Islam as Drama: Wedding Rites and the Theatricality of Islam in South Sulawesi

Abstract

This article discusses the prominence of wedding rituals in South Sulawesi to illuminate Islamic development in post-Suharto Indonesia and theatrical expressions of Islam through dramaturgical and social drama analysis. Theatre metaphors help explain the theatricality of Islam and the centrality of wedding rites in social and religious life in South Sulawesi, two social facts not easily understood by people outside this region. Through the performance of wedding rites, Muslims know themselves as Muslims, display social status and transform local politics. Analysis of wedding rites illustrates not only the importance of theatricality in the expression of Islam for the Bugis Makassar Muslims, but also how massive social and religious transformation is structured around a particular life-cycle ritual, namely weddings. Giving emphasis to theatricality, this article nuances recent studies about contemporary Islam, which largely focus upon the importance of discourses in the life of contemporary Muslims.

Keywords:

• Wedding Ritual
• Islam
• Drama
• Post Suharto
• South Sulawesi

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Philip Taylor and Kathryn Robinson from the Australian National University and also the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

[1] According to the Indonesian scholar Muhaimin (2008), the separation between adat and Islam was consolidated only after the Dutch policy on Indonesian sources of law. Nevertheless, in research about Islam and adat in Cirebon, he found that traditional Muslims do not separate what they call adat and Islam (118). In this form of unity, custom effectively regulates social life before all law (Burns 2007).

[2] Muslims in Kindang Bulukumba use a combination of Bahasa Indonesia, Makassar, Konjo and sometime Bugis language terms to describe the accessories or rituals of a wedding. I follow this multilingual practice in this paper.

[3] Horsemeat is popular in Kindang. Horses in this Konjo-speaking community are bred mainly for meat, not for transportation; it is favoured for its tenderness, taste and fragrance. The importance of horse is expressed by a young man: ‘Before coming to a wedding party, people will ask “what animal has been slaughtered? Cow or horse?” If it is cow [he illustrated this it with two fingers on his head to look like horns] they will be reluctant to come early.’

[4] Barzanji, originally called ‘iqd al-jawahir’ (Ar.: diamond of a necklace), is a text written by Syaikh Ja'far al-Barzanjiy almost a millennium ago, in 1184 (580 H). This text contains rhymes to venerate the prophet Muhammad. They describe his beautiful attributes, which reflect the attributes of God because of the crystal quality of the prophet's heart. Barzanji is in fact the name of a place in Kurdistan (Iraq) where the author of the rhymes comes from. In South Sulawesi, the chanting of barzanji is called dzikkiri, which sounds like dzikir, remembering Allah. Though the chanted text is the same, dzikkiri is not the barzanji I found in Java. I am familiar with this text as it is widely read in Java and I also read it when I initiated my daughter during her birth ritual. In South Sulawesi, it has more rhyme, contravening the Arabic regulation of reading (Ar.: tajwid). An elderly man told me that ‘the rhyme is more important that the reading regulation’. Of course, rhyme here also refers to the feeling and sensation created from the chanting. Additionally, unlike in Java where this text is usually only chanted during a ritual for a baby, in South Sulawesi this text is chanted by an imam or guru on every occasion: entering a newly built house, at a wedding ceremony, at a birth ritual (akekah) and to celebrate new property and as an expression of gratitude (Ind.: syukuran). Puang Saleng, an elder, told me ‘if there is a gathering there should be the burning of incense and the chanting of barzanji’. Paccing (purifying) is conducted when the chanters arrive at the line ‘My love, my greeting to you’, and stand up to respect the spiritual presence of Muhammad. Though it uses fragrant water rather than spittle, the paccing rite involves writing on the palm with a finger. After paccing is finished and the barzanji chanters have sat down again, the barzanji ends, closing the long process of the first day.

[5] Spending money is the amount paid by the groom's family to the bride's family to be spent on wedding costs. For noble and high-ranking people, the amount currently ranges from 20 million rupiah (around AU$3000) to 40 million (around AU$5000); for the commoners between 7 million (around AU$1000) to 15 million (around AU$2000). Nobles generally receive 88 or 44 reyals and ordinary people 22 or 12 reyals. In Kindang, these traditional prescriptions are strictly applied. There was once a case where the marriage was almost cancelled when the groom's family failed to provide the reyal for the wedding festival. However, because of many people's endeavours, including the bride's family, the money was obtained from local people. Because of its importance as a marker of social status, it is not rare, when the groom's family is unable to pay a lot, that the amount will be exaggerated during the public examination by the adat though in fact the amount is much smaller.

[6] Kalesunrang is the amount of guilden and reyal money paid to the groom's family as regulated in the customary law. It is always calculated in guilden, the currency of the Dutch colonial period, or in reyal, the currency used by the Arab residents of Makassar during the fifteenth century. These currencies are no longer in general circulation, but must be purchased locally to provide kalesunrang.

[7] De Jong's (1996) account provides the following comparative amount across regions, during the 1960s and 1970s: The nobles in Selayar pay 2 buffaloes, 300 litres of rice and Rp 25,000. The commoners pay one buffalo, 100 litres of rice and Rp 5,000. The poor paid the amount they can afford. A young noble in Gowa payed two buffaloes, 700 litres of rice and Rp 50,000; and a commoner paid one buffalo, 500 litres of rice and Rp 25,000. The poor pays one buffalo or horse. In Soppeng, the amount ranged between Rp 5000 and 15,000. The rank price paid by the Selayar noblemen in the 1930s was f. 160 (=80 reyal or riala; 1 reyal=20 gram of gold); in the 1970s it was 88,44 and 22 reyal and in Gowa 30, 28 and 14 reyal for the commoners (1906: 44, 22 and 12 reyal); 1 reyal is equivalent to 2 guilden. In addition to buffalo, rice or money, the people can also pay with rice fields, boats, plantation (garden), coconut trees, slaves or horses.

[8] An imam told me that hajj women are priced high because the husband no longer needs to pay for the cost of the pilgrimage. The imam's explanation reveals why pilgrims from South Sulawesi include large numbers of young and unmarried women, which is not the case for other parts of Indonesia where pilgrims are more likely to be male and older.

[9] While the bride is waiting, hired photographers often take photos of her. As a result, wedding scenes in South Sulawesi often look rather sensual: photos on the bed.

[10] Karaeng Butung adopted all these elements because of his traditionalist orientation, locally styled as ahlussunnah waljamaah. In the midst of the ‘sharia-ised’ public sphere of the district, Karaeng Butung understood the increasing attacks on traditional rituals, but he continued to practice them as a display of the particular form of Islam he accepted and defended them before the public sphere. In modern South Sulawesi, in addition to Muhammadiah, groups that represent modernist views are Darul Istiqamah. This group began in Maros, just north of Makassar but now has two branches near Bulukumba. Istiqamah—the short identification the Muslims of Kindang use to call the followers of Darul Istiqamah— is actually a school founded by a religious cleric (KH Muzdakir Ali) in Kahar Muzakkar's Islamic state dedicated to purifying Islam in South Sulawesi after the latter's dissatisfaction with the too Java-oriented religious purification of Muhammadiah. However, Istiqamah in South Sulawesi become a ‘madhab’ (Ar.: school of law) that seeks to identify particular forms of Islam different from Ahlu Sunnah style. Java's orientation of purification normally focuses on the ‘authentic’ way of praying and is not sensitive to the particular social world of South Sulawesi. One of Istiqamah's main strategies is to develop a particular wedding procedure which followers regard as more Islamic.

[11] This criticism of local wedding rituals dates back to 1926 when Muhammadiah—the Java-born revivalist movement—arrived in the region almost fourteen years after its establishment in Java. In South Sulawesi, the intellectual energy to attack unacceptable Islamic practices was consolidated in 1931 when Haji Rasul sent his son, Hamka, to Makassar to prepare for the 21st Congress of Muhammadiah. Though only twenty-three, Hamka was welcomed as a great teacher, taken to several parts of Sulawesi and later published two journals and one book to spread the organisation's modernist messages (Karel Steenbrink 1991 cited by Gibson 2007, 169). The attacks were firstly limited to criticising drinking, gambling, cockfighting, barzanji recitations, maulid celebration and the cult of royal ancestors, evoking the modernist approaches in Java.Before the arrival of Muhammadiah, South Sulawesi had been exposed to an earlier form of reformism around four centuries earlier, at the end of the 1590s. That was when the king of Bone, La Ma'daremmeng (moved by the egalitarian concept of Islam which had reached South Sulawesi through ar-Ranniri sufistic writings) decreed that non-hereditary slaves, commonly bought in exchange for spices from Moluccas, should be freed. However, this reformism was limited to the liberation of slaves. Opposed by Bone's nobles as well as La Ma'deremmeng's mother, this revival movement was crushed in 1643 by Gowa and La Ma'deremmeng was forced to flee to Luwu (Gibson 2007, 64), a district in the north of South Sulawesi.Only after Muhammadiah expanded its hold and recruited more local followers did local scholars begin to attack the wedding rituals seriously. In 1937, the organisation had sixteen branches, and in 1941, it had 7000 members and 30,000 sympathisers (Gibson 2007, 170; Pelras 1994, 127). Their call for reform attracted followers in a manner similar to that described by Taylor (2007, 11) about the reform of Islam among Cham in South Vietnam. Reform ‘appealed as a creed that was rational, disciplined and systematic to those urban centres who were involved in social relations that transcended localistic tribal affiliations’ (Taylor 2007, 11).