Still remembering the origins

ABSTRACT

Over the last three decades, the influence of orthodox Islam in contemporary Indonesian society has become increasingly visible. The use of Muslim clothing, Islamic expressions and commodities has become prevalent in the everyday life of Muslims in Indonesia. Along with this change, some prominent localised forms of Islam are being gradually replaced by standard orthodox Islam. However, syncretic Islamic practices continue strongly in some regions in Indonesia. In this article I explore factors enabling syncretic forms of Islamic practice through a case study of the Gumay of South Sumatra. Drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the Gumay people, I argue that the sustained importance of local Islamic authorities and the transmission of Islamic knowledge that are embedded in everyday kinship relations is the key, although school education and other external Islamic authorities are shaping the way Muslim Gumay see what orthodox Islam should be. Also important are the Indonesian government’s cultural policies, the political importance of ethnicity, and the popular use of new media as these have played a significant role in keeping such syncretic Islamic practices alive among the younger generations of the Gumay.

KEYWORDS:

• Adat
• Gumay
• Indonesia
• Islam
• Sumatra
• syncretism

Acknowledgements

I thank the Gumay elders and families who have assisted in my ethnographic research over the decades. I also thank the two anonymous reviewers of Indonesia and the Malay World for providing valuable feedback on my earlier draft.

Note on contributor

Minako Sakai teaches at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of New South Wales, Canberra, and is adjunct Associate Professor at the College of Asia and Pacific, Australian National University. Her most recent publication is an ethnography of the Gumay community, Kacang tidak lupa kulitnya: identitas Gumay Islamisasi dan merantau di Sumatera Selatan (In press, Obor). She has also published on issues relating to the interplay between religion and development policies in contemporary Indonesia. Email: [email protected] and [email protected]

Notes

1 These visits took place in 1999, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2015.

2 Sharing ancestral knowledge with an outsider required strong support from the community and showed their level of trust in this research. Fearing this knowledge might be lost forever, Pak Rumsyah, as the 26th Jurai Kebali’an, generously offered to support my research in the mid 1990s by adopting me as his daughter, and I was able to earn the trust of the key ritual specialists.

3 Lampit is a woven mat given to elders and represents a symbol of authority; see Collins (1998: 539).

4 The Palembang coastal Malays still generally hesitate before visiting the regions, as the highlands are seen as a place of danger where activities such as robbery by gangs occur.

5 My observations of the Besemah region in the mid 1990s near Pagar Alam showed that the Besemah had the financial means to build solid platform houses with beautiful carvings whilst such magnificent houses were rare in the Gumay region.

6 For example, the children of Pak Rumsyah and the current Lahat District Head, Saifudin Aswari, have been educated at St Yosef.

7 Indeed, the interest in secular education is much stronger in contemporary Indonesia. Only 13% of the primary and secondary school-aged children in Indonesia are in Islamic education (Hefner 2009: 57).

8 In 1995 a group of external preachers appeared to offer proselytizing sermons at Gumay Talang. The village elders decided not to allow them to stay in a village mosque for proselytizing purposes for fear of the radical Islamic views they may offer. They suspected that the group had a link with Darul Al-Arqam, a sect banned in Malaysia.

9 The revival is unofficial and there were more than a few cases in which self-declared ‘sultans’ insisted that they were the true successors.

10 Receiving multiple invitations to weddings on Sundays is not unusual and the number of guests usually exceeds 200 whilst established families will receive more than 1,000 guests as well-wishers. These events are attended by the whole family.

11 Wak is a kinship term among the Gumay to refer to someone who is older than their own parents. Since Wak Rustam is an elder brother of Pak Rumsyah, he is usually called Wak Rustam in Gumay Talang.

12 The participants of the Sedekah Malam Empatbelas customarily left money to the house of the Jurai Kebali’an. The accumulated money was usually divided for use among those involved in Jurai Tue but the greater portion of the money raised stayed with the house of the Jurai Kebali’an. The question of who should actually receive this money became contentious when Wak Rustam was the acting Jurai Kebali’an.

13 The district head of Muara Enim attended in person while the Bupati Lahat personally presented his best wishes prior to the wedding ceremony which he could not attend because of another commitment.

14 In other areas of Lahat and Muara Enim districts new administrative boundaries with distinctive ethnic names were created. This is just one of the many examples of renegotiation of power and development policies in regional Indonesia. See Schulte Nordholt and van Klinken (2007) for an explanation of power politics in the region.

15 For an example of syncretic individualistic practices in East Java, see Cederroth (1991).