THE HISTORY OF ISLAM IN BOLAANG MONGONDOW, NORTH SULAWESI

Abstract

This article describes the spread of Islam in the Bolaang Mongondow region of the province of North Sulawesi and shows that religious conversion was an intermittent if ongoing process. It is characterised by changes very much along the lines of religious rationalisation in the Weberian sense including systematisation and codification of doctrine, building of formal institutions, professionalisation of the clergy and a universalistic claim to truth transcending ethnic and national boundaries. The emphasis on aspects of rationalisation also serves to shed more light on processes that run in the opposite direction since rationalisation of Islam facilitated the carving out of an increasingly separate sphere of popular beliefs and practices. I will refer to this sphere as folk beliefs in contrast to rationalised scriptural religions (in this case Islam) and the traditional local religion of Bolaang Mongondow, because folk beliefs include elements and adaptations of both religions but in markedly derationalised form.

Notes

¹The term Bolaang Mongondow here refers to the regency (kabupaten) of the same name before it was split into four regencies and one municipality in 2007 and 2008. The people in North Sulawesi usually still say Bolaang Mongondow or Bolmong when speaking about the whole region; the new term Bolmong Raya (Greater Bolaang Mongondow) is only used in a political context or by the press.

∗Research in Indonesia consisted of 24 months of fieldwork in Bolaang Mongondow between 1999 and 2007 and research in the Arsip Nasional in Jakarta under the auspices of Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and supported by grants from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). I was also able to consult the Nationaalarchief in The Hague, the archives of the Landelijk Dienstencentrum in Utrecht and the KITLV in Leiden. I am grateful to these institutions and assistance from their staff. I would like to thank the participants of the symposium on ‘Islam in Eastern Indonesia’ in Frankfurt and the two anonymous IMW reviewers for their comments on previous drafts of this article.

²Neither ‘church’ nor ‘priest’ in their common usage are applicable to Islam, however Weber (1980: 278) explicitly includes Islam in his usage of these terms.

³Wilken and Schwarz (1867: 256f.); Dunnebier (1951: 161) does not confirm this meaning of the word karauwan but suggests that Wilken and Schwarz may have misunderstood it for the term karawan (the spirit house used for offerings to ancestors of the raja) but he also gives ample evidence that a distinction between ancestors of commoners and noble ancestors was important (Dunnebier 1947–1948: 208ff.; 1951: 352f.).

⁴Wilken and Schwarz (1867: 281) mention bilale, hakim, hatibi, hukum seraa, imam, modjim, paili, sehe and seraa; the umbrella name for Islamic religious leaders was lebe. At present each village in rural Bolaang Mongondow has an imam and a number of subordinate mosque officials commonly called pegawai syari.

⁵For more details about the Christian missionary activities in Bolaang Mongondow see Kosel (2005), where the minimal success of the mission is mainly explained by the fact that Islam also provided a group identity to those in Bolaang Mongondow by which they distanced themselves from the Christian Minahasa and the Dutch.