"I do not intend to prejudge the past." ~ William Whitelaw
Javanese Muslims in rural Java are strange. Most of them don’t understand Arabic. Most of them don’t have physical proof of God. And yet their unquestioning piety is astounding. Being called “Hajji/Hajjah” is something they spend their entire lives and savings for. No matter how poor.
Recently, the Muslims in Aceh passed the practice of stoning as legal sanction. I barely a year spent there, so it’s hard to confirm; but regressing to modern day stoning could give you an idea why anybody would give up TRYING with the Acehnese.
Islam in Java is woven into the culture, practiced with the kind of obedience that reminds me of cattle herds. A lot Javanese Muslims belong to a tariqah; a sufistic order and collectivistic in their religious practice.
Islam in Sumatra is practiced with rigid brutality as in Saudi in the 80s. Either you believe, or fake it, or be stoned. A lot Sumatran Muslims are Muhammadiyahs, the Indonesian version of Wahhabism.
Does it explain anything to you if you knew that Islam in Java was spread through storytelling, shadow puppets and plenty of mind boggling myths and legends?
Does it explain anything to you if you knew that Islam in Sumatra was spread with bloodletting? That the Paderi Wars stabbed conviction into every animist, man, woman and child. That my great-great-grandmother fled to Java carrying horrors about women folks being forced to witness their men beheaded, after being publicly raped. For objecting Paderi-advocated reforms.
By the men in white thobes and turbans.
Do methods of teaching define practice?
3 afterthinkers:
i am speechless.. nothing more jaw dropping than a live example of how important education is..
and just comes to show the outcome of force-feeding religion unto people..
Here where I live, we have extremes: We've got people here who practiced a very diluted form of Islam mixed with pagan beliefs...Then there are those who practice a very rigid Islam (never mind if it's Wahhabi or not, since it's in many forms too).
Islam in my country was spread by Malay-Arabs who didn't create violence with their coming, much less with their preaching, but that didn't guarantee that the Islam they spread would be free from native elements such as mythology and folklore.
The result? Thirteen ethnic groups who profess Islam as their religion, and follow it in varying degrees of liberality or/and rigidity. They don't even get along together very well as people, actually, which is why I am skeptical of the Islamic State that separatist groups are fighting for.
One thing though. I'm glad my somehow my Dad hired private tutors (very well-screened to check for objectionable ideologies) for my religious education. He said , "You have a brain, I have raised you to use it, and we have a whole library of religious books. Read them and find things out for yourselves." Naturally such an attitude caused a stir in the neighborhood as we were almost the only ones who didn't attend madrasah. But I'm thankful just the same.
When I see those friendly, smiling faces of those hard working people from Lombok it's very hard to imagine that these very same people waged holy war on their Hindu Balinese neighbors. Then I see that wicked looking Kris dagger I inherited from my grandfather...
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