Javanese-Islamic Mysticism

Kyai Omyang Jimbe minangka arane sawijining keris kang ampuh lan akeh digoleki de-ning para kolektor/pandhemen barang antik, utawa barang kang ana tuah/kasiyate. Saliyane dipercaya duwe kagunan kang minulya kanggo nglancarake rejeki, keris "Omyang Jimbe", wis kaloka nduweni isoteri/tuah/kabisan kanggo ngayomi bandhane sing kagungan lan nggampa-ngake kanggo nagih utang. Malah pawartane, sawetara keris Omyang Jimbe bisa digunakake kanggo narik dana ghaib/pesugihan.

Berbagai praktik mistik telah berkembang di kalangan masyarakat Jawa. Kemunculan praktik tersebut sebenarnya dapat dilacak dari konteks sejarah masuknya Islam ke Indonesia, dan Jawa pada khususnya. Artikel ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi Islam dan mistisime di Jawa, yakni menjelaskan rasionalitas dari penerimaan komunitas Muslim atas penyebaran mistisisme Islam dan penyebaran mistisisme Islam itu sendiri di Jawa. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa mistisime Jawa tumbuh subur dalam hampir setiap sendi kehidupan; di lingkungan keluarga istana, pesantren, grup kebatinan, dan di tingkat publik secara umum. Hal ini terjadi karena Islam yang sebenarnya diperkenalkan ke Indonesia dan Jawa, khususnya, adalah Islam yang dirumuskan sebagai Islam mistik. Mistisisme Islam lebih mudah berkembang sebagaimana ia juga dapat menyesuaikan diri dengan pemahaman pubik masyarakat Jawa.
Various mystical practices are found in Javanese Islam. Genealogically, the emergence of these practices can be traced back in the history of the penetration and development of Islam in Indonesia and Java in particular. This article aims to glimpse the accounts of Islam and Javanese mysticism in, explaining the way in which Javanese Muslims accommodate local mysticism in their religiosity. This article finds that Javanese mysticism grows in the fertile Java, found in the royal family, boarding school, Sufi group, and other sectors. Indeed, Islam and Javanese culture has met and mixed, so that Islamic mysticism survives and evolves and can be found in daily life of Javanese society.

BLURB: Javanese shadow puppetry is a sophisticated dramatic form, often felt to be at the heart of Javanese culture, drawing on classic texts but with important contemporary resonance in fields like religion and politics. How to make sense of the shadow-play as a form of world-making? In Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind, Bernard Arps explores this question by considering an all-night performance of Dewa Ruci, a key play in the repertoire. Thrilling and profound, Dewa Ruci describes the mighty Bratasena’s quest for the ultimate mystical insight.
    The book presents  Dewa Ruci as rendered by the distinguished master puppeteer Ki Anom Soeroto in Amsterdam in 1987. The book’s unusual design presents the performance texts together with descriptions of the sounds and images that would remain obscure in conventional formats of presentation. Copious annotations probe beneath the surface and provide an understanding of the performance's cultural complexity. These annotations explain the meanings of puppet action, music, and shifts in language; how the puppeteer wove together into the drama the circumstances of the performance in Amsterdam, Islamic and other religious ideas, and references to contemporary Indonesian political ideology. Also revealed is the performance’s historical multilayering and the picture it paints of the Javanese past.
    Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind not only presents an unrivalled insight into the artistic depth of wayang kulit, it exemplifies a new field of study, the philology of performance.

Kumpulan Review Jurnal :
1. An orientation to be a good millennial Muslims: state and thepolitics of naming in islamizing Java
2. Islam dan Pembebasan: Elemen-elemen Teologis dalam Menciptakan Transformasi Sosial
3. Representasi Khilafah Dalam Pemerintahan Republik Spiritual

This article is a preliminary exploration of suluk texts aiming at advancing P.J. Zoetmulder's ideas with respect to the Indic origins of some characters and doctrinal elements in Javanese mystical texts. It will identify possible continuities between Indic and Islamic paradigms, thereby revisiting and rebalancing scholarly perspectives that have stressed the Sufi origins of Javanese Islam-or uncritically posited its inherent, yet nebulous, 'Javaneseness'-at the expense of its being situated in, and indebted to, a context of religious discourses and practices rooted in the Indic paradigm. Having introduced and evaluated Zoetmulder's hypotheses about the figures of the santri birahi and Lĕbe Lonthang, it will analyse some passages of suluk that show indebtedness to ideas stemming from a pre-Islamic tantric fund. It will then link the figure of heterodox Muslim mystic Siti Jĕnar to other antinomian characters described in Javanese literature, and contextualise them against the background of the wider issue of the synthesis between Hindu-Buddhist (tantric) and Islamic (Sufi) identities in Java.

When religious affairs in Indonesia (casually glossed as a country with the largest Muslim population) grab international attention that mostly comes down to Islam and attempts of further Islamisation of the Archipelago. However, local forms of syncretic and pre-Islamic mysticism, magic and spirit beliefs persist and their adherents keep fighting for recognition on the state level (as Indonesian freedom of religion is limited to the choice between several state-recognised confessions). The objective of this paper is to discuss how pre-Islamic beliefs exist and persist among the Javanese (the largest ethnic group in both Indonesia and entire Southeast Asia), alongside with Islam and despite the advances of modernity. A more detailed outlook on the contestation and resistance is meant to be based on the example of traditional dance known as jathilan or kuda kepang. Trance (believed to be caused by the spirits possessing the dancers' bodies) constitutes the main attraction of the performance which is commonly held on various celebratory occasions (marriages, circumcisions, village festivities and even national holidays). During the past two decades, it has been enjoying an ever-growing popularity and nowadays most of the shows are advertised via social media. The resilience of the trance dance is meant to be analysed by superimposing its own specific features against the background of the national religious and cultural policies.

"The wound is the place where the light enters you." 1 -Rumi "…The movement to make fear the problem is also dangerous. What is needed is courage to resist the oppressive causes for unnecessary suffering 2 , and fearlessness in actions [on] behalf of children at risk [,] and we can only do this by teaching courage and fearlessness to act according to our courageous choices without hesitation." (Four Arrows 2018)

I am still on the first stretch of this nomadic exploration, but I think I can begin to answer the question that is guiding this exploration—'how can the Natural-Indigenous Worldview support our understandings of the potential for an anarchist society (i.e. for social order without hierarchical domination)?' The key of Natural-Indigenous Worldview that opens the lock of an anarchist society, of a society without hierarchical domination, comes in the Natural-Indigenous Worldview's spiritual ecology. When we develop the four R's (responsibility, reciprocity, respect, relationships [Young 2015]) through relating to the world in a manner that is facilitated by the spiritual ecology that rises from the Natural-Indigenous Worldview and thus ascribes spirit to all things without regard for the Colonial Modernist Worldview's distinction between 'animate' and 'inanimate', we come to see the world as a single, living, conscious being. The illusion of a discrete distinction between self and other breaks down and we come to see the self (and other selves) as strands in the unified, conscious web of creation. We come to care for all of creation as we would care for our children, for our partners, for our parents and for our self. Transcending the illusion of discrete individuality we develop a lovingly reciprocal, responsible, respectful and relational orientation to the world that begets virtuous thought, feeling, behavior and being without recourse to hierarchical authority (to punishment and fear of punishment). Engaging with the world through the spiritual ecology that rises from the Natural-Indigenous Worldview allows the sprouts of human nature to grow to fruition without recourse to hierarchical domination (i.e. without recourse to attempts to 'help sprouts grow' by pulling on them and the death of the sprouts of human nature portended by such hierarchical folly [Meng Zi 2016, 2A2]).

This article aims to fill the gap in the study of Indonesian Sufi women, focusing those whose names are mentioned in the manuscripts of Shaṭṭārīyah genealogy (silsilah). One of those Sufi women discussed is Kangjeng Ratu Kadospaten, the wife (garwa padmi) of Sultan Hamengkubuwana I or Pangeran Mangkubumi (r. 1749–1792), and emban of Pangeran Dipanagara (1785-1855), the Javanese mystic and leader of the ‘holy war’ against Dutch colonialism. She is one of the most important women in Yogyakarta in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Kangjeng Ratu played an instrumental role in the shaping of Islamic spirituality of the Pangeran Dipanagara from his childhood in the Kadipaten (1785-1793) until they moved to Tegalreja, where Kangjeng Ratu Kadipaten passed away in 1803.

If you fail to act now, history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people." (King 1959) "Future planners assume that today's human behavior is normative, explaining it as adaptive to current conditions and part of a line of progress from prior Western or Euro-centric existence. There is a lack of awareness of how "worldview" has influenced the state of affairs in the world today." (Four Arrows and Narvaez 2016, p. 2) have on one's descendants. Interconnectedness fosters harmony by promoting responsibility and reciprocity, and harmony is considered the most powerful energy in the universe." (Methot 2012) "In Indigenous sciences, the world is often understood in terms of flows of energies (and sometimes entities) across a permeable boundary between manifest and unmanifest realities. Working relationships with forces deemed "superstitious" or "irrational" in modern science are significant aspects of social processes and healing practices. Maintaining these worldviews and practices is an uphill battle against the hegemony of modern scientific thought and the legacy of missionaries and educators who tried so hard to dismantle Indigenous knowledge systems. Even among scientists today, those who try to work outside the mechanistic paradigm in ways that approach Indigenous science are denounced as crackpots." (Herman 2008, p. 75) Returning to our discussion of , accepting that being 'realistic' means accepting the status quo is just fine if accepting the status quo is tenable for you in your seat of privilege, but it is not tenable if accepting the status quo means accepting the suffering and death of your homeland, nonhuman kin, family, friends, communities, etc. By not telling students how things fit together in the political, social, economic, etc. systems of Colonial Modernity or how we should think and feel about the oppressive ways that things fit together in colonial modernity teachers simply allow the exploitative, dominant culture of Colonial Modernity and its many and varied mythological rationalizations for oppression (which have been inscribed upon all those people who are socialized within Colonial Modernity) to go unproblematized (which is to say to retain their 'commonsensical', banal invisibility). By approaching education in a non-didactic manner authors like Cook implicitly support the hegemonic status quo and the many and varied forms of oppression therein. Obviously students will retain their ability to accept or reject didactic narrations, but the key is that didactic narrations which counter the dominant culture serve to problematize the banal invisibility of the dominant culture and its associated myths, ideas, logics, ontological assumptions, etc. (i.e. Worldview) that produce and legitimate the oppressive, hierarchical relations between things that typify Colonial Modernity.

Modernity and a True Return to Nature 0. Point of Departure Question How are human-nature relations and the attainment of virtue through human-nature relations understood in the classical urban theory of Geddes and Mumford? How is technology and technological power seen as mediating the relationship between humans and nature?

Beyond somewhat vague allusions to Sufi influence, a qualitative sense of early Javanese Islamic praxis remains sadly lacking among scholars. This article attempts to rectify that deficiency by re-assessing the importance of a Kubrawī silsila (spiritual genealogy) found within the 17th- to early 18th-century Javanese chronicle, Sejarah Banten Ranté-Ranté. First identified by Martin van Bruinessen in 1994, this silsila preserves detailed information about two separate Sunni-orientated Kubrawī lineages attributable to the latter’s Central Asian sub-branch, the
Hamadānī. Set within the context of other early Javanese Muslim texts containing previously overlooked evidence of Kubrawī praxis, in addition to hagiographical traditions identifying one Jumadil Kubra (a probable cypher for Kubrawī founder, Najm alDīn al-Kubrā) as the island’s earliest Muslim practitioner and a resident of Gresik, we argue that this silsila indicates considerable Kubrawī influence over Java’s initial Islamisation. Further consideration of the silsila’s specific Hamadānī characteristics set against wider 13th- to 15th-century Islamic history suggests either a north Indian or, more probably, Sino-Muslim origin for that influence. We therefore conclude by interpreting the Sejarah Banten silsila as a possible window onto the substantive nature of Sino-Muslim involvement in early Javanese Islam, adding further nuance to our understanding of that island’s Islamisation.

This paper, part of a project on religious worldmaking at the court of Paku Buwana IV in Surakarta, focuses on a category of ideas about worldmaking that were ambient among the Javanese social elite. The quest, an agential, typically person-focused form of worldmaking, narrative in character, appears in variable figurations in many historical environments and different cultural domains across the globe. I describe how a literary rendition of the Javanese mythological narrative of quest known as "Bima Purified" (Bima Suci) was made into a shadowplay in 1817–1818 and how it resonated with ideas of Sufi questing in court circles.

This article was originally published in the Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Leiden), vol.130:259-88. It gives an overview of the various Javanese histories or babad written about Prince Diponegoro (1785-1855) and the Java War (1825-30), concentrating particularly on one of the key texts written by the prince's principal adversary in Bagelen, Raden Tumenggung Cokronegoro I, the bupati (administrator) of Purworejo (pre-1832, Kedung Kebo - The Buffaloes' Watering Hole) (in office,1830-62), First completed in 1843, and later rewritten in various subsequent editions, the Buku is a remarkable historical document which draws on the experiences of one of Diponegoro's principal commanders (Basah) in Bagelen, Basah Kerto Pengalasan, who later became a Sufi mystic and studied under a leading Sheikh tarekat (Islamic mystical brotherhood) in Pulau Pinang, dying later in Semarang (and giving his name to the Kampung Basahan - kampong of the army commander).

Slametan, referring to a broad communal prayer, feast, and food-offering to commemorate or celebrate critical live cycles, such as birth, marriage, and death, constitutes an essential ritual for Javanese Muslims. Despite growing Islamization, in which this ritual is often renamed as tahlilan, elements of local beliefs in it remain. This study aims to reexamine the Javanese Muslim death ritual tradition and offers a new interpretation. It explores the elements of local belief and its convergence with the universal Islamic teaching and demonstrates that the Javanese norms fit the fundamental Islamic doctrines, rendering this ritual easily acceptable by the Javanese. This study concurs with the previous studies stating that this ritual paves tolerance and social integration and unites Islam and local tradition. However, this study specifically examines the meanings of the death ritual and argues that the idea of honoring predecessors and maintaining an uninterrupted symbolic communication between the alive, namely descendants, and the dead such as late parents and forebears, constitute common Javanese and Islamic values. [Slametan merupakan salah satu ritus penting bagi muslim Jawa yang berupa doa dan makan bersama serta berbagi makanan untuk memperingati atau merayakan peralihan daur hidup seperti kelahiran, pernikahan dan kematian. Meskipun Islamisasi terus berlanjut, ritus yang sering disebut juga dengan tahlilan ini masih menyisakan unsur-unsur kepercayaan lokal.

This was the paper which I read at the International Symposium on Javanese Studies and Manuscripts of Keraton Yogyakarta at the Royal Ambarrukmo Hotel on 5-6 March 2019. Entitled:  '”Dia Yang Menyerah” – Zaman Inggris dalam Pandangan Seorang Pangeran Sastrawan Yogya', it should be read in conjunction with my PowerPoint of the same title. I also gave it a sub-title as follows: 'Merayakan “Manuskrip Yogya Kembali” dengan membaca kembali Pangeran Aryo Panular (± 1772-1826) – putra-sentana dan sejarawan Keraton Yogya yang mampu mengisahkan sisi lain zaman Inggris (1811-1816) dari pihak Jawa dalam Babad Bedhah ing Ngayogyakarta (1812-1816)' [posting updated 14 June 2021]

Moving from Barnesmoore's (2016) theorization of humans as beings with the potential for conscious (epistemological) evolution, this article argues that a revolution in the ideas by which ('world view' in which) we conceive of potential practice must necessarily precede a revolution of academic and social practice (that theory necessarily precedes practice). Revolution must be rooted in revolutionary ideas and cannot be facilitated by practices that rise from (are rationalized within) the hegemonic essence (ideas, axioms and logics) of the regime against which revolution is being waged.

Through the ethnographic examples and a framework of the everyday life, "The Pilgrim's Divine Gift at the Shrine of the Sunan Pandanaran" shows the important role which the shrine of saint Sunan Pandanaran, located in Bayat, Central Java, plays in the lives of the Javanese people. This paper shows how the Javanese sacred space is inclusive of a historical continuity of different faiths that make up the local culture. Exposing the unnoticed, the inconspicuous, and the unobtrusive, this paper goes beyond the settled cultural patterns and problematizes heterogeneities, ambiguities, and indeterminate classification of categories into a homogenous identity of place, culture, and state-one singular, unified entity. The shrine is an heirloom of the Javanese kingdoms of Surakarta and Yogyakarta-Sunan Pandanaran is considered an ancestor of the Mataram Kingdom-but through the efforts of a Catholic village chief, this shrine has been revitalized as an important pilgrimage site for Javanese of any religious affiliation.

This article presents the story of the Dutch Reformed theologian and missionary Dirk Bakker. He was involved in the establishment of the first Reformed educational institute in theology in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia in 1906. Unlike other publications about him, it also pays attention to his carrier before he entered the mission field in 1900. The author is of the opinion this his experiences in his early carrier had impact on his attitude in mission and towards other religions.

" Those machines whose output was so great that all men might be clothed; those new methods of agriculture and new agricultural implements, which promised crops so big that all men might be fed—the very instruments that were to give the whole community the physical basis of a good life turned out, for the vast majority of people who possessed neither capital nor land, to be nothing short of instruments of torture. " (Mumford 1922, pp. 115-116, emphasis added) We grew corn at the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm gardens this year, and while the corn stalks grew to be over eight feet high they were barren. The corn grew tall, but it was unable to bear fruit because of the northerly environment it grew in. Similarly, we grew a strain of tobacco that was gifted to the gardens by a company from the US, and while the tobacco grew tall, had big, beautiful leaves, and even began to flower, it did not mature to the point of bearing its seed pods. The tobacco grew tall, but it was unable to bear fruit because of the northerly environment it grew in. Post-Industrial society can be likened to such a plant, which grew tall from the seed—from the utopian myth—of industrial society but failed to bear the fruits portended by these myths because of the environment (the Paternalist Worldview [Barnesmoore 2017a; Barnesmoore 2017b; Barnesmoore 2017c]) it grew in.

Sunan Kalijaga adalah salah satu dari walisanga (sembilan wali) yang menyebarkan agama islam di pulau Jawa. Gaya penyebaran islam Sunan Kalijaga berbeda dengan beberapa Sunan yang termasuk dalam walisanga. Sunan Kalijaga melakukan akulturasi antara ajaran Islam dengan budaya Jawa serta beberapa ajaran agama yang sudah mapan di Jawa (Hindu-Budha). Hal yang ditekankan oleh Sunan Kalijaga dalam mengajarkan agama Islam adalah pada pengalaman praktis kehidupan sehari-hari orang Jawa dalam memahami “sangkan paraning dumadi". Salah satu media yang digunakan oleh Sunan Kalijaga adalah tembang “Ilir-Ilir”. Tembang tersebut adalah tembang dolanan yang banyak diketahui dan ditembangkan oleh anak-anak kecil. Di balik kesederhanaan bentuk luar tembang tersebut, ada ajaran yang sangat dalam yang disampaikan oleh Sunan Kalijaga, yaitu mengenai gambaran pergantian kekuasaan, perbaikan akhlak para pemimpin, dan nilai Pancasila-Buddhid (ajaran moral).

Selama ini penelitian tentang patok batas wilayah belum pernah dieksplorasi, padahal ini menyangkut masalah kedaulatan suatu negara/bangsa, penelitian yang sudah dilakukan selama ini adalah pembuatan purwarupa patok batas wilayah menggunakan GPS dan GSM. Penelitian ini memiliki keterbatasan, karena tidak semua wilayah di Indonesia memiliki sinyal GSM yang baik dan stabil. Terkait hal ini, maka itu dilakukan penelitian pembuatan purwarupa patok batas wilayah menggunakan Wemos D1. Purwarupa patok batas wilayah ini tidak menggunakan GPS maupun GSM namun memanfaatkan sinyal dbm/RSSI sebagai sarana pemantauan. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini menggunakan metode Triangulasi yang sudah dimodifikasi, gubahan dari Vincent Pierlot dan Marc Van Droogenbroeck. Hasil dari penelitian yang sudah dilakukan, penggunaan metode perhitungan Triangulasi terbukti berhasil mencari posisi Wemos D1 mendekati posisi koordinat yang sesungguhnya, selain itu penggunaan semakin banyak Access Point dalam penelitian ini terbukti bisa menghasilkan akurasi yang lebih baik. Kata kunci : patok batas wilayah, Wemos D1, Triangulasi, RSSI. ABSTRACT This article illustrates on regional boundary stakes, the research that has been carried out so far is the manufacture of regional boundary stakes using GPS and GSM. This research has limitations, because not all regions in Indonesia have a good and stable GSM signal. Regarding this matter, the research on making boundary stakes prototypes was carried out using Wemos D1. The prototype of the boundary stakes does not use GPS or GSM, but uses the dbm / RSSI signal as a monitoring tool. The method used in this study uses a modified Triangulation method, compositions from Vincent Pierlot and Marc Van Droogenbroeck. This calculation method proved to be useful for finding Wemos D1 positions without using GPS and GSM devices. The results of research using the Triangulation calculation method proved successful in finding the position of Wemos D1 close to the actual coordinate position, besides the use of more Access Points in this study proved to be able to produce better accuracy.

This paper analyses the awarding title to GKR Pembayun as GKR Mangkubumi, daughter of Sultan HB X of Yogyakarta Court, which indicates her promotion as Crown Princess; the next successor of Yogyakarta Court. Formerly, various socio-political analyses have been raised to understand it. This paper believed that previous analyses are not comprehensive enough, because it did not address power relations of men and women as crucial element of the Javanese concept of power. Therefore, by using gender perspectives, this paper seeks to provide a new understanding of the event, in relations to the role and position of women in Javanese concept of power. Literatur review is the primary method used in this paper. Interview method could not use as the key person recultance to be interviewed due to sensitivity of the issue. This paper reveals that the awarding title of GKR Pembayun as GKR Mangkubumi as Crown Princess indicates changes of Javanese concept of power especialy in relations to women's role and position. In the past, according to the Javanese concept of power, men are perceived as the most suitable and appropriate figure to posess power, now women also perceived as having the same potential as men to posess power. While in past, women are in peripheral position merely due to procreation (reproductive) function to give borth for boys as the next successor. Now, women are believed to be able possess power and be a leader in Javanese cosmology. This all happened because the growth of Yogyakarta Court has been surrounding by the current context and challenges of globalization, social Islamisation, democratization, and gender equality. Abstrak Tulisan ini menganalisis pemberian gelar baru oleh Sultan HB X kepada GKR Pembayun sebagai GKR Mangkubumi yang menandai pengangkatannya sebagai putri mahkota Keraton Yogyakarta dan dipercaya akan menjadi penerus tahta. Beragam analisis sosial dan politik telah dikemukakan mengenai makna pemberian gelar tersebut. Tulisan ini berpendapat bahwa berbagai analisis terdahulu belum sepenuhnya lengkap karena tidak mampu menyajikan analisis yang menyentuh persoalan relasi dan posisi perempuan dan laki-laki sebagai elemen penting dalam konsep kuasa Jawa. Oleh karena itu, dengan menggunakan perspektif gender, tulisan ini memberikan pemahaman baru mengenai makna pemberian gelar baru tersebut dikaitkan dengan peran dan posisi perempuan dalam konsep kuasa Jawa masa kini. Metode penarikan data adalah studi literatur karena permintaan wawancara dengan narasumber kunci tidak dapat dilakukan oleh karena sensitifitas persoalan ini. Tulisan ini menemukan bahwa pemberian gelar baru kepada GKR Pembayun sebagai GKR Mangkubumi mengindikasikan adanya pergeseran konsep kuasa Jawa khususnya terkait peran dan posisi perempuan. Jika pada masa lalu konsep kuasa Jawa mempersepsikan laki-laki sebagai yang paling mampu memiliki potensi kuasa, saat ini perempuan juga telah diposisikan sebagai pihak yang memiliki potensi kuasa sejajar dengan laki-laki. Perempuan yang dahulu berada pada posisi pinggiran dan hanya dibutuhkan karena fungsi prokreasi (reproduksi) untuk melahirkan keturunan laki-laki, kini dipercaya mampu memegang kuasa dan menjadi pemimpin dalam kosmologi Jawa. Pergeseran konsep kuasa Jawa demikian terjadi karena Keraton Yogyakarta tumbuh berkembang dalam konteks kekinian berupa globalisasi, Islamisasi sosial, demokratisasi, dan kesetaraan gender. Kata kunci: keraton Yogyakarta, putri mahkota, perempuan, keseteraan gender, kuasa Jawa.

Many researches concern with the dialectic between Islam and tradition of Java. One of them is Soebardi studying Serat Cabolek, a manuscript that illustrated the dialectic between Islam and Javanese tradition in 18/19 century. Through philological studies Soebardi has produced a PhD thesis at The Australia National University (1967), and published in 1975 under title “The Book of Cabolek”. This book should be appreciated for having presented an important study on Islam and Java. Yet, it also needs to be studied more deeply through historical studies in order to obtain clearer information about the context. This article attempts to give a short review about the content of the book, and gives a critical explanation based on its socio-historical perspective. The result is that the story in Serat Cabolek is a construction of Javanese Priyayi on their history. It is an upscale historical document, to strengthen the king’s position as Panatagama. Dialektika Islam dan tradisi Jawa menarik ...

Amongst Islamic reformers, Sufism (Islamic mysticism) has long constituted a contentious issue. While some see it as a unique opportunity to engage with a powerful spiritual tradition, one capable of reinvigorating the relationship between individual believers and God, others, including many in Southeast Asia, see it as a corrupting force, a conduit by which foreign accretions (Jewish Kabbalah, Christian gnosis, Hindu spirituality) have entered Islam, distorting the true religion. This brief article examines Hamka's thought on this issue.

What personalities and processes need to be present for religious traditions to successfully establish new constituencies? In Aceh, for example, did recently arrived Arabs from Aden play key roles in the processes of "Islamisation?" While few claim rank outsiders to have been crucial in chapters of significant religious change, in this paper I argue that neither are individuals⎯albeit inadequately⎯described as insiders. Accounts provided by historians done with dissecting the dynamics of religious change note the presence of multi-lingual and mobile mediators, who have been described as "inbetweeners", who were adept at importing new ideas⎯including ways of dealing with the divine. Commerce across the Indian Ocean both before and after the rise in European presence centred on ports where being different was normal. Pre-colonial port-cities produced ethnolinguistical “creole” or “cosmopolitan” communities whose comfort with ethnoreligious diversity is lamentable scarce in present-day South and Southeast Asia. This paper considers the role of “mobile mediators” and “inbetweeners” in the importation of a range of Islamic movements in Thailand. I make suggestions about the personalities and processes through which ideas espoused by Imam Al-Ghazali (1058–1111), Sheikh Ahmad Ibn Idris (1760-1837), and Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905) become known in Thai/Malay Peninsula. I describe the contributions and discuss the identity of local luminaries including Shaykh Ahmad al-Fatani, Ishmael Lutfi Japakiya, Direk Kulsriswasd, and Conrad Laurens Coolen to the spread of mystical, modernist, reformist, and revivalist Christian and Muslim movements.

(Open access, see below.)
The prominence of Hindu-Buddhist mythology, imagery, and religiosity in Islamic Java has puzzled observers. The shadow play with its Mahābhārata- and Rāmāyaṇa-derived subject matter is a prime example. Another is the late 18th-century ‘renaissance’ of Old Javanese literature in the Islamic kingdom of Surakarta, which produced classics still celebrated today. Beyond a misguided assumption that the Javanese were so strongly disposed to syncretism that blatant doctrinal clashes did not bother their intellectuals, the factors that animated this enterprise remain obscure, despite its critical consequence for the development of Javanese religiosities. I scrutinize several unstudied manuscripts and piece together information from hitherto unconnected scholarship to try to understand these factors, with reference to pressing circumstances, living theories, as well as people who think, feel, and hope. First I examine Javanese theoretical ideas about the relationship between the Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic traditions and the connection between epic narratives and the present and future of Java. Against this background I consider the initiative, in 1778, to reinterpret the ancient epic heritage, beginning with the Arjunawiwāha (composed c. 1030). Focal points of interest in the Islamic hermeneutics of this poem were a quest for inner potency and the resulting external power of violence, knowledge and revelation, and future kingship.

Can one be a true revolutionary without being as a vulgar revolutionary? Can one pursue revolutionary thought, behavior and conception of being-an idealism of 'what should be', which is to say 'what IS'-within the academy without being drawn into a binary struggle with 'what is'? Can we recognize that 'what is' is wrong and pursue 'what should be' without being drawn into a state of thought, behavior and conception of being that is articulated in opposition to 'what is'? Can one do their part to bring about revolution without being as a revolutionary?