Indonesia - the new Andalus?
‘The stories are usually wildly unhistorical but also
dramatic, wacky, poignant, funny, kitschy, uplifting, invariably fantastic yet
often revelatory and profoundly true. Few of them are single-track narratives.’
Confused? Don’t
expect Western reason to put everything into logical order. For Bandit Saints of Java is about
the marriage of ‘the new authority of Indonesia with the age-old authority of
Java.’
The media label ‘expert’ is over-used. An exception is Dr George Quinn, 75, author
of the opening statement from his latest book. He studied at Gadjah Mada
University, speaks Indonesian and Javanese, and ran Southeast Asian studies at
Australia’s premier university. He first visited in 1966 and is married to Emmy
Oey from Central Java.
Despite his experiences and knowledge Quinn remains
‘bewildered’, like wide-eyed students on first encountering the ancient
archipelago.
This humility, coupled with humor-laced prose, snares even
the most casual browser. He’s from a near-extinct species, the lesser-jargon
academic.
This is the most entertaining book in English on the mystery
and magic, the ‘batik-like pattern of contradictions’ of this nation since
Elizabeth Pisani’s Indonesia Etc. (2014).
The ‘bandit saints’ are the Wali Sanga, also known as
Walisongo, the nine probably Arab traders from India, who brought Islam to Java
in the 15th century.
How did they oust the existing faiths of Buddhism and
Hinduism, also from India? The rout was
incomplete, the earlier ‘gods, heroes, villains, clowns and ogres of the shadow
theatre still cram the imagination’.
One explanation is that the newcomers, unlike Protestant
missionaries, accepted existing religions and adapted. Sunan (Honorable)
Kalijaga used wayang kulit performances to show ‘the Islamic reality
behind the ancient Hindu stories, so persuading them to embrace the new faith.’
Another version is that Java converted because King
Brawijaya married an Indochinese Muslim princess who whispered about her faith
while lovemaking. Less romantic is the
suggestion that Hindu worship had become elitist and complex while Islam was
simpler and accessible to the masses.
In other tales, many little known till now, the Nimble Nine
changed the course of the Brantas River, shifted shape, leapt across barriers
super-hero fashion, and like all sages, prophesized.
The Brantas did shift after a volcanic explosion, so facts
morphed into fiction. In one text the
leading character is a walking, talking human penis who’s an opium addict and
gambler. Try that, Hollywood.
Then there’s the toddler-demon tuyul, and a menagerie
of wraiths still spooking millions, as newsstand pulp mags and TV soapies (sinetron)
plots prove. Superstition sells.
Quinn re-tells the folklore with wit, which he suspects may
offend the more pious. His prose never
plods as it would if he kept a straight face at his keyboard.
Take the chapter on the 2010 clumsy attempt by big business
and the state to demolish the grave of Mbah Priok in the heart of the North
Jakarta container terminal. It’s a case study of religion being manipulated as
clerics and ministers perform Olympic standard gymnastics of unreason seeking
solutions.
Another hilarious section recalls the strife caused when it
was discovered that many mosques were not oriented towards Mecca, but Christian
Ethiopia.
The open upsurge of Islam, from the benign wearing of
headscarves to stirring extremism, worries many. Yet Quinn remains hopeful that
the world’s most populous Islamic nation, though officially secular, could
become ‘the new Andalus.’
(At the turn of the first millennium the Muslim-ruled
Spanish state was an educational, cultural and scientific center famous
throughout Europe.)
The few foreigners who venture beyond Bali usually follow
the Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Borobudur and Mount Bromo circuit. Fears of
encountering extremists or offending protocols deter straying.
Over years of visiting venerated places the author reports
only one challenge, at Surabaya’s Ampel mosque, which was rapidly reversed.
Although he’s not a Muslim, Quinn’s intimacy with Islam and
Javanese culture are useful insurances. The less knowledgeable, who stay
respectful and curious, seldom encounter anything more oppressive than demands
for selfies.
Westerners will better understand Indonesia through seeing
the Wali Sangas’ real or mythologized tombs (Sunan Bonang has four) and
other holy places. Many were sacred
long before the arrival of Islam. Some are believed protected by Javan tigers,
though now extinct. Weird? Absolutely.
The sites draw millions despite ancestor worship being
forbidden by the austere Saudi-funded Wahhabism that has penetrated Indonesia.
Quinn claims ‘compelling evidence that the ancient practice
of saint veneration and local pilgrimage is booming’. So is the income garnered
by canny local authorities charging fees to pray.
For those keen to erase their ignorance the website www.saintsofjava.net gives directions to some sites.
Almost every page of Bandit Saints carries a
memorable line: ‘Tradition is a suspect territory that is ripe for invasion.’
‘The squint-eyed wariness of Java’s peasantry and the aloofness of patrician
mystics’.
‘I felt – as I always do – a powerful affection for the
aural ambience of Islam. It is a very
public, very melodic ambience, as comforting and as
beautiful (yes … beautiful, even when wrenched out of shape by screeching
predawn loudspeakers) as Islamic architecture, dress, food, etiquette,
calligraphy and decoration.’
And who could resist a chapter with the sub-head: ‘A gay
saint, pushy women and Islam’? Yet this
is scholarship, not The Daily Mail.
Bandit Saints probably couldn’t be published in
Indonesian lest it generate confected outrage, particularly in an election
year. It is available in mainstream bookshops.
As an outsider, New Zealand-born Quinn doesn’t suffer the
‘anxiety Indonesians breathe every day in the air of public rhetoric.’
As a result we are enriched, inspired to visit and fortified
by this pilgrim’s findings: ‘In the tangled Sherwood of Java’s cultural
interior they (the Wali Sanga) wait in ambush, a stubborn challenge to the
well-armed soldiers of fundamentalism.’
Bandit Saints of Java
Monsoon Books, Leicestershire, 2019
432 pages
First published in The Jakarta Post 18 March 2019
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