The Pilgrimages of Albertus Laksana

Albertus Bagus Laksana SJ, Journeying to God in Communion with the Other. A comparative theological study of the Muslim and Catholic pilgrimage traditions in South Central Java and their contributions to the Catholic theology of communion sanctorum, Doctoral Dissertation, Boston College, 2011, 663 pages. UMI Dissertation Publishing no 3499300.

Indonesian Muslims, especially in the Central Javanese plains, cherish a large number of shrines. Some are small, but there are also elaborate monuments that attract thousands of pilgrims once in 35 days, at the concurrence of a Muslim day in the schedule of the 7-days week and a traditional Javanese day within a week of five days. This calendar already shows the characteristic of these Muslim shrines: they are also related to pre-Islamic traditions and important figures. Laksana gives detailed historical and modern descriptions of three Muslim shrines in his first part. They were created over a long period of time: the shrine of Tembayat is centred on the grave of the first preacher of Islam in the region, around 1550, while the shrine of Turgo Hill is a quite recent ‘invention’ of the 1980s. The second part (187-426) is a substantial description of three Catholic shrines, all created between the 1930s and the 1990s. 

Architecture in Sendang Sono by Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya: no big cathedral, but many small places to talk, chat, pray in the pleasant cool mountains close to the big Sono-tree where water is pouring down.

The first is a Catholic place of pilgrimage, called Sendang Sono (Pond of the Sono Tree). This is an adaptation of an existing well, high in the central mountains not far from the ancient Buddhist Borobudur temple. In this well the first larger group of Javanese Catholics were baptized by Father Frans van Lith in 1904 and already in the 1930s a stream of pilgrims started. 

Like a small Prambanan temple, built in the late 1920s as a Sacred Heart shrine: Ganjuran.

In Ganjuran, not far from the southern beach of Java (traditionally a sacred place where the Goddess of the Southern Ocean is venerated), a shrine was built in 1930 for the Sacred Heart of Jesus in a style that was more or less a copy of the Hindu shrines near Prambanan. The initiator was a pious and rich Dutch owner of a sugar plantation. After 1950 this place was more or less neglected, but in 1988 the Indonesian priest Gregorius Utomo started a revival of the shrine that was very successful and since then the celebration of the procession in June (Sunday of the Feast of Holy Heart of Jesus) has become one of the big events among Catholics of Indonesia. Water was found at the place of the shrine and some miracles took place. 

The third Catholic shrine is in the town of Muntilan where the first missionary Frans van Lith, the first martyr, diocesan priest Sanjaya, and some other ‘ancestors’ for Catholicism in Java have been buried in graves that resemble the Javanese Muslim graves. In 1935 it was forbidden by the Church authorities to pay visits to these graves, but after the 1960s they were gradually opened for pilgrims and in the 1990s a museum for the early beginnings of Catholicism in Java was built, a monument for the pioneering missionary and for the martyr of 1948 (who died amidst the war of independence against Dutch colonialism). Laksana pays much attention to the hybridity between Javanese-Muslim traditions and Catholicism. This is not only found in the architecture and some rituals (burning of incense and offerings of flowers on the graves, holy water to be taken home, pilgrimage as a method to seek material gain, marriage partners, pregnancy, healing from diseases), but also in the uttermost purpose of pilgrimage that he defines as a quest for tentrem (peacefulness) and slamet (integral wellbeing). I found it striking that these are all this-worldly goals. The Virgin Mary plays an important role in the shrine of Sendang Sono, also called ‘the Lourdes of Indonesia’, but the person of Jesus remains quite vague and not elaborated even in the Sacred Heart shrine of Ganjuran. Is this a reflection of the Muslim environment where an emphasis on Jesus as son of God is not really appreciated?  The third part of the dissertation wants to apply the proposal of Francis Clooney for a comparative theology to the two series of places of pilgrimage. This is done in two concluding chapters: chapter 8 elaborates the conflicts (Catholics as a remnants of colonialism and as traditionally anti-Islamic) but also the possibilities of sharing a spiritual milieu, a common culture of devotion. Laksana considers a true Indonesian Christianity as the result of ‘religio-cultural negotiations and interactions between different entities such as Islam and Christianity’ (440). From the first foreign missionaries this acceptance of Javanese elements has been a consistent strategy, but during the last decades it developed bottom up, slowly and in a natural way. The places of pilgrimage are also the places to remember the pioneers and saints in Javanese Catholic history. Laksana notes with some regret and envy that ‘in a rather stark contrast to Roman Catholicism, Sunni Islam has no official list of saints’ (490). Therefore the role of saints can develop more easily. In a very long last chapter 9 (504-596) this comparative theology is further developed in the idea of communio sanctorum. Already on p. 468 Laksana compared the Muslim idea of isnād (some kind of ‘apostolic tradition’ in preserving the memory of the Prophet and the first generation of faithful) to the concept of the more general communion of the faithful. In the last chapter we are no longer in Indonesia, but in a broad group of Christian theologians (especially Elizabeth Johnson, but also Louis Massignon, Yves Congar, Jürgen Moltmann, Henri Corbin) and Muslim mystics like the great master ‘Ibn ‘Arabī, besides Al-Hallāj, Al-Ghazzālī and others. There is still an echo of Pope Benedict XVI about his visit to the Great Mosque of Amman, Jordan, where he stated that all places of worship ‘from the ancient to the modern, the magnificent to the humble, all point to the divine, to the Transcendent One, to the Almighty’ (438). 

In the concluding chapter Laksana again and again stresses that ‘double visiting’ (pilgrimage to a sacred place of another religion) will enrich and deepen the understanding of one’s identity, will produce peace of heart, but a Catholic will always pray as a Catholic. Here I had two basic questions that I like to illustrate with two personal anecdotes about these shrines. The first question is about the anti-pilgrimage tradition in both religions. Protestant Christians, but also quite many Catholics as well as many Muslims have fundamental problems with this practice of popular religion. In the mid-1980s I was teaching at an Islamic University in Yogyakarta. With a Muslim colleague I visited the grave of Tembayat. Below the hill where the saint is buried, a row of women sold incense and flowers. I bought a sachet. My Muslim colleague, a modernist, reproached me: ‘We come here for observation, not for participation.’ I replied that I was brought up in a Catholic tradition and loved pilgrimages with all the folklore. He smiled, but could not understand this mixture with a Western Catholic. This opposition to pilgrimages and to popular religion in general in many circles of Christians and Muslims is fully absent here. Is comparative theology some kind of ‘seek and you will find?’ but only after seeking your favourites also with others? The second and even more basic question is about the sometimes quite artificial division between the major religions. There is perhaps no other country in the world where this division has become so strict. The Indonesian constitution has the formula that the nation is built ‘upon the belief in the One and Almighty Divinity’. This means in practice that atheists and heretics are illegal in the country. For acts like marriage, but also to get an identity card or a drivers’ licence one most declare one’s religion with a choice out of six recognised religions (Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Catholic, Protestant, Confucian). There is some protest in the country about this simplistic reduction of religion to six big players only, but I have the feeling that some churches and the Council of Muslim Scholars love this state protection of their monopoly. I once received in Yogyakarta the request of a parish priest to support a good Catholic and jobless carpenter. The man did some reparations in our house and built a fine miniature Javanese house for our Christmas nativity scene. Later I met this ‘pious Catholic’ again among many thousands in the Muslim shrine of Tembayat. He felt ashamed and only said to me: ‘Oh sir, I still have no job!’ Shrines, sacred wells, healers, often are not restricted to one major and official religion, but escape these too simple categories. The fine book and thorough and sophisticated description by Laksana is also the starting point for further questions about religious identity and loyalty. – Karel Steenbrink, IIMO, Utrecht University.  (This review was originally written for the journal Exchange and you are invited to read the whole issue of this academic journal of our institute).

Meeting of the European Muslim Union in Rotterdam

Friday 14 and Saturday 15 September 2012 some 60 members of the European Muslim Union came together at IUR, Islamic University of Rotterdam. Main theme of this meeting was The Importance of Education for the Muslims in Europe. On Saturday there was programme with keynote speaker  Prof. Dr. Ahmed Akgüdüz, rector and Dr. Özcan Hidir,  Senior Lecturer IUR. There was information about some funding organization like Qatar Charity, Salamworld, and educational projects in Albania Cyprus, Andalusia, Novi Pazar (in Bosnia?)
I was invoted to give a table talk on Islam and education in the Netherlands and below I include some parts of my talk.

At the table I was seated next to Prof. Dr. Nevzat Yalcintas, Honorary President of the EMU,  and also Honorary President of the Islamic University Rotterdam. There were also representatives of the Turkish Embassyand an Indonesian.

So, aspects of my speech:

1. The prelude: Islam as a provider of medical and natural science

In 1612 Thomas Erpenius was nominated professor of Arabic in Leiden at the university that was established in 1572. He was not teaching to do research related to the religion of Islam, but he taught Arabic mainly as a support for medical and natural sciences, because the Arab textbooks in these fields were still highly praised. In 1644 the gifted but also adventurous Levinus Warner (1619-1665) travelled to Istanbul, where he would stay until his death. He was in the 1650s nominated as the official ambassador of the Netherlands in Istanbul. He collected more than 1000 precious manuscripts, mostly on science and these still are the kernel of the collection of Arab manuscripts in Leiden university. Only later, mostly in the 19^th century the study of Arabic concentrated on Islam as a religion. – This is a nice start and it reserved to be remembered, but this is absolute over and a finished past. We now live in a reality where sciences have their autonomy and if we talk about universities and Islam, we talk either about the political reality of the Muslim world or about Islam as a principal player in the spiritual market.

2. The practical needs for knowledge of Islam in the colonial period

From 1596-1942 Indonesia was the largest colony for the Netherlands and the dominant religion in this vast archipelago was Islam. There were three reason for colonial officials to study Islam and this also dictated the academic courses to start a colonial career.

1° There were shari’a courts under colonial rule and therefore sections of Islamic law were studied, mostly in the field of marriage, divorce and inheritance. This field of study is still developed in Leiden university at the Vollenhoven institute where shari’a law, adat and modern national law is compared.

2° For linguistic studies of the Indonesian languages, especially Malay and Javanese, old manuscripts with religious texts were studied. Most western scholars liked the mystical texts much more than fiqh or Qur´an commentaries and therefore they spent much time on mystical scholars. This is a general trend until now in Islamic studies in Europe. When I was teaching at an Islamic university in Indonesia, my students often asked, why the orientalists did like the heretics and the marginal figures much more than the orthodox.

5. The wisdom of two dreams

When I was a student of Arabic and Islam at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, the Jesuit priest Prof. Jean Houben told us about his dream: If all Christians should follow the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas, ánd if all Muslims should follow the philosophy of Ibn Rushd, the two communities would easily live in harmony and mutual understanding.

            Another dream was told to me by someone present here, before coming from Turkey to Europe to teach. He saw Said Nursi in his dream, telling him that he should go to Europe to help the Christian to fight secularism, because without the help of Muslims they cannot defeat the decline of religion.

            The wisdom of these two dreams is for me that Muslims and Christians also in the universities have to evaluate their common roots and history. But they cannot return to the giants of the past: they must reformulate their message in dialogue with modern science and culture. Also the universities have their duty in this important project: not only to observe development in actual Islam, but also to propose new solutions.

 

 

Hilman Latief on Islamic Charities

Today, 29 August 2012, we celebrated the doctoral examination of Hilman Latief in Utrecht. The cover of his dissertation shows PKO Muhammadiyah (Penolong Kesengsaraan Oemoem)  or charity organization of Muhammadiyah at a rice distribution, probably in the 1920s or 1930s.

This is a very rich dissertation: many facts, especially from the last 15 years, suggestions for various interpretations, personal observations. The book has a large number of organizations: Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama, Persis, DDII as the older ones, but many recent developments. After the introductory and more general chapters, chapter 4 concentrates on health centres for poor people, many institutions while Muhammadiyah Hospitals and clinics still are the leading ones. Chapter 5 is on activists  defending women's rights. Chapter 6 is the result of fieldwork in Nias, where some muballigh or da'i from outside the island have settled and concentrate on activities in mosques and small prayer houses, instructing children how to pray. Chapter 7 is on the attention given by Indonesian Muslims to international affairs, like war in Afghanistan, occupation of Palestine. Chapter 8 has some general conclusions.

 One conclusion was challenged by Birgitte Meyer at the oral examination. On p. 312-3 it is stated that traditionally zakat is given from person to person. Nowadays even rich people donate some 5-10.000 Rupiah to poor people who line up by hundreds. When charity is given through organizations and not through individual benefactors directly it is neutral: not an imbalance between giver and receiver. 'It is within this context that charitable associations, in the form of collective action, can diminish this psychological dimension.'  This sentence is not absolutely clear, but it wants to explain that people will feel easier and free to apply here. This is what happened in the Dutch system when in the 1960s poor people received the right for government allowances. The same is, however, not the case with Muslim organizations. Latief even gave a nice example of Muslim charities that distributed rice to people, but women had to use the veil at the process of application. Some of these women immediately after receiving their share, took of the veil! Also here there is not true reciprocity between giver and receiver!

I concentrated on chapter 6 in my questions. The majority of people in Nias are Protestant, some 25% are Catholic and few are Muslim. This was the reason for sending Muslim missionaries to the island. It was not a competition between various organizations, but I had the idea that here the 'giver' took the decisions, not the Muslims of Nias themselves. A first preacher was some Qaimuddin , probably born about 1970 in Flores. In the 1980s he was in Bangil for the pesantren or Muslim school of PERSIS. He had a career as preacher in many places: 1. in Ampah (Central Kalimantan); 2. Raha (Sulawesi Tenggara), with a local foundation for one year; 3. with asistance of PERSIS he helped muallaf in Flores for 2 years and 3 years financed by a Quwaiti foundation. 4. Then he was in Buleleng, North Bali with a Muhammadiyah organization; 5. Again in Flores he was involved in politics and even received a seat in the local parliament for PBB, a Muslim party during the 1999 elections, but he did not take his seat, rather moved to 6. a freelance position in Jakarta and finally 7. to Nias for a proghramme of AAP, Al Azhar Peduli. (Latief 235-7)
These preachers only receive a low salary, stay often in a room attached to a local masjid. Their education is not fit for development work, because their education concentrates on Arabic and Quranic Studies. They like Islamic Banking, but another informant for Latief was a member of the Catholic Credit Union in Nias, because there was no money for things other than dakwah or direct preaching.  On page 252 the charity is defined as "Progress in this region means the ability to provide local people with wider access to education, particularly Islamic education." In fact often not much more than chanting the Qur'an.