Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
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Author(s): C. W. Watson
Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp.
773-792
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3804047
Accessed: 26-10-2016 05:02 UTC
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A POPULAR INDONESIAN PREACHER: THE
SIGNIFICANCE OF AA GYMNASTIAR
C.W. Watson
University of Kent
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774 C.W WATSON
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776 C.W. WATSON
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C.W WATSON 777
It is 6:45 in the morning when I arrive and the pilgrims are already seated in the lower
courtyard space, about seven hundred of them sitting under an awning and another two
hundred or so standing around the edges. A steward standing among the crowd answers
someone's query and says that altogether there are 1,500 people there that weekend.
About three-quarters of them are women and, of those, two-thirds are middle-aged. They
are talking among themselves and half-listening to the group of five young male singers
who are standing on a raised stage area in front and who, in barbershop style, are singing
catchy religious songs (nazid). On the stage there is an array of microphones and speak?
ers and a screen set under another awning. A young man acting as announcer tells them
what the next item of the programme will be and advises them to watch the screen.
The singers leave the stage and a film is shown on the screen: Aa Gym as action man,
showing him riding on his motorbike, deep-sea diving, parachuting, riding a horse, doing
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778 C. W WATSON
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Short as this description of one morning session is, I hope it suggests how
any comprehensive monograph on the significance of Aa Gym in contempo?
rary national Muslim life in Indonesia would have to consider a variety of
different aspects of the phenomenology and sociology of this scene. It would
move from a close focus on Gym himself and his rhetorical style through to
an informed account of his audience. However, in line with my particular
interest here in Gym as a new style of preacher comparable with, yet differ?
ent from, Indonesian predecessors as well as counterparts in other Muslim
countries, I want to look at the way in which the national message he conveys
is a product of the fortuitous conjunction of both the availability of the new
media and a changing perception of the significance of Islam in daily life in
Indonesia today. To put the argument in context, we need to look first at
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780 C. W WATSON
The biograph
Born in 1962 Gym was t
apparently exercised a g
died in his early twentie
and he grew up in a mili
walk away from his pr
appear to have been inte
capacity for leadership. M
siastic entrepreneurial sp
In school he also develop
drama productions.
After being a leading
good university but had
to enter the army, follo
unsuccessful; he was not
the early 1980s he was b
ities. The turning point
a younger brother who
illness had much influen
nical school run by the m
entrepreneurial possibili
avenues for learning m
schools (pondok pesantr
vicinity of the Parahyan
seems to have come in c
of Al-Ghazali and the
Al-Iskandari, from whic
nificant dream experienc
prophet Muhammad and
tradition is considered
connotations. It is, how
made dream narratives v
from those hostile to m
criticism, Gym, in a rec
drawn from it is not th
ration it provided to him
(Gymnastiar 2003: 26). T
in his discussion of the
gift of ilmu laduni ? an
2003: 34).
The dream, the religiou
kiyai, and the spiritual
bined to make Gym inte
religiosity was channelle
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A context
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784 C.W WATSON
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presented in anecdotal a
unconventionality in w
Islamic scholarship and
contemporary living in
emphasis on simple rule
stone, which leads to
Muslim wisdom and pla
by Eickelman and And
However, before we ca
where ultimately his co
final comparison, name
activists in Indonesia w
positions for more act
comes closest to Aa Gy
Sejahtera - People's Just
the most successful of
putting across an image
people s welfare. A stro
shows affmities with Gy
is its espousal of moder
if the Muslim communi
it lacks at present and
The PKS is a movemen
modernist revival move
turies, of which the stil
ential leader H.A. Dahlan
also sees today's Turkish
nation prompting the m
of defensiveness toward
science and technology a
with these perceptions i
ism. Ultimately, these r
make progress is by rev
comitant value judgemen
the Prophet and his co
those who are labelled
injunction to follow lite
while at the same time
technology is absurd ?
porary life - and betray
Their opinions,17 howev
Contrast, then, these t
headed by young urban
obvious differences are
that Western influence
be checked nor from th
to be found either in a
a radical neo-rationalism
his Sufi-inclined ment
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Conclusion
The year 1998 was clearly critical for Indonesia in a number of way
fall opened up the way for a new wave of democratization for
opposition had been pressing for a number of years. With the ne
ties for communication opened up came a sudden expansion of
sphere and of the roles played there by secular and religious group
logical sophistication was already in existence before that, but it
the new political climate of freedom of expression which em
consequence of the liberalization swiftly announced by Habibi
successor, that this know-how could demonstrate its potential. Not
new TV channels quickly established which were not under
control of the government but there was a sudden flowering of th
newspapers and journals formerly banned under Suharto re-emerg
ones flooded the market. A new range of publications appeared t
time, including a new genre, the Indonesian romantic Muslim no
Tempo, 21 March 2005: ll).18 Independent of political develop
internet, which had always been less susceptible to government in
grew in strength with the spread of internet cafes and the linkin
communities of politically aware netters. As Hefner (2003) has de
was also in 1998 that one of the first groups to make effective u
new technology was a militant Muslim organization. It was in thi
that Aa Gym began to be known beyond the neighbourhood
Bandung.
In relation to the rest of the Muslim world there is at first sight nothing
unusual in the emergence of a person like Aa Gym. He is, it would seem,
simply another representative of what has become a fairly common phenom?
enon, an influential Muslim figure whom the tide of modernization and the
availability of new technology have allowed to communicate with a mass audi?
ence, and who has thus displaced the traditional figure of religious authority
whom the umat (Muslim community) would have looked to in the past as
the sole source of religious wisdom. Even within Indonesia, a country where
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NOTES
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790 C.W WATSON
Namun sebelum menetapkan SBY sebagai capres, sesuai kelaziman yang berlaku di kalan
gan kiyai, SBY 'dipal' atau dilihat secara spiritual dulu pakai keris. 'Yang ahli 'ngepal' calon
pemimpin ini adalah Kiai Idris dari ponpes Lirboyo. Nanti saya carikan keris. Kerisny
harus Nogo Sosro sabuk Inten.Yang punya keris ini adalah Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono
Nanti saya akan pinjam. Mudah-mudahan boleh,' kata Kiai Cholil.
(Nevertheless before confirming SBY as presidential candidate, according to the pre-
vailing convention which the kyai keep, SBY will be 'dipal [tested?] or first examined spir?
itually with the aid of a keris [Indonesian special knife].The specialist in testing leadership
candidates is Kiai Idris from the pondok pesantren Lirboyo. I shall be obtaining the keris. It
has to be the Nogo Sosro Sabuk Inten [the name given to this special sacral keris].The owner
of it is Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono. I shall be borrowing it. Hopefully I shall be allowed
to,' said Kiai Cholil) (Pikiran Rakyat, 13 March 2004: 14).
11 That role of mediation is still an important one, as the lead-up to the 2004 electio
demonstrated when the leaders of the largest political parties chased each other around
rural religious schools (pesantren) in order to win popular support (Kompas, 3 March 2004: 6
12 This, incidentally, is the major difference between him and the comparable archety
figure, Shaykh Uthman, whom Gaffney describes as a 'preacher as advocate of religiou
mspired modernity' (1994: 209).
13 Religious views which challenge orthodoxy are characterized as heretical cults - alir
tersesat ? on a fairly regular basis, corresponding in fact to the frequency of the emergence
rather strange exclusivist sects (see Hartono 2002; 2003).
14 A caveat has to be entered here. The world of the kiyai, too, is rapidly changing and th
is also within the pesantren a move to participate in the social life of neighbouring village co
munities and to introduce new management skills and modern technology. For a recent acad
emic account of the world of the pesantren, which takes as its point of departure Geertz's art
of forty-five years ago, see Turmudi (2004). The new ideal pesantren and the ideal kiyai are w
portrayed in the fictional persona of the computer literate Kiyai H. Basyar in the serial Ar
Bersilangan, which ran in the newspaper Republika in the first half of 2004.
1:>Such alternatives to mainstream religious currents have become relatively commonplace
Indonesia in recent years, again largely as a product of the spread of communications techn
logy. Leo Howe (2001: 210-35) has pointed out, for example, how the Sai Baba and H
Krishna sects have taken a strong hold in Bali in recent years, and he links their growth bo
to the 'desire for a more satisfying religious life' (2001: 201) and to a disenchantment with o
cial Balinese Hinduism (Agama Hindu-Bali), which is perceived as entrenching hierarchy
consolidating existing political structures of power.
16 The engagement in business and commercial activities and the prestige of such activiti
is not of course new in itself, and Islam has from its inception been a this-worldly religion
that respect. The involvement of modernist Indonesian Muslims in the new commercial opp
tunities of the twentieth century is also well documented (see, e.g., Geertz 1983: 56
The novelty of Gym's approach is the introduction of a more systematized and professi
business ethic, imported from Western models, which is very different from the laissezfai
commercial practices of the past. This combination of sound business practice wi
spiritual experience is what distinguishes Gym's followers from those of Sai Baba in Bali. H
(2001: 201) seems to argue that, for the latter, it is almost exclusively the spiritual relig
experience which inspires them, although he does note that for some there are econom
benefits (2001: 174).
17 A good account of the controversies which have now arisen around the view of the
erals - in particular concerning a controversial article by Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, 'Menyegar
kembali pemahaman Islam' ('Putting some life back again into Islamic understanding') wh
appeared in Kompas (18 November 2002) - are to be found in Ulil et al. (2003). See a
Hefner s description (2003: 164-75) of the Laskar Jihad and the thinking of its leader, Jafar Um
Talib. For an excellent recent account in Indonesian of the Indonesian Salafi movement,
Jamhari & Jajang (2004).
18 For more on Islamic books and publishers during this period see Watson (2005).
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C.WWATSON 791
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Turmudi, E. 2004. Perselingkuhan kiai dan kekuasaan. Yogyakarta: LKiS.
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792 C.W WATSON
Daily Newspapers
Kompas (Jakarta)
Republika (Jakarta)
C.W. Watson teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent. His
doctoral work was carried out in Kerinci in Sumatra. He has recently completed a second
book on Indonesian autobiography and is currently doing research on contemporary Muslim
politics in Indonesia.
Department of Anthropology, Eliot College, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NS, UK.
c. w. watson (cbkent. ac. uk
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