Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru by James Bourk Hoesterey (review)

In this well written ethnography, Hoesterey places the fascinating story of the "rise and fall" of a popular Muslim televangelist (or "tele-dai") in the broader context of contemporary anthropological and religious studies debates about spiritual authority, Muslim subjectivity, and the politics of public piety. Based on more than two years of fieldwork with remarkable access to sources, he chronicles the striking rise of Yan Gymnastiar, born in 1962 in Bandung, West Java, the eldest of four children. The name "Gymnastiar" was coined by his father who worked as a physical education teacher before later being enlisted by the military when the boy was four years old. The name Abdullah was bestowed by the imam of the grand Haram mosque during a pilgrimage to Mecca, but the young man preferred the more familiar Sundanese appellation "Aa" (older brother): hence his familiar moniker, "Aa Gym."

Aa Gym learned strict military discipline from his father, although he was once branded as a delinquent youth, renowned for violent temperamental outbursts, and for taking part in aggressive campaigns to purge his Bandung neighborhoods of vice. It is thus surprising that his reputation and indeed his "brand," now rests on his soothing, calming voice and his promises to train others in the arts of the "Management of the Heart" (manajmen qolbu). A constant refrain in the streams of self-help advice issuing from the Daarut Tauhiid, the "Center for the Oneness of God" enjoins its followers to submit sincerely, thoughtfully, and completely to Allah, while managing one's feelings so as to put God first, rather than one's own passions, desires, and emotions.

The complex, partly interwoven, but ongoing religious, sociopolitical, ecological, and economic crises facing the contemporary Muslim world came to a dramatic climax in Indonesia relatively early, in 1998, when the 32-year period of authoritarian rule by Suharto came to an end (Aspinall, van Klinken, and Feith 1999). The ensuing phase of tumultuous and sometimes violent "reform" (reformasi) (see Nordholt 2003) was a period of decentralization, openness, and democratization, propelled by a spirit of hope, but freighted for many with considerable uncertainty and anxiety. During Suharto's dictatorship, the vast majority of Indonesians had become literate and educated, and infrastructure, health, and living standards had improved. The groundswell of sentiment of this newly well-informed population was in favor of democracy and greater freedom, even if they were not certain where this would lead.

As many scholars have recounted, the sudden dismantling of the Suharto regime led to a crisis of authority throughout much of the archipelago (Hefner 2011; Kuipers 1998, 2009; Nordholt 2003). Although Gymnastiar founded his Islamic Center Daarut Tauhiid in Bandung in 1987, it was not until Suharto's demise in the late 1990s that his popularity as a media presence, trainer, and self-help guru began to take off. Hoesterey shows how Aa Gym, drawing selectively and creatively from American self-help prosperity gurus such as Dale Carnegie, Anthony Robbins, and Joel Osteen, synthesizes a family friendly "brand" of religiously devout and economically adroit masculinity that exhorts and trains men to achieve success (sukses) in gaining wealth to support their families. One of the most important "markets" for this type of masculinity, Hoesterey shows, were Indonesian women, who sought ways to restructure and reinterpret family values in a time of intensifying religiosity, newfound political and social freedoms, and growing but uncertain economic opportunities. Aa Gym's entertaining, soothing, multimedia "Management of the Heart" training seminars became wildly popular, attended by thousands of paying customers in the mid-2000s, as people sought ways to blend emerging forms of Islamic devotion in a post-9/11 world with newfound economic and political opportunities. Those who could not afford the "training" could still obtain the benefit of Aa Gym's wisdom through his televised sermons and call-in television advice shows.

Hoesterey shows how these "seminars" drew on and conjured the aura of scientific authority. Lab-coated chemists lectured on the...