The Crescent Arises over the Banyan Tree: A Study of the Muhammadiyah Movement in a Central Javanese Town, c.1910s-2010 (Second Enlarged Edition)

Postscript to Part I

POSTSCRIPT TO PART I The reality of Islam is a personal, living faith, new every morning in the heart of individual Muslims. (Wilfred C. Smith 1957, pp. 17–18) 1. My stay at Harvard University, September 1981 to June 1982, as a visiting scholar of the Department of Anthropology and the Center for the Study of World Religions, has caused delay in the publication of this book for more than a year. I must apologize for this to the publisher and whomever else concerned. 2. At Harvard I was initiated into Qur’anic Arabic. I was also exposed to introductory courses in Islamic studies and comparative religion. My newly acquired knowledge, although still meagre, has enabled me to see my previous experience with the Muhammadiyah in Kotagede in a new perspective. I now realize a number of errors and shortcomings contained in this book. Most of them are of such nature that I took matters of universal significance in Islam and the Muslim world as something peculiar to the Muhammadiyah in Kotagede or Islam in Java. At the same time, I now feel assured of the basic soundness of my approach — to take Islam seriously as a religion. 3. I am encouraged by favourable comment on my original dissertation coming from a leading Indonesianist (McVey 1981). I am also heartened to observe growing interest among young Indonesian scholars in the empirical study of religious developments in Indonesia.Their contribution includes two recent sarjana theses by Kotagede students (Hazim 1977 and Charris 1979). Perhaps the “intellectual stagnation” I mentioned in the Preface applies only to Western or more precisely American scholarship which seems still enchanted by Geertzian paradigms. 4. I would also like to mention a brief but important contribution by H. Zaini Ahmad Noeh, a senior official of the Department of Religion. In his introduction to the Indonesian translation of Daniel Lev’s Islamic Courts in Indonesia (Peradilan Agama di Indonesia, Jakarta: Intermasa, 1980), he emphasizes, among other things, the duality of penghulu officials in the indigenous Javanese polity as “kyai in the circle of priyayi, and also conversely priyayi in the circle of kyai” (ibid., p. 7). (Cf. abdi Postscript to Part I 213 dalem santri, p. 15 in this book.) He further points out the significance of this religious officialdom as a basis of the Islamic legitimization of the Kingdom of Later Mataram and successive Javanese authorities (even under the Dutch rule), and as a source of leadership for modern Islamic movements (both Muhammadiyah and NU), and the forerunner of the Department of Religion in the Republic of Indonesia. I hope his call for full scholarly investigation on the penghulu will be heeded. 5. The role of the Muhammadiyah in the field of women and marital life — a topic briefly touched upon in my original dissertation — has been dropped almost entirely from this book for various reasons. Those who want to know something about this subject are advised to consult the M.A. thesis of my wife, Hisako (H. Nakamura 1981). The thesis will be published by the Gadjah Mada University Press before long. 6. I would like to repeat my invitation of criticism and correction on this book from readers. I would especially welcome comments from Muhammadiyah people. (Please correspond through the publisher.) For I believe that the anthropologist is academically and morally obligated to keep striving for the improvement of his or her ethnography with the help of the people he or she studies. For the time being, let me only say: nyuwun pangapunten sedaya kalepatan kula lahir lan batos (“I beg your pardon for all my mistake most sincerely”). Mitsuo Nakamura Tokyo 12 July 1983M/1 Syawal 1403H ...