From alternative medicine to national cure. Another voice for the Sûfî orders in the Indonesian media
1 This paper is based on observations made during the course of two visits to Indonesia in July-August 2002 and February-March 2003 and was presented at the workshop “Modern Adaptations in Sûfî-based Islam”, held at Berlin's Centre for Modern Oriental Studies on 5 April 2003. Each period of research was supported by the four bodies supporting the project on Islam in Indonesia in the 20th century: the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), the School of Asian, African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), and the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM). See http://www.iias.nl/iias/research/dissemination/. I would like to express my special thanks here to Siti Soraya Devi for her help and kindness in Jakarta, Ulrike Freitag for her encouragement, Julian Millie for his valuable feedback and insights, and the anonymous reviewer for stringent, but productive and appropriate, suggestions.
Michael Laffan
L'article discute la façon dont une revue dédiée au Soufisme a récemment expliqué que l'inculcation d'une piété mystique adéquate au peuple indonésien sauverait la nation de ses nombreux problèmes actuels. Elle le fait en présentant la modernité comme une réalité inévitable et suggère que si les gens peuvent tirer profit d'une approche historique et contextualisée de l'histoire du Soufisme, il n'en reste pas moins que les écoles islamiques traditionnelles sont mieux à même d'en offrir une réelle compréhension et que les meilleurs exemples de pratique de cette religion sont fournis par les confréries traditionnelles.Mots-clés :
Indonésie, soufisme, tariqua, presse.
This article discusses the ways in which a recent periodical devoted to Sufism argues that the inculcation of proper mystical piety in the Indonesian people will save their nation from its current raft of problems. It does this with reference to modernity as an inescapable reality and suggests that while people are well served by an intellectual and contextualist approach to the history of Sufism, the actual understanding of it is still most ably communicated in the traditional Islamic schools and its practises are best examplified by the traditional orders.Keywords :
Indonesia, Sufism, tariqa, the press..
El artículo discute la manera en que una revista dedicada al Sufismo ha explicado recientemente que la inculcación de una piedad mística adecuada para el pueblo indonesio salvaría la nación de sus numerosos problemas actuales. Lo hace presentando a la modernidad como una realidad inevitable, y sugiere que si las personas pueden aprovechar una perspectiva histórica y contextualizada de la historia del Sufismo, no es menos cierto que las escuelas islámicas tradicionales están en mejores condiciones de ofrecer una real comprensión de ésta, y que los mejores ejemplos de práctica de esta religión están dados por las cofradías tradicionales.
• Introduction
• Luqman Hakiem and an Indonesian sense of Islamic history
• A Sûfî silsila
• Dealing with modernity, reconstructing Sufism
• Themes thereafter
• The Haqqani-Kabbani connection
• Looking forward, looking back
• Bibliographie