John R. Bowen

Muslims through Discourse (eBook, ePUB)

Religion and Ritual in Gayo Society

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

In this rich account of a Muslim society in highland Sumatra, Indonesia, John Bowen describes how men and women debate among themselves ideas of what Islam is and should be--as it pertains to all areas of their lives, from work to worship. Whereas many previous anthropological studies have concentrated on the purely local aspects of culture, this book captures and analyzes the tension between the local and universal in everyday life. Current religious differences among the Gayo stem from debates between "traditionalist" and "modernist" scholars that began in the 1930s, and reveal themselves in the ways Gayo discuss and perform worship, sacrifice, healing, and rites of birth and death, all within an Islamic framework.

Bowen considers the power these debates accord to language, especially in arguments over spells, rites of farming, hunting, and healing. Moreover, he traces in these debates a general conception of transacting with spirits that has shaped Gayo practices of sacrifice, worship, and aiding the dead. Bowen concludes by examining the development of competing religious ideas in the highlands, the alternative ritual forms and ideas they have pro-mulgated, and the implications of this phenomenon for the emergence of an Islamic public sphere.

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, D ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. November 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780691221588
• Artikelnr.: 60932405

Autorenporträt

John R. Bowen is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Washington University. He is author of Sumatran Politics and Poetics: Gayo History, 1900-1989 (Yale).

Inhaltsangabe

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Transcription
Pt. 1
A Genealogy of Divergent Understandings
Ch. 1
Introduction
3
Ch. 2
Religious Disputes in Takengen
18
On Modernists and Traditionalists
21
Social and Moral Contexts
30
Ch. 3
Islamic Knowledge in the Highlands, 1900-1990
39
Languages of Past Piety and Learning
40
The Development of Traditionalist Scholarship
47
Muhammadiyah: Social and Religious Innovation in the Highlands
55
Radical Reform through Islamic Education
61
Pt. 2
Powerful Speech and Spirit Transactions
Ch. 4
Spells, Prayer, and the Power of Words
77
Distinctions among Doa
82
The Efficacy of Spells
87
Quranic Knowledge and Power
94
Acquiring Power and Expecting Results
101
Ch. 5
The Source of Human Powers in History
106
The Creation of the World
106
The Human Embodiment of Creation
115
The Coming of Islam to Aceh
124
Ch. 6
The Healer's Struggle
129
Healers and Knowledge
131
Finding the Jin
135
Restoring the Balance
139
Asking a Spirit to Depart
145
Ch. 7
Exorcism and Accountability
151
Casting Out the Spirits
152
The Social Framework of Exorcism
162
Ch. 8
Farming, Ancestors, and the Sacred Landscape
173
Speaking with the Ancestor
174
Protecting the Crops and the Community
185
Ancestors and Other Sacred Beings
194
Ch. 9
Adam and Eve's Children
202
The Origins of Rice
202
Cain, Abel, and the Marriage of Twins
209
Hunting, Healing, and Spiritual Siblingship
216
Pt. 3
Negotiating Public Rituals
Ch. 10
Transacting through Food: The Kenduri and Its Critics
229
Prayers, Food, and Sacrifice
230
Celebrating the Prophet Muhammad's Birthday
237
The Child's Entry into the World
240
Ch. 11
Speaking for the Dead
251
Speaking to the Dead at the Grave
252
Negotiating the Passage of the Dead
259
Chanting for the Deceased
262
Ch. 12
Sacrifice, Merit, and Self-Interest
273
Generating Merit in Isak
273
"Selfless Sacrifice" in Takengen
279
Ch. 13
Worship and Public Life
289
Form and Feeling in Worship
290
Worshiping Together
296
Disputations
300
Mosque Politics
309
Ch. 14
The Social Forms of Religious Change
315
Creating Private and Public Spheres
315
Two Modes of Cultural Rationalization
321
Public Discourse and the State
325
Glossary of Gayo and Arabic Terms
331
Bibliography
335
Index
353

Rezensionen

Bowen's observations that anthropologists, historians of religion, and other scholars of Islam have neglected the study of Islamic ritual practice, and that Indonesianists have for too long neglected the study of Islamic textual traditions, point to significant problems in all of these fields. It is hoped that Bowen's work will inspire Islamicists to pay greater attention to the varieties of Muslim ritual practice and inspire Indonesianists to consider more seriously the importance of the Islamic textual tradition in what is, after all, the world's most populous Muslim society.