Contrary to the common view that Sufism is somehow incompatible with “the modern,” emerging new forms of Sufism signify the creative adaptation of Islam to the religious sensibilities and social demands of modern life. This article focuses on the Padepokan Thaha, a thriving Islamic studies centre in Indonesia, whose integration of esoteric spiritual knowledge with modern-style education suits the modern sensibilities of affluent and educated Muslim cosmopolitans in Indonesia

Howell, J.D.

Leiden University Scholary Publications

2 2  I S I M  R E V I E W  1 9  /  S P R I N G  2 0 0 7Connecting to the ModernJ U L I A  D A Y  H O W E L LRepackaging Sufism in Urban IndonesiaA brochure for a newly upgraded adult Islamic studies centre, Padepokan Thaha, in central Jakarta’s swank Sen-opati district appealed to its anticipat-ed clientele in 2005 by imaginatively speaking in their voice, revealing the likely concerns that the centre could address. Reading the brochure, we lis-ten in, as it were, on the kinds of rumi-nations that have led prospective stu-dents to pick up the brochure. “What’s wrong with me?” The brochure’s char-acter frets. “I pray five times a day with real sincerity, I read all kinds of things about how to find spiritual gratification in prayer…but I still have trouble getting into that deep, focused feeling (khusyuk)… I want to enjoy life [even] in the midst of social conditions that are wracked by crises, I want to be able to be happy under all conditions.” As we read on, we find that the prospective students are the sort of people who actually have a good deal of material security and strong bases for social respect as well. Thus the brochure’s hypo-thetical reader confesses that his (or her) worries come “despite my everyday needs being fulfilled.” “I have a high level of education… [and] I’m also respected in society.”1These are the kinds of peo-ple who ought to be happy and secure if any good Muslim could. So what’s missing?What’s missing, according to the brochure, is nothing less than the mystical experience of God’s presence, which is accessible with the as-sistance of Padepokan Thaha. Padepokan Thaha offers that assistance through its Programme for Guidance of the Self towards “Tawajjuh” (Program Pembinaan Diri Menuju Tawajjuh). “Tawajjuh,” the brochure explains, is “coming face to face with [one’s] True Self” and “knowing the Creator” through ma‘rifatullah [the highest stage of eso-teric spiritual knowing in this rendering of Islam’s Sufi heritage]. Initiation into the relevant spiritual practices is provided by the spiritual director of the foundation, KH Rachmat Hidayat, who also offers regular weekly classes at the centre on themes from the Quran and Hadith, such as might be found in many other well-appointed and for-malized city pengajian (religious instruction class-es). Kyai Rachmat himself has initiation from a Sufi master whose spiritual genealogy (silsilah) reaches back through the legendary Javanese Muslim saint Sunan Kudus, to the Prophet Muham-mad via his nephew ‘Ali. We can see from this that Padepokan Thaha is catering for Jakarta urbanities’ niggling spiritual hunger by renovating what was once thought to be a dying remnant of rural, peasant society: Sufism (tasaw-wuf). That is, Padepokan Thaha offers (among other things) tutelage in esoteric practices that have been carried by Sufi orders (I. tarekat; Ar., tariqa) and in the metaphysics associated with the mystical experi-ences that may unfold from those practices. However, Kyai Rachmat denies that he himself is affiliated with a tariqa and both he and the di-rectors of the foundation that runs Padepokan Thaha vigorously reject any idea that his teaching activities constitute a tariqa. Rather, as the foundation’s full name indicates, it is styled as a majelis ta’lim, an Islam study group. This addresses the phobia many Muslim modernists (that is, in Indonesia, people aligned culturally or organizationally with the Muhammadiyah and similar organiza-tions) have of the supposedly archaic and authoritarian tariqa.Catering to urban professionalsIndeed as an institution Padepokan Thaha is a thoroughly modern opera-tion. It is a formally constituted chari-table foundation, with officers charged with specific administrative duties, and proper accounting for its funds. The approach to teaching is also well suited to the interests and preferred learning styles of well-educated, globally “connected” urbanities. This is signalled in the brochure we have already sampled: the Tawajjuh Programme is delivered by “teachers and facilitators” (pengajar and fa-silitator). Kiai Rachmat is simply listed as the first of these, although his primacy and special role is acknowledged in his title “Pengasuh” (lit., one charged with the care of others). Significantly, he is not identified by the terms shaykh or murshid, which are more resonant of the author-ity and hierarchy in the old-time tariqa. The modern feel of this majlis ta’lim is also evident in the brochure’s description of the Tawajjuh Programme’s instructional methods (me-tode), namely: “discussion/dialogue (sharing)” (diskusi/dialog [sharing]), “lecture” (kuliah), and practice (pengamalan). “Practice” is briefly ex-plained as performing certain devotional rituals (ibadat), making clear the programme is built on a firm religious base, but also alluding to notions of self-development and learning through one’s own experi-ence that are central to modern-style general education. To make it clear to prospective participants that the discussions and lectures will use best-practice, university-style educational methods, the brochure also explains that the facilitator and participants will be “on the same level” (sejajar) in “discussions,” and after lectures there will be a ques-tion and answer period. It is hardly coincidental that so many English language loan words are used in the brochure: they signify Padepokan Thaha’s positive engagement with an international world of business, management and teaching practices, such as patrons employ in their professional lives.The efforts of Padepokan Thaha’s directors to accommodate modern urban life-styles and the interests of specifically cosmopolitan urbani-ties is evident in the range of its programmes, their regular scheduling to accommodate the leisure-time planning of busy urbanities, and the content of the programmes. Monthly schedules are printed showing the topic, times (weekday evenings), and session leaders for its five regular programmes, which, in addition to the Tawajjuh Programme (a residential course done only once by any given student), include “Rou-tine Religious Study” (“Pengajian Rutin”), “Book and Film Discussion” nights, “Quran Reading Study,” and the “Post Tawajjuh Programme” for initiates. While the Quran Reading programme and the “Pengajian Rutin” cover core skills and topics common to other majelis ta’lim, albeit with some differences in choices of texts and commentary, the book and film discussion nights cater to the distinctively broad range of “spiritual” interests of Padepokan Thaha’s cosmopolitan clientele. This is evident from book club choices like Achmad Chodjim’s best-selling study of the legendary (and some would say heretical) Javanese Sufi saint Shaykh Siti Jenar, followed by Farry Aprianto’s book Enrich Your Everyday Life, and Eknath Easwaran’s Conquest of Mind. Film choices like “Little Buddha” and “The Passion” also show that Padepokan Thaha programme planners are trying to help students make sense of popu-lar culture representations of other religions in a way that is consist-ent with the universalism of Kiai Rachmat’s Unity of Being (wahdat al wujud) metaphysics.2Contrary to the common view that Sufism is somehow incompatible with “the modern,” emerging new forms of Sufism signify the creative adaptation of Islam to the religious sensibilities and social demands of modern life. This article focuses on the Padepokan Thaha, a thriving Islamic studies centre in Indonesia, whose integration of esoteric spiritual knowledge with modern-style education suits the modern sensibilities of affluent and educated Muslim cosmopolitans in Indonesia.[I]n the global house-cleaning and rebuilding of contemporary Islam … Sufism has not been thrown out; instead … it has been selectively reconfigured.To judge from the packed audience hall at Padepokan Thaha and the traffic jams caused in the street out front by patrons’ late-model sedans and four-wheel-drives on evenings when the regular pengajians and special lectures are on, this new-style centre for Sufi studies has indeed accurately identified a social need and suitably catered for it. The cen-tre is flourishing. Other “Padepokan” functioning under the guidance of Kiai Rachmat and with the same institutional structure and core pro-grammes have also opened elsewhere in Jakarta (Padepokan Esa in Bin-taro) and in other parts of Indonesia (in Bogor, Bandung, Batam, Pekan Baru, Surabaya, and Bali). Padepokan Thaha directors put the number of people in Jakarta who regularly attend functions at around 4,000.Adaptations to modern lifeThe “Padepokan” associated with Kiai Rachmat are not unusual in teaching some form of Sufism in upmarket quarters of the major In-donesian cities, except, perhaps, in offering initiations through the same city-based charitable foundation that supports Islamic learning in an organizationally formalized setting. Most institutionally mod-ern foundations and businesses offering tasawwuf studies as part of a broader programme of Islamic studies for adults in Indonesia do not have practicums, much less initiations; but they nonetheless commonly acknowledge the value of cultivating deep devotional feeling in one’s prayers and the virtues of ethical reflection associated with various Sufi disciplines. Such modern Islamic study providers may also help their students locate appropriate individual instructors and workshops, and some have offered excursions to rural tarekat with introductions to spir-itual directors there. There are also independent groups with more of a practice orientation to Sufism. The variety and articulation of new insti-tutions through which middle-class and elite Indonesian urbanites are now accessing “Sufi” teachings is described in my chapter in the forth-coming volume Sufism and the “Modern” in Islam.3The other case studies in that volume (which span the Muslim world from Africa to Asia, as well as Muslim migrant communities and univer-salist movements in Western societies) provide us with a useful cross-cultural perspective on contemporary adaptations of Sufism in Indone-sia. Viewed in this broader context, it appears that Indonesian Muslims are hardly alone in working changes in the tariqa. Rather, we can see the many new forms Sufism is taking there as part of a global panorama of creative adaptation of Islam to the religious sensibilities and social demands of modern life. Surveying this global panorama, it is evident that in the global house-cleaning and rebuilding of contemporary Islam that we have witnessed over the twentieth century, Sufism has not been thrown out; instead, like other strands of the Islamic heritage, it has been selectively recon-figured. In Egypt and West Africa, Muslims enthusiastically patronize conventional tariqa but turn them to novel social purposes like interest articulation in new democratic polities. Elsewhere, in Turkey, Muslims af-filiated with the Gümüşhanevi branch of the Naqshbandis find no good at all in initiations and esoteric knowledge, but want to save the Sufi orders (the tariqa) as vehicles for teaching ethical formation and car-rying out social service activities. Hamka, a leading twentieth century Indonesian Muslim intellectual, considered that all that could be done without the tariqa, which should be given up to disencumber modern Muslims from dysfunctional traditional attitudes (in his phrase, keep-ing “tasawuf without tarekat”). Other Muslim scholars in India and the Middle East, fired by Salafist zeal for ridding the faith of all heretical in-ventions, have gone even further than Hamka, rejecting even the word tasawuf as a heretical invention; yet the Salafis have been prepared to approve particular Sufi practices (purification of the heart [tazkiya] and remembrance of God [dhikr]) identified by words found in the Quran.Just as Sufism around the world now encompasses a range of insti-tutional forms, spiritual practices and social engagement, and all that in diverse combinations, so too do we find in Sufism today a consider-able variety of stances towards Islamic law. In the Muslim world over the course of the twentieth century, spreading religious literacy and Sufi en-gagement with the Islamic reform movements have generally made for increased emphasis on the core obligations of the faith, but universalist Sufi movements like the International Sufi Movement, sprung from the Chishti order after its founder Hazrat Inayat Khan moved to the West, cutting “Sufism” loose entirely from Islamic law and an Islamic identity.What patterns can we detect in all this variation? For one thing, Sufi tradition is being carried forward into the twenty-first century, but we can no longer identify it exclusively with the institutional complex of the conventional tariqa. While that survives, and such tariqa are even vigorously assuming new functions in many parts of the world, here and there its structure is being modified to suit modern sensibilities (as ex-emplified by Padepokan Thaha). It is also being disassembled, as it were, with its scholarly teaching functions assumed by the likes of universi-ties and religious booksellers, its facilitation of group devotions taken up by impresarios of dhikr akbar led by celebrity preachers at major urban mosques, and its ethical formation and social work agendas as-suming scripturalist-reformist organizations and a few stripped-down, no-mystical-nonsense Neo-Sufi orders. The search for mystical union is probably not well catered for outside the tariqa, and perhaps not so much even in many of those. In any case, it probably repre-sents only a small niche-market. But if the growth of this market in the West in the last few decades is anything to go by, the Padepokan Thaha’s of the Muslim world will have a secure place in the future amongst Muslim cosmopolitans.I S I M  R E V I E W  1 9  /  S P R I N G  2 0 0 7  2 3Connecting to the ModernNotes1. For further details on Padepokan Thaha, see, Julia Day Howell, “Urban Heirs of Ibn al- ‘Arabi and the Defence of Religious Pluralism in Contemporary Indonesia,” Australian Religious Studies Review 18 no. 2 (2005): 197-209. See also www.thaha.net.2. Op. cit. Howell 2005:202.3. “Modernity and Islamic Spirituality in Indonesia’s New Sufi Networks,” in Sufism and the “Modern” in Islam, ed. by Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (London: IB Tauris, in press).Discussion evening at Padepokan Thaha, Jakarta 2006COURTESY OF PADEPOKAN THAHAJulia Day Howell is Associate Professor at the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University.Email: j.howell@griffith.edu.au

Repackaging Sufism in Urban Indonesia

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