Abstract
The impact of ‘Middle Eastern Islam’ on its South-east Asian counterpart is both symbolic and real. South-east Asian Muslims borrow abstract ideas as well as concrete examples from the Middle East to strengthen their faith and Islamise their often pragmatic and Westernised cultural bearings. There has been, however, a dialectical and ambivalent imagery of the Middle East in the Muslim landscape of South-east Asia. The latter at times regards the former as the home of the high culture and knowledge, in so far as Islam is concerned. Yet one also detects some contempt for the Middle East for its feudal traditions and a somewhat violent, contradictory way of life.
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Notes
With regard to the significance of historical haj accounts for various Southeast Asian scholars and travellers, see Matheson and Milner (1985). For the most recent soujourn and pilgrimage descriptions by an Indonesian, see Haji Danarto, A Javanese Pilgrim in Mecca (1989).
Several Indonesians who worked as immigrant labourers in Saudi Arabia, whom I met in Cairo during my field-study on al-Azhar Indonesian students (Abaza 1991a) mentioned that Saudis call all South-east Asians ‘Jawi‘ as a manner of debasing them. According to the New Straits Times of 6 Jan. 1982, there were 42 000 Indonesians employed in the Middle East and among them 22 000 in Saudi Arabia. It was also reported that the number had been increasing by between 10 and 15 per cent annually. For an understanding of the historical significance of the Jawa community in Mecca, see C. S. Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century: Daily Life, Customs and Learning. The Moslims of the East-Indian Archipelago (1970).
See, for instance, Geertz’s Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (1968) and his comparison of Islam in Morocco and Indonesia. The idea of borrowing purer or so-called Middle Eastern orthodox traits as against the local adat in South-east Asia has to do with the fact that Islam in the periphery was historically taxed by South-east Asianists for being more lax, syncretic and deviant, in contrast to the harsh Islam of the centre.
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© 1994 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Abaza, M. (1994). Islam in South-east Asia: Varying Impact and Images of the Middle East. In: Mutalib, H., Hashmi, T.uI. (eds) Islam, Muslims and the Modern State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14208-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14208-8_6
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