- 2 Such policy was a result as well as a source of the archipelago’s Islamization, as attested to by r (...)
1Along with ethnicity and nationalism, Islam has become an increasingly central symbol and component of cultural identity in Indonesia in the 1990s. Islamic revivalism experienced a low-key expansion relatively unhampered under the Suharto regime, which showed a more favorable disposition towards conservative Islam.2 The political dimension of Islamism was less apparent than its cultural dimension, insofar as the regime tightly controlled the unique Muslim party, the PPP (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, the United Party for Development), and did not allow for new political parties to be represented in Parliament. This changed rapidly after the fall of Suharto: Of 48 parties contesting the June 1999 general elections, 18 either espoused Islam as their ideology or had their roots in Islamic groups.
- 3 It was argued that, after the banning of the Masyumi, Muslims as a whole found themselves deprived (...)
2During much of the 1990s, however, political Islam slowly anchored itself on a part of the urban Muslim middle class, which in the 1950s was represented by the modernist party Masyumi - later (1960) banned by Soekarno, partly for its support of the rebellion of the Sumatran PRRI (Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia, the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia). Long marginalized in the political scene, this socio-political current later grew into a new pressure group, giving a louder echo to calls for more democracy, more social justice, less corruption, and more participation for Islam in the administration.3 President Suharto, trying to court the Muslim middle-class, allowed the creation of the Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association (ICMI, Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia), which contributed to a change of the orientation of his regime: After 1993, no Christians remained in major ministerial positions, and Sino-Indonesians felt the pressure of economic indigenization, while President Suharto’s nepotism and corruption continued as strongly as ever. In 1998, a split became evident within ICMI: Amien Rais became a leading figure in the students’ Reformasi movement that toppled Suharto in May, while the pro-Habibie group within ICMI succeeded in confiscating the political change to its advantage and had ICMI activists appointed as important ministers in the new Habibie government.
- 4 Atheism is forbidden in Indonesia, and all Indonesians have to profess one of the five officially r (...)
- 5 Islamic resurgence does not take Middle Eastern militaristic forms in Indonesia, which has categori (...)
3These political developments are important because they were accompanied by an Islamization of the way of life, which has had an impact on the women of Indonesia. When I started my research on women and new Islamic trends in Indonesia in the early 1990s, there was much hope that a politicization of Islam would become a vector of democracy. Democracy was thought to be a natural route towards a more Islamic government, given that 87 percent of Indonesians profess Islam as their religion.4 But intellectuals were also reflecting on how Islam would accommodate democracy and societal transformation. Like elsewhere in the Muslim world, some of them - referred to as “Islamists” by Middle East specialists - believed in Islam as “the only feasible system able to maintain true democracy” (Hefner 1993: 30), while others - referred to as “progressives” - argued in favor of a non-ideological Islam that could inspire laws but should not be codified.5
- 6 Seminar Wanita Islam Indonesia Dalam Kajian Tekstual dan Kontekstual; the papers of this seminar we (...)
- 7 I am grateful to Budhy Munawar-Rachman for giving me his paper (1995).
4Thus, in parallel with the numerous seminars on Islam and democracy, lower-key seminars were taking place on women rights and Islamic theology, a rare subject in the 1980s. In December 1991 a seminar entitled “The Indonesian Muslim Woman Studied from a Textual and Contextual Point of View” 6exposed the endeavour of a part of Indonesian Muslim intellectuals to find religious justification for the high status and the relative freedom enjoyed by Indonesian women, and to correct existing inequalities. Some of the speakers present at the seminar, as well as other so-called “feminists” or progressives, continued to speak at forums such as university conferences, at Koranic schools, and at special classes for urban Muslim women. In 1995, the progressive Yayasan Paramadina, founded by intellectual Nurcholish Madjid, held a special course called “Islam and Feminism.” The course’s statement acknowledged that the term “feminism” - to which Indonesians had developed an “allergy” - was becoming acceptable. The paper questioned the inequality of women under the “patriarchal system,” and the “isolation of women at home.”7 During November 1995, I attended two seminars on women that discussed the present preoccupations among Indonesian women: remaining inequalities in salaries (condoned by some Islamists present in the conference room), polygamy seen as discriminating against women, and increased domestic violence. In November 1997, the public role of women was seriously debated at the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, a major traditionalist Muslim mass organization) congress in Lombok, and a declaration was issued on women’s right to a public role (see Barton & Feillard 1999).
5In the midst of this phenomenon of Islamization, it was important to ask women their own opinion because they are reputed to enjoy a higher status than women in other countries in Southeast and South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan (Ward 1963: 70–71). For example, exchanges of wealth at marriage do not burden female children more than males. In Java, women continue to deal with money, become traders, and their contribution to the household gives them financial autonomy and power (Stoler 1977). Keeler (1990: 129) writes,
“Although gender entails many distinctions in domestic responsibilities and public activities in Java, it seems to preclude relatively little. For one thing, it certainly does not prevent women from exercising great control within the household, since, with the exception of some bourgeois families, Javanese wives usually manage their husband’s income, as well as any money they may themselves earn through trade or other business dealings. They also participate fully in discussions with their husbands about the family’s plans, such as business, or children’s education or marriage arrangements. By the same token, within the family, men are not unwilling to attend to children at times, and to wash their own clothes, though they are unlikely to wash their wives’ or children’s clothes, or to shop at the market for foodstuffs. In a village, both men and women take part in farming, and in town, both men and women participate in business dealings, though in both cases, again, certain differences in what kinds of tasks men and women perform do arise. More remarkably, many Javanese women enjoy positions of considerable prestige and respect in public life…”
6Even in religious matters, Indonesian women have a freedom unknown in the Middle East. They rarely have to suffer from polygamy. A woman may perform the call to prayer (azan) and lead the congregation when women are present, and there have been women judges in Muslim courts since the early 1950s.
7To find out the opinion of Indonesian Muslim women on key issues concerning them, compiling statistics would have been complex in this archipelago of more than 300 ethnic groups, variably touched over the centuries by Arabs, Indians, and Chinese traders, by Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, and by Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial powers. Thus, I decided to conduct long interviews with 23 women leaders, assuming that they represented various trends and have had an impact over people in their respective organizations. Indeed, this choice may have had the unwanted effect of blowing up the picture of an intellectual middle class. However, to increase diversity, I chose interviewees aged from 22 to 83 years, some living in big cities Uakarta), some in smaller cities (Malang, Gresik, Yogyakarta), all in Java (again a limitation, despite the fact that Java harbours more than half of the Indonesian population). Ali were Muslims, but I chose some leaders from strict Muslim milieus (the terms they used to qualify themselves were santri, modern, rational), others from a more Javanist orientation that is closer to the Hindu-Buddhist Javanese culture (they used the terms abangan, kejawen, orang Jawa, belum Islam benar). Some of them had parents from both abangan and santri milieus.
8During the two- to four-hour interviews I carried out, I asked questions on gender issues like marriage and spousal obedience, divorce, inheritance, polygamy, abortion, premarital pregnancy, education, family planning, and the veil; on the interviewees’ mothers’ message; on their visions of the world in their twenties and now; on their perceptions of modernity; on the values present in the environment in which they grew, etc. I have chosen in this article to single out two themes: Muslim dress and polygamy. This choice is based on the fact that these issues carried the most visible signs of change in Indonesian women’s lives in the 1990s.
9The discourse of the 23 women leaders exposes the reality of a growing conservatism to which, paradoxically, strict Muslim milieus (santri) rather than Javanists (abangan) dare most to react. Quasi-unanimity exist in favor of tolerating non-veiling and maintaining freedom of movement and work, and in favor of monogamy, a discourse similar, to that of women in the Middle East. The Islamist (formalist) discourse is represented by one single respondent, reflecting the low visibility of this group in Indonesia in the early 1990s, but maybe not its strong presence on the university campus. An analysis of the discourse of the 23 leaders leads to the conclusion that, between the women whose references are Western (who dare, for example, defend the rights of lesbians) and those who look to the Middle East as a model (acceptance of polygamy as the very proof of true faith), there appears to be an intermediate category of Muslim feminists - modern moderates - who believe in and fight for an egalitarian and liberating interpretation of Islam, and who are today at the forefront of a yet unstructured Muslim feminist movement.
10For many women in the 1920s and 1930s used to wearing traditional (adat) dress, modernization introduced either Western dress or Muslim dress. Malay-Indonesian dress - kebaya blouse, long sarong cloth, and head shawl - replaced the adat clothes in many remote Islamized parts of the archipelago, showing a heightened concern with covering the body. At the same time, a small elite going to Dutch schools were adopting Western dress. Tradition remained strong in many regions; up until the 1960s, women could be seen bare breasted in Islamized regions such as West Java and South Sulawesi.
- 8 See Idham Chalid’s 1969 speech.
11In Java, the rule was for the santri (or strictly Islamized) women to wear a kain (a rectangular piece of batik wrapped into a long skirt, tight around the hips), a kebaya (long-sleeved blouse showing the neck), and a kerudung (a shawl hanging over the head and flowing onto the shoulders). Women working in rural areas would wrap the kerudung around the neck for practical purposes. A photograph of women leaders present at the first women’s congress in 1928 shows only a minority wearing the kerudung. Modernization was affecting men of the santri circles, too: Idham Chalid, the leader of the NU, publicly made fun of the white robe (jubbah) he had had to wear in the 1955 elections campaign.8 There were limits not to be passed, however, as is shown by the case of another NU leader, Subchan, who was severely criticized at the same period for wearing a swimming suit. For women, the long skirt and blouse were increasingly adopted - in all decency - for practical reasons. The 1980s suddenly changed dressing habits for women (though not so much for men) with the spread of the tight veil (jilbab or hijab), a new fashion: hence the new term jilbabisasi (’jilbabization’). To start examining reactions to the jilbab, I propose looking at women’s experiences of the veil.
12The tight veil seems to have appeared in Indonesia in limited reformist circles in the 1920s, including parts of the Muhammadiyah, the largest Abduh-inspired reformist movement in Indonesia. AS, a former chairwoman of the traditionalist Muslimat organization, who lived in Timbuk Baru, Kalimantan, in the 1930s, recalls,
“The people of Muhammadiyah were modern. The men wore a tie and a jacket to go to the mosque. In the village, on the contrary, they wore the sarong and the kopiah [black head cap] as a way to reject copying the Dutch colonizer. The mosques were distinct for the two currents of thought [i.e., reformist and traditionalist]. My father, for example, did not work on Fridays because he had to ride 9 km by bicycle to go to ’his’ mosque. The mosque situated 2 km away was not proper to him. Thus, he would lose one whole day going to the other mosque. The Muhammadiyah women, of the ‘Aisyiyah [the Muhammadiyah’s women’s organization), were different, too. They wore the kain and kebaya and they would pull a selendang [long shawl] tight under the chin and around the neck. They came from West Sumatra and could speak Dutch. For us, it was unbelievable, and we were for non-cooperation. Like them, we wore the kain and kebaya but our kerudung were open, leaving our neck exposed. Not all Muhammadiyah women wore their veil tight, others had been wearing the kerudung like us since the age of eight. But we would take it off at home, they would not.”
- 9 The Salafiyya-oriented movement in Indonesia has been termed “modernist” since the first studies on (...)
13Thus, paradoxically, the tight veil was introduced by the reformists, also called modernists,9 who also introduced the jacket and tie for men, and was openly rejected by traditionalist Islam. However, the tight veil, referred to as “the Minang way” (cara Minang) after the ethnic group living in West Sumatra, was not the rule in Muhammadiyah circles in Java. A former leader of the ‘Aisyiyah, BB, born in 1923 in the Kauman (the Muslim district) of Yogyakarta, the birthplace of the Muhammadiyah, only wore the kerudung beginning in primary school. Even so, it was not obligatory in Muhammadiyah schools in the 1920s and 1930s in Yogyakarta. As BB recalls,
“At the Muhammadiyah junior high school, we were a minority wearing the kerudung. At senior high school, there were more wearing it. The jilbab did not exist yet. We wore our kerudung the Minang way, pulled around the neck several times. But this Minang way was only for ceremonies or photographs. Later, as a student in Jakarta, I continued to wear the kerudung, kain, and kebaya. I wanted to maintain my own identity. I was free but I kept my Yogyakarta way of dressing. In Cairo also, I continued to wear it. Now I wear the long dress instead of the kain because it is more comfortable.”
14A generation later, in the 1950s, the kerudung was still not obligatory but, as before, activists would ask their daughters to wear it. A Muhammadiyah leader and medical doctor in Jakarta, MM, born in 1945 in Yogyakarta, says her parents obliged her to wear the kerudung when she entered junior high school. The fact that she was nearly the only person wearing it made her feel uncomfortable. But there were other Muhammadiyah families who did not take the kerudung as a criterion for religiosity. The current chairwoman of the ‘Aisyiyah, ED, born in 1940, was raised in North Sumatra where her father, a reputed ulama (Muslim theologian), never asked her to wear the kerudung. She wore it when she became a religious teacher, abandoned it for a while in Solo, and later put it on again after marrying the son of a penghulu (palace religious authority).
15It is only the younger Muhammadiyah generation that made the use of the jilbab a rule. The first vice-president of the Nasyiatul ‘Aisyiyah organization (NA), TS, born in 1964, started wearing the jilbab everyday in the 1980s, at a time when it was only obligatory on certain occasions. Her mother wondered then, “Why do you wear the jilbab when nobody obliges you to do so?” She remembers that she did not dare wear it everyday at first because “our teachers would think of us as fanatics, fundamentalists.”
16Thus, the kerudung, optional in the 1930s, was replaced in the 1980s by the strongly recommended jilbab, which is now obligatory on certain days of the week in all Muhammadiyah schools. Even for the strict reformist region of Minangkabau, there is no continuity, as there has already been a phasing-out of the tight veil (telekung), which had been present since the 1920s, to conform with modernity, where men “are no longer excited by a woman’s hair because they are so used to seeing it’’ (Whalley 1993: 14). In West Java, the tight veil (tiunga) was worn in the strict reformist circles of Persis (Persatuan Islam). This dress earned them gestures of hostility from the surrounding population. Researcher Lies Marcoes recounts acts of destruction against a house occupied by women wearing the tight veil in 1934 in the region of Pameungpeuk (Marcoes-Natsir 1993: 100).
17Among the traditionalists, dress habits were different again. There was no talk of the tight veil before the 1980s. The open kerudung had been the rule, although modernized elite families seem not to have demanded that their children wear it. CH, one of the founders of the Fatayat, the traditionalist young women’s mass organisation, says that her parents never obliged her to wear the kerudung, although she was born into a strict East Javanese Muslim family in Gresik in 1929. This is also the case for AHB, a granddaughter of NU founder Kyai Hasyim Asy’ari. She started wearing the kerudung after she became an activist within the Muslim women’s traditionalist organization, Muslimat, of which she now is the chairwoman. There seems to have been some flexibility in veiling, reflecting a de facto tolerance for discrepancies vis-à-vis the sharia, as is the case with traditional Islam elsewhere in the Muslim world. Apparently, even in Arab-influenced circles, the jilbab was not obligatory. FR, born in 1964 and raised in Jakarta, attended a primary school managed by Arabs, where she wore the jilbab only to go to religious classes, which seems to have been the rule until the 1970s (the jilbab was also compulsory at burials).
18Islamist literature translated from English and Arabic, imported without the usual strict censorship that applies to ideologies like Marxism, has contributed to the spread of the jilbab since the 1980s. Books advocating the tight, hermetic veil as the only proper Muslim dress are numerous (see Meuleman 1993: 175). A translation from one such booklet from Egypt, for example, says that the veil should cover “the head, the neck and the breast,” and that “the only parts that may be visible are the face and the hand palms” (Mutawalli 1994). Another booklet defines the jilbab as “a wide robe worn over the usual clothes,” usually “black and cover[ing] the whole body” (Maftuh Ahnan, n.d.). As noticed by Meuleman, such books, mostly written by non-Indonesians, are far from the reality of life for Indonesian women.
- 10 Interview with an ITB female student who graduated in 1978.
- 11 Interview with a young women who graduated in 1984.
- 12 Ratna Sarumpaet, a poetry reader who later became an anti-Suharto activist, was prominent among the (...)
19It is, however, undeniable that these books have contributed to the emergence of a new “veiled identity.” The jilbab has replaced the kerudung and has spread outside the rigorist santri circles. After several court cases brought by young girls demanding the right to wear the veil in state schools, the administration gave in in 1991. The jilbabisasi has touched state universities, in particular. At the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), about one third of the students were veiled in 1995, compared to just a few in 1978.10 A similar case has occurred at the elite University of Indonesia, where, in the department of psychology, for example, there were only two veiled girls in the 1984 graduating class.11 On the contrary, in Islamic universities, where the veil is compulsory, girls often take it off after school hours. The veil has become a divisive issue among artists as well: In 1995, half a group of Jakarta artists abandoned a poetry reading in support of Bosnia after women readers were required to wear the jilbab.12
20Facing this new phenomenon, the women leaders interviewed show diverse reactions, from rejection to fervent advocacy, but with a wide range of intermediate opinions that reveal the ambiguity of the veil.
21The reasons for advocating or rejecting the veil were manifold. I have tried to summarize them below into three main themes: The veil is a sign of obedience to God’s orders, a pledge to live a virtuous life, a protection against sexual harassment. Although all three motives are connected, I separated them in order to present the feminists’ counterargument specific to the Indonesian context.
22Advocacy of the jilbab is made exclusively by younger women leaders. Two women declare it to be compulsory: TS, a young NA activist, and FR, a non-affiliated activist reputed for her self-claimed “fundamentalism”. Whereas TS seems a relatively moderate supporter of the jilbab, FR is more intense: Her daughter has worn it since the age of five months and she herself wears a long and large jilbab. To reconcile with the unveiled past, she says, “It is a religious obligation which the Indonesian ulama had not touched upon.” The argument of an obligation that should no longer be neglected (for it could have bad consequences in the hereafter) is a frequent argument among veiled girls.
- 13 Her brother was condemned to death on charges of subversion and executed in 1986.
23On the opposite side of this opinion stands SA, an activist with Kalianamitra, an NGO involved in the defense of women’s rights. She objects to her newly-veiled friends, “But what about our ancestors, our grandmothers, were they not good Muslims because they did not wear the jilbab? They cannot answer my question.” Other women leaders use their religious knowledge to counter the pro-jilbab rhetoric. One of them is WH, a sociologist born in 1952, who grew up in a Koranic school owned by her father. She is now one of the most active feminists campaigning for a liberating interpretation of Islam.13
24She argues that, “The veil has nothing to do with religion, it is not justified in Indonesia, a tropical country with different values than the Middle East.” Psychology professor SS, co-founder of an organization for counselling Muslim women in matrimonial matters, echoing the argument, says, “The veil is a cultural thing. In the early days of Islam, they wore it. It was there even before Islam.”
25A second motive is the genuine fear that modernization will result in a sacrifice of moral values. This opinion was best represented by young NA leader TS, who started to wear the veil in high school, departing from the Muhammadiyah kerudung tradition. For her, after her first menstruation, a girl must wear the jilbab, which is “compulsory but cannot be forced upon girls.” For TS, the veil is a declaration of intent to live a virtuous life but also to improve oneself. As she puts it,
“The problem is that, once a girl starts wearing the jilbab, society becomes very demanding: She has to be virtuous. But I say, it is better to start wearing it and become virtuous later. It already means making the effort to become better. But people say, ’Look at this girl, she wears the jilbab but her eyes cannot keep from looking left and right [at boys]’.”
26This fear of the impure is reminiscent of the puritan trends of the first half of the 20th century, when reformist women insisted on keeping the kerudung in a non-Muslim environment in order “to be safe from temptations,” in the words of prominent Muslim activist, 88. Thus, in terms of its function, the jilbab seems to have replaced the kerudung, with the same goal of bearing witness to and helping toward a life of virtue. Here, the veil symbolizes the autonomy of a young generation that is modernizing but claims a difference from more modernized layers of society. The adoption of the Muslim dress becomes, in the words of Whalley, “a spiritual test, an overcoming of amoral influences, a battle with desire, a submission to the greater mission of Islam” (Whalley 1993: 17).
27White tolerating the veil as a mark of distinction and respecting its intentions, some modernized Muslim women reject it as a sign of superiority in religion or morals. WH clearly expresses this opinion, as well as LM, an NGO activist coming from a Muhammadiyah family and graduated from a state Islamic university (IAIN, Institut Agama Islam Negeri): “The veil is acceptable to me only if the girl does not feel she is the good Muslim and the others are not.” Artist RS, a convert through marriage, echoes the same rejection of the veil as a guarantee of virtue: “With the veil, they imagine they are the civil servants of Gad,” and adds that she doubts that jilbab is synonymous with virtue.
28The argument that the veil can also hide vice is recurrent among Indonesian women, santri and abangan alike. In her study on the Minangkabau, Whalley expresses well this conflict about the veil, proper to santri circles: “Those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s with the view that they should ’go modern’ resent this sudden challenge to wear strict Muslim dress as if the strength of their adherence to religion was being questioned” (Whalley 1993: 23).
29Most interesting is the fact that some advocates of the veil associate it with coquetterie. Thus, SMA, chairwoman of the Fatayat, a traditionalist young women’s organization, defends the veil with a simple sentence, “Why not, isn’t it prettier so?” TA, the director of the major As-Syafi’iyah Islamic school and a reputed preacher attracting huge audiences, also says the jilbab replaced the kerudung in her school, because “it is cleaner and nicer to see.” In these cases, it seems that the veil is accepted as a femininity-enhancing device, without the fear of sexuality characteristic of Islamist literature. One can only think of the Iranian woman who has succeeded, despite or through the veil imposed on her by the state, to “insidiously” increase her charms (Chafiq & Khosrokhavar 1995: 191).
30Thus, the veil has here two contradictory functions: It can be either the neo-puritan expression of anxiety over gender relations or the reverse, a form of coquetterie allowed within the serenity usually dominating gender relations in traditional Islam (Chafiq & Khosrokhavar 1995: 200). Hence the development of a new flashy and ostentatious fashion around the “Muslim dress” (busana Muslim), which is very far from the austere veil of some so-called fundamentalists.
31FR, the fiercest advocate of the jilbab, further mentions the danger of sexual harassment as a reason to recommend the veil: “Obedience to God’s order is not a blind choice but a rational one because the jilbab invites respect from boys. Girls in miniskirts are being harassed.”
32Another woman advocates the veil for the same reason but cites examples of dangers in a foreign country. Religious teacher KTY, the head of a research center on women at the Jakarta IAIN, tells of her bad experience with men during her studies in Cairo. Another veiled young woman I met (outside of the 23 women leaders) mentions how the jilbab has a liberating function, for she dared travel to the USA “without fearing rape.” In these two cases, bath the West and the Middle East are associated with sexual violence, not Indonesia. As for FR, the Indonesian term she uses to express harassment was dicolek-colek, literally meaning ‘being touched with the fingertips.’ This is not to say that sexual harassment does not exist in Indonesia, but it does to a much lesser extent than in Middle Eastern societies so far.
33The counterargument to FR suggests that the danger is being exaggerated. Sociologist and NGO activist WH says that she tells young girls that self-confidence should do as a protection against boys. Professor SS is firm about it when she states, “Men should respect us, it is not for us to protect ourselves.” A leader of the Muslim Student Association (HMI) at the IPB, DS, born in 1973., also feels the dangers are overestimated. She does not want to wear the veil, although she prays five times a day, reads the Koran everyday, and attends religious courses. Her opinion, expressed differently by many women leaders, is that the veil is imported from the Middle East, where gender relations are different:
“People say that, there, men have a high libido (nafsu besar) and rapes are frequent, so they ask their women to veil themselves. But as a result, when they see a non-veiled woman, they feel overexcited. The girls who wear the jilbab here say that it is to remain virtuous and that, in that way, they will not excite men. They say that no veiled girl has ever been raped, and thus, that the veil is a guarantee against rape. But I do not believe it. It all depends on the way we behave toward men, we should not be provocative. I am for the middle way.”
34It is true that, like elsewhere in the Muslim world, the rapid pace of social change has somehow upset communal order in urban areas and altered relations between men and women, who had been protected by strict societal rules. This is best expressed by veiled girls who say they feel safer at night in urban areas when veiled. However, it seems that communal order and traditional values have been comparatively well preserved in Indonesia, besides the fact that it is a country where there is basically a great traditional respect for women. What Whalley wrote of Minang society is true of most Indonesian ethnic groups, namely that a woman’s body is not viewed as “corrupting of society, unclean, or dangerous as it is in some Middle Eastern societies, but women are thought of as the foundation of society, not as a source of its corruption” (Whalley 1993: 5). Furthermore, Indonesian females tend to downplay gender differences, in terms of their bodies and social id1entities, as in Southeast Asia traditionally (see Errington 1990). This tendency expresses itself clearly in modern dressing habits: The miniskirt mentioned by FR is still far from being the rule among young Indonesian women, who would rather wear jeans and loose untucked blouses. Finally, with female visibility being accepted in Indonesian society, the veil has not the same obvious protective function as it had for the Hezbollah women in Iran or for Turkish women from the lower classes, who could enter public life and leave their homes thanks to the veil (Chafiq & Khosrokhavar 1995: 187).
35The polemic that I have condensed above has given rise to tensions that appear most clearly within university and santri circles, dividing the young and the old generations.
- 14 Indonesians are not alone in blaming other Muslim countries for being responsible for the veiling. (...)
36As early as the 1920, when the tight veil appeared in West Sumatra, conflicting views about it arose, as Whalley had already noted, “The majority of Minangkabau women were not convinced that God had meant by those rather ambiguous statements in the Koran for women to veil themselves in the exact manner prescribed by the Diniyah,” the reformist school for girls set up in 1923, which prescribed the tight veil (Whalley 1993: 13). The only woman member of the national Islamic Council (MUI, Majelis Ulama Indonesia), ZD, a Minang herself, says she wore her kerudung even during her nearly nine years of study in Cairn, despite pressures on her to wear the tight veil. She herself shows little enthusiasm for the jilbab, an attribute that, she says, “may be the result of influences from the Middle East.”14
37In reformist circles, some younger women activists are strong advocates of the jilbab and put pressure on the older generation to abandon the kerudung. Senior Muhammadiyah woman activist BB says, “Girls wearing the chador [a veil through which only the eyes are visible] came to me to say that the kerudung was not sufficient, that people could see their neck. I told them it was a question of one’s school of thought (paham). We keep telling our young girls that only the kerudung is obligatory.”
38Thus, the older generation cannot but tolerate the jilbab, but they stand firm against the chador. The current ‘Aisyiyah chairwoman, ED, relates, “Some of my pupils have started wearing the chador, and I told them to stop. I told them that the whole society was making fun of them, and that it was unattractive (jelek). Now, some of my students ask me to wear the jilbab, but I keep wearing the kerudung. I myself wear the Muslim dress. The question of which is the best is to be answered by each woman individually. What is important is one’s actions as a Muslim. If a girl feels she is not yet able to wear the jilbab, then she should not wear it.”
39Thus, while the chador is allowed at state universities (at least in Yogyakarta), it is forbidden by the ‘Aisyiyah. By doing so, the ‘Aisyiyah draws a line between radical Islamism and itself. Interestingly, this shows that the strongest reaction to Islamism seems to stem not from the government but from strict Muslim circles themselves.
40In traditionalist circles, the pressure of jilbab advocates appears to be weaker. Interviewees, however, tell tales of children demanding that their mothers wear the jilbab. Traditionalist leader AS counselled a couple who had come to her in tears as their grandchild had suddenly changed after attending an intensive religious course (pesantren kilat) at the university. The student demanded that the mother wear the jilbab, and rejected the NU organization for accepting the state ideology (Pancasila), which promotes religious tolerance without mentioning the sharia.
41Judging from the interviews, the university appears to be another major source of tension as Islamism is propagated there at a rapid pace. The tensions result not so much from the veil itself but from sectarian attitudes associated with it. DS, a student leader at the IPB, where one third of the female students wear the veil, spells out her problems: “Some veiled students refuse any contact with men, even a handshake, and certain people do not like that because they take it as an offense. This is incompatible with the friendliness we should show to people. The current times require a capacity for adaptation. I am modern but I am also a practicing Muslim and I look for harmony. On the other side, modernity without religion is impossible. It would mean abandoning one’s potential.”
42A similar reservation was expressed by professor SS, who recounts the general embarrassment caused by a veiled student, granted the honor of receiving the diploma in the name of her class, who refused to shake hands with the rector during the graduation ceremony.
- 15 This is how the Indonesian press reported the veil affair in France. Actually, the French court lef (...)
43Thus, evidently, women have ambiguous feelings regarding the veil. This is also shown by the diverging opinions expressed about court cases brought by veiled women against the administration. NK, a lawyer born into a nationalist family, defended several veiled women in court in 1987, before the veil was officially accepted at schools in 1991. She won her cases, partly on the mistaken argument that France had allowed it at state schools.15 But other feminists were hesitant and, after a first victory in court, refused to continue the legal proceedings.
44Apart from these circles where tensions are acutely felt, there seems to be a widespread tolerance of the veil in society and little or no antagonism against women in jilbab. If tensions exist, they are well hidden. Acrimony between veiled and unveiled women, as had been the case for example in Iran before 1979 (see Chafiq & Khosrokhavar 1995: 172), is seldom heard of in Indonesia. The reason for this may partly stem from the fact that the veil is not, contrary to the situation in pre-revolution Iran, the emblem of a particular class. Being new, it is spreading not only across the lower and middle classes but also to the upper classes, and not being a class phenomenon, its claim to symbolize virtue is probably more credible. In general, unveiled girls or women show a degree of humility towards those veiled, stating that they themselves are “not yet ready” for the veil. Some Minang women interviewed by Whalley suggested that they did not wear the veil for “lack of self-discipline” (Whalley 1993: 16). I heard the same discourse among several unveiled students at the IPB, which seems to imply the spreading opinion that Muslim dress does symbolize perfection and virtue. Student leader DS herself, despite her diatribe against the veil (see above), does not exclude the possibility that, one day (“after I get married”), she would wear it. There seems to be a relative readiness to adapt to social pressure and new norms or fashion, as shown by Whalley in Minangkabau, where she describes a “manipulation of wardrobes” (Muslim, Western, or traditional dress, alternatively) by “women whose life choices have placed them on the margins of the status quo.”
45Among the women interviewed, it seems that the older secular-minded or abangan women express the least distrust of the veil as an expression of a virtuous life - although they do not wear the kerudung or jilbab themselves. This is the case of the two pro-independence freedom fighters, MSI and TR, and of the former police officer turned human rights activist, RKA. This attitude is probably due to an honest intent to avoid expressing a value judgment on the unknown, in the humanist tradition of early nationalism in Java.
- 16 See Warsilah’s dissertation (1995). Her conclusion was also elaborated during her Ph.D. defence (10 (...)
- 17 See, for example, philosopher Toeti Heraty Noerhadi, expressing her feeling of insecurity about wri (...)
46However, there seems to be a relative readiness in abangan circles to adopt external signs of Muslimness, like the veil. NGO activist SA, raised by an abangan father and a santri mother, says that at the department of psychology where she studied, she had five abangan friends, three of whom had already adopted the jilbab. “They run from an abangan extreme to a santri extreme,” she says. How much of this change is due to pressure from the environment or to a genuine search for a new and universal rather than local identity is hard to say. But it is clear that the abangan denomination is increasingly devalued. Abaza’s remark on Southeast Asian Islam is particularly true of Javanese Islam: “The idea of borrowing purer and so-called Middle Eastern orthodox traits as against local adat in Southeast Asia has to do with the fact that Islam in the periphery was historically taxed for being more lax, syncretic, and deviant in contrast to the harsh Islam of the center” (Abaza 1991: 219). As shown by Indonesian sociologist Henny Warsilah, Javanese Muslims, often close to mysticism, animism, and HinduBuddhist culture, have a hard time being accepted as genuine Muslims by the non-Javanese population.16 The veil thus becomes an easy way to prove one’s Muslimness. At the very least, secular-minded feminists seem to feel uneasy about writing on Muslim women.17 Thus, it needs to be assessed whether the abangan population is an obstacle - as some Indonesian observers think - or, on the contrary, a soft target for Islamism.
47In conclusion, what progressive Indonesian women demand is not the phasing out of the veil in the name of modernity, but tolerance of non-veiling, that is, the freedom to choose to wear the veil or not, despite increased social pressure to wear it. The debate is occurring within the santri intellectual elite, where conservative and progressive Muslims are competing for recognition and influence at a time when religious authority is scattered and increasingly contradictory on the subject. The progressives have to cope with imported material, mostly very conservative, often written by unknown writers, and published by a plethora of small publishers, some of them of obscure origin (Meuleman 1993: 183). But women in general remain dependent on and naively credulous of such literature, as they usually cannot read Arabie themselves. We are witnessing a chaotic situation in terms of Islamic orientation, a fact that Abaza had already noticed for Egypt and Malaysia (Abaza 1991: 226). This is all the more distressing because the progressive and conservative currents cut across the mass religious organizations like the ‘Aisyiyah, the Nasyiatul ‘Aisyiyah, the Muslimat, and the Fatayat, all of which are major references for Indonesian Muslims.
- 18 Quoted from Lombard (1990: 111, 60 and note p. 172), who himself quoted from Pigeaud (1960-63: Vol. (...)
48The practice of polygamy varies from one region to the next and evidence is scarce as to whether it existed before Hinduism and Islam. We know that it was practiced by the Javanese Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit royal house in the 14th century, under King Hayam Wuruk. In the Nagarakertagama, Prapanca wrote, “The beautiful girls of Kediri and Janggala were chosen as soon as there was one (such beauty)”, adding “without mentioning the others who were taken from other places (parapura) and brought to the palace.”18 Islam, embraced by the royal courts of Mataram in the 16th century, never managed to curb the number of the royal wives or selir, secondary wives. However, there could only be four queens at the same time (Lombard 1990: Ill, 62). Apparently, polygamy was practiced mostly in the well-to-do classes in Java. The 1930 census shows that only 1.9 percent of married men were polygamous in Java and Madura, 4 percent in the Outer Islands, and 8.7 percent in Minangkabau (Vreede-de Stuers 1960: 104).
- 19 In 1995, a portrait of Kartini hung in the small office of the Muslimat in the Eastjavanese town of (...)
49The national heroine Kartini, who remains the model for Indonesian women in general,19 wrote about polygamy in a letter published a few years after her death in 1911: “The public must not know what we are really fighting - the name of the enemy against which we take the field must never, never be cried aloud - it is polygamy. If that word were heard no man would trust his child to us. I have struggled against this, for it is as though we began our work with a lie” (Ailsa 1980: 11).
50Restrictions on polygamy were requested by Indonesian nationalist women as early as 1928, when they held their first congress. They argued that the principle of equal treatment for all wives was not respected and engendered much suffering among women (Suwondo 1981: 11). However, a look at the proceedings of these women’s congresses and meetings during the colonial period shows that the problem was treated with extreme caution. Although polygamy was high on the agendas, together with prostitution, child marriage, and protection in case of divorce, it was a divisive issue. Thus, when the Federation of Indonesian Women’s Associations (PPII) met in 1930, the subject was avoided in order not to offend Muslim associations (Vreede-de Stuers 1960: 91). In 1935, the Second Congress of the PPII, held in Jakarta, decided that it would “make a detailed inquiry into the position of women under Islamic law and endeavor to improve this position without depreciating religion” (Vreede-de Stuers 1960: 94). In the Third Congress (1938), it was agreed to establish a commission (Komisi Perkawinan) entrusted with the drafting of an Indonesian marriage regulation “without attacking Islam.” Attempts by the Dutch colonial administration in 1937 to suppress polygamy had been abandoned after Muslim and nationalist parties (Parindra and Pasundan) expressed their opposition, and even great feminists like Maria Ulfah Santoso, who actually agreed with the Dutch bill proposal, did not want the Third Congress to express support for the bill, “in order to avoid a possibly irreparable split within the ranks of Muslim feminists” (Vreede-de Stuers 1960: 113).
- 20 See Marcoes-Natsir (1993: 98) on a 1929 speech by Soekarno, which was critical of Islam for sanctio (...)
51The constitution of the new Republic declared women and men equal, but the question of polygamy remained untouched for many years, as was the case in Maghreb countries (except for Tunisia). President Soekarno first condemned polygamy, but later became polygamous; in a symbolic gesture, his first wife left the Palace when he remarried.20 When Soekarno asked Minister of Religious Affairs Saifuddin Zuhri to preside over his third marriage in 1963, the minister clearly seemed embarrassed, evidence of how problematic polygamy was in elite public opinion at the time (Zuhri 1987: 531).
52It was only in 1974 that polygamy was restricted under a new marriage law, allowing it only under specific conditions, i.e., the woman could not fulfill her duties as a wife; the wife had an infirmity or an incurable disease; the wife could not bear a child (Suwondo 1981: 13). Taking a second wife was also subject to the consent of the first wife. Since 1975, the civil code (KUHP, article 279) provides a five-year prison sentence for remarriage outside the legal rules (Suwondo 1981: 13). This marriage law did not totally suppress polygamy, something women activists had been hoping for. These women had to face conservative ulama, partly from the NU, who succeeded in having the draft legislation modified to be doser to Islamic law (Feillard 1995: 145–149). However, some restrictions on polygamy were accepted by the ulama, partly thanks to the NU’s rois aam (president), Kyai Bishri Syansuri, who was himself monogamous.
- 21 According to Nursyabani Katjasungkana, a lawyer specializing in women rights, a recent case involve (...)
- 22 For a thorough critique of the decree (PPIO) and its protection of women, see Suryakusuma (1991).
- 23 Hasan Basri, head of the MUI, was often cited by feminists as the most conservative among influenti (...)
53After 1974 polygamy continued, illegally, with the second marriage being then only religious - that is, not registered with the civilian authorities. This deprived the second wife and her children of any legal status, leaving her without alimony in case of divorce, no right to inheritance, and no birth certificates for the children.21 The powerful association of civil servants’ wives, Dharma Wanita, succeeded in 1983 in having a government decree making polygamy increasingly difficult for civil servants, with the second marriage requiring beforehand permission from the employee’s supervisor.22 Some women activists have continued to demand a total ban on polygamy, but the MUI, dominated by conservative ulama, has rejected their requests.23
- 24 See the weekly Tempo, 21 April 1990.
54Despite this fact, the consensus seems to be strong against polygamy. In 1990, Indonesia’s largest-circulation news weekly Tempo carried a 13-page story about adultery, publishing a poll without any reference to or a single question about polygamy itself.24 In the mid-1990s, however, the issue emerged in seminars on gender, partly a result of the new phenomenon that polygamy seemed increasingly fashionable in elite circles. Contributing to this fashion were Islamic booklets that openly praised the merits of polygamy. “Polygamy is God’s order to solve social problems like free sex, adultery, etc.,” wrote H. Mansur bin Mashadi in his booklet The Marriage of a Happy Family in Islam going on to say that polygamy is “sweet” (manis), and “If you do not believe it, ask those who carry out this divine order” (Mansur 1995). The young female Muhammadiyah activist TS says that there are more and more female university students who would accept becoming second wives, because “they have problems finding a husband, as men do not like to marry women of superior education, although girls are often better at school.” Psychology professor SS confirms, “Polygamy has become fashionable now in elite circles. But in my father’s day, it was not done and not even discussed.” While polygamy survived mostly in the lower classes, it appears that, in the mid-1990s, it was gaining ground among students and the urban middle and upper classes.
55It is quite interesting to note that almost all interviewees, whether they are for or against polygamy, are quick to remark that it does not concern them since it does not exist in their families, making it a kind of doom for others, and an honor for themselves to be part of a family where men - at least their fathers, if not grandfathers - have “behaved.” Even in circles considered conservative, polygamy is viewed as improper. Thus, popular preacher TA comments about her father, a reputed ulama in Jakarta: “My father was not polygamous. His wife was enough for him. He had friends who were polygamous and he used to say that he could understand them, but that he did not want polygamy for himself. My mother rejected polygamy. My father was a good person. As an ulama, he was often offered a girl for marriage, but he was not the type to accept. Neither of my grandfathers was polygamous.”
56Even the two women who express the fewest objections to polygamy both stress that it was non existent in their families: SM, leader of the traditionalist Islamic young women’s association, Fatayat, says, “According to our religion, polygamy is possible if the man is able to be fair. But in my family, we do not practice it. Hopefully, it will stay so!” FR, the business woman and preacher closest to fundamentalism, openly advocates polygamy, but adds, “My parents did not recommend anything, but they were a model to me. My father never had another wife. But I approve of polygamy.”
57Six of the women interviewed link polygamy to suffering they have either witnessed or heard of. This is the case for the Muslimat chairwoman, AHB, the daughter of a former minister of religious affairs and granddaughter of the founder of the NU, who says, “My father seemed to have been hurt by his father’s second marriage after his mother fell sick with tuberculosis. At that time it was incurable, like cancer today. His mother died in 1937. His father’s second marriage left marks on him. My father devoted a great deal of attention to my mother, pushing her to read, to learn, to read newspapers, to discover the outside world. When he became a known personality, he says, people often offered him a girl for marriage. But he always rejected the idea, remembering the suffering of his mother when she had to accept her husband’s second wife (dimadu). As for me, before my marriage, I told my husband that he could not prevent me from continuing my activities outside of the home, and I told him I would rather divorce than accept polygamy.”
58The majority of the interviewees reject polygamy on the grounds that the divine message, which says that co-wives should be treated equally, is impossible to implement, which, in their view, amounts to a discouragement of polygamy by the Prophet. This is expressed by the ‘Aisiyah chairwoman, ED: “Since Islam’s early days, it has been said that polygamy is allowed under the condition that the husband be fair to his wives. It had to be really like that, from the material, biological, and psychological points of view. What is stressed nowadays is the material aspect only. So, whenever a man can afford it, he takes another wife. But this is not what was meant by God. And if the husband cannot be fair in all aspects of life, it is better that he marry only once. I have met a family with four co-wives in four separate rooms. All the kids were spoiled. The wives were looking sad. I have not seen one single case of polygamy that works.”
59Interestingly, only one woman mentions egoism as the motivation for polygamy. The abangan, Dutch-educated nationalist leader MSI says, “To be polygamous is to care only for one’s own interests. If a man wants to marry again, he should first divorce, out of compassion.”
60Among the younger intellectual generation, it is not egoism, nor “lack of equal treatment,” that is put forth against polygamy, but a more elaborate argument that sees polygamy as anachronistic. For young NGO activists (LM, WH, RS, and EF), polygamy was only legitimate in the socio-historical context of the 7th century, when it constituted a way to better integrate widows in times of war. Polygamy was widespread then and, while responding to the requirements of the socio-historical context, Islam attempted to restrict polygamy, thus introducing “progress.”
61A degree of tolerance toward polygamy can be found in santri circles among women leaders of religious organizations, or teachers in Islamic institutions - such as influential MUI member ZD, IAIN teacher KTY, the ‘Aisyiyah chairwoman ED, the Muslimat chairwoman AHB, and popular preacher TA. One of the reasons put forth is the existence, for specific reasons, of what some call “excessive sexual needs” or, in Indonesian, an “overdosis” of sexual needs in certain men referred to, in their words in Indonesian, as “hyper” or “super.” Then, polygamy may be the solution to avoid adultery.
62ZD, who is also an IAIN teacher and a psychotherapist specialized in Muslim women, explains, “As a principle, one should not be polygamous. But there are exceptions, such as in the case the wife has a particular weakness or because of particularly pressing circumstances. There is a door open for solving a particular problem. But it is only a case of force majeure. My observations as a psychotherapist show that there are men who have a particularly high libido and others who are normal. The former are ‘hyper,’ and sometimes a single wife cannot satisfy them. Or the wife may be sick, or cannot fulfill her duties as a wife. There, Islam opens a small door, the eye of a needle. Islam is very strict in this domain. In these special cases, the wife has to give permission. I know a woman who asked her husband to remarry because she could not satisfy his needs alone. She looked for a second wife for him, wholeheartedly, because she was afraid that he would commit adultery.”
63Another IAIN teacher, TH, agrees, although she would ask the man to “fast,” for example, when his wife gave birth. Jakarta preacher TA also sees polygamy only as a solution in the case of a sick wife or a hypersex husband, as a way to avoid adultery. Former police officer RKA, who has dealt with prostitutes during her career, says that women have to strive to keep their husbands faithful and monogamous. “Those who go to prostitutes are those who are not polygamous,” she adds, implying again that polygamy is the alternative to adultery.
64Among the Muslim reformists, there is a dividing line between the younger and the older generations. For the older women leaders, polygamy is too painful to be justified by any such reason as “hypersexuality.” ‘Aisyiyah chairwoman ED says, “Even when a husband is super, there is no single wife who can psychologically accept polygamy - a mistress, yes, maybe.” She adds that adultery is less painful than polygamy. The younger reformist generation seems to be more tolerant towards polygamy, reflecting the same dividing line as for the veil. Young NA leader TS says that polygamy is acceptable “if the sexual needs of a man cannot be satisfied by his wife,” a much looser condition than that stated by ED.
65Among the traditionalist women interviewed, there is no talk of hypersexuality justifying polygamy, only the distance between home and work and the sickness of a wife. Former Muslimat chairwoman AS admits that, “in fact, men are polygamous, but I cannot understand how women can be happy. Islam allows polygamy when the husband goes far away to work, as a better solution than adultery.” The current Muslimat chairwoman AHB mentions sickness as the only legitimate reason for polygamy.
66Of the 23 women, only one, FR, makes a long apology for polygamy. However, she defends polygamy only on the grounds of social solidarity, not to satisfy a physical attraction: “I often say to my husband, ‘Do take another wife.’ But he won’t. ‘Take my friend as your second wife, a girl I work with at the cooperative, we would then be more united in our work.’ He does not want to. For me, polygamy does not mean oppression of women. [Question: Wouldn’t you be jealous?] One must see where one starts from. If the origin of polygamy is physical pleasure, and she is pretty, I could be jealous. But I look at the example set by the Prophet, who had only one wife, ‘Aisyiyah. The others were fat and dark-skinned. The only young woman was ‘Aisyiyah, the others were old, around fifty. The rule of polygamy is that it is the last solution to fighting social evils like prostitution, abandoned children, etc. If the woman remarries, her children will have a new father. The Prophet has allowed polygamy because women were being left alone, widows, not because they were pretty. This is not a Muslim concept. I tell my husband he can take as his second wife a widow with ten children, or a prostitute, to help her out, if he has the financial means and the courage to do so. It is a form of social assistance, it has nothing to do with sexual desire.”
- 25 I am grateful for this remark to Wardah Hafidz, who lectured during that session at Yayasan Paramad (...)
- 26 Interview during a one-day seminar entitled Perempuan dan Kemerdekaan (14 October 1995), organized (...)
67FR’s discourse - polygamy as a form of social assistance - is quite unusual for Indonesia but has now become more frequent. This is also mentioned as a justification for polygamy by NA leader TS. This argument was also raised during a ten-week course organized by the progressive Muslim intellectual group, Yayasan Paramadina. A woman rose to defend polygamy, saying that she would agree to her husband’s marrying a Bosnian widow. The urban upper-middle-class Muslim women attending the course appeared stunned, apparently not identifying with this view.25 A young veiled woman attending a Jakarta seminar on women’s roles told me that her beloved teacher in Bandung was preaching in favor of polygamy “as the true expression of faith.” She was very admirative and regretted that she felt herself unable to enter into a polygamous marriage.26
68In summary, advocacy of polygamy is new in Indonesia and is only encountered among the young generation. As elsewhere in most Muslim countries, Indonesia’s women are very adamantly opposed to it, even in very strict traditional Muslim circles. The conservative leaders of religious mass organizations can tolerate it in cases of force majeure, including sickness, distance, and “hypersexuality.” Young progressives reject it as anachronistic. Interestingly, the fact that all women, even those advocating polygamy, speak admiringly of their monogamous fathers seems to indicate that there is now actually a very deep - if sometimes unspoken - commitment to monogamy.
69When I started this field research, both Islamism and the Muslim feminist movements were at an embryonic stage, but they were already competing for influence. The fact that I interviewed many women from institutionalized Islam and only a few representatives of the new Islamist or “neo-fundamentalist” wave might make it appear as if Islamism were very marginal and without a future. Nevertheless, the promotion of a strict patriarchal domination in both the public and domestic spheres is then viewed as a serious challenge by an unorganized Muslim feminist movement: Besides the veil and polygamy, these women are worried about a new tendency in marginal circles to encourage the “housewifization” of women and their seclusion at home, attempts at discrimination at universities, and a reconsideration of their right to a public role.
- 27 See Didin’s paper in the Perempuan dan Kemerdekaan seminar.
70Islamic revivalism is seen as having the advantage of its prolific literature, intensive courses, and preachers, while the Muslim feminists think they have fewer means and face distrust in the population. For example, when, at a Jakarta discussion on women, Didin Syafruddin, of the IAIN, exposed how Indonesia’s beloved ulama and prolific writer Hamka was actually “conservative” on gender relations, I heard two young women express objections to such “arrogance” from a young graduate who dared criticize the great ulama.27 Whether the Islamic resurgence will settle in as a “low-key but pervasive” part of urban Indonesian culture, as it has done in Malaysia (Ong 1995: 182–185), is still too early to say.
71To date, the resistance of Indonesian women to conservative gender discourse has been demonstrated by Whalley’s research in Minangkabau. Women adapt to pressures and “develop strategies for self-representation designed to preserve their own reputations and that of their families” (Whalley 1993: 26). Evelyn Blackwood (1995) has cleverly shown that women in Minangkabau were not marginalized, despite the double effort of the State’s and Islam’s legitimization of men’s power.
72What can be noted, first, from this series of interviews is that, although the revivalist discourse has rendered the Muslim vs. non-Muslim boundaries more rigid, the gender debate is an internal Islamic issue: The santri circles (from both the Muhammadiyah and NU) draw a line between themselves and the other, so-called “fundamentalist” circles. These issues are not dealt with by secular, abangan, or Christian circles, whose members do not feel concerned by or are not knowledgeable enough about them.
- 28 K.H. Ali Yafie, vice-president of ICMl’s counselling board, in reply to a question on female circum (...)
73Secondly, the role the government is ambivalent. In the 1980s, Minister of Religious Affairs Munawir Sjadzali and Vice-President of the Supreme Court Busthanul Arifin were both concerned about promoting egalitarian rules within the framework of the Islamic Court. But Munawir was unable to persuade the ulama to accept the principle of granting equal shares of inheritance to sons and daughters. In the 1990s, the government sponsored ICMI included both progressive intellectuals, eager to answer women’s specific concerns, and conservatives, the latter having the advantage of seniority.28 As for the MUI, it has had noted conservative chairmen.
- 29 Sociologist and Muslim feminist Wardah Hafidz, for example, was castigated in 1993 by the newspaper (...)
74Moreover, the feminists are at a disadvantage because, as elsewhere in the Muslim developing world, the bourgeoisie d’affaires is tempted to valorize itself through the symbol of Islam as a strong counter-identity to Westernization. Thus, feminists in the Muslim world are too easily discredited as puppets of the West, an argument also found in Indonesia, where anti-Western feelings intensified after the Gulf and the Bosnian wars.29
- 30 This is reminiscent of Iran’s effort to re-normalize “repented women” (see Chafiq & Khoskohavar 199 (...)
75The task seems to be a huge one for Muslim progressives, who are worried about new developments, yet confident in their eagerness to find a specifically Indonesian way of being a good Muslim in a modernized society; remaining faithful to its tradition, culture, and values; and still being different from the people of the West and the Middle East. Interestingly, the Salman group in Bandung, viewed as the first embryo of Islamic revivalism in the 1970s, translated and published in the early 1990s three progressive books on Muslim women, in a reversal of earlier trends. Some in the group are said to have come to the conclusion that women had gone too far, learning the lessons of conservative Islamism “too well.”30 Like neighbouring Malaysia’s, Indonesia’s Islamic elite seems to be on the way to a tentative but arduous articulation of women’s rights.
76The fall of Suharto in May 1998 has brought about new factors that might have an impact on the future of gender relations in Indonesia: the important rote of women during the political crisis (including Dr. Karlina Leksono-Supelli and Ratna Sarumpaet), and the rise to prominence of a woman, Megawati Soekarnoputri, as the symbol of change. The failure of the Justice Party (Partai Keadilan), the most conservative on gender issues, to win a significant percentage of votes at the 1999 general elections proves that conservative ideas on gender still belong to a minority, but the systematic barrage by many of the Muslim parties against the presidential candidacy of Megawati, on the pretext that she is a woman, is an inescapable sign that the struggle of Muslim feminists is not yet over.