RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATIONS AMONG JAVANESE MUSLIMS

In the preceding chapters I have attempted to make two major points. The first, a historical point, has been that the Muhammadiyah movement must be regarded as a development from within Javanese society rather than as a ready-made import from without. The second, a more contemporary and sociological point, has been that the social basis of the Muhammadiyah movement has become greatly widened and it is no longer confined to a small segment of society like the urban bourgeoisie. In this chapter I shall examine critically another aspect of the conventional view that reformist Islam, including the Muhammadiyah, is fundamentally alien to Javanese or non-Javanese, in cultural terms (e.g., Benda 1965, p. 133; Geertz 1968, p. 16). I shall argue that reformist Islam is not antithetical to Javanese culture but an integral part of it, and what reformists have been endeavouring is, so to speak, to distil a pure essence of Islam from Javanese cultural traditions. The final product of distillation does retain a Javanese flavour, just as any highly pure liquors cannot lose their local flavours. But the universalistic essence of Islam is more fundamental, and it should be appreciated as it is first and foremost.