The author, Puan Sri Dr Rohana Zubir, came to see me at ISEAS about three years ago upon the introduction of a mutual friend, Ramon Navaratnam, a retired senior Malaysian civil servant. In the course of the conversation, Dr Rohana disclosed to me that she had been working on a book about her father for some time and that she was looking for help to find a good publisher. When, in response to my query, she said her father was Zubir Said, my ears pricked up. To my generation, the name was easily recognizable as the person who composed Singapore's national anthem.

As I had always been intrigued by the personality of Pak Zubir and the circumstances under which Majulah Singapura was conceived, I readily agreed to have the book published by ISEAS. After reading the manuscript, I was even more convinced that it would be a book that would shed light on the broader canvas of the region's post-war history. It was also going to be a story about a teacher who would be instrumental in guiding a whole generation into the world of music.

The story is all the more poignant and moving as it is an account by a daughter, who made the telling of it her lifelong passion. ISEAS Publications Unit, under the redoubtable leadership of Mrs Triena Ong, supported Dr Rohana in her arduous journey to have the book published. The book is accompanied by a CD, produced by Trabye, Raja Mahafaizal Raja Muzaffar, containing some of Zubir Said's musical compositions.

I am happy to have been a part of this recording of Pak Zubir Said's life and achievements.

Here I would like to indulge in a bit of personal reminiscences to put my original work into perspective. I shall be doing so by acknowledging the help of several individuals who assisted or encouraged me in writing my dissertation and the subsequent “Banyan Tree” book in various ways. I would also like to thank those people who have helped me to undertake a brief but fruitful fieldwork for revisiting Kotagede, December 2008 to February 2009.

My initial as well as official research topic before visiting Indonesia for the first time was on the social history of indigenous Javanese urban society. I intended to replicate and test Clifford Geertz's work on the social history of a Javanese town of “Modjokuto” in a more appropriate location. I felt that Geertz's “Modjokuto” was too shallow in its history and marginal to the centre of Javanese civilization. The town of Pare, which is the real name of “Modjokuto”, was in fact a young frontier town just emerged since the mid-nineteenth century, thanks to the growth of sugar and tobacco cultivation. It was inappropriate, according to my view, to be taken as a sample for representing the traditional urban ways of Javanese life. I was planning to conduct fieldwork in Kotagede and Klaten, following Professor Selosoemardjan's suggestion, to compare “old and new” urban communities in inner Central Java.

Kotagede was thought to be a natural choice to study traditional urbanism in Java. The town appeared in history as the initial capital of the Islamized Mataram Kingdom in the late sixteenth century and has continued to maintain its physical and cultural identity until the modern times. The town was much older than Yogyakarta and Surakarta, the capitals of the two principalities tracing their history back to 1755 when the Mataram Kingdom split into two, and then four. Meanwhile, Klaten was somewhat comparable to “Modjokuto” as a new frontier town, developed with the imposition of the Culture System by the Dutch authorities in rural Central Java. However, I had to abandon the plan to do fieldwork in Klaten in the end because the data gathering in Kotagede consumed the entire time (and funds) allowed for me.

Part II of this book covers the history of the Muhammadiyah movement in Kotagede for the period of approximately forty years since my first fieldwork, i.e., from 1972 to 2010. During the period 1972–98, General Soeharto ruled Indonesia with his strategy of pembangunan, i.e., economic development under military control with the aid of Western powers. During the period 1998–2010, Indonesia experienced years of turbulent political change, in which the dictatorship of General Soeharto fell before the widespread protests and the era of Reformasi (Reformation) was launched. In Part II, attention is focussed on the local scene of Kotagede against the background of developments at the national level.

Chapter 8 reviews social changes occurring over the forty year period in the town of Kotagede in terms of urbanization, diversification, and globalization. Then, in Chapter 9, the achievements of the Muhammadiyah during the same period are described and discussed. In the following Chapter 10, the internal dynamics of the Muhammadiyah, especially of the conflicts between generations, and the process of change in its leadership are examined. In Chapter 11, a number of challenges currently faced by the Muhammadiyah movement in the post-Reformasi situation are taken up. In Chapter 12, an interesting and important recent development in the town, i.e., the Festival Kotagede, is discussed in relation with the Muhammadiyah. Chapter 13 deals with the impact of the 2006 earthquake and the efforts for rescue, recovery and reconstruction undertaken by the Muhammadiyah and others.

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.

The original version of this book is my doctoral dissertation in anthropology submitted to Cornell University in 1976. Data for the dissertation was obtained through fieldwork and archival research. The fieldwork was conducted in the town of Kotagede in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia, for a period of nineteen months between October 1970 and April 1972. The archival research of two and a half months was carried out in the Netherlands between June and August 1972.

In this book I attempt to present a history and an ethnography of a local branch of the Muhammadiyah movement, one of the most influential Islamic movements in contemporary Javanese society. My perception of Islam in Java in general, and of the Muhammadiyah movement in particular, changed markedly through my field experience. Before fieldwork, I thought that Islam in Java was a losing religion: Javanese Muslims were politically divided and weak, economically stagnant, ideologically conservative, and culturally dull in spite of their numerical strength; Islam as a religion concerned only a small proportion of the Javanese population, a particular segment which was commonly referred to as santri in recent social science literature. Personal encounter with Islam and Muslims through fieldwork has changed my perception: Islam in Java is by no means a waning religion but a vital living faith providing guidelines for ethics and inspiration for aesthetics; the Islamization of Java is not a completed historical event but an ongoing process; the Muhammadiyah represents part of this process of continuing Islamization; Islam concerns not a particular segment of Javanese society but its entire population in that it constitutes an integral part of Javanese religious traditions. This book is thus, in a sense, a testimony for the ‘conversion’ of my view on the significance of Islam in Javanese society. But, at the same time, it is my hope that this book will also contribute to providing some empirical answers to questions often asked about Islam in Java: To what extent and in what ways are the Javanese Muslims? And why is it that Islam still persists in Java?

In revising the original dissertation for publication, I have tried not to be tempted to produce an entirely new work.

One of the ways of understanding the process of the Muhammadiyah development in Kotagede seems to be to take a look at the life histories of its founding leaders. For, in the life histories of those individuals, the transition to a new religious and social orientation is clearly embodied. The life histories of two such individuals, Kyai Haji Masjhudi and Kyai Haji Amir,1 shall be presented below in detail. Both were the founders of the Kotagede Muhammadiyah. In addition, for the purpose of generalization and comparison, mention shall be made of some other individuals.

MUHAMMADIYAH FOUNDERS IN KOTA GEDE

Haji Masjhudi was born in Kampung Boharen, Kotagede in 1888. His childhood name was Rusdi but he later changed it to Masjhudi upon his return from the Mecca pilgrimage. The exact date of his birth is not known. He told me: “My birth date is not certain, for there is no written document.” When asked if he remembered his birthday according to the Javanese calendar, he answered: “I've already forgotten it. It's not important.” It is likely that he did know it, but obviously he did not seem to think much of it. When he died on 28 February 1972, while I was still in the town, a biographical sketch was compiled by the Muhammadiyah leaders of Kotagede and read at his funeral:2 according to this source, the haji was 84 years old at his death. The description of his life, which follows, is based upon this biographical sketch, other local publications, and the interviews I had with him, his family members and friends.

Haji Mukmin, Haji Masjhudi's father, was a wholesale trader in cotton goods and cloth for batik. He had a store in Danuredjan, one of the main business districts in the city of Yogyakarta. Mukmin's grandfather, Kyai Baghowi, came to settle in Kotagede from the Kauman district of Pijenan in Bantul prior to the Dipanegara War (1825–30). Haji Mukmin's father was called Kyai Sjafi'i. Haji Masjhudi was thus the fourth generation of a family migrated from the hinterland of Kotagede, but he, and others, thought himself to be Kotagede asli, “a native Kotagedean”.

ABDI DALEM SANTRI IN KAUMAN, YOGYAKARTA

Serious cleavages were developing not only among the local religious officials in Kotagede but also in the court of the Yogyakarta Sultanate itself around the turn of the century. Some of the religious officials of the court, abdi dalem santri, became critical of the laxity of Islamic faith and practice among their fellow court officials. They urged the ruler and the priyayi to rectify their behaviour according to the standard of Islamic orthodoxy. Kyai Haji (K.H.) Ahmad Dahlan (1868–1923), the founder of Muhammadiyah, was one of these critical santri in the service of the Sultan of Yogyakarta.

K.H. Ahmad Dahlan was one of the twelve ketib (khotib, Friday sermon giver) of the Great Mosque of Yogyakarta, receiving a meagre salary of seven guilders a month from the Sultan's treasury. He lived in the Kauman district of Yogyakarta, gave religious lessons in his own home and engaged in the batik trade, in addition to his official duties in the Sultan's Mosque. He travelled widely in Java for religious as well as commercial purposes. His education was solely religious, obtained from his own father Kyai Haji Abubakar, a ketib himself, and from various teachers (kyai/ulama) in several pondok pesantren in Java. He twice made the pilgrimage to Mecca for a total of several years. K.H. Ahmad Dahlan was not a scholar or a writer. He has left no books or articles. He was, however, obviously an excellent educator and organizer. According to an Indonesian biographer of Dahlan, he was a “manusia amaliah (man of action) rather than a manusia ilmiah (man of scholarship)” (Solichin 1962, p. 28). His religious lessons, given in his own house, attracted a number of Kauman youth. When the Budi Utomo, the organization of young priyayi of nationalist orientation, was established in 1908, he joined it with several of his pupils and associates. He was soon elected to its leadership board as a commissioner and as a religious advisor.

THE BEGINNING: SUCCESS OF FESTIVAL KOTAGEDE 99

Efforts for the revitalization of local culture and arts have been realized in a series of community events called the Festival Kotagede (FK) held in 1999, 2000, and 2002. Those events have reflected internal dynamics within the local community in which the Muhammadiyah has occupied a significant position. The Muhammadiyah as an organization did not participate in the events. But, it became an informal stakeholder since its members were divided into two opposing groups — one group promoted the festival while the other criticized some of the programmes of the FKs. The events have given serious and meaningful lessons to the Muhammadiyah in terms of its relationship with local culture and arts in particular and its overall relationship with the diversifying local community.

Furthermore, the events were extremely significant in many ways beyond local context. From a national perspective, FK seems to be inseparable from the nationwide atmosphere of the Reformasi. Certainly, the removal of President Soeharto from the top of the power structure opened up a Pandora's box including culture: freedom of cultural expression went hand in hand with the guarantee of political freedom. PAN, PDI-P, Golkar, PKB, and other political groups were now free to express sub-cultures of their own respective constituencies in election campaigns. Also, with the advancement of regional autonomy, the provincial and municipal governments of Yogyakarta have become more active in promoting tourism on their own initiatives than before. International attention and cooperation has also become much wider and more active than before as indicated by the funding provided by the World Bank. Those factors all worked in favour of the FK. In a sense, the FK was a local celebration and appreciation of the Reformasi.

Therefore, it is understandable that two serious studies have already been made on FK, one by a university student1 native of Kotagede and the other, by an experienced outside observer. Brosur Lebaran has also taken up the events on several times. I shall rely on these sources when describing and discussing the events.

The actual beginning of the FK was made by the meeting of two actions: (1) an inventory of local cultural and artistic activities taken by Erwito Wibowo in 19994 and (2) the offer of a small grant from the World Bank for the promotion of local culture.