9 - Chinese Muslim Cultural Identities: Possibilities and limitations of Cosmopolitan Islam in Indonesia

Summary

INTRODUCTION

[The] Prophet Muhammad urges Muslims to seek knowledge even as far as China. Since many ethnic Chinese reside in Indonesia, Indonesian Muslims are lucky enough that we can learn from them without traveling to mainland China (field notes, 16 October 2008).

Tan Mei Hwa, a popular female Chinese Muslim preacher, delivered this message to her audience of mostly Javanese Muslims during a halal-bihalal (a meeting for mutual forgiveness) in Surabaya in 2008. Dressed in stylish Islamic dress, she also claimed that some of the Walisongo (Muslim saints popularly credited with for bringing Islam to Java) were of Chinese descent.

Also in 2008, at a breaking of the fast function during Ramadan, another Chinese preacher, Syaukanie Ong, wearing red traditional Chinese dress, spoke in front of Muslims crowded into the compound of the Muhammad Cheng Hoo Mosque, a Chinese-style mosque in Surabaya. These two events combine Chinese cultural symbols and Islamic messages, as well as bring together Chinese preachers and Muslim audiences, to challenge the widely held perception by both non-Muslim Chinese and non-Chinese Muslim Indonesians that “Chineseness” and Islam are incompatible.

During the New Order (1966–98), Chinese Indonesians who converted to Islam had always been assumed to have lost their “Chineseness”, and assimilated themselves into various local ethnic majorities. Today, there are increasing numbers of Chinese Muslims who are publicly performing their Chinese ethnicity along with Islamic religiosity, exemplified by the popularity of Chinese preachers, the establishment of Chinese-style mosques, the celebrations of Chinese New Year in mosques, and the engagement of Chinese converts in various Islamic movements. Who and why promotes Chinese Muslim cultural identities? What does the emergence of Chinese Muslim culture tell us about Islamic pluralism in Indonesia? This chapter sketches answers to these questions.

CONTEXTUALIZING CHINESE MUSLIMS IN CONTEMPORARY INDONESIA

The emergence of Chinese Muslim cultures is an outcome of several interrelated processes that occurred in Indonesia and abroad from the 1990s onward. Such events include China's growing economic and diplomatic power; improving relations between China and Indonesia after the Cold war; the establishment of Indonesian democracy, the recognition of Chinese cultures after the fall of the New Order regime; the rise and diversification of Islamic consumer markets; the divergent pluralist and conservative tendencies of Indonesian Islam.