Between Umat and Rakyat: Islam and Nationalism in Indonesian Modern Theatre

[W]hom do we mean by Islamic writers and poets?

Is it enough that they just be Muslims, or must there actually be some Islamic-ness (keislaman) in their works?

-H. B. Jassin (1954)1

I was not a pious man but I believed deeply in the existence of God and the justice of God.

-Abu Hanifah (1972)2

I never argue my position in a manner muddled by questions of religious idiom.

-Emha Ainun Nadjib (2007)3

Devotions of the Revolutionary Youth

In Malaysia during the early 1980s, proponents of an Islamic theatre such as playwright Noordin Hassan constituted an influential faction of its national theatre community. This is unsurprising to Malaysian theatre scholar Krishen Jit, who connects the emergence of an identity-based-theatre alternative to secular nationalism with the fragmentation of a de-colonial discourse; that is, with a progression from universalist postcolonial nationalism to a de-centered critique of state neo-colonialism. However, lest such "progression" seem teleological, he calls attention to a very different situation among Malaysia's close ethnic and cultural kin to the south: "Although plays revealing Islamic themes have sprouted in contemporary Indonesia, they have been eschewed by the major and influential figures. And no signs of a similar movement are to be seen in Indonesia."4 In Malaysia, Muslim artists challenged the nationalist presumption that Malaysians were rakyat (the people) before being members of the umat (the global Islamic community). Despite the existence of a vast Muslim majority, despite the rise of political Islam from the late Suharto era onward, and despite the fact that most Indonesian theatre artists self-identify as Muslims, there has never been a similar attempt to acculturate postcolonial Indonesian theatre to Islam.

This essay advances the thesis that Islam has indeed mattered to the development and practice of teater (modern theatre)5 in Indonesia more than nationalist and materialist histories have acknowledged. Following some general reflections on the legacy of Islam to Indonesian arts, the bulk of the text offers a provisional explanation of the apparent reticence to claim Islamic credentials on the part of Indonesian Muslim artists. Neither Islamic iconoclastic indictments against figural representation nor Clifford Geertz's distinction between santri (devout) and abgangan (nominal) Javanese provide sufficient explanations. Conservative censorship (on iconoclastic or ethical grounds) has rarely prevailed in Javanese history, yet not all...