Grave Matters: Ambiguity, Modernism, and the Quest for Moderate Islam in Indonesia

Abstract

Although graves of famous figures are often important sites of commemoration where religious communities invoke a normative past, the very act of commemoration can coexist uneasily with a religious community’s values and self-understanding. This is the case with Muhammadiyah, an Indonesian modernist Islamic mass organization focused on the purification of Islam from what they consider heretical innovations, including memory practices at graves. Yet, to differentiate themselves from radical Islamist organizations they find objectionable, Muhammadiyah’s leadership has begun to draw on their organizational history and its physical remnants, including graves, to articulate a “moderate” identity. Drawing on ethnographic research in Yogyakarta, I show how Muhammadiyah’s conflicting desires produce an ambiguity that is productive for articulating the organization’s complex ideological positionings. In so doing, I argue against the pervasive claim that with modernity, Islam lost its tolerance and appreciation of ambiguity.