Learning at graves: The living, the dead, and questions of belonging in Islamic Java

Abstract

Ahmad Dahlan (d. 1923) was the founder of Muhammadiyah, a modernist Islamic organization in Indonesia that is often critical of traditionalist practices like grave visitations. Although many traditionalists are likewise critical of the modernist Islam with which Dahlan is associated, some nonetheless visit his grave to pray there, thus seemingly disregarding not only Dahlan's own wishes, but also their own reservations about the modernist movement Muhammadiyah represents. To understand this seeming paradox, I focus on prayers uttered during such pilgrimages and argue that grave visitations allow today’s pilgrims to establish ontological, narrative, and ethical relationships with Muslims of the past. As an interface between the past and the present, grave visitations grant access to the imaginal realm and to different temporalities where those who remember forge more authentic ties of identity and ideological belonging that are irreducible to conventional categories of the traditionalist and the modernist Muslim.

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