Muslims through Discourse : : Religion and Ritual in Gayo Society / / John R. Bowen.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Bowen, John R.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2020]; ©1993
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (376 p.)

In this rich account of a Muslim society in highland Sumatra, Indonesia, John Bowen describes how men and women debate among themselves ideas of what Islam is and should be--as it pertains to all areas of their lives, from work to worship. Whereas many previous anthropological studies have concentrated on the purely local aspects of culture, this book captures and analyzes the tension between the local and universal in everyday life. Current religious differences among the Gayo stem from debates between "traditionalist" and "modernist" scholars that began in the 1930s, and reveal themselves in the ways Gayo discuss and perform worship, sacrifice, healing, and rites of birth and death, all within an Islamic framework. Bowen considers the power these debates accord to language, especially in arguments over spells, rites of farming, hunting, and healing. Moreover, he traces in these debates a general conception of transacting with spirits that has shaped Gayo practices of sacrifice, worship, and aiding the dead. Bowen concludes by examining the development of competing religious ideas in the highlands, the alternative ritual forms and ideas they have pro-mulgated, and the implications of this phenomenon for the emergence of an Islamic public sphere.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transcription -- PART ONE: A Genealogy of Divergent Understandings -- Chapter One Introduction -- Chapter Two Religious Disputes in Takèngēn -- Chapter Three Islamic Knowledge in the Highlands, 1900-1990 -- PART TWO: Powerful Speech and Spirit Transactions -- Chapter Four Spells, Prayer, and the Power of Words -- Chapter Five The Source of Human Powers in History -- Chapter Six The Healer's Struggle -- Chapter Seven Exorcism and Accountability -- Chapter Eight Farming, Ancestors, and the Sacred Landscape -- Chapter Nine Adam and Eve's Children -- PART THREE Negotiating Public Rituals -- Chapter Ten Transacting through Food: The Kenduri and Its Critics -- Chapter Eleven Speaking for the Dead -- Chapter Twelve Sacrifice, Merit, and Self-Interest -- Chapter Thirteen Worship and Public Life -- Chapter Fourteen The Social Forms of Religious Change -- Glossary of Gayo and Arabic Terms -- Bibliography -- Index