Chapter Two - Background to the Study

Summary

This background chapter furnishes the context of the study. This includes a detailed literature review in which I explain what previous studies have said about the topic and discuss recent developments and identify the gap in the literature which has led to pinpointing the research problems in the study. In short, it is not only an account of the society under study as an ethnographic record but also theoretical and methodological insights which expand the study of Islam in the eastern Indonesia. The historical experiences of Muslims in Bima from the time of their conversion to Islam to the present day have resulted in Islamic practices which accentuate their distinctive ways of being Muslim and of showing their admiration for religious figures.

Of course, this means that I explore the introduction of Islam, the conversion to Islam, the further dissemination of Islamic practices, the growth of the Muslim population and the spread of Islamic religious ideas in Bima. Overall, as said in Chapter One, the process of Islamic conversion in Bima is multi-branched. It involved a dialectic process between early Islamic preachers and the locals, including the agency of the locals in the decision to embrace Islam (see Comaroff and Comaroff, 1991 and 1997, for Christianity).

On the 22 February, 2012, in the city of Bima in Sumbawa, eastern Indonesia, I stood in a crowd of thousands in the hot sun to witness the festival of Hanta Ua Pua. In this festival, a litter topped by a Malay-style house is carried by bearers from Kampung Melayu along the three-kilometre road to the Sultan's palace. This recently revived festival symbolizes the key role of Malay proselytizers in Bima's Islamization in the seventeenth century and, on a more secular note, serves as a key element in tourist promotion. As described in Chapter Three, I see the festival is as a critical lens which enables us to realize that the role of religious practices in public life and popular culture is alive and well in Bima.

This study engages with the diversity of expressions of Islamic beliefs and practices in Bima, of which Hanta Ua Pua is an important example. Incontestably, the festival represents the dominant storyline of the Islamization of Bima and the Islamic character of Bima in general. Nevertheless, dig deeper and the diversity of the representations of Islam in the religious practices among Bima Muslims are revealed.