By: Samia Kotele*
The autonomy of women in Southeast Asia, both economically, socially, and politically has received particular attention from historians. Women who had exceptional agency in particular contexts became national heroines and marked history by their exploits in crisis time.
However, the long tradition of women active in the spiritual and then religious domain has been marginalized from history. Hadith transmission allowed female surroundings of the Prophet of Islam to initiate a tradition in knowledge production at the early time of Islam. However, the development of religious education and institutions led to a marginalization of women, seen not as subject of Islamic knowledge but became gradually the object of laws, fatwas, and doctrine throughout the centuries.
This patriarchal tradition clothed in sacredness marginalized women from the field of theology, leaving to men the outline of the contours of female orthopraxy. Yet the specificity of Indonesian Islam, characterized by its syncretism – expressed through a mystical synthesis – has allowed the emergence of an open theological tradition which let women to develop and disseminate their thoughts alongside men.
Much of the work on gender and Islam focus on the transnational movement of Islamic feminisms which attempt to historicize texts in order to “exhume the forgotten history of Muslim women” and produce a liberating hermeneutic aimed at reforming fiqh. This article will on the other hand try to retrace the steps that allowed the thoughts of women ulama to be expressed in Indonesia throughout history.
From Spiritual Exceptional Figures to the Constitution of Religious Network
Some women ulama in the Malay world took on a role that could be described, in a Weberian conception, as “technicians of worship” from the 18th century. The ulama Fatimah al Banjary and her kitab perukuran taught until today in Pesantren represents the exercise of an exceptional religious authority for a woman of her time, hence its publication under the name of her uncle.
Other women ulama put their spiritual power under the service of political struggles. The mother of Prince Diponegoro – instigator of the Java War (1825-1830), the first major anti-colonial rebellion in Java – Raden Ayu Mangkarawa obtained an ijazat from Prince Pangeran Pakuningrat. This recognized spiritual woman led and protected a troop of five hundred combatants by transmitting Sufi rituals to give strength and protection throughout the war.
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Teungku Fakinah, Cut Nyak Dhien, are other familiar name in historiography thanks to their outstanding role in war time bridging together spirituality and resistance. Sometimes heroines sometimes forgotten, the destiny of women of knowledge starts to massively appear in written sources in the beginning of the 20th century.
The calling for education from Islamic reformer’s groups led the country to be among the first Muslim majority nation to implement farreaching programs of women’s secular and Islamic education. Alongside nationalist projects the two biggest Islamic organizations in the world Muhammadiyah created in 1912 and Nahdatul Ulama in 1926, opened women’s wings. By doing so they created important networks to promote social and religious activism for women across the archipelago. This unique situation among Muslim countries, allowed in a time of deep social and political turmoil women ulama to give a voice and expression to their agency by developing their reformist thought within the framework of a rethought Islam and a nation in construction.
Grassroot Development of Thoughts Through Education
The idea of women movement emerged in nationalist and religious organizations in a time of discourses around the Dutch Ethical Policy and Muslim reformist view on the need for girl’s education. Although opportunities for women in the Indonesian Archipelago to participate in a modern schooling system date back from the end of the nineteenth century, they increased significantly in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
As a result of the Ethical Policy, a new class of educated people emerged, including women, who then spearheaded the struggle for national liberation and the betterment of the lot of the native people. The access to modern education for a small part of the indigenous population led to the creation of modernized Pesantren. Rahmah El Yunusiyah, the so-called Sumatran Kartini, founded in 1915 in West Sumatra a Pesantren for women.
Providing secular and religious education for women this spirit for access to knowledge can be found also in religious organization like ‘Aisyiyah. The development of women’s religious organizations came in hand with a cultural and religious reform in Java. The decision to change the name of Sopo-tresno to ‘Aisyiyah, indicates the symbolic will to bring back woman’s ideal far from the cultural suwarga nunut neraka katut.
By recalling symbolically the role of the wife of the prophet, his right hand, the organization aimed to bring the spirit of an independent mother involved in decision making as a model for the women of the organization. The Role played by ‘Aisyiyah in grassroot by building of women’s mosques (1922), spreading her understanding of religious rituals and knowledge, can also directly be linked to one of the main early missions of the organization.
On a grassroot level this can be observed by the emergence of a social institutional landscape to spread this thought through philanthropy and education with Muslimat and Fatayat the women branch of the organisation Nahdatul Ulama. Their strong connections to different layers of society remind this characteristic of grassroot based movement.
The building of women’s mosques, establishment of religious training classes for women, the training of muballighat in order to send them to remote areas in the beginning of the 20th century represent the beginning a massification of women involved in the religious domain as cadres.
Nyai Khairiyah Hasyim Asy’ari who founded in 1942 “Madrasah Kuttabul banat” in Mekkah and her role in Jajaran Bahtsul Masail witness the strong religious authority as a cadre that she benefits thanks to her knowledge and kinship in a very early time.
Reformist Women and Their Dissenting Feather
The faith in the written word encouraged reformist women to develop a press, which articles unveiled the range of women public roles in education, social, and philanthropy domains. Writing in a time in which, human and intellectual movements have been enabled with technological development and the opening of the Suez Canal, the launching of different newspapers reflects their public engagement with new thought.
This investment in press discourse broke male monopoly in writing that had previously confined women to private, or fictitious, modes of writing, and therefore reflects the relationship of reformist women to the public space. The launching newspaper like “Soeara Aisjijah” in 1926, still in circulation to now in Indonesia represents a space for female ulama thought in gestation. The micro steps that allowed the improvement of women condition withing religious institutions but also in Indonesian societies got massified with the access of women in Islamic universities.
Conservatism, Progressive Islam, and Women
The political downfall of the Suharto’s “New Order” in Indonesia (1998) opened the way for democracy, human rights and for the participation of political Islam previously banned under the authoritarian rule of the regime. In a context of reaffirmation of religious identity, the Islamic overbidding of reactionary trends instrumentalized the condition of women for political purposes. The various attempts to Islamize the law, and trouble achieved rights for women led Indonesian women ulama to take on the role of women’s rights activists from guardian to architects of “Islam of progress”.
The long scholastic tradition, and their engagement in social organization allowed them to develop an alternative Islamic gender theology competing with conservative discourses. Drawing a silent revolution, on the sidelines of secular feminist and islamist movements the thought of women ulama is spread through different channels of transmission such as Islamic universities, pesantren, women’s organizations, social media that allow them to disseminate their understanding of religion. [3/22]
*Phd Student, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France