Challenging Islamic Orthodoxy
Challenging Islamic Orthodoxy

Author: Al Makin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-09-22

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 3319389785

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This book is the first work that comprehensively presents the accounts of Lia Eden, a former flower arranger who claims to have received divine messages from the Archangel Gabriel and founded the divine Eden Kingdom in her house in Jakarta. This book places Lia Eden’s prophetic trajectory in the context of diverse Indonesian spiritual and religious traditions, by which hundreds of others also claimed to have been commanded by God to lead people and to establish religious groups. This book offers a fresh approach towards the rich Indonesian religious and spiritual traditions with particular attention to the accounts of the emergence of indigenous prophets who founded some popular religions. It presents the history of prophetic tradition which remains alive in Indonesian society from the colonial to reform period. It also explores the ways in which these prophets rebelled against two hegemonies: colonial power in the past and Islamic orthodoxy in the present. The discussion of this book focuses on Lia Eden including her biography, claims to prophethood and divinity, the development of her group Eden Kingdom, her challenge to Islamic orthodoxy under the banner of the MUI (Indonesian Ulama Council), her persecution by radical groups, her experiences in court trials and imprisonment, and public responses to her emergence. The discussion also covers other themes currently drawing public attention in Indonesia, such as pluralism, religious freedom, tolerance, discrimination against minorities, and secularisation.

Power Plays
Power Plays

Author: Andrew Noah Weintraub

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 089680240X

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Based on ethnographic fieldwork spanning twenty years, Power Plays is the first scholarly book in English on wayang golek, the Sundanese rod-puppet theater of West Java. It is a detailed and lively account of the ways in which performers of this major Asian theatrical form have engaged with political discourses in Indonesia. Wayang golek has shaped, as well, the technological and commercial conditions of art and performance in a modernizing society. Using interviews with performers, musical transcriptions, translations of narrative and song texts, and archival materials, author Andrew N. Weintraub analyzes the shifting and flexible nature of a set of performance practices called Padalangan, the art of the puppeteer. He focuses on "superstar" performers and the musical troupes that dominated wayang golek during the New Order political regime of former president Suharto (1966-98) and the ensuing three years of the post-Suharto period. Studies of actual performances illuminate stylistic and formal elements and situate wayang golek as a social process in Sundanese culture and society. Power Plays includes an interactive multimedia CD-ROM of wayang golek. Power Plays shows how meanings about identity, citizenship, and community are produced through theater, music, language, and discourse. While based in ethnographic theory and methods, this book is at the center of a new synthesis emerging among ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cultural studies. Its cross-disciplinary approach will inspire researchers studying similar struggles over cultural authority and popular representation in culture and the performing arts.