Background on Topic:
Within Indonesia, Islam is the majority religion, with roughly 88% of the population who identify with the Muslim religion. However, even though Indonesia is a majority Muslim state, geographically, Bali is a major exception. The Hindu religion, a minority religion within the whole country of Indonesia, is the dominant religion in Bali (93% Hindu). The historical context and reason for the influx of Hindus in Bali is still highly contested.
In the past few years, there have been two major occurances, deemed “terrorist attacks,” in Indonesia. In October of 2002 and 2005, there were a series of suicide bomb attacks in Jimbaran and Kuta near or in major tourist night clubs. Roughly, 20 people were killed and 129 people were injured, most of whom were Australian and foreign tourists. There were many domestic and international reports on the incident, and many claimed that it was a religious dispute, specific to the Islam community.
Official reports in the media theorized that the suicide bombers were radical Islamists who felt it was their religious obligation to attack social institutions that were contrary to their religious doctrines and beliefs. As a result, these bombers deemed Westerners as their enemy and wanted to attack Western influences, such as the nightclubs, to fulfill their religious duties.
This theory created much outrage within Indonesia, especially within the Islamic community. Specific to Bali, these incidents created much tension between the Hindu majority and Islam minority.
Research Questions:
After the bombings in Bali, how has the Islam and Hindu religious communities been influenced? How have the relations between the two religions changed? What are their perspectives of each other?
Why this question is important?
We were both initally very interested in the idea of majority-minority religions within Indonesia. More specifically, we found the religious breakdown within Bali of major interest, due to the sustainability of this community even though it deviated from the rest of Indonesia. Overall we have felt that the relationship between Hindus and Muslims in Bali have been relatively beneficial and harmonious thus far. With this in mind, we were interested in the effects of the Bali bombings and its religious implications on the two religions in Bali and whether the relationship is still beneficial or tensions have arised that are not being publicly discussed.
This topic is important because we feel studying the relationships between majority and minority populations are essential in understanding the social, political and economic dimensions of any community. Bali is a very unique community due to its exceptional ability for two major religions to coexist, at least on the surface. But after the two bombing incidents within Bali, the relationships between the majority and minority religions could have been impacted in ways that are not noticable or understandable through publicly dispersed media. This lack of understanding on the current relationships between the two is our point of interest, as we feel it is important to see the changes between the two and question the dynamics of the two communities.
Methodology
What are we going to do?
Our research will be heavily based on anthropological fieldwork, through observational data and interviews, and also some general research on the demographics of the two religions within Bali and media reports on the bombings that were widely dispersed.
We were planning to visit a small Muslim community within Bali to observe their living situations and religious practices. Afterwards we will interview various members about their reactions to the Bali bombings, their opinions of the Islam community, the relationship between the two religions and whether this has changed. We were careful to take into account that many Indonesians would not be comfortable in a very formal, interview session, so we were hoping to interview them without the formal list of questions or to be frantically scribbling down notes. Hopefully we can use a voice recorder and try to put them at ease. We will then apply a similar setup to observe and interview the Hindu community, by focusing on Teman 65 and Jenny’s homestay family.
Why these particular methods?
Due to the nature of our research questions, we feel anthropological fieldwork is important to understand the various perspectives of the two religious communities. We did not want to rely on official reports on the perceived relationships between the two and wanted to personally establish a more intimate interview to get a better sense of how they feel.
We also felt it would be important to look at the nature of the public reportings of the incidents to contextualize the potential influences that would prompt the change of feelings within both religious communities in Bali. And the demographics are all part of our general background research of the Hindu and Islamic religions specific to Bali.
Participant-Observation Fieldwork
For our field research, we conducted field observation with the intention of getting a better understanding of the Muslim and Hindu practices and communities in Bali. For our first outing, we attended the Hindu ceremonies that occurred throughout Bali. We observed the ceremony that occurred in Taman 65 and a small village ceremony near Jenny’s homestay. In addition, we also drove around the streets as there were prayers and festivities being held publically on the streets. For our field observation of the Muslim community, we went to a large mosque in Denpasar across from the police station and also a smaller, more intimate version of a mosque called Mushola in a small Javanese Muslim village.
What did you learn from this experience?
After a week of field observation, we feel we have a better understanding of the differences and commonalities between the two communities. We thought it was an ideal time to observe and compare the large scale ceremonies that occur twice every month for the Hindu community and just the daily prayers that occur five times a day in a Muslim mosque. Although this type of field research didn’t provide us with a lot of concrete information beyond a superficial glimpse of the religious practices held at each prayer, we found a few interesting points that could be linked to our study of the relationships between the majority and minority religious communities in Bali.
We were surprised to see the difference in the “visibility” of the two religions in Bali. We thought the Hindu community was much more open and inviting with their religious practices as compared to the Muslim community. For example, it has become a daily struggle for us to avoid stepping on the abundance of Hindu offerings on the sidewalks. Moreover, on practically every sector of the street, we can see women making and selling these offerings – women who would gladly teach outsiders how to make offerings. This sense of openess and visibility in the Hindu community became even more apparent when we observed the large scale Hindu ceremonies. People were praying openly on the streets and were walking around freely in their religious attire all day. And as long as you tried to assimilate to the customs and rules of their religious prayer, practically anybody could join the ceremony, as all the Haverford students were invited to attend and take pictures of the whole ordeal. The Muslim community however was much less visible in Bali. Access to Muslim mosques or communal religious spaces is noticably less convenient, and the prayer ritual is more private and contained indoors. For Jenny, a woman and an outsider to the religion, it was impossible for her to enter the mosque or even take pictures explicitly; whereas she had a certain level of access and invitation in the Hindu community. Although this might be the nature of Muslim prayer practices, we did think it was worthy to note the contrast in the general level of awareness or visibility of the two religions. It was very obvious and easy for the Balinese community and even outsiders to get acclimated and become aware of the daily Hindu offering practices and the ceremonies, whereas the Muslim community was much more reserved and people can barely hear the calls for prayer that occur five times a day. This contrast can be easily explained by the dynamics of majority-minority relations in that the majority is ofcourse more apparent, but we were still very surprised to see that those within the Muslim community embraced a very exclusive communal attitude.
From our field research, we also started to question our conceptions of the “coexistence” and the lack of visible “confrontation or resistance” between the two religious communities. We entered our research with the assumption that there is a level of peaceful coexistence between the two religions, in that the Hindu community never imposed on the Muslim minority and that there potentially might be some type of integration and acceptance of the Muslim community within the majority Hindu community. But from our field research, we felt the two communities were very divided not only in terms of their residence but also their daily social circles. For instance, it took us quite some time to locate a large Muslim community and we had to travel quite a bit in order to arrive at a Javanese Muslim community. From our short trip, we thought the Javanese community was less populated and the atmosphere differed from the bustling streets of Denpasar. The people were less receptive to us and the community seemed very closed off and disinterested in outsiders. Moreover, even when we visited a very official and impressive mosque in Denpasar, there weren’t a lot of people lingering around and many left directly after completing the prayer. Overall there was a lack of interaction between the two religious communities, as the Muslim community was confined (perhaps willingly) to a close-knit community that was separate from the mainstream parts of Bali. This lack of interaction might just explain the apparent lack of tension, because in order for conflict to be visible, interaction must necessarily be present first.
What were the challenges?
One major and relatively obvious challenge we encountered was the inability to integrate into the community or to even visit these places more than once due to the limited time frame for field observation. As outsiders to these communities, it was a challenging task to get genuine observational information because we didn’t know whether their activities were influenced by their uneasiness with the presence of foreigners. We weren’t able to build an intimate relationship with the people we observed; so generally we felt our findings only provided very superficial information that was potentially skewed or bias. More specifically for the Muslim community, it was hard for both of us to freely enter this community as we were both outsiders, especially since Jenny didn’t identify with the Muslim religion. We struggled to break down this barrier between the community of interest and our role as observers.
Another challenge we encountered was a logistical one since Muslim communities are hard to find in Bali. Moreover even though we were lucky to find a Muslim village, it was challenging to simply observe without attracting a lot of attention and suspicion. With this realization, we also recognized how hard it is to enter and integrate oneself into any minority community. In the case of Bali, the Muslim minority is on the outskirts of the island and is very segregated from the rest of the Hindu community. So as observers, we had to be mindful of their suspicions of outsiders and to try to get observational data without imposing ourselves in a burdening way.
Lastly we found observational fieldwork to be a challenging process on its own. The practice of sitting and observing for the purpose of gathering data while maintaining an open mind is a relatively complicated task. Sometimes we found ourselves sitting there not knowing what to find interesting or thought-provoking; whereas, at other times, we questioned whether our observations are really as substantive as we made it seem. But as we were reflecting on our experiences, we found it really helpful if we had overlapping points of interest and were able to share our different views on the data.
What kinds of questions did this experience provoke?
· To what extent is the Muslim community really integrated within the Hindu majority community in Bali? Is the lack of tension between the two religious communities really due to genuinely favorable relationships between the two or just due to the lack of interaction?
· Do Javanese Muslims feel disconnected from the rest of Bali?
· Does the overwhelming presence of Hindu practices bother Muslims in Bali? Are they comfortable with the level of visibility of their own religious community?
· How much interaction is there between the Hindu and Muslim communities? In what aspects or social spheres is there the most/least interaction or communication? When is this interaction unfavorable/favorable?
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