Spiritual materialism in the haj pilgrimage

Dadi Darmadi, Cambridge, MA

This year, again, more than 200,000 Indonesian pilgrims are going to Saudi Arabia. What is the biggest challenge facing many Indonesian pilgrims as they head to Mecca: Severe desert weather? Terrorism? Poor transportation and accommodation? Or the government's ongoing mismanagement of the haj?

Every single factor above could be equally challenging. In fact, most of these problems still likely haunt Indonesian pilgrims. But nothing seems so difficult that it cannot be slowly but surely overcome.

The biggest challenge is, as has been in the past, how the pilgrims liberate themselves from spiritual materialism. That sounds like a contradiction in terms, but that is how the pilgrims triumph over the strenuous challenge and stay true to the arduous commitment of the pilgrimage, which is all about equality and self-effacing humility. That said, to say the least, the pilgrims will not be able to spend as much money as they wanted.

By the way, what do pilgrims actually do? "Oh, as the 'guests of God', we come to Mecca only to pray and fulfill our obligations as Muslims." Some others will faithfully tell us "we would like to get the fullest blessings from the visit to both the holiest cities of Mecca and Medina".

Indeed, those are dreadfully wonderful rejoinders. However, those are regrettably normative ones. The actual phenomenon is often deeper than what it may seem. When it comes to the pilgrimage, it seems there is no sign of economic crisis among Indonesians. If each pilgrim spends at least 250 riyals each for souvenirs, that means annually Indonesian pilgrims spend no less than 50 million riyals (approximately Rp 125 billion).

That figure is far less than the annual spending of roughly 400 million riyals, the equivalent of Rp 1 trillion, for 200,000 Indonesians during the haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. A friend of mine jokingly told me that pilgrims often spend more money than anyone in the world.

They buy things from religious iconography to toys, as well as other non-religious things. Some pilgrims even buy teapots, mugs and trays, not to mention other bigger and heavier merchandise like electronics, bedspreads and rugs. It is not surprising, after all, Indonesian pilgrims have long been known for being "bargain hunters" and some really do shop "till you drop" in the pilgrim way!

They even have to satisfy their desire to hand out gifts for their beloved relatives and friends by buying things from, hilariously, the Tanah Abang market. But, probably the most amusing of all, people know it, keep doing it and look happy with it. How can you make sense of this? Why does this hunger for candid spirituality feed spiritual materialism?

Religion surprisingly blends pretty well with tourism and consumerism. Such a case is true, for instance, in the contemporary practice of the pilgrimage among American Jews to Israel and Poland. Or look closely at the practice of umrah, the Islamic lesser pilgrimage to the city of Mecca, among some well- off Indonesian Muslims. Luxurious packages offer pilgrims different routes from Jakarta to Jeddah. Afterwards, they can visit Istanbul, Cairo or Jerusalem.

In this voyage, they are plunged into transnational linkages brought to them by this tightly knit endeavor of religion and tourism. By visiting some Islamic historical sites they are invited to religious imagination of the splendid Islamic civilization and to reconstruct the memory of the golden age of the Islamic past.

This without a doubt allures the more wealthy pilgrims to extend their reach in a merely "religious duty". If this is not enough, you can also be accompanied by Indonesian celebrities. On this package, where everything is provided, pilgrims cannot help but quit the arduous obligations of the ritual.

The pilgrimage becomes a ritual departure from the routine and workaday world in luxurious hotels, shockingly scattered all over the shrines. That spiritual materialism is a real blend of religion and consumerism. Religious shrines often become a contested space, where Islam, as a global religion, cannot avoid the global culture of capitalism.

When pilgrims are also tourists, the pilgrimage is not a religious phenomenon anymore. The ritual carries a banner of religion, commercialism and even class identity. They want their Islam to be "comfortable" enough for their lifestyle, as well as suitable for their class identity so that they can stay put and feel "at home" with the religion.

Seen in this way, however, religious observation not only reaffirms religious and cultural identity but also, and more importantly, class identity. Moeslim Abdurrahman, a respected Indonesian anthropologist, said the Indonesian haj tours in the 1990s were "divided" rituals along social class lines.

Mind you, this is not my effort suddenly to consider those respected "guests of God" as being haji mardud, the rejected pilgrims, as some people in the village mockingly point the finger at particular shoddily behaved pilgrims upon their return. God forbid, the pilgrims themselves surely know better than I do. However, if we want the pilgrims to keep away from becoming rejected ones, we had better get used to self-criticism. If, for some reason, that brings up predicaments about new religious reformism, so be it. We are going to be called reformers for whatever changes we make.

The writer is a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Islam and Society at Jakarta's State Islamic University. He is currently a Fulbright PhD student in social anthropology at Harvard University.