Spiritual materialism in the haj pilgrimage

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.