Foreword
p. 7-8
Texte intégral
1Beyond the tumult of an essentially political and unfinished Reformasi, several transformations of Indonesian society, although less publicized, deserve our attention. Among them, the jilbab question stands at the crossroads of several mutations, related to religion and to women’s status of course, but also to the economy, culture, and politics. As a scientific work enriched with her very personal experience, Dewi Candraningrun’s study constitutes a valuable contribution to the field. It shows the complex motivations and also the frequent disappointment of Indonesian women who, like the author, chose to veil themselves a few years ago. Far from the simplistic explanations often proposed in the West, this paper draws from a broad range of social sciences and a wide variety of sources, especially interviews and social networks analyses.
2To be understood, the jilbab issue in Indonesia should be placed in a broad historical perspective. Islamic identity had long been perceived as secondary, but since the 1970s it has occupied a more visible place in society. This development is of course linked to a religious revival, but it was fueled with moral imperative and political criticism toward the New Order regime. In the early 1990s, veiling was often a free and militant action, and was part of a demand for reform that culminated at the time of Suharto’s fall in 1998. This aspect of social rebellion was then exploited by a new Islamist elite who instituted themselves as censors in a society wrapped in the virtue of religion. The rebellious and unconventional dimension of veiling was thus totally overthrown and ironically laid the foundations for a new conformism. The study shows how many women were deprived of their own choice whether to wear jilbab at an early age, and were forced to do so through various regulations (schools, perda sharia, etc.) and especially by social pressure. Here, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, the onus is primarily on women to maintain public morality. In what seems to be a very Mediterranean trend, men are infantilized and regarded as being unable to restrain their sexual drives.
3But this paper also shows how some women were able to divert the subordination conveyed by this injunction. In a still-very-corrupt Indonesia, the moral values that are allegedly conveyed by jilbab allowed women to emerge as prominent politicians, breaking the glass ceiling of a traditional Asian society which, despite a more liberal appearance, confined women to subordinates positions. With the jilbab Indonesia seems to have renounced its claim of “Far-Eastern” specificity to mobilize Middle Eastern values. The semantic shift of the term ketimuran highlighted by Dewi Candraningrum is enlightening. Interestingly, the paradox is that this evolution goes along with an unprecedented Westernization of lifestyles. The veiling issue here takes on a cultural dimension in which the market plays a fundamental part. The veil issue, and beyond it all visible symbols of Islamic affiliation, through a new kind of consumerism, constitutes a patent sign of the process of symbolic reappropriation of Western capitalism in a globalized society.
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