Javanese religion, Islam or syncretism: comparing Woodward’s Islam in Javaand Beatty’s Varieties of Javanese Religion

It has been proven that the different findings in examining Javanese religious life are led by the differences in terms of academic approaches. It includes the ways some key terms are perceived and elaborated. The term ‘Islam’ is defined in its wide sense by one and its narrow sense by the other. The popular rite of Slametan is also elaborated its different aspects by different authors, one leading to Islam and the other leading to animism. The notion of mysticism and mystical practices are also employed to refer to something different, one referring to Sufi tradition, and the other referring to authentic Javanese mystical practices. In addition, authors’ perspectives matter. Particular understanding of some notions applied from the beginning of the observation has been guided the attention to particular aspects of religious life. Certain understanding about Islam has made one author emphasize more on the aspects of Islam, rather than different religious tradition. On the other hand, an empty-assumption-like autor to conduct observation on religious life of Javanese has been easily fallen to the dominant view of previous examination on the field. Those factors may lead to using different sort of data. If a single religious tradition like Islam is considered, the useful resources are textual, since they tell much about the general development of the tradition. However, while no single religious tradition is considered more important than others, one may find that ethnographical account is the best way to see what kind of religious traditions exist and how the traditions are perceived and practiced. Lastly, as the leading notion and the subsequent sort of data used are different, the aspects of a religious tradition are emphasized differently, one the great and the other the little tradition. Therefore, the awareness -that ‘there is subjective involvement in the process of knowing’ is confirmed in this thesis. It has been proven by the fact that different findings of the same field research are caused by the ways researchers approach the problem. In fact, they have different approaches.