Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Embodying the True Islam written by Eva Fahrun Nisa and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indonesian Muslim women who choose to wear the strictest type of women's dress, cadar (full face-veil), have become increasingly visible in Indonesia. This practice is often misunderstood in both popular media and scholarly works on Indonesian Islam: cadari (the wearers) are frequently stereotyped as terrorists or militants belonging to violent groups. The trend of face-veiling is viewed by some scholars as an aspect of the Arabisation of Indonesia. It is also frequently assumed that the cadar symbolises the oppression of Muslim women. Throughout Indonesian history it has often been regarded as a symbol of religious fanaticism. This thesis takes an ethnographic approach to investigate two different categories of women who wear the cadar belonging to two contrasting Islamic revivalist movements-Salafi groups on the one hand and Tablighi Jama'at on the other. The first group, who I term 'passionate cadari, makes a strong commitment to changing their lives to embody the norms of their religious groups. The second group I study consists of women attending an Islamic residential school where the cadar has been standardised. The thesis is based on 12 months of fieldwork in three large cities in Indonesia (Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Makassar) from 2007 to 2008, with a return visit for five months in 2009.