Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia

by Clifford Geertz

"In four brief chapters," writes Clifford Geertz in his preface, "I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan."

Mr. Geertz begins his argument by outlining the problem conceptually and providing an overview of the two countries. He then traces the evolution of their classical religious styles which, with disparate settings and unique histories, produced strikingly different spiritual climates. So in Morocco, the Islamic conception of life came to mean activism, moralism, and intense individuality, while in Indonesia the same concept emphasized aestheticism, inwardness, and the radical dissolution of personality. In order to assess the significance of these interesting developments, Mr. Geertz sets forth a series of theoretical observations concerning the social role of religion.

Genres: Anthropology, Islam, Religion, Nonfiction, History, Sociology, Social Science

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Clifford James Geertz was an American anthropologist and served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.

Reviews

[Cărăşălu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although partly based on Geertz's fieldwork, this book is concerned less with ethnograhic anthropology and more with comparative religion. Despite this difference, Geertz applies his trademark semantic approach. The tasks he sets ahead of him is "not to formulate an underlying uniformity behind superficially diverse phenomena, but to analyze the nature of that diversity as we find it". In comparing the Islam of Indonesia, heavily influenced by the Indic (Hindu-Buddhist) tradition, characterized more by mental poise and psychic balance, with the Islam of Morocco, based on the Maraboutic tradition and moral intensity, Geertz focuses less on what is common to them (he doesn't ignore this aspect and gives it its share of attention), and more on the reasons behind these differences, as well as on their consequences. In the confrontation with Christiany and Westernization, both types of Islam react in a similar manner through what Geertz calls scripturalism and the ideologization of religion (a transition from religiosity to religious-mindedness). These movements, asserting the letter of Islam, were directed both against classical "impure" traditions, and against the Western domination (both spiritual and political). However, after its alliance with nationalism, the scripturalism was cast aside by its ally, who returned to the classical traditions of the Theater State with Sukarno in Indonesia and of the Maraboutic Sultan with Muhammed V in Morocco.
The way Geertz tries to explain these developments is by treating religion as something that arises from the insufficiency of common sense in helping the ordinary man make sense of his everyday life. Religion is meant to provide meaning there where common sense fails. Religion merges the world view (the way a man interprets it) and the ethos (a guide for action: the way things should be done). In response to the rivalry that naturally arises between religion and science, the former has traditionally taken two stances. One is more specific to Morocco: separating strictly the two of them for fear of contaminating the former and shackling the latter. The other is more specific to Indonesia: integrating them by claiming that science only makes explicit what is implicit in the Koran and that it doesn't infirm, but it confirms the Koran. This difference can be well analyzed by focusing on two essential characteristics that Geertz identifies of religion: its force, meaning its psychological grip, and its scope, meaning its social range of application. The separation of secular and religious life in Morocco is related to the greater force of religion there, but it severely limits its scope. In Indonesia it's the opposite: although the force of religion is weaker, its scope is greater as nearly everything is 'tinged' with the spiritual. The problem that believers in both countries face is that religious symbols cannot sustain anymore a properly religious belief, the main reason being the secularization of thought. Religion is asserted instead of being experienced.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good, careful anthropology. Geertz's observations of particular practices expose universal themes of culture and religion, somewhat like the later works of Jared Diamond.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who wants to understand the current state of the Muslim world should read this book. Geertz takes a diachronic approach to understanding Muslim culture at the antipodes of the Muslim world, Morocco and Indonesia. He shows the development Islam in those two places and its fusion with indiginous culture. He then goes on to show what the effect of colonialism was in those two societies, and it is not what you think. The reaction to modernity was, in his terms, the ideologization of religion. That is, Islam as an -ism. The transformation was basically to spur the development of revivalist movements that in the Christian context is called fundamentalism.

[Viola Briatková · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow. thats really scholarly gem.

[Kia]

Wish i could go back in time and attend a Geertz lecture…his prose is genuinely laugh out loud funny at parts

[Burhan]

The book Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia by Clifford Geertz focuses on explaining how differences occur between different societies that share a common religion. It does this mainly through analyzing the cultural characteristics of the examined regions, Morocco and Indonesia.
The author seems to over-characterize different aspects of culture and this in turn leads to him constructing a narration that strongly resembles a style of storytelling. Different actors with different motivations strive to accomplish different tasks described for them in the scenario. All social change is the result of this scenario being played out. I believe that this constant struggle to understand society as a play causes him to miss on some crucial points such as the actual details in Islamic disciplines. A principle in tasawwuf, kashf is unknown to the author possibly because of his neglect of such matters but instead different romanticized cultural interpretations are used to explain what happened in the story of Sunan Kalidjaga’s discovery of divine truth. Because the real causes are neglected the author must conjure different causes such as Indonesia’s power center wanting to naturally shift to the central lands where it belongs to from the coastal lands which usurped it when explaining how and why Sunan Kalidjaga did what he did.
Another peculiarity about the author’s analysis of these societies is his complete lack of referral to any Islamic principle. Normally I expected him to use religion as a means of explaining as to why these characters did what they did, but Geertz generally refers to more abstract cultural phenomena instead of religion. While he is not discarding religion the way Marxist thinkers do, he is not ascribing any unique characteristics to it either. In his comparison of the societies before and after he strongly emphasizes that not much changes other than the specific rituals. It doesn’t look like Geertz gives much importance to Islam in regards to social change as Islam being Islam, but he only views it as being a religion. I am inclined to believe that even if the religion in question wasn’t Islam but another religion he would have wrote roughly the same things.
As a result of the author explaining the two societies as different characters under the same name Islam, and him explaining the different social groups in the two societies as sub-characters he creates multiple images of Islam. While he often refers to an orthodox ideal Islam and the dissimilarities between the Islams of the various characters in his analysis to this orthodox Islam he doesn’t provide any factual backing as to why the Islam in Morocco or Indonesia is not orthodox. This in turn leads us further away from understanding what Islam truly is. This is a problem because the book implies that it will provide insights for the readers on to what Islam actually is.
Overall while I found parts of the book to be disagreeable for me and contradicting what I know of Islam, it was hard to pinpoint and say the author did this wrong here. This was caused by the fact that the author inserts his analysis through previous field observations. Since we cannot know what he exactly observed to arrive at the conclusions he arrived at, it is hard to criticize him on this basis.
Overall I found the book to be lacking in its use of Islam in explaining social phenomena, and as a result of this, weak in explaining Islam. While I am not sure what the cause for this might be, I am inclined to assume that the author didn’t have much understanding of Islam as a scholarly tradition and the concepts and principles within it. Surely had he known these, he would have invoked them when explaining how Muslims act as they do.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN ANTHROPOLOGIST COMPARES ISLAM IN TWO DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

Clifford James Geertz (1926-2006) was an American anthropologist and literary critic who was professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1968 book, “In four brief chapters---originally delivered as the Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion and Science for 1967 at Yale University---I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan… A number of people---historians mostly, but political scientists, sociologists, and economists as well---have questioned whether this sort of procedure is a defensible one… The answer … is, of course, ‘yes’: it is invalid, reckless, absurd---and impossible... I am attempting … to discover what contributions parochial understandings can make to more comprehensive ones, what leads to general, broad-stroke interpretations particular, intimate findings can produce… We are all social scientists not, and our worth…. consists of what we are able to contribute to a task, the understanding of human social life, which no one of us is competent to tackle unassisted.” (Pg. v-vii)

He says in the first chapter, “that which we most want to know [is] by what means, what social and cultural processes, are these movements toward skepticism, political enthusiasm, conversion, revivalism, subjectivism, secular piety, reformism, double-mindedness, or whatever, taking place?... In attempting to answer grand questions like this the anthropologist is always inclined to turn toward the concrete, the particular, the microscopic. We are the miniaturists of the social sciences, painting on lilliputian canvases with what we take to be delicate strokes. We hope to find in this little what eludes us in the large, to stumble upon general truths while sorting through special cases.” (Pg. 3-4)

He observes, “In Indonesia Islam did not construct a civilization, it appropriated one. These two facts, that the main impulse for the development of a more complex culture---true state organization, long-distance trade, sophisticated art, and universalistic religion---grew out of a centrally located peasant society upon which less developed outlying regions pivoted, rather than the other way around, and that Islam penetrated this axial culture well after it had been securely established, account for the overall case Muhammedanism has taken in Indonesia… In Indonesia Islam has taken many forms, not all of them Koranic, and whatever it brought to the sprawling archipelago, it was not uniformity.” (Pg. 11-12)

He states, “In Indonesia as in Morocco, the collision between what the Koran reveals, or what Sunni (that is, orthodox) tradition has come to regard it as revealing, and what men who call themselves Muslims actually believe is becoming more and more inescapable. This is not so much because the gap between the two is greater… It is because, given the increasing diversification of individual experience, the dazzling multiformity which is the hallmark of modern consciousness, the task of Islam (and indeed of any religion tradition) to inform the faith of particular men and to be informed by it is becoming ever more difficult. A religion which would be catholic these days has an extraordinary variety of mentalities to be catholic about; and the question, can it do this and still remain a specific and persuasive force with a shape and identity of its own, has a steadily more problematical ring.” (Pg. 15)

He explains, “On the Indonesian side, the cultural tradition … was that of the great court centers of Indic Java. In attempting to summarize that outlook… I would like to reduce it to a series of doctrines… The first and more important of these I will call ‘The Doctrine of the Exemplary Center’; the second, ‘The Doctrine of Graded Spirituality’; and the third, ‘The Doctrine of the Theater State.’ Together, they make up a world view and an ethos which is elitist, esoteric, and aesthetic, and which remains, even after the adaptations and reformulations forced upon it by four hundred years of Islamization, three hundred years of colonial domination, and twenty of independence, a powerful theme in the contemporary Indonesian consciousness. By ‘The Doctrine of the Exemplary Center,’ I mean the notion that the king’s court and capital, and at their axis the kind himself, form at once an image of divine order and a paradigm for social order.” (Pg. 35-36)

He notes, “Sunni Islam did not, today still does not, represent the spiritual mainstream in Indonesia… it represented a challenge to that mainstream---a challenge which grew stronger and more insistent as it took deeper root and firmer outline and as a truly national society slowly formed, but a challenge whose force was scattered, whose appeal was circumscribed and whose triumphs were local.” (Pg. 42)

He points out, “In a curiously ironic way, intense involvement with the West moved religious faith closer to the center of our peoples’ self-definition than it had been before. Before, men had been Muslims as a matter of circumstance; now they were, increasingly, Muslims as a matter of policy. They were OPPOSITIONAL Muslims. Not only oppositional, of course; but into what had been a fine medieval contempt for infidels crept a tense modern note of anxious envy and defensive pride.” (Pg. 65)

He states, “In this century the scripturalist movement proceeded to what… was its logical conclusion: radical and uncompromising purism. The rise throughout the Muslim world after 1880 of what has been called… ‘Islamic Reform’… merely provided an explicit theological base for what, a good deal less effectively, had been developing in Indonesia for at least half a century.” (Pg. 69)

He suggests, “Whatever else ‘Islam’---maraboutic, illuminationist, or scripturalist---does for those who are able to adopt it, it surely renders life less outrageous to plain reason and less contrary to common sense. It renders the strange familiar, the paradoxical logical, the anomalous, given the recognized, if eccentric, ways of Allah, natural.” (Pg. 101)

He concludes, “So amid great changes, great dilemmas persist, as do the established responses to them. In fact the responses seem to grow more pronounced as they work less well. The Moroccan disjunction between the forms of religious life and the substance of everyday life advances almost to the point of spiritual schizophrenia. The Indonesian absorption of all aspects of life—religious, philosophical, political, scientific, commonsensical, even economic---into a cloud of allusive symbols and vacuous abstractions is rather less prominent than it was two years ago; but its progress has hardly been halted, much less reversed.” (Pg. 116)

This book will interest those seeking ‘outside’ perspectives on Islam.

[Hock Tjoa · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of the books on Islam that I have read and I am glad since it showed how very differently the faith was practiced in different parts of the world.

[Tosca Wijns-Van Eeden · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kept waiting for him to make his point...

[Ellison Moorehead]

It's sad how easily convinced I am by good writing. This is why I can't read people like Celine, or Vargas Llosa, or any of those nasty characters. There is so much slop being published, so much that is terribly written that people go about reading, so much junk people feel they need to publish for their academic careers, it's so tiring trying to get information from out from under thickets of mostly lifeless, colorless, standardized prose and listless formats hedging every single bet. And Geertz is just a wonderful, brilliant, forceful, direct writer. His personality, his own true style, his voice, is always there, his examples are always on point and helpful, and his arguments always easy to follow, albeit not uncomplicated. I would happily read anything he'd written, on whatever topic.

This topic, the sociology (or anthropology) of religion, is really my focus at the moment and since I just got back from a stint studying Arabic in Morocco, this study of the Maghreb is perfect. Whether you enjoy a piece of writing depends to a large extent on timing, like a lot of things in life, I guess.

Geertz argues that our lives are not merely material (in this case scriptural) nor psychological (our personal thoughts or opinions) but that they are built by ourselves and others (the community) learning, employing and adapting symbols (he goes back and forth in the text --here he steps carefully-- from believing religion is its practices and that it isn't just its practices, but I think he lands on the side of practice over orthodoxy every time). People are, in his opinion, highly symbolic creatures and ones that feed those symbols through rituals and practices. This idea of the symbolism of thought and reasoning even, but especially of reality creation, was much in vogue when he was writing this book and for a while afterwards; I don't hear it bandied about as much anymore, but I'm not sure if we're over the semiotics/hermeneutics craze. It was fun while it lasted, at least for me, because literary critics love to decipher texts and postmodernism gave us permission to act as though the entire world were one big text just waiting for its exegesis. By us. We had the key! I mean, I guess the world and life is always asking for exegesis, but you guys know what I mean. The emphasis on deciphering symbols was placed by the very people in a position to decipher them. This is somewhat like why therapists are so invested in "everyone needs therapy," but that's another story.

This book, at least, could not be written today because of his extremely generalizing statements about "Morocco" and "Indonesia," not to mention how he glosses "Islam" from an aseptic "secular" position, even though he does relate what his local informants have told him. I wouldn't dare, but he does (and he's in a much better position to do so). You can't help but enjoy that he does and very quietly applaud him for it. Isn't it nice to take one myth (he picks one each for Indonesia and Morocco) and use it as the basis for the next 500 years of social formation and ideas? Isn't it fun to, in 100 pages, describe why Morocco and Indonesia have different interpretations of Islam? Isn't it satisfying to link a myth from the 18th century to 20th century nationalism? It is, but at the same time, it's extremely (and by that I mean perhaps overly) sure of itself and intentionally simplifying. It doesn't matter: he knows he's simplifying, he knows there's more to it, but he does it anyway and the results are simple enough to be digestible and complicated enough to be titillating.

I always read Geertz with my critical pencil in hand and end up entirely seduced. I give up.

[Alvin Qobulsyah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well translated by Hasan Basri, though it was still written in an "old school" style. When you might found one paragraph only in every single page. Keeping your focus tired on finding main idea from each long phrases.
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It was Geertz kind of genius on making comparisons between two Islamic nations civilizations. Making Sunan Kalijaga and Lyusi yet Soekarno and Muhammad V as a iconic figure on making these kind of "comparisons". Between maraboutism and misticism, through royalism and syncretism.
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The best chapter is on the "Scripturalist Interlude" when it is quietly still running until now from the ideas formed by M. Abduh and Al Afghani. On how the puritans, scripturalist still tries on managing "power" in both countries.
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Since there are so many concepts really scattered here amd there. The most remembered one is one simple explanation of Indonesia model of "Theatre of State". The reason why centralistic development model occured in a very long in Indonesia before it was smashed by the trial of so called regional autonomy.

[Anjar Priandoyo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not finish this book. The idea is very good actually.

[Sy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ethos is sought and forged, so are religions and all of their secular representations. On a personal note, the work could’ve been longer...

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a comparative religion study than anth. Some very good points early on, but as the papers go on, there is a lot of repitition. Interesting up to a point.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had this left over from college. Aimed at specialists, but between the discussions of methodology, which were relatively uninteresting to me, there were several nuggets of insight about the current state of the Muslim world, and some general information about Muslim practice and the national character of Morocco and Indonesia, so for that it was worth it. Geertz is a eloquent writer, as well. In all, too academic for my tastes; perhaps something more general would do, like his Religion of Java.

[Matt Friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

His insight into the diversity of a particular religious bloc across various cultures is enormously important, especially now.



Plus, it's Geertz, whose writing is as wonderfully put together as it is informative.

[Lutfi Retno]

Pernah baca waktu ngerjain skripsi. Lupa isinya.

[Icaruz · Rating 5 out of 5]

i want to know why moslem in indonesia very disgusting

[Matthew Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Geertz is a structural functionalist who believes that humans use religion to make sense out of chaos. Easy to read text with, short and sweet with a lot of anthropological theory.

[Anna Campanales · Rating 3 out of 5]

el tercer capítol s'ha llegit en diagonal pero bastant decent, m'ha agradat saber més sobre la història i el desenvolupament de l'Islam a Indonesia

[Syamsury Syamsury]

i need read a book