Social Science Research Master August 2016
Supervisor: Dr. S. Tidey Second Reader: Dr. J. McBrien
M A S T E R T H E S I S
Sexuality, Surah & Sholat:
negotiating religious contestation in an Indonesian transgender boarding school
by
Ann-Kathrin Ziegler student number: 10863931 annkathrin.ziegler@gmail.com
List of terms
banci term that is sometimes used to refer to waria, meaning third gender
fiqh theory of Islamic law based on the teachings of the Qur’an
haram forbidden by Allah
imam Islamic worship leader of a mosque or Muslim community
Isha’a last prayer of sholat, mostly one hour after maghrib
jilbab Muslim headscarf
kyai (Javanese) expert in Islam
maghrib 4th prayer of sholat, shortly after sunset
mukenah dress that covers the whole body, worn by women during prayers
pengajian religious congregation, includes discussions of sermons
sarong long piece of cloth worn wrapped around the waist, typically worn by men
during prayers
sholat Muslim prayer, performed five times every day
surah chapter of the Qur’an
taqiyah round skullcap, often worn by men during prayers
ustad Islamic scholar
wudu washing, performed before sholat
“I‘m a waria. But I am also Indonesian and a Muslim. All at the same time”
(a young waria from Jakarta speaking at the transgender day in Yogyakarta, 24.11.2015)
Introduction
It‘s early October in Indonesia, the beginning of the rainy season, and I find myself driving through the small streets of Kota Gede, a historic neighbourhood in Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta or Jogja, as it is called by the Indonesians who live here, is located in the province Central Java on Indonesia’s most populous island and is an 8-hour train ride away from the Indonesian capital Jakarta. It just stopped raining and the streets are still damp. Trying to avoid driving through bigger puddles I follow Budi, a friend of my flatmate, into a narrow alleyway. As he slows down and looks for a good spot to park I am getting more nervous. We arrived. Budi leads me into a hallway through which we reach a small back yard with an open veranda. The first thing I notice are the tiny cats walking around through the yard. Then, there is a squeak and one of the cats starts running towards us closely followed by an older person with a small water pistol in hand, aiming at the cat. “Oh, bule (foreigner),” Mbak Nur proclaims when she sees me. “Hello, Budi!,” she adds. She comes over and shakes my hand.1 “Nice to meet you! I am Nur,” she
in-troduces herself in Indonesian. Mbak Nur then invites me to take a seat on the veranda where around ten other people are already sitting. Everybody greets Budi and me and we are offered tea and sweets. On the wall next to me hangs a poster announcing “Build peace within diverse faith and sexual identities” in English. There is a small shelf below it which contains a dozen books with Arabic skript on their spine: the Al-Qur’an in Arabic with Indonesian translation, Budi explains. Next to the shelf the doors that lead into the house are wide open. The big room with a green carpet is mostly empty, with the exception of two shelves and a mattress in one corner of the room. Twenty minutes after our arrival Ibu Shinta, wearing a headscarf like pious Indonesian women tend to do sits down behind a small table on the floor and welcomes every-one. The sun has just set and it is shortly after six o’clock in the evening. “Welcome to the waria pesantren,” she says.
A pesantren is an Indonesian boarding school which focuses its education on religious aspects and which is usually sex segregated. This pesantren however, is a unique one. It does not ca-ter to men or women. Instead it caca-ters to waria, Indonesian transgender women, such as Nur and Shinta. In a global context in which Islam is increasingly seen to be incompatible with non-heternormative gender expressions the existence of a Muslim transgender space merits anthropological interest. On the following pages I will describe the situated knowledge I con-structed about this specific part of gender complexities in Indonesia. In specific, I will examine how the formation of waria subjectivity takes place in the waria pesantren and how the perfor-mance of religious practices influences this subjectivity. To do so, I will look more closely at the historical-spatial contexts of the transgender and Muslim subject position of the waria and at
1 ‘Mbak’ is used on Java to address younger women. For older women the term ‘Ibu’ is common. Despite her age, Nur insists to be called Mbak.
the reconciliation of apparent contradictions between these two subject positions. I chose two main practices to show this formation of waria subjectivity: the interpretation of the Qur’an according to non-heternormativity or more specifically transgenderism and the performance of sholat, the Muslim prayer, at the waria pesantren.
This thesis is based on five months of fieldwork in Yogyakarta in which I regularly went to the pesantren and joined the waria for other events such as the national transgender day or open discussion forums. I combined this participant observations with semi-structured interviews with most of the waria who are active at the pesantren as well as the two imams who were pre-sent at the time of research. Choosing this specific setting allowed me to focus on the life stories of my interlocutors and let me conduct an ‘ethnography of the particular’ as Lila Abu-Lughod calls it (Abu-Lughod 1991: 145). In line with Abu-Lughod’s ‘writing against culture’ it is not the goal of this thesis to formulate theoretical generalizations. Rather, I will present the particular stories of the attendant at the pesantren in order to show how gender is performed within this specific group of religious waria. I agree with Linda Alcoff on the fact that representations are always mediated and might be better seen as interpretations: “I am engaging in the act of rep-resenting the other’s needs, goals, situations, and in fact, who they are [...] I am participating in the construction of their subject-positions” (Alcoff 1991: 9). Hence, I claim to only construct situated knowledge. In alignment with her concept of feminist objectivity Donna Haraway ar-gues that situated knowledge is always partial and can never speak for every individual of a so-cial group: “The moral is simple: only partial perspective promises objective vision” (Haraway 1988: 583).
The concept of identity as a category to capture selfhood has increasingly been criticised in social science and proven difficult to work with (cf. Brubaker and Cooper 2000). Therefore, I prefer the terms subjectivity and subject position to refer to this experience of selfhood. In alignment with Tom Boellstorff I agree that subject position and subjectivity are better suited to study the notion of selfhood (cf. Boellstorff 2005). The term identity here is problematic in a sense that it “tends to imply a coherent sense of self that is conspicuously avowed, which is often the case for queer subjects in Indonesia” (Graham Davis 2010:13). The terms subject position and subjectivity allow me to make the notion of identity more concrete and to show that some-times selfhood can be incoherent. A subject position is a socially recognized category of self-hood. Being a Muslim for example would be a subject position. Boellstorff uses the Indonesian term jiwa (soul) to refer to subject positions. Subjectivities are one’s own perceptions and senses of self. The Indonesian term pribadi (self-conception) is seen as equivalent here. Subjectivities are always part of subject positions and cannot exists without them. An example here would be being a waria who is devoutly religious. As this example shows, subjectivities occur when par-tially or sometimes completely occupying a subject position or multiple subject positions (cf. Boellstorff 2005). They can also be temporarily or permanently. This partiality and temporarity of subjectivities brings the advantage to be able to focus on supposedly incompatible categories
of selfhood, in my case the categories ‘Indonesian Muslim’ and ‘transgender’. Boellstorff lists three crucial aspects about the ethnographic investigation of subject positions. Firstly, the im-portance of their historicity. This includes their own history and development over time as well as the history of their surroundings which shapes them. Secondly, the spartial scales of subject positions. These scales can also change over time, like being a ‘Yale student’ in contrast to being ‘Japanese’. Thirdly, the “intersect[ion] with other subject positions and the histories and spatial scales of those other subject positions” (Boellstorff 2005: 35). This intersection of subject posi-tions and the formation of subjectivities from multiple subject posiposi-tions is what I will mostly focus on below.
Another important theoretical concept I will address in this thesis is the notion of performativi-ty. Sharyn Graham Davies argues it is a very usefull tool to investigate gender in Indonesia “as it shows how dominant norms shape gender and helps explain the way certain roles, occupations, behaviours, and dress contribute to the notion of gender” (Graham Davies 2010: 33). Gender performativity after Judith Butler is referring to a process of repetitive performances that con-struct identity. Butler argues that gender identities are created through their very enactment and not through a predetermined essence of the enactment (cf. Butler 1990). This focus on performativity allows an examination of how individuals accept, transform or resist dominant discourses of gender identity. Saba Mahmood takes the notion of performativity one step fur-ther and and argues that not only gender, but also religious norms can have a performative character. She claims that besides being reinforced, norms are also performed and experienced in a variety of ways and can hence construct subjectivity: “norms are not only a social impo-sition on the subject but constitute the very substance of her intimate, valorized interiority” (Mahmood 2005: 23). To examine this formation of subjectivity Mahmood emphasizes to focus on the various ways that norms are performed, lived and consummated (cf. ibid.: 23). In the following pages I will look in more detail at the ways the waria perform religious norms and the variations of these performances.
Firstly, I will give a more detailed description about waria and the pesantren itself and by doing so describe the transgender and Muslim subject position of the waria. Then I will examine the formation of waria subjectivity by means of the two practices I described above.
The waria
“So I always felt, so to say, different. My gender felt different. [...] I was a boy, but I also liked boys” (Interview Mbak YS, 29.11.2015)
Mbak Nur and Ibu Shinta are as I mentioned above waria, Indonesian transgender women. The term waria is a combination of the Indonesian words wanita (woman) and pria (man). Waria are born with male anatomies, but as the quote above shows they share a female gender identity. An older term which is sometimes still used to refer to effeminate men in Indonesia is
banci which actually refers to a third gender (cf. Forshee 2006). Tom Boellstorff, one of the few
scholars who have written about waria in English, argues that waria are male transvestites (cf. Boellstorff 2004: 161ff). The waria in Yogyakarta whom I interviewed however, felt more com-fortable being seen as trangendered as they described a combination of a male sexual identity and a female gender identity. While transvestites are men dressed up in women’s clothes, my interlocutors perceived themselves as male women dressed up according to their gender iden-tity (cf. Tidey 2006). These waria do exclusively date heterosexual men and since they feel like women they do not consider themselves homosexual. Mbak YS explained it like this: “So this is about our gender. I don’t feel gay. [...] I feel different from gay men. Like lesbians, they want to be with lesbians. But I don’t want to be with waria. I want to be with straight men. I identify as woman so I want to be with straight men. So I am not gay” (Interview Mbak YS, 29.1..2015). All waria I talked to, even in Malaysia, agreed about this point. There was one incident during my time at the pesantren that I like to mention here as well. A group of young ustads, Islamic scholars, visited the pesantren and one of them posed the question of whether waria would also date other waria. The following is a segment of my field journal: “Mbak Eva couldn’t keep herself together. She bursted into laughter: ‘Me being with another waria? Impossible!’ All the other waria were laughing as well. When they calmed down a bit, Eva looks at the ustad and said that being with another waria would make her a lesbian and that that wouldn’t be a good behaviour for a Muslim woman. At this point Mbak YS next to me was laughing tears.” This reaction of Mbak Eva shows how dominant the femininity can be in the waria subject position, at least among my informants at the waria pesantren.
The importance of historicity of the waria subject position was evident in my interviews. Not only did they describe their own development over time, but also how their surrounding influ-enced their identification process. Here, the fact that gender transgressions have a long history in Indonesia (cf. Peletz 2006 & Blackwood 2005) including the waria subject position which took form during the mid-nineteenth century, is very important. A lot of waria start identify-ing as such duridentify-ing their time in junior high school, some even earlier. Since waria are mostly clearly visible in everyday life and hence widely known in Indonesia, it is often other people like friends or family that point out to them that they are transgender (cf. Boellstorff 2004: 165). This was also the case for Mbak Nur: “I didn’t even know when my friends already knew
I was waria. When we were playing I always played the girl” (Interview Mbak Nur, 06.12.2015). Often, it is these female attributes like playing with dolls, wearing skirts, etc. that are seen as sig-nificant factors in the identification process. While Boellstorff argues that a desire for men does not play an important role in this process, other scholars like Sharyn Graham Davies disagree. Graham Davies focused her research on transgender women in South Sulawesi and found that for them, often their sexual desire for men made them realize they are waria (cf. Graham Davies 2010: 28ff). Some of my interlocutors, like Mbak YS and Mbak Eva, also named their interest in boys as one factor of their identification process: “I noticed I am different than other boys. And I wondered what it was that I am. I wanted to change myself and I was curious as well. I wanted to be with a boy” (Interview Mbak Eva, 16.12.2015).
All waria at the pesantren without exception claimed to have a very close relationship with their family. Often this would go hand in hand with their religious beliefs. Almost all of the active members of the waria pesantren are coming from very religious Muslim families. In Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim nation, where 87% of the population are Islam devotees, this is no surprise. In the special region of Yogyakarta the Muslim population is even higher: 92% (cf. Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics). Most of the waria were sent to a pesantren when they were kids, some even had Muslim clerics coming to their house in the evenings to study the teachings of Islam. These facts already show how deeply religion is rooted in their lives. Mbak Nur for example answered my question about her relationship with her family as follows: “It is very good. They just said if I am a waria I have to be a good waria. Don’t be a waria who is criminal. Don’t sin” (Interview Mbak Nur, 06.12.2015). Tom Boellstorff states that the idea of ‘familyness’ is fundamental to being Indonesian (cf. Boellstorff 2005: 195) and argues that this
Family Principle is one of the two essential principles introduced during the New Order state
under Suharto.2 According to Boellstorff the Family Principle, promoted by the state, influences
the subjectivities of Indonesians concerning marriage and children. To be an adult includes being married and have children, in the best case one boy and one girl (cf. Boellstorff 2005). These family values are also visible among the waria of the pesantren. Mbak Nur for example has a husband. They are not officially married, but they live together and she refers to him as her man. Ibu Mariani as well as Ibu Shinta both adopted a child. Ibu Shinta’s daughter who is in her twenties now also lives in the building complex of the pesantren.
As mentioned above, waria are often seen in daily life. A lot of them are working as pengamen (buskers) that play music on the street and walk around to collect money. Others are working in hair and make-up salons or as MCs at events. Some waria earn their living as sex workers. Besides influencing the religiosity of the waria the family can also play an important role in their choice of profession. Mbak Nur who used to work as a sex worker stated that the biggest problem she has with the job was that her family didn’t support her in this decision. Mbak Eva who was the only one of my interlocutors who still engaged in sex work did not tell her family about it.
While most pengamen dress very feminine with short skirts, high heels and make-up, there are also other waria who wear jilbab, the Muslim headscarf. This shows different spatial scales of the waria subject position. Often, waria make use of medical help to appear more feminine. Hormone treatments are very popular as well as the injection of silicone in chest and face. However, gender reassignment surgeries are not very common since waria do acknowledge their male body (cf. Oetomo 1996: 262) and mostly do not have the financial means to pay for an operation.
The waria pesantren
“It’s a space for waria, a room for waria in which we can safely study religion” (Interview Mbak YS, 29.11.2015)
A pesantren is an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia. Its students are known as santri. Nor-mally, a pesantren provides housing for its students as well. The word pesantren includes the word stem of santri, and therefore literally means place of santri. The term pondok pesantren is also used often. Pondok is the name of the bamboo huts that were traditionally used as dormi-tories for the santri. Besides the santri and the pondok, a traditional pesantren also includes a
kyai, the leader of the school, and traditional Islamic teaching (cf. Dhofier 1999).
Dian Maya Safitri argues that since the waria pesantren does not really live up to these four cri-teria, it would be more appropriate to call it a pengajian, “a religious congregation for discussing or listening to sermons and Qur’anic verses about particular issues” (Safitri 2013: 95). I agree with Safitri on this. At the time of my research only two waria lived in the complex where the pesantren was located. Ibu Shinta who basically reopened the pesantren in her living room (see below) and Mbak Nur who lives in another building with access to the same back yard. Fur-thermore, most of the waria have regular jobs during the week, hence a traditional pesantren with daily classes would simply not be possible. The waria would meet only once every week, on Sunday evenings, to pray sholat, the Muslim prayer, together. At the time of research there were eight regular attendants who were between 36 and 56 years old. The fact that they call it a pesantren however shows their desire for a place for prayer and piety that can be seen as part of their Muslim subject position. This wish for a space for prayer is also the reason why the pesantren was established in the first place. It was founded by Ibu Mariani, a widely known waria in Yogyakarta, and Ibu Shinta after earthquake in 2007. The two of them organized in-ter-religious prayers with the Muslim and Christian LGBT community. They started to hold a
pengajian every month and these meetings got so popular that Ibu Mariani came up with the
idea of creating a pesantren especially for waria in which they would be offered religious guid-ance. This first pesantren was located in a small house in Notoyudan, a neighbourhood in the centre of Yogyakarta. When Ibu Mariani died in 2014 the school was closed for some months before moving to Ibu Shinta’s private house in Kota Gede. There it was located until February
2016, one month after I finished my fieldwork, when it had to close down. Members of the Isla-mist group Islamic Jihad Front (FJI) convinced local administration officials to shut down the school. Until now, the waria have not find a way to reopen the pesantren again.
The full name of the waria pesantren was Pondok Pesantren Khusus Waria Al-Fattah
Senin-Kamis. This name is referring to multiple aspects. The addition khusus waria means specifically
for waria. Al-Fattah refers to another pengajian of Kyai Haji Hamrolie whom Ibu Mariani was very fond of. This Kyai was also the first Islamic leader to support the waria pesantren.
Senin-Kamis (Monday-Thursday) indicated the days the waria would meet. At the time of my research
there was only one regular meeting Sunday evenings.
A typical Sunday meeting at the pesantren would start between 5:00 pm and 5:30 pm. Most of the waria would arrive by motorbike (or bus) during this time, as well as the researchers, journalists or visitors. At the time of my research there were two other Indonesian students who wrote their Bachelor thesis about the pesantren. Journalists or other visitors, e.g. religion students from one of the universities in Yogyakarta occasionally visited as well. Mostly, there were between six and twelve waria, one or two imams (Islamic leader), us three researchers and up to twenty guests at the meetings. Around 5:30 pm Ibu Shinta usually welcomed every-one and explained the agenda of the evening. This would often include event preparations and planning and also suggestions on how to change the curriculum of the pesantren itself. Then, at 6:00 pm, all Muslim participants would perform magrhib, the first evening prayer, together. Here, everybody would go inside the house where Ibu Shinta provided praying rugs and also additional mukenahs, the praying dress for women, in case there were female visitors. During this time, the other participants who did not join the prayers waited outside on the veranda usually accompanied by Mbak Nur, talking quietly to not disrupt the prayers. After maghrib, everybody would sit together again on the veranda. Then, one of the imams introduced the theme of the meeting, e.g. performing hajj, the pilgrimage to mecca, or the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. These themes would be discussed until it was time for the second prayer, the Isha’a, shortly past 7:00 pm. After this, Mbak Nur arranged the food for everyone on a table and all participants ate together. Some of the waria left right after dinner while others, like Mbak YS, often stayed until everybody else had left. Mostly, that was the case between 8:00 pm and 8:30 pm.
The waria pesantren was until its closing in February 2016 the only institutionalised religious community of transgender Muslims in the world. Safitri argues that “the existence of this pe-santren [was] a form of resistance against the force of hegemonic Islamic discourse in Indonesia” (Safitri 2013: 96). By founding their own pesantren, the waria did not have to conform to any rules of a “conventional” pesantren or pengajian. Rather they created a a safe space for the trans-gender community in which they can satisfy their religious needs without feeling uncomforta-ble or offended, a place in which the formation of a ‘pious waria’ subjectivity is possiuncomforta-ble without
any restrictions. Ibu Shinta explained it like this: “People always asked questions. For them it’s a problem if the waria are praying in sarong.3 Whereas here, the waria can decide for themselves
how they want to be in front of God” (Ibu Shinta, field notes, 24.10.2015).
By establishing a transgender pesantren the waria found a way to freely act out their Muslim waria subjectivity. They can act out this subjectivity without having to justify their non-Muslim conformative gender identity which might be the case in other public mosques.
The waria interpretation of the Qur‘an
“Being waria is not a choice. Being waria is given from Allah” (Interview Ibu Shinta, 17.01.2016)
According to Clifford Geertz, the Javanese pesantren formed, together with the pilgrimage to Mecca, the “social structure of the Islamic great tradition during the final hundred years of colonial rule in Indonesia, and permitted both, Islamic orthodoxy to shape local practices and local practice to shape Islamic orthodoxy” (Geertz 1960: 231). The kyai as the head of the pe-santren plays a key role in this. He is the one who decides on the programme and the structure of the pesantren. The waria pesantren does not have a kyai in the strict sense of term. Ibu Shinta who is the chairperson and the founder of the pesantren does not have the position of a kyai. Rather, there are two imams who frequently lead the Sunday prayers and provide religious guidance. But the planning and structure of the pesantren is decided by the waria themselves. During the last weeks of my fieldwork one of the two imams was working on a new curriculum together with the waria. He handed out surveys in which they could express their wishes and suggestions on how they would like to alter the programme of the pesantren. One of the things they wanted to introduce was teachings of the fiqh, the principles of Islamic jurisprudence. The term fiqh literally means ‘deep understanding’ in Arabic and refers to the theory of Islamic law based on the teachings of the Qur’an. The introduction of fiqh classes would have been another step towards becoming a proper religious institution. Ibu Shinta once put it like this: “We want people to take us seriously. We want them to acknowledge that there are waria who are Muslim and we want them to accept this transgender community” (Ibu Shinta, field notes 29.11.2015). Due to an extensive media coverage about the pesantren and its curriculum, the FJI got to know about the plan to introduce fiqh. In February 2016 the party organized demonstrations and some of the waria even received death threats. Ibu Shinta went into hiding for some weeks and there were massive protests by pro- and anti-LGBT activists in Yogyakarta. Eventually the FJI organized a meeting with local administration officials and convinced them to force the waria to close the pesantren.
As mentioned above, it can be very problematic for waria to join a religious community or to simply go to a mosque. Mbak YS and Mbak Ririn told me multiple stories of being mocked in a mosque: “There are a lot of waria who would like to go to a mosque, but are afraid. Like me, when I went to a normal mosque, there were some children and they looked at me and then they shouted banci, banci and offended me” (Interview Mbak YS, 29.11.2015). Mbak Ririn told me a similar story. She usually wears jilbab, the Muslim headscarf, and make-up in daily life, but when performing sholat she wears sarong and no make-up. When she went to a mosque once, two other men wear teasing her, asking where her mukenah was. These difficulties also showed when I was talking to an imam whom I met through a friend and who is not connected in any way with the waria pesantren. He claims that waria are not living according to teachings of Islam. According to him, being a waria and dressing up as woman despite being a man is a sin and prohibited in Islam. But not all imams share this opinion. Here, a lot depends on the un-derstanding and interpretation of the Qur’an: “Interpretation [...] is a human endeavour. Thus, one could argue that there is nothing sacred about the personal interpretation given to a verse even by a Companion of the Prophet, or by a Successor or by early imams. Their understand-ings, like ours, are limited by context and culture and may or may not be relevant outside their culture, their context” (Saeed 2006: 4). Muslim scholars distinguish between three categories of interpretation: textualists, semi-textualists and contextualists (cf. Nurmila 2013: 111). While textualists and semi-textualists engage in a literal reading of the Qur’an, contextualists do not only rely on the text itself, but also include the context of the revelation of the Qur’an. I argue that the imams as well as the waria at the pesantren all follow a contexualist interpretation of the Qur’an.
There is one surah, a chapter in the Qur’an, that is central for the Muslim LGBT-community and which one of the imams and Ibu Shinta referred to in our interviews. It is the surah An-Nur (The light). This surah describes among other things how women should cover themselves and it lists the people they are allowed to expose themselves to: “And tell the believing women to [...] not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers [...] or those male attend-ants having no physical desire” (Qur’an 24: 31). This part of the surah can be interpreted in two different ways. ‘Those male attendants having no physical desire’ can either refer to asexual or impotent men who do not feel any desire at all or to men who simply do not feel desire towards women. While the imam acknowledges the two meanings here, Ibu Shinta sees this surah as proof for the inclusion of waria in the Qur’an: “They think being waria is a sin. How could it be? How could it be a sin if it is coming from God? [...] There is a surah, the surah An-Nur 31, which mentions men who do not desire women. So waria are part of Islam. They are mentioned in the Qur’an” (Interview Ibu Shinta, 17.01.2016). However one interprets this surah, it is an example for non-heteronormative individuals mentioned in the Qur’an.
There is another surah that is important in this context. It is often used to justify that homosex-uality is haram (prohibited). It is the surah Ash-Shu’ara (the poets), the surah of Lot: “Do you approach males among the worlds? And leave what your Lord has created for you as mates? But you are a people transgressing” (Qur’an 26: 165-166). Here, most Muslim clerics claim that the act of approaching other men is prohibited. In contrast to this dominant interpretation, one of the imams at the pesantren understands the surah differently: “He is not being punished because he has this homosexual relation, but rather because he is leaving his wife” (Interview Imam Joko, 14.10.2015). This contextualist interpretation is also shared by most of the waria at the pesantren. However, the waria do not believe they are addressed to in this surah since they do not consider themselves homosexual.
Interpretations like the ones describe above are often justified with other parts from the Qu’ran, which is also common among other religious scholars. Lily Munir for example refers to the overarching goal of a just and humane society: “The Qur’an speaks of its own mission as ‘bring mercy for all creatures’ (Q.S. al-Anbiya’ 21: 107) and to ‘free human beings from any oppression and discrimination due to sex, race and ethnicity’ (Q.S. al-Hujurat 49: 13)” (Munir 2002: 209). When I asked Mbak Nur about her past as a sex worker and if she felt like she was sinning, she replied: “No, I don’t feel so. Because we were alone when we were doing it. We didn’t hurt an-other person” (Interview Mbak Nur, 06.12.2015). Even though prostitution is haram according to the Qu’ran, Nur didn’t feel like she was breaking any rules. This is a good example for the performative character of norms. While most Muslims would probably argue that sex work falls under zina, the Islamic law that concerns unlawful sexual relations between unmarried Muslims, Mbak Nur does not believe so. Rather, she emphasizes that she did not do even ‘worse sins’ like hurting another person. This organization of norms into hierarchy is one way norms can be performed.
These different interpretations allow the waria to reconcile their waria subject position with their Muslim subject position concerning the teachings of Islam. Through this they do not have to struggle with the accusation of doing acts that are haram. For them being a waria is not a sin, because it is not prohibited by the Qur’an. Rather they believe that Allah created them this way. Through prioritizing some Islamic rules over others some of the waria create their own set of morals within their subjectivity that allows them justify their acts in accordance with the teach-ings of Islam.
Performing sholat
“I feel like a woman. Also in front of God. So I wear mukenah“ (Interview Ibu Shinta, 17.01.2016)
The second theme I want to address in this thesis is the performance of religious practices at the waria pesantren. Here, I am mostly referring to the mahrgib and the Isha’a which the waria regularly perform together. As mentioned above, waria often dress very feminine in daily life. Some of the waria at the pesantren, like Mbak Rinrin or Ibu Shintu, usually wear jilbab and long dresses, outfits that Indonesian Muslim women wear regularly. When coming to the pesantren however, this is mostly not the case. This following segment of my field journal that I wrote after a film screening at one of the universities in Yogyakarta is a good example: “I entered the room and was welcomed by two waria, both wearing jilbab and make-up, whom I thought I haven’t met before. I started introducing myself when I got interrupted. ‘Yes, we know, you’re Mbak Anni, right? Don’t you remember us? We met last week at the pesantren?’ Only then did I realize that these two are Yuni and Ririn who were both without make-up and dressed in a
sarong at the pesantren. There Yuni was wearing a taqiyah, a rounded skullcap that Muslims
often wear during prayer, and when I met her for the first time at the pesantren, I wasn’t sure if she is a waria.”
Out of the eight waria who regularly came to the pesantren only Ibu Shinta and Mbak Nur wore
mukenah while performing sholat.4 The other waria were dressed in a sarong. They never wore
make-up nor nail polish and most of them didn’t wear any headpiece besides the taqiyah. Mbak YS sometimes wore a short haired wig. While performing sholat the imam prayed in front of everyone, then came the waria wearing sarong and in the back were the waria with mukenah. This reflects the typical order in Islam, in the rare case men and women are praying together. Men with sarong stand in the front during prayer, while women with mukenah stand in the back. Before praying, the waria were performing wudu, the Islamic procedure of washing hands, feet and face. This is one of the reasons why most of them didn’t wear make-up. Occasionally the make-up issue would also lead to discussions amongst the waria of the pesantren. Since Ibu Shinta was always wearing make-up, also while performing sholat, she would usually not wash her face during wudu. Sometimes she would get teased because of this. Mbak YS once told me in an ironic manner that Shinta was actually not a proper Muslim, because she doesn’t wash her face properly before praying. This example shows how norms, in this case Islamic regulations, can be differently perceived and performed. For Shinta, the procedure of wudu is not a strict act that she has to perform according to a specific description. Rather, she adapts the norm by only washing her hand and feet and not her face. This is very interesting however if we compare it with the way women perform sholat at a regular women’s mosque. Like men, women have to ‘be clean’ for the prayers as well. This includes wudu and and the removal of make-up and nail polish. Before the existence of the waria pesantren Ibu Shinta joined the service for women at
a women’s mosque. There she had to follow the conventional rules of the mosque. At the waria pesantren however, she was free to perform these religious practices the way she wanted to. When asked about the reasons why they choose to wear sarong while praying and not mukenah, all of my interlocutors claimed that they feel more comfortable worshiping this way. Mbak Ri-rin put it like this: “I like using make-up and I like dressing up. But to worship and when I am confronted with God I am still a man. And I am more comfortable when I wear sarong” (Mbak Ririn, field notes 15.11.2015). She said this at the pesantren to another visitor and she was very reflective while giving this answer. I noticed the same during my interviews when I asked this question. Mbak YS as well as Mbak Eva had to think about their answer for a while. I argue that this question caused a sort of moral breakdown amongst the two. Jarrett Zigon defines a moral breakdown as a moment in which one is conscious about one’s own behaviour according to the own moral standpoint: “The need to consciously consider or reason about what one must do only arises in moments that shake one out of the everydayness of being moral” (Zigon 2007: 133). Zigon defines morality here as an inhabited bodily disposition that one feels familiar to: “To be moral is to [...] inhabit a soul” (ibid.: 135). This suggests that morality is deeply con-nected with the subjectivity of a person. In the case of the waria at the pesantren this would mean a subjectivity that is influenced (amongst others) by their waria and their Muslim subject position. Since most of the waria claimed to have a female inhabited bodily disposition, one would expect that they would all pray like Ibu Shinta, wearing mukenah. The fact that they are not shows a discrepancy within their moral disposition which, when asked about, they become aware of. To return to the unreflective mode of morality, the waria I talked to justified their choice of wearing sarong with their male body characteristics: “Because that’s the way I am. I was born a man. But in my heart I am a woman” (Interview Mbak Eva, 16.12.2015). This also shows the performative notion of gender in different settings. Mbak Eva for instance appeared more masculine at the pesantren, or as she says she shows her “male side” (Mbak Eva, field notes 14.11.2015). In contrast to this ‘male side’ she was wearing a short dress, make-up and high heels when I met her once at a non-religious setting. This is also the case for most of my other interlocutors. One time, Mbak YS came ‘dressed up’ to the pesantren. While the Muslim participants went inside to perform sholat, she stayed at the veranda with us. First, she jokingly said she cannot join because she has her menstruation, but when I asked her again she ex-plained that she is not allowed to pray when wearing make-up.
I believe that there is a second important factor that influences the waria in their choice of clothing, namely their family and in accordance to that their previous religious education. As mentioned above, most of the waria at the pesantren attended other conventional pesantren as children and some of them received extensive religious education. At these conventional pe-santren, to which they sometimes went to before they identified as waria, they prayed according to the standards of the pesantren, with sarong and taqiyah. I argue that this religious practice is an important part of the waria’s Muslim subject position and hence deeply anchored in their
pious waria subjectivity. The importance of the family’s judgement became very clear in my interview with Mbak Eva. When I asked her if she would like to pray as a women she simply replied that it would be a problem with her family as if her own opinion didn’t matter.
The practice of sholat at the pesantren is another good example of the performativity of reli-gious norms. While Ibu Shinta and some other waria bend these norms a little, the majority of the waria actually follows the conventional regulations of this religious practice. This again confirms that the waria pesantren allowed its members to freely act out their personal subjec-tivities. It is also an example of the performative character of gender which the waria are mak-ing us of in religious settmak-ings.
Conclusion
“We have to educate the society [...] about who the waria are. Then, when they understand they will accept waria” (Interview Ibu Shinta, 17.01.2016)
The waria pesantren was a remarkable place in Indonesia and the whole Muslim world. It showed that a liberal Islam in which norms can be performed differently and religiosity can be acted out in a variety of ways does exist. In this thesis I showed this performativity by means of two practices, namely the interpretation of the Qur’an and the performance of sholat. Firstly, both practices show the performativity of gender. While most waria normally embrace their fe-male gender identity, some of them focus on their fe-male sexual identity when performing sholat. Here, the comparison with the Qur’an interpretation is very interesting. None of the waria felt addressed by the surah Ash Shu’ara that supposedly prohibits homosexuality with the explana-tion that they are not men, so they cannot be considered homosexual if they have a relaexplana-tionship with a man. But when it comes to praying some of them do acknowledge that they are still men in front of God. Hence, different contexts allow different gender perceptions. Secondly, the two examples show how religious norms can be performed differently. By not forcing the waria to perform practices in a specific way, like wudu or sholat, the pesantren does not restrict the waria in however they want to act out their religiosity. These examples also show that individuals vol-untarily enact religious practices accoring to their own desires and motivations (cf. Mahmood 2005). Therefore, thirdly, the construction of subjectivity is influenced by these performative enactments. By creating a safe space for the waria (and in fact the whole LGBT-community) the pesantren enhanced the formation of a pious waria subjectivity which can be acted out in a variety of ways. The openendedness of the way religious practices have to be performed allowed the waria to individually decide how they want to enact their subjectivity.
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