A Popular Indonesian Preacher: The Significance of Aa Gymnastiar

Abstract

Aa Gymnastiar (Gym) is a popular Indonesian Muslim preacher who seems to be now at the pinnacle of his fame. He regularly gives advice to the head of state and to ministers and yet at the same time his approach to Islam appeals to all sections of the national Muslim community. His is a familiar face in newspaper columns and above all on television screens; Aa Gym has a masterful command of the media. This article describes and accounts for his popularity and discusses it in terms of continuity and change in the rise and decline of Muslim celebrities in Indonesia. It points out the difference between Gym and some obvious forerunners such as the scholar Hamka, and stresses that the nature of Gym's appeal is new in as much as he does not come from within the circle of traditional families of Muslim ulama. He seems to draw his information as much from secular sources of self-help manuals as from books of Sufi wisdom. Although very popular and influential among the general circle of believers, he is regarded with some suspicion by those who criticize his sufistic leanings and lack of an orthodox Muslim education. The article concludes by arguing that Gym and his approach to the implementation of Muslim precepts is more representative of the nature of Islam in Indonesia today than the activities of terrorists.In his apologia for his decision to conduct research on Islamic preaching in contemporary Egypt, Gaffney (1994: 3, 29) points out how Western studies of Islam have become vulnerable to a new kind of orientalism. Arguing that research agendas seem often to be driven by political imperatives, he suggests that there has been an over-concentration on issues of political ideology and political movements and that this has led to a neglect of the comparative anthropology of Islamic institutions. The point is well taken. His book goes on to demonstrate the usefulness of not allowing oneself to be distracted by the concerns of political scientists and doom-laden futurologists and, instead, of looking closely at the dynamics of change within Muslim societies, focusing in particular on the way in which new knowledge is currently being generated and disseminated by new kinds of Muslim intellectuals. This approach was later taken up and expanded in Eickelman and Anderson's path-breaking book New media in the Muslim world (2003; first edition 1999), which sought to illustrate the revolution in religious thinking which was taking place in different Muslim countries as a consequence of the use made of new media technologies.In particular what Eickelman, Anderson, and their contributors were arguing was that new public spheres were being created as a consequence of

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