Statist Islam and Folk Islam Ethnohistory and Muslim Practices in Bantaeng

Abstract

El-Zein and Asad proposed theoretical approaches to understand Muslim societies. Many later anthropologists welcomed and criticised their proposal. Ideally, how should Muslim societies be anthropologically approached? How should localities of Islam be comprehended? To give a partial answer to these questions, I turn to my ethnographic and historical fieldwork in Bantaeng, eastern Indonesia, to show how it should ideally work. This paper examines the way anthropologists ideally react to the study of Islam and Muslims. This includes several issues that will be made as case studies in this paper. By exploring the ideas of folk and statist Islam[s], tomb visit, Bugis within Makassar, and some other. This paper will be ended with a recommendation on the proposed prospective way-out of how anthropologists observes Muslim societies.