Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru
296
Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru
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Overview
Kyai Haji Abdullah Gymnastiar, known affectionately by Indonesians as "Aa Gym" (elder brother Gym), rose to fame via nationally televised sermons, best-selling books, and corporate training seminars. In Rebranding Islam James B. Hoesterey draws on two years' study of this charismatic leader and his message of Sufi ideas blended with Western pop psychology and management theory to examine new trends in the religious and economic desires of an aspiring middle class, the political predicaments bridging self and state, and the broader themes of religious authority, economic globalization, and the end(s) of political Islam.
At Gymnastiar's Islamic school, television studios, and MQ Training complex, Hoesterey observed this charismatic preacher developing a training regimen called Manajemen Qolbu into Indonesia's leading self-help program via nationally televised sermons, best-selling books, and corporate training seminars. Hoesterey's analysis explains how Gymnastiar articulated and mobilized Islamic idioms of ethics and affect as a way to offer self-help solutions for Indonesia's moral, economic, and political problems. Hoesterey then shows how, after Aa Gym's fall, the former celebrity guru was eclipsed by other television preachers in what is the ever-changing mosaic of Islam in Indonesia. Although Rebranding Islam tells the story of one man, it is also an anthropology of Islamic psychology.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780804796385 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/11/2015 |
| Series: | Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 296 |
| File size: | 10 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Rebranding Islam
Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru
By James Bourk Hoesterey
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-9638-5
CHAPTER 1
Rebranding Islam
Autobiography, Authenticity, and Religious Authority
Aa Gym does not only preach about peace, harmony, simple living, and honest, socially-responsible business practices. He also offers an example through his everyday actions. He has already practiced what he preaches. — Hermawan Kartajaya, Indonesia's "marketing guru"
On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Asian-African Conference in 2005, Aa Gym admonished Muslim leaders to become more savvy about marketing the "beauty of Islam." He used this occasion to explain his strategy for religious propagation (dakwah) in terms of "the wisdom of durian fruit." Likening Muslim leaders to marketers and Islam to a fruit, Aa Gym declared: "Even a ripe, delicious durian won't sell if a person does not know how to market it wisely." For Aa Gym, the form of dakwah was as important as its content. Islam was not just a religion to be lived but also a product to be packaged and sold. When I began research in 2005, Aa Gym had promoted, trademarked, and licensed Manajemen Qolbu through nationally televised sermons, self-help books, and Islamic training seminars. His multilevel marketing firm MQ Baroqah (MQ Blessings) sold a diverse range of consumer and household products ranging from halal cosmetics and Qolbu Cola to MQ Noodles and "Pure MQ" mineral water. Indonesia's leading marketing guru hailed Aa Gym as a "spiritual marketer." Aa Gym turned himself into an icon of Islamic virtue, his turban into a trademark, and "Aa Gym" into a name brand. Aa Gym was the guru of virtue, his mantra was MQ, and his mission was to rebrand the public face of Islam.
Marketing is more than bold brands, creative logos, and catchy jingles. It is about building relationships between producers, products, and consumers. Aa Gym's personal brand is more than a logo, trademark, or image. It is at once a story and a pastoral relationship. Aa Gym's national image and therapeutic style of preaching are rooted in discursive traditions of advice giving (nasihat; Arabic, nasiha) as examined by Asad (1993, 200–238). However, Indonesians describe this affect-laden and interpersonal preacher-disciple relationship not only in terms of nasihat but also with the acronym curhat for curahan hati, literally "an outpouring of the heart." When Aa Gym was only beginning to make a name for himself in the early 1990s, his earliest students gathered several times a week for his "Sermon to Cool the Heart" (Taushiyah Penyejuk Hati). Solahudin notes that — even before Aa Gym attained national stature — the most common answer for why people attended was that Aa Gym "cools their heart" and "touches their heart" (1996, 85). Thus, public sermons, corporate seminars, and television programs were placed within the social and affective registers of a "heart-to-heart" conversation.
A focus on religious brands offers an important glimpse into the relationships between marketing and modernity, preacher and brand, autobiography and authority. Aa Gym carefully cultivated his brand — a persona and narrative as self-help guru, shrewd entrepreneur, and doting husband that mediated economic and affective relationships with his followers. As Mara Einstein observed with respect to Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Joel Osteen in America, "branding ... occurs through the creation of stories or myths surrounding a product" (2008, 12; see also Lofton 2011; Luvaas 2013; Mazzarella 2003). The power of Aa Gym's brand, and the religious authority it presumes, relies on his public image as a pious, successful, devoted, and dreamy man who can restrain negative emotions but also share his soft and romantic side. Even when thousands of women are squished into a hot and impersonal stadium crowd, many still describe the encounter in terms of a "heart to heart." Considering Aa Gym as both celebrity preacher and personal brand contributes to an understanding of the production of religious authority and the moral economy of the preacher-disciple relationship. Kenneth M. George, in his book about Indonesian painter A. D. Pirous, asks readers to think about Pirous's paintings (and the stories about them) as "points of human encounter": "As he makes his way in his lifeworld, his works and ideas belong not just to him, but to others as well. They are the places where he is in expressive dialogue with predecessors and peers, with his nation, with ideas about art, and with God" (2010, 5). Likewise, we would do well to understand religious brands in terms of narrative, encounter, and exchange.
In this chapter I map out different moments of exchange — both affective and economic — between preacher and devotee, producer and consumer, brand and fantasy. This is not to pit "superficial" marketing against "authentic" religion but rather to better understand the ways in which knowledge and authority are constituted and contested within the preacher-disciple relationship and the marketplace of modernity. Religious branding is part of a broader framework of Islamization, corporatization, and privatization of post-authoritarian Indonesia. Even decidedly non-Islamic corporations tried to capitalize on the believed intimacy between preacher and disciple. For example, as part of an effort to thank its female customers for making the Mio the most popular motorcycle among Indonesian women, Yamaha partnered with MQTV to launch an eight-city customer relations tour, aptly titled "Touching the Heart with Love." Aa Gym was the headliner. A Japanese transnational corporation hires a celebrity preacher to market its women's motorcycle brand in terms of the heart. Religious branding in a neoliberal age.
Patrick Haenni (2005) and Daromir Rudnyckyj (2009a, 2010) advance the idea of "market Islam" as a way to understand religious practice in late capitalist modernity. In this reckoning, Islam is commensurable with market capitalism but not simply reducible to neoliberal logics (see also Hefner 2012; Nasr 2009; Osella and Osella 2009; Soares and Osella 2009). Without undercutting the importance of political and economic forces of privatization and liberalization in Indonesia, I am more interested in the marketing of Islam and its influence on dakwah, religious authority, and the preacher-disciple relationship. Aa Gym's religious authority in the public sphere was based on the story — the brand narrative — of Aa Gym as the master of his own heart and the embodiment of everyday ethics. In this chapter I reflect critically on how Aa Gym told his life history — in his autobiography, televised sermons, and everyday encounters — as a way to position himself as a public figure, to legitimate his claims to religious authority, and to cultivate the economic and affective allegiance of his followers.
Aa Gym's life story is not confined to a book or a video. It is a living history that he repeatedly narrates during his sermons and public appearances. For years, Aa Gym preached before stadium crowds by day and dined with politicians and Muslim leaders by night. On each occasion, he used examples from his own life to teach lessons about everyday ethics. Whether at dinner with the mayor of Padang, the governor of Central Kalimantan, or the ambassador of Afghanistan, Aa Gym made sure that an LCD projector was ready to screen an abridged, seven-minute version of his video autobiography. With microphone in hand, Aa Gym provided a live running commentary: "See, Pak. That was when I went scuba diving with the military special forces [Kopassus]. It really required concentration." When the video had finished, he would encourage applause and then begin a casual (but consistently routine) story about his life: humble roots; embracing Islam, family, and entrepreneurial ventures; and current success and happiness. After taking some questions, he would sing a couple of songs, often concluding with John Denver's "Country Road" (as a child, he often listened to his father's eight-track recordings of John Denver and other hits from the West). His advance team always made sure there was a karaoke keyboard ready and waiting, the song queued. I observed this sequence of events every time I accompanied Aa Gym on trips across Indonesia and each weekend at Daarut Tauhiid when he met with pilgrims and trainees. In this chapter I describe how Aa Gym built his personal brand and reflect on how it afforded a particular form of religious authority.
From Neighborhood Preacher to National Celebrity: The Political and Economic Contexts of Stardom
Aa Gym's rise to fame as a television preacher must be understood within the context of the easing of media restrictions during the latter years of the New Order regime (1965–1998). In 1975 Suharto introduced what would become known as the SARA doctrine, which, in effect, prohibited overt media discussion of four issues that the state viewed as capable of eroding nationalist sentiment: Suku (ethnicity); Agama (religion); Ras (race); and Antargolongan (social class). During most of Suharto's rule, Indonesia had only one television channel, the state-run TVRI. Only in 1987 were private channels permitted to operate, although program content was still heavily censored and had to promote the five pillars of the nationalist state ideology of Pancasila (van der Pool 2005, 11). During the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, Suharto embraced what he termed "cultural Islam" and endorsed the founding of an Islamic newspaper, Islamic bank, and the Association for Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI; George 1998; Hefner 2000). Thus, even though there may have been a market for Islamic programming during the Islamic revival of the 1980s, politics of state censorship restricted any political overtones of religious programming (van der Pool 2005, 16). Even state-run religious TV programs were largely confined, barren production sets with aging clerics discussing Islamic jurisprudence — a far cry from the extremely choreographed Islamic TV that emerged after Suharto's downfall.
In 1990 Aa Gym officially founded Daarut Tauhiid in the very neighborhood in which he grew up. What started as two rented rooms in 1990 would become a multi-million-dollar enterprise with over twenty businesses under the parent company, MQ Corporation. His popularity grew steadily during those first few years, and demand for his humorous and practical sermons grew beyond Bandung. In 1992, Time magazine in Asia referred to him as Indonesia's "Holy Man," and in 1993 he was featured on the cover of the respected Indonesian national weekly magazine Tempo. During the mid-1990s, Aa Gym realized that his popularity had caught the nervous attention of Suharto, Indonesia's authoritarian ruler who remained concerned about political Islam. Aa Gym and Daarut Tauhiid leaders gleefully recollected a story about Suharto's New Order government sending intelligence agents to spy on Aa Gym's sermons and activities. As the story goes, these intelligence officials inevitably realized that Aa Gym had nothing to hide, confessed to him about their covert activities, and asked for forgiveness.
These claims aside, Aa Gym surely knew that Suharto had jailed Muslim figures (such as Imaduddin Abdulrahim) whenever their popularity was deemed a threat to the New Order. Another one of Aa Gym's predecessors of sorts was Zaenuddin MZ, known as the "preacher with a million followers." He was a star in some of the earliest dakwah films of the 1980s and 1990s, often playing the wise senior elder with the moral authority to intervene and resolve conflict. However, Zaenuddin MZ's following sharply declined once he began to more explicitly engage in party politics. It was this sociopolitical context in which Aa Gym learned the value of publicly declaring himself apolitical. Even though Suharto stepped down in 1998, Aa Gym refused to openly declare his allegiance to any political party. Interestingly, he and his advisers referred to their ostensibly apolitical stance in terms of the English marketing parlance of "positioning." Even in 2006, when he mapped out a clearly political strategy to rally popular support for controversial anti-pornography legislation, Aa Gym reminded his closest advisers, "Our positioning is neutral. Our role is to calm national tensions and encourage respectful dialogue. That's it." Aa Gym was always cognizant of the positioning of his personal brand on the public stage, and he devoted special attention to be sure that he did not divide his following along political lines.
With the widespread proliferation and privatization of media during post–New Order Indonesia, television producers and advertisers enthusiastically embraced Islam-inspired programming and even organized special committees to Islamize their image. In the process, Islam accrued a certain market value. This was especially the case during Ramadan, when television preachers began to appear on nearly every channel. Aa Gym's preaching style was well suited to this medium. In 2000, Aa Gym had his national television debut on SCTV with the program Indahnya Kebersamaan (The beauty of togetherness). Aa Gym's appeal to togetherness, with its explicit focus not just on the Muslim community but on Indonesia as a diverse nation emerging from the grip of authoritarian rule, can be understood within the social-political milieu of post–New Order Indonesia. Suharto fell in 1998, but by 2000 the jubilant calls for reform (reformasi) had often given way to the realities of new political factions competing for power and money. As an ardent nationalist, Aa Gym genuinely wanted Indonesia to prosper, and he was troubled by the interreligious clashes in Indonesia in areas with a higher percentage of Christians, such as Central Sulawesi and the Moluccas. Despite sharp criticism from some conservative ulama, Aa Gym preached in a Christian church when conflict in Central Sulawesi — not inherently religious, but cast in terms of religion — resulted in widespread violence. The photograph is even included in his autobiography. As a marketer, Aa Gym had a keen understanding of how to increase his stature and moral authority by placing himself at the center of national events — clashes in Sulawesi, the 2002 bomb blast in Bali, and the 2004 tsunami in Aceh. Aa Gym was developing his public persona as the nation's therapist-in-chief, carefully weaving the personal through the political, and vice versa.
Although Aa Gym's television debut was in 2000, he solidified his standing as a national figure during a nationally broadcast sermon live from Istiqlal mosque in December 2001 when he was invited to preach before an audience that included politicians, foreign dignitaries, and then-President Megawati Sukarnoputri. As usual, he offered religious wisdom in the form of everyday anecdotes, humorous asides, and the occasional quotation, in Arabic, of passages from the Qur'an. Actually Aa Gym hardly spoke any Arabic, but he was well aware of the power of language, especially the capacity for a well-placed quote in Arabic to assert one's religious authority. Soon after this sermon "Aa Gym" was a household name throughout Indonesia.
With his newfound popularity, Aa Gym also began to parlay his celebrity status into political capital. In early 2003 he mobilized thousands of supporters to protest the impending American war in Iraq. With the vast majority of Indonesians against American imperialism in Muslim countries, Aa Gym could afford to be political when it concerned international affairs. In a clever marketing move, he asked attendees to paint their clothes in red, and, on his cue, everyone fell to the ground in an effort to simulate the needless deaths that would inevitably occur. This "die-in" proved to be a great photo-op for the evening news. More important, it caught the attention of foreign diplomats who were anxious to cultivate allies in the so-called war on terror. Aa Gym's autobiography includes his letter to President George W. Bush. With a strategic rhetorical style to which I return in Chapter 5 — he does not condemn America but instead invites America to act in accordance with purportedly noble values. It was an ethical summons. When Aa Gym refused to meet with Bush when he visited Bali for a few hours (a story Aa Gym loves to recount), General Colin Powell arranged to meet with Aa Gym, and Western diplomats began to visit Daarut Tauhiid as part of their official diplomatic circuit with Muslim leaders. Aa Gym had the shrewd ability to use his popularity to enter the political arena and, in turn, to seize such moments of political and moral debate to further advance his own standing and interests as both preacher and entrepreneur.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Rebranding Islam by James Bourk Hoesterey. Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents and AbstractsIntroduction: Authority, Subjectivity, and the Cultural Politics of Public Piety chapter abstractThe Introduction frames the book in terms of the anthropology of psychology and it within theoretical conversations concerning religious authority, Muslim subjectivity, and the cultural politics of public piety. It argues that Aa Gym garnered religious authority through adept use of media and the deliberate cultivation of his personal brand in the religious marketplace of modernity. His authority was marked by distinctive affective and economic relationships between preacher-producer and consuming devotees. It also argues that Islamic self-help psychology promotes models of personhood that are commensurate with, but cannot be reduced to, neoliberal logics of self-enterprise and democratic notions of civic virtue. Aa Gym also leveraged his public pulpit into political voice in an attempt to discipline state actors during the drafting of controversial anti-pornography legislation. The Introduction argues that scholarly understandings of political Islam must focus on popular culture, not simply electoral politics and formal institutions.
1Branding Islam: Autobiography, Authenticity, and Religious Authority chapter abstractKnown across the Indonesian archipelago as a shrewd entrepreneur, doting husband, and virtuous family man, Gymnastiar legitimated his claim to religious authority through his ability to market himself as the embodiment of Islamic virtue. This chapter///////
2Enchanting Science: Popular Psychology as Religious Wisdom chapter abstract3Ethical Entrepreneurs: Islamic Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism chapter abstract4Prophetic Cosmopolitanism: The Prophet Muhammad as Psycho-Civic exemplar chapter abstract5Shaming the State: Pornography and the Moral Psychology of Statecraft chapter abstract6Sincerity and Scandal: The Moral and Market Logics of Religious Authority chapter abstractConclusion: Figuring Islam: Popular Culture and the Cutting Edge of Public Piety chapter abstract