Vu de Kudus : l'islam à Java

A view of Kudus : Islam in Java M. Bonneff In Kudus, a small town on the north coast of central Java, the pious Muslims of the old quarter of "Minaret" constitute an original type of community. These santri exhibit an archaic devotion to their "saint" which represents a testimony to the strong historic consciousness specific to this region (the Pasisirj where the islamization of Java began in the 15 th century. It is from this group that the first manufacturers o/krètèk (cigarettes with cloves) originated, who made Kudus into a bastion of the "indigenous" economy at the time of Dutch colonization. Little by little, entrepreneurs of Chinese extraction were able to usurp the control over this production because the santri were not sufficiently well organized, nor did they possess — beyond a common religious ideal — an effective class consciousness. The case of Kudus provides us with a view of Islam which is somewhat different from that to which we are accustomed — i.e., one which makes global judgments for all Javanese regions as viewed from the principal centers of the island in which the model is excessively "Javanized". In the case of Kudus one has a greater appreciation of the specific role and its limits.Bonneff Marcel. Vu de Kudus : l'islam à Java. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 35ᵉ année, N. 3-4, 1980. pp. 801-815