Introduction

I met Fatima at a Shi‘a educational centre in Yogyakarta, on the Indonesian island of Java, while she was studying international relations at the prestigious Gadjah Mada University. Fatima is now in her late twenties, and her life encapsulates the many facets of Indonesia's Shi‘a communities. She grew up in Bengkulu, a small town on the western coast of Sumatra, as her father taught at the local university, and led the Shi‘a community there. After completing secondary school, Fatima moved to Pekalongan, in Central Java, to enrol at the Shi‘a religious school pesantren Al-Hadi. Her brother, also an Al-Hadi alumnus, is now one of the teachers there. A couple of years after we had met, Fatima had moved to Jakarta, where she prepared to further her studies in political sciences at Tehran University. Her sister had by then been admitted to the Jami‘at Al-Mustafa in Qom.

In what follows I pull some of the threads hinted at above, each originating in a specific ‘place’ – understood both as a physical location and as a point on the moral geographies of Shi‘a Islam – in order to uncover the relationship between Indonesia's devotees of the ahl al-bayt and Iran's role in propagating a set paradigm of rituality. Analysing Shi‘a educational institutions and Muharram rituals in Java and Western Sumatra, this contribution shows how although not all of Indonesia Shi‘ites feel a connection to the Islamic Republic of Iran, one way or another, the vast majority of Shi‘a-inclined institutions feel compelled to display such a connection.

Pekalongan

Aware of my interest in Shi‘a Islam, Fatima suggested I visit pesantren Al-Hadi, and thanks to her brother's position there, I was welcome to spend time with pupils, teachers and their families. This turned out to be the first stop of a ten-day whirlwind immersion in a network of Shi‘a educational centres across Java (itself the first of many Muharram cycles); each centre was connected to the next by kinship, marriage or student–teacher relation, letting surface a tightly knit community.

It is the third night of Muharram, in 1431 AH /2009 ce. I am standing in the courtyard at Al-Hadi, and as I wait to be received, nothing strikes me as any different from the (Sunni) pesantrens I have visited before.