THE APOTHEOSIS OF SITI KHOTIJAH: ISLAM AND MUSLIMS IN A BALINESE GALACTIC POLITY

Abstract

This article seeks to describe the way in which Gusti Ayu Made Rai, an eighteenth-century Balinese princess from Badung became Raden Ayu Siti Khotijah, one Indonesia’s few widely recognized female Muslim saints. In so doing I develop an alternative reading of the dynamics of the history of religion in Bali, countering the common view that it is a static monolithically Hindu tradition. Rather than turning inward as the surrounding areas embraced Islam, Balinese kingdoms sought to include Muslims and elements of Islam in scared narratives and geographies. Two distinct theoretical approaches are used in this analysis: the structural approach to indigenous Southeast Asian states pioneered by Robert Heine-Geldern in the early decades of the twentieth century and the performative approach to ritual studies developed by Victor Turner in the 1970s.