Misinterpretation of patience : an analytical study of nerimo concept within Indonesian Muslim society

This research aims to deeply explore the nerimo concept in Javanese Muslim society. Nerimo, as a philosophy of Javanese culture, is often associated with the concept of patience in Islamic doctrine. This research shows that there is a misconceived understanding and practice among the Javanese Muslim regarding the concept of nerimo and patience. They tend to explain nerimo and patience as a practice of passivity, static, and blind submission to all problems of life. This causes the values contained in those concepts to be reduced and lose the spirit of liberation for the life of mankind. By employing a liberation hermeneutics approach and sociological analysis, this research concludes that the nerimo concept in Javanese Muslim could indeed be reconstructed into a Javanese idea that implies human endurance in every period of life. The concepts of nerimo and patience are alternately a form of psychological, spiritual, and intellectual awareness of every life having a periodic motion, in which every person will certainly experience life fluctuations. Then the principle of patience and nerimo become a catalyst for the position of life to turn it back into motion. Patience and nerimo, therefore, are not placed as results but are situated as the power of a continuity life process that is able to drive people to surpass one stage of their lives.