Taking Sufism to the streets : majelis zikir and majelis salawat as new venues for popular Islamic piety in Indonesia

This article identifies the institutional and social origins of a newly prominent type of vehicle for the promotion of Islamic piety. This makes rituals associated with the Sufi heritage the central foci of group gatherings and personal practice. These are the majelis salawat and majelis zikir. Two urban and one rural majelis (associations) that are highly popular and use both salawat and zikir rituals provide the case material for this investigation. Distinctive structural features of these majelis distinguish them from traditional Sufi orders and enable them to serve Indonesians responding to modern social pressures for geographic mobility and loosened ties to kin and local community. There is also distinctive conceptual framing and ritual deployment of the sawalat and zikir rituals by the habaib preachers who commonly lead the urban majelis salawat and by the kiai who leads the rural majelis, which considers the appeal of those usages of salawat and zikir for the groups' largely non-elite followings.