Revisiting the Javanese Muslim Slametan: Islam, Local Tradition, Honor and Symbolic Communication

Slametan, referring to a broad communal prayer, feast, and food-offering to commemorate or celebrate critical live cycles, such as birth, marriage, and death, constitutes an essential ritual for Javanese Muslims. Despite growing Islamization, in which this ritual is often renamed as tahlilan, elements of local beliefs in it remain. This study aims to re-examine the Javanese Muslim death ritual tradition and offers a new interpretation. It explores the elements of local belief and its convergence with the universal Islamic teaching and demonstrates that the Javanese norms fit the fundamental Islamic doctrines, rendering this ritual easily acceptable by the Javanese. This study concurs with the previous studies stating that this ritual paves tolerance and social integration and unites Islam and local…