Andrée Feillard: Du messianisme au dépassement de la « religion ». La voie de Salamullah dans l’Indonésie du XXIe siècle

In 1997, Lia Aminuddin, head of the Salamullah community and former presenter of a TV programme about floral arrangement, announced that she had received a revelation: Jibril (the archangel Gabriel in the Koran) was speaking to her, relaying God’s messages. Although her following has been limited, its impact has been amplified by modern internet techniques. She was put on trial in 2006 together with the group’s Muslim intellectual, Abdul Rahman, whom she considers to be the reincarnation of Muhammad and also the Imam Mahdi, so says the revelation.

This paper analyzes Lia’s teachings and the group’s religious and political actions in their context. Salamullah, later named Eden, cannot be dissociated from the Archipelago’s history, neither from influence of the large Reformist organization Muhammadiyah, nor from the post-Soeharto transition, with its ruptures and shocks, following 32 years of political immobilism. Salamullah may have started as a Sufi-like movement, including magical curing practices, but it has evolved into a messianic group highly concerned with the nation’s future. Just as small messianic movements were often “safety valves” (soupapes) to Dutch oppression in the 19th and early 20th century, to borrow Denys Lombard's expression,  so Salamullah/Eden seems to function as a “safety valve” in view of a rigidification of religious norms, which have translated into religion-related violence in Indonesia at the dawn of the 21st Century.