Sacred places are often understood primarily through their institutional ownership and formal religious functions. Less attention has been paid to how a sacred place associated with one religious tradition may acquire wider communal meaning without losing its particular religious identity. This study examines how Protestant, Muslim, and Catholic residents of Negeri Waraka interpret the Negeri Church and how collective memory, the Nazar Negeri, customary authority, and religious boundaries shape its social meaning. The study used a qualitative, focused ethnographic approach. Fieldwork was conducted in Waraka, Central Maluku, from December 2025 to January 2026 and involved 16 purposively selected participants, including customary authorities, religious leaders, village representatives, and residents from the three religious communities. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, open observer-as-participant fieldwork, field notes, photographs, and relevant documents and were analyzed thematically. The findings show that the church remains a Protestant liturgical space while also functioning as a material reference point for Waraka’s collective history and communal identity. The annual Nazar Negeri connects the Raja’s house and the church through differentiated participation: Protestant residents retain liturgical authority, whereas Muslim and Catholic residents participate through customary and civic roles. The continuity of this arrangement depends on collective memory and the mediating authority of the Raja, Saniri Negeri, and religious leaders. The Waraka case demonstrates that the communal significance of a sacred place does not require the erasure of religious boundaries. Instead, shared meaning is produced through negotiated participation, customary belonging, and the continuing recognition of religious difference.
Polygyny remains a contested religious and social practice in Indonesia, but research has rarely examined how a wife’s natal family participates in legitimizing a subsequent marriage. This article examines how a later-married wife and her natal family constructed “nobility” as a counter-narrative to stigma and how the charismatic authority of a kiai (Muslim religious leader) mediated their reception of Qur’an 4:3. The analysis draws on an interpretive qualitative single-case study conducted from January through early July 2026 in an anonymized Islamic study-circle community in West Java. Data were collected through participant observation and in-depth interviews with the wife, three members of her natal family, and three external informants. The material was coded manually and iteratively, then interpreted through the Living Qur’an perspective and Berger and Luckmann’s social constructionist framework of externalization, objectivation, and internalization. The findings show that “nobility” was externalized through material provision, redistribution, giving practices, and domestic hierarchy; objectivated through repeated narratives about religious knowledge, household provision, and social influence; and internalized through marital reasoning, forms of address, spatial conduct, and deference to religious authority. The family’s reception of Qur’an 4:3 was mediated primarily through accounts of the kiai’s biography rather than an observed formal exegesis of the verse. External informants questioned his marital conduct, the meaning of consent, and whether material prosperity constituted blessing. The case therefore shows that the natal family actively participated in producing marital legitimacy, although this construction remained contextual and contested rather than theologically conclusive or uniformly accepted.
Structured Qur’anic instruction in early childhood education can organize basic reading activities alongside recurring religious practices, classroom routines, and teacher discipline. This study examined the implementation of the Taisir Method at TK Ulumul Qur’an, the religious and social habituation observed among selected pupils, and the participating teacher’s reported pedagogical and religious practices within changing educational conditions. A qualitative descriptive case-study design was employed. Formal data collection was conducted in April 2026 through systematically recorded classroom observations, semistructured interviews with the principal and one teacher, naturalistic conversations with two purposively selected pupils, and analysis of learning records and school documents. The researcher’s prior engagement as a teacher at the school for approximately one academic year provided contextual familiarity with recurring instructional routines. The findings showed that the method organized Qur’anic instruction through the sequential stages of ra’a (seeing), sami’a (listening), and qara’a (reading), supported by small-group learning, collective repetition, individual recitation, gradual targets, and written progress monitoring. The selected pupils repeatedly participated in explicitly religious practices, including prayer and respectful greetings, as well as broader classroom routines involving orderly turn-taking and responsibility for learning materials. The participating teacher reported that the method provided a more systematic framework for lesson preparation, pronunciation modeling, individual evaluation, time management, patience, and religious modeling. The study concludes that, within the institution studied, the Taisir Method connected instructional organization, school-based religious and social habituation, and the participating teacher’s pedagogical practice.
Digital religion research has extensively examined online preaching, religious influencers, and changing religious authority, but less attention has been given to how digital platforms mediate collective ritual and reproduce the charisma of deceased religious leaders. This study examines how Majelis Rasulullah SAW uses digital platforms to mediate devotional performance, ritual participation, and the institutionalized charisma of its founder, Habib Munzir Al-Musawa. It employed a qualitative case study based on digital observation and limited offline participant observation conducted from February to May 2026. The digital dataset comprised approximately 130 Instagram posts, content from the organization’s official website, and the YouTube livestream and live-chat interactions associated with the Thirteenth Haul Akbar of Habib Munzir. The data were analyzed thematically using Weber’s concepts of charismatic authority and routinization, Joosse’s concept of charismatic aristocracy, and Campbell’s framework of networked religion. The findings show that the website primarily functions as an informational archive, whereas Instagram facilitates ritual mobilization, logistical coordination, and post-event circulation. YouTube enables geographically dispersed audiences to follow and respond to the ritual synchronously while making religious intermediaries and devotional performances publicly visible. However, engagement metrics and live-chat activity indicate visibility and participation rather than direct evidence of devotion or charismatic recognition. The study argues that Majelis Rasulullah’s digital presence represents selective platformization: official digital channels extend established offline rituals by selecting and circulating event information, ritual images, religious figures, and organizational messages while maintaining institutional control over communication. Platform-mediated charisma is therefore reproduced through commemorative ritual, visible intermediaries, organizational curation, and the convergence of online and offline participation.
Religious conversion involves ongoing negotiations of identity, social relationships, religious practice, and life meaning. Although previous studies have examined Chinese Indonesian converts and the spiritual dimensions of Umrah, little is known about how converts retrospectively connect pilgrimage experiences with post-conversion difficulties and everyday life. This study examines how Chinese Indonesian Muslim converts interpreted significant experiences during Umrah and related them to reported changes in life meaning. It used a qualitative descriptive design with an interpretive orientation. Five participants were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. Data were collected from January to March 2026 through three synchronous online semi-structured interviews and two written responses based on the same open-ended guide and were then analyzed thematically. Two themes were identified. First, participants interpreted encounters at sacred sites through awe, crying, calmness, surrender, perceived closeness to God, and perceived divine assistance. Second, they connected these experiences with greater acceptance of adversity, religious confidence, continued religious learning, and changes in worship or everyday conduct. These accounts were embedded in earlier family disagreement, social pressure, and identity negotiation, and their depth varied across participants. Umrah therefore appeared as a symbolic and emotional reference point within continuing meaning-making rather than as an independent cause of psychological recovery or uniform long-term transformation. The study contributes an interpretive account of how pilgrimage memories, conversion histories, religious identity, and social relationships intersect in the post-conversion narratives of Chinese Indonesian Muslims.
