Performing Islam in an Urbanizing Periphery: Mekar Jaya, Wayang Kulit, and Cultural Preaching in Eastern Bekasi, 1990–2000

Abstract

This article reconstructs how a family tradition of wayang kulit performance became a locally organized repertoire of Islamic preaching in eastern Bekasi between 1990 and 2000. It argues that Mekar Jaya did not simply convert an inherited art into a religious instrument. Its historical importance lay in a gradual process of institutionalization in which household transmission, informal leadership, notarial recognition, performance technique, and audience-sensitive language were assembled into a durable cultural practice. The decisive shift occurred in 1994, when dalang Sukarlana Nemit Putra recalled beginning to insert Islamic messages consistently without replacing the classical narrative structure. Dialogue, dalang narration, punakawan humor, symbolism, suluk, and gamelan enabled messages concerning prayer, honesty, justice, family responsibility, solidarity, and tolerance to circulate within entertainment. The study applies the historical method, consisting of heuristics, external and internal source criticism, interpretation, and historiography. Its main evidence comprises 2025 oral-history interviews, a photographed notarial cover dated to 1996, a later operational recommendation, material objects, and scholarship on Bekasi wayang. Source criticism addresses two important problems in the evidence. Mustika Jaya, Mustika Sari, and Cimuning are treated as eastern Bekasi localities rather than three 1990s districts, and the number printed beneath the notary’s name is not presented as the deed number. The article also distinguishes evidence of deliberate preaching from retrospective claims about religious change. Mekar Jaya’s contribution was therefore not a measurable conversion effect, but the creation of a culturally translated Islamic vocabulary whose reach remained contingent on language, duration, dalang credibility, economic conditions, and competition from modern media.