Wali Pitu And Muslim Pilgrimage In Bali, Indonesia

This ethnographic book deals with the emergence of the Wali Pitu (seven saints) tradition and Muslim pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia. It touches upon the issues of translocal connectivity between Java and Bali, Islam-Hindu relationship, relations between Muslim groups, and questions of authority and authenticity of saint worship tradition.

Besides, it offers a new perspective on Bali, seeing the island as a site of cultural motion straddling in between Islam and Hinduism with complexities of local figurations, and belongings of ‘Muslim Balinese’. The study also urges the intricate relationship between religion and tourism, between devotion and economy, and shows that the Wali Pitu tradition has facilitated the transgression of spatial and cultural boundaries.

Syaifudin Zuhri is a lecturer at State Islamic University of Sayyid Ali Rahmatullah/UIN SATU and a former research fellow at Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies/BGSMCS. He graduated from the State Islamic University of Sunan Kalijaga, majoring in Sociology of Religion (2005) and obtained his Master Degree in Islamic Studies at Leiden University (2009). In 2018, he finished his doctoral studies at Humboldt University of Berlin specialising in Southeast Asian studies.