Ijia Article p203 - 5

International Journal of
Islam in Asia 2 (2021) 203–231

brill.com/ijia
Cosmopolitan Imagery: Prestigious Connections

to the World in Contemporary Muslim and
Christian Indonesian Pilgrimage Pictures
Mirjam Lücking | orcid: 0000-0002-2933-6056
Martin Buber Society of Fellows, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Mount Scopus, 9190501 Jerusalem, Israel
mirjam.lucking@mail.huji.ac.il
Abstract
Travel following religious aims has a long tradition in the Indonesian-Malay Archi-
pelago. Yet mass overseas religious tourism is a relatively recent phenomenon among
people in today’s Indonesia. A variety of travel agencies advertise pilgrimage package
tours to notable destinations like Mecca and Medina but also to other destinations in
the Middle East, Europe, East Asia, and Central Asia. An analytical focus on various
images in this context, including their creation and distribution, reveals patterns of
prestigious cosmopolitan middle-class imagery among Muslim and Christian Indone-
sians in the field of religious tourism. This imagery is similar across different religious
affiliations and particularly vibrant in online social media. The imagery challenges per-
ceptions of interreligious divisions and hegemonic mappings of the world, ultimately
centralizing the local social environment of people and exhibiting national Indone-
sian pride.
Keywords
Indonesia – Muslim–Christian relations – middle class – social media – selfies –

imagery – tourism – pilgrimage – cosmopolitanism
1 Introduction: Vernacular Cosmopatriotism
An Indonesian participant in an al-Aqsa pilgrimage package tour pulls out

his phone to take a selfie in front of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and
explains to me: “If I haven’t taken a photo in Jerusalem, it’s like I haven’t
Published with license by Koninklijke Brill NV | doi:10.1163/25899996-20223008
© Mirjam Lücking, 2023 | ISSN: 2589-9988 (print) 2589-9996 (online)
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been there” (May 2019). While accompanying Indonesian travel groups in

and around Jerusalem in 2018 and 2019 for research on pilgrimage tourism,1
I learned that taking photos and posting them on social media is essential in
the religious journeys of Indonesians. The above-quoted statement indicates
that a selfie is proof of “having been there” for oneself and others. However,
I found that the overall imagery in the context of contemporary Indonesian pil-
grimage tourism is more than a reminder or proof of presence at a famous holy
site. It is also a communicative field of representing the world and one’s place
within it – like other forms of visuality, pilgrimage imagery in advertisements
and photographs is a form of mediation (cf. Strassler 2020, 12, 20). Part and
parcel of pilgrims’ mediations of self-representation is their class affiliation.
Considering the cost of overseas travel from Indonesia, visual representations
of connections to the world are prestigious. Strikingly, the visual motifs and
practices among Muslim and Christian travelers from Indonesia are quite simi-
lar. Thus, in this article, I analyze the making and sharing of images in contem-
porary Muslim and Christian pilgrimage travel from Indonesia to the Middle
East, mainly in advertisements and photography. Through this analysis I relate
to the broader discussion in this special issue, namely the different forms of
(Muslim) cosmopolitanism in the Malay-Indonesian world. I specifically dis-
cuss what form of cosmopolitanism pilgrimage tourism imagery constitutes.
As discussed by Amanda tho Seeth in this issue, Islam in Southeast Asia is
often seen as cosmopolitan and inclusive, both in emic and etic understand-
ings. While tho Seeth discusses the meanings of cosmopolitanism among
Muslim intellectuals, my case study on guided package tours considers cos-
mopolitan imagery among ordinary Indonesians. My attention to this cos-
mopolitan imagery results from an ongoing research project on Muslim and
Christian tourism from Indonesia to Jerusalem. While on a narrative level, pil-
grimages to Jerusalem are framed in the context of spiritual gains, religious
affiliation as Muslim or Christian, and in reference to the Israel–Palestine
conflict, practical components of the journeys reveal remarkable similarities
between Indonesians of different religious affiliations. Beyond alignments
and de-alignments with Israel and Palestine, or religious affiliations as Muslim
or Christian, including any sub-stream of Islam and Christianity, Indonesian
tourist pilgrims in today’s guided religious package tours engage with presti-
gious cosmopolitan imagery that communicates class affiliation, piety, and
modernity to peers back home in Indonesia.
1 The terms “tourism” and “pilgrimage” are used interchangeably here, following the emic use
of both terms as synonyms and the scholarly observation of the amalgamation between tour-
ism and pilgrimage.
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Cosmopolitan Imagery 205
The relevant representations of cosmopolitanism are vernacular. While on

the one hand, the term “vernacular cosmopolitanism” has been used to draw
attention to cosmopolitanisms that emerge from marginal everyday experi-
ences rather than extravagant sojourns (Bhabha 2004; Werbner 2006a; 2006b),
on the other hand Pnina Werbner (2006b, 497) has shown that class identity
does not determine the character of cosmopolitanism per se and vernacular
cosmopolitanism is not only created from marginal positions. Important fea-
tures of “vernacular cosmopolitanisms,” according to Werbner and Bhabha, are
their processual formation, a local rootedness, and integration into everyday
experiences, and a plurality of centers. Yet within these everyday references to
the world among Indonesian pilgrims, there are hierarchies between multiple
centers and, in fact, the home context of pilgrims, Indonesia, is often seen as
being at the top of this hierarchy, as I shall show with reference to interviews
and observations which correspond with Martin Slama’s (2020) analysis of
how the concept of Islam Nusantara (Islam of the Archipelago) is imagined
and presented as a center in the social media activities of Indonesia’s larg-
est Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama.2 Obviously, the national pride
of Indonesian pilgrims relates to historical and contemporary discourses on
national and religious identities. I shall specify the local rootedness of the ver-
nacular cosmopolitan imagery of Indonesian pilgrims though the concept of
“cosmopatriotism” coined by Jeroen de Kloet and Edwin Jurriëns (2007), con-
sequently speaking about “vernacular cosmopatriotism.” In reference to Ong’s
(1999) observations on flexible citizenship and Appiah’s (1997) arguments on
a combination of local rootedness and international sophistication, de Kloet
and Jurriëns (2007, 13) define cosmopatriots as flexible citizens who “navigate –
in some cases voluntarily, in other cases forced by circumstances – between
their ironic loyalty to the state and their sense of longing for and belonging to
the world.”
Most Indonesians who travel in guided religious package tours to interna-
tional destinations are members of the middle classes and thus they are “in the
middle” rather than at the edges of society, they are not at the top, nor at the
bottom. They are not the “affluent world citizens” (de Kloet and Jurriëns 2007,
10) that are commonly associated with elitist cosmopolitan jet-setters but ordi-
nary people who travel via guided mass package tourism. Moreover, most of
2 The “inward-looking” approach of presentations of Indonesian centrality follows previous

patterns of imagining centers and authorities in Indonesia (Slama 2020, 293). For a further
analysis of the differences in representations of cosmopolitanism among Nahdlatul Ulama
and Indonesia’s second largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah, see tho Seeth in this
issue.
International Journal of Islam in Asia 2 (2021) 203–231

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206 Lücking
the participants in these tours are women. Their position within Indonesian
society is not as marginal as is the case for other examples of vernacular cos-
mopolitanisms, for instance regarding labor migrants, but they are also often
not at the center of power and influence. Accordingly, the concept of “vernacu-
lar cosmopolitanism” or “vernacular cosmopatriotism” is suitable here since
the discussed imagery is not the result of a conscious intellectual discourse on
cosmopolitanism, as in the contribution by tho Seeth in this issue, but rather
an everyday trend in religious lifestyles that goes beyond the sphere of travel.
My analysis of imagery includes photography, travel advertisements, and
social media representations and shows how Muslim and Christian Indonesian
pilgrims and travel agents connect religious destinations abroad to their
Indonesian home context. Carla Jones (2021, 172) observes notions of “domes-
ticating foreignness” in her research on foreign converts to Islam who have
become Instagram celebrities in Indonesia, showing that processes of integrat-
ing foreign features into Indonesian everyday life are not only relevant for the
field of tourism. Considering this observation, I relate my analysis to the more
general “turn towards the visual” (Spyer 2022, 19) in Indonesia, among other
things building on findings by Strassler (2020) and Spyer (2022) and examining
evidence on the current relevance of online social media.
The discussion of imagery includes anthropological research perspectives
on peoples’ making, understanding, and distribution of imagery and departs
from participant observation, informal conversations, and interviews during
ethnographic research with Indonesian pilgrims and travel agents, which took
place from January 2018 until February 2020. While accompanying Indonesian
travel groups in Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories in the West Bank,
I also interviewed their Palestinian and Israeli counterparts, for instance travel
agents for incoming tourism, tour guides, and bus drivers. Moreover, during
two research visits to Indonesia from July to August 2018 and in August 2019,
I was able to conduct follow-up interviews with several travel agents and pil-
grims in their everyday lives in Jakarta, Central Java, and East Java, understand-
ing how their religious travel, and the visual documentation thereof, matter in
the home contexts of people in Indonesia and learning more about the offers
of travel agencies regarding destinations other than Jerusalem, including Cen-
tral Asia and Europe. The collection and analysis of images and social media
activities continued during the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought a halt to
tourism to Israel from March 2020 onward.
Before I describe and analyze advertisements and photography in the field
of religious tourism, I shall give an example of how the making and circulation
of imagery relates to (imagined) centers and peripheries, as the following rep-
resentations of Jerusalem and Indonesia show.

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2 The Religious Centrality of Indonesia and the Middle East
A world map from 1581 by the German theologian Heinrich Bünting shows
Jerusalem at the center of the world. With the so-called Clover Leaf Map,
Bünting did not attempt to offer a geographically precise representation of
the world but an ideational one. This mental map shows the centrality of
Jerusalem as a religious center, surrounded by the continents Europe, Asia,
and Africa, depicted as leaves of a clover around the center. The continents
are enclosed by the sea, England and Denmark are located above the clover
leaf labeled as Europe and America is located at the left corner of the map.
Obviously, this map represents a sixteenth-century European worldview and
yet the map remains popular as a symbol of Jerusalem’s global centrality, and
today, a mosaic model of the map can be seen in front of Jerusalem’s town hall.
Similarly, various forms of visuality in Indonesia can be seen as practices of
“world making” (Spyer 2022, 10; Strassler 2020, 15). In her analysis of “image
events,” Karen Strassler (2020, 13) argues that images are not static but must be
seen as events, performative acts and political happenings that relate to cer-
tain demands. In a similar way, Patricia Spyer (2022) shows for imagery in pub-
lic spaces in the Moluccan islands, in particular in the urban space of Ambon,
how large posters of Christ emerged in the context of Muslim–Christian civil
war and in the course of the downfall of the Suharto regime. Both Spyer and
Strassler emphasize the shift from an authoritarian control of visual depic-
tions in newspapers, television, and public spaces during the Suharto era to
new freedom and liberalization of media since the process of democratization
and decentralization, also known as Reformasi, started in 1998. Moreover, both
authors mainly focus on public spaces and on posters, murals, and advertise-
ments but they also acknowledge the increasing importance of the internet.
While Spyer and Strassler analyze visuals in relation to different examples of
socio-political tension in Indonesia, the examples of pilgrimage imagery in the
article at hand stem from the sphere of religious consumption and lifestyles.
As part of the new freedoms since Indonesia’s democratization process, reli-
giosity is expressed more openly in public and private spheres. Religious tour-
ism is one trend in the vibrant field of religious lifestyles in Indonesia that
have been described much more in relation to the Islamic context than other
religions in Indonesia. Since Jerusalem is a shared destination for Muslim and
Christian Indonesians, it is an interesting case study to juxtapose Muslim and
Christian travel advertisements and documentation. Even though some travel
discourses might appear competitive or conflictive, the division between
Muslim and Christian travel agents and travelers is far from the context of con-
flict that Spyer describes for post-civil war Ambon. Nevertheless, it is worth

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considering the different meanings of Jerusalem in Muslim and Christian

Indonesian world-makings.
Jerusalem is the city of the first and second Jewish temples, it is related to
the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and home to al-Aqsa Mosque, the
“farthest mosque” that the Prophet Muhammad visited during a night jour-
ney. These places (or their remains) of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim history
have become famous pilgrimage destinations, including the Western Wall, the
Via Dolorosa, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and the al-Aqsa Mosque com-
pound with the Dome of the Rock, in Jerusalem – or al-Quds, the holy one.
In addition to the hajj and ʿumra, the obligatory and voluntary pilgrimages
to Mecca and Medina respectively, Muslims relate to al-Aqsa Mosque as a third
holiest place in Islam and according to a hadith by al-Bukhari, pilgrimage to
al-Aqsa is recommended, even though Muslim clerics have controversially dis-
cussed whether Muslims should perform pilgrimages to al-Aqsa ever since the
commencement of Israeli rule over Jerusalem.3
In Indonesia, the longing to perform the hajj is reflected in the decades-
long waiting lists, which are administered by the Indonesian Ministry of
Religious Affairs. Meanwhile, international travel has become affordable to
larger numbers of Indonesian citizens and among the growing middle classes,
religious travel is especially widespread. Due to hajj waiting periods of up to
30 years, many people sign up for the minor pilgrimage to Mecca, the ʿumra,
and for other religious trips, like al-Aqsa pilgrimage tours. For the Indonesian
Christian tourism market, travels to Jerusalem have become an equivalent of
the hajj and some interviewees jokingly said that the tour is their “Christian
hajj.” Furthermore, the travel industry for religious journeys is flourishing also
for incoming tourism.
A poster from the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism labels Indonesia as
the “Kiblat Wisata Halal Dunia,” the World Halal Tourist Qibla (Indonesian
Ministry of Communication 2018). The qibla, the direction of prayer in Islam,
is oriented towards the Kaʿba in Mecca. Thus, in contrast to daily prayers, for
international incoming tourism, Indonesia is presented as the qibla, or “direc-
tion.” The poster advertises Indonesia’s achievements in the World Halal
Tourism Awards in 2015 and 2016, during which, among other things, the Island
of Lombok won best honeymoon destination, Garuda Indonesia won best air-
line, West Sumatra won best culinary destination and Aceh won best cultural
3 As an example, in 2012 Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
issued a fatwa against foreign visits to al-Aqsa while the president of the Palestinian
Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, encouraged foreign Muslims to visit Jerusalem.

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destination. The concept of “halal” has clearly entered the tourism industry,
labeling destinations, hotels, airlines, and activities that can be considered
as halal, or permissible, according to Islamic law even though the respective
product offer does not always use the term in combination with an official cer-
tification. In fact, several interviewees from the tourism sector argue that the
halal label can be seen as a marketing label rather than an official legal cat-
egory. Wisata halal, or halal tourism, is a booming business.
It is not only for tourism that Indonesia is presented as the central direction
(qibla). In the modest fashion industry, Indonesia is likewise described as qibla
(Jones 2021, 182) and in intellectual thought, the archipelago is celebrated as a
qibla for Islamic moderation (Jones 2021, 181; Slama 2020, 283).
Thus Indonesian pilgrims and travel agents locate Jerusalem, Mecca, and
their own country as multiple centers on a mental map. However, as I shall
show for the following examples of cosmopolitan imageries, there are certain
hierarchies within these mental maps and Indonesia’s centrality ranks highly
in visual world-makings. Jerusalem is seen as a center but not the center of the
world, like in the Bünting clover leaf map or other Eurocentric views of the
world. In fact, the own country of pilgrims, Indonesia, appears to be a more
relevant reference point than other centers. Furthermore, there are differing
evaluations in the references of Indonesians to religious centers in the Middle
East and other destinations in Asia and Europe.
3 Contemporary Indonesian Religious Tourism
Until the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, international religious travel

had become more and more widespread in Indonesia with the new wealth
of the urban middle classes allowing more people to travel. I had noticed this
trend during previous research on labor migration and Mecca pilgrimages
(Lücking 2020a) and it is part of an overall consumption-oriented Islamic life-
style (see among others Jones 2018; Fealy 2008).
When Christian Indonesians heard about my interest in Mecca pilgrimages,
several of them explained that for them a so-called “Holy Land Pilgrimage” in
the footsteps of Jesus, to Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and the Galilee, was an equiva-
lent to the hajj of their Muslim compatriots: a once-in-a-lifetime experience
that promised meaningful spiritual gain, was full of blessings, and offered a
pilgrimage community. At the same time, I noticed that some Muslim travel
agencies also offered tours to Jerusalem. Thus, I entered the research field
in Jerusalem through Indonesian channels and even the interviews with

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Palestinian and Israeli people who work in the tourism industry often took
place in Bahasa Indonesia, as several local tour guides enthusiastically guide in
the mother tongue of their customers.
In January 2018, I accompanied an Indonesian Catholic pilgrimage group
for the first time. The group had arrived in Cairo, crossed the Sinai Peninsula,
and entered Israel via the southern border crossing between Israel and Egypt.
Their first stop in the Holy Land was the Bethlehem area, with the Church
of the Nativity, the milk grotto, and the shepherds’ fields. In Jerusalem they
enacted the way of the cross, carrying a large wooden cross on the Via Dolorosa,
prayed at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in the Church of All Nations at
the Gethsemane Garden, and on the Mount of Olives. Their journey contin-
ued north to Nazareth and numerous places around the Sea of Galilee that
are related to the life of Jesus. After one week in Israel and the West Bank,
the group crossed into Jordan to take a flight back to Jakarta. This itinerary
recurred when accompanying further Christian groups, which mostly adver-
tise their tours as Holy Land Pilgrimages to Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, ranging
between 10 and 14 days and costing around 2,500 USD.
During this first encounter with an Indonesian Catholic pilgrimage group,
I met Basuki,4 one of the owners of a Catholic travel agency from Jakarta.
Basuki explained that his family business had been bringing Indonesian
Catholics to the region for more than forty years and that apart from business,
this was a service to the community and to God, supporting believers in con-
necting to holy places and strengthening their faith (personal communica-
tion, January 2018). During a visit to Jakarta, Basuki’s father, the founder of the
travel agency, underlined the religious motivations for his family business. In
addition to personal spiritual growth, he considered supporting Christianity
and alliance with Israel important measures in the global fight against, as he
put it, “radical Islam” (personal communication, August 2018). Support for
Christianity is also manifested through material objects in the Holy Land.
Some of the longstanding Christian Indonesian travel agencies have spon-
sored artwork in the Holy Land, for instance murals of the Lord’s Prayer in
Bahasa Indonesia and other languages of the archipelago, such as Javanese
and Sundanese, which can be found in the Pater Noster Church on the Mount
of Olives and a statue of the Virgin Mary in the Church of the Annunciation
in Nazareth (photo 1). These objects connect Indonesian Christians to global
Christianity and create traces of home at the distant holy sites.
4 All names of research participants are pseudonyms.

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Photo 1 Indonesian artwork at holy sites abroad: The Lord’s Prayer in Bahasa Indonesia at
the Pater Noster Church on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem
Photo by the author

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According to Israeli and Palestinian interviewees in the tourism sector, the

majority of Indonesian tourist arrivals in Israel up to the beginning of the
Covid-19 pandemic, approximately 70 per cent, consisted of Christian groups
who have been coming to Israel since the 1980s, despite the lack of diplomatic
relations between Indonesia and Israel.5 However, Muslim travel agents in
Jerusalem and Indonesia emphasized that the smaller percentage of Muslim
groups is growing faster and that more and more Indonesian Muslims want
to perform a pilgrimage to al-Aqsa Mosque as people become more and more
interested in Palestine, which is also evident in the research of Silvia Wolf (in
this issue).
My first encounters with Muslim Indonesian groups occurred as a side-
effect of accompanying Christian Indonesian groups, since their Muslim com-
patriots often stayed in the same hotels and ate in the same restaurants. Indeed,
even their itineraries did not differ much. Like for Christian groups, in almost
all Muslim tour packages the visit to Jerusalem is combined with stopovers in
Egypt and Jordan, also because of logistical reasons and flight connections. In
travel advertisements, Muslim tours are often advertised as “Excursion to the
Lands of the Prophets” (Napak Tilas di Bumi Para Nabi) in Egypt, Palestine,
and Jordan. Consequently, in addition to al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of
the Rock, important sites of visitation are tombs or symbolic gravesites (ceno-
taphs) of the Prophet Musa (Moses) near Jericho, Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham)
in Hebron, and some Christian sites that are of interest to Muslim pilgrims in
reference to Jesus as Prophet ʿIsa in Islam.
Inayah, a Muslim travel agent whom I met several times in Jerusalem and in
Jakarta, argued that her business supports the Palestinian cause. She expressed
her shock that the al-Aqsa compound was so empty compared to the Holy
Mosque in Mecca, which is always filled with life, surrounded by pilgrims day
and night. She asked me and her Jerusalemite business partners why al-Aqsa
Mosque was so empty and whether the people living in the area did not care to
visit it (personal communication April 2018). Her Jerusalemite business part-
ner said that, indeed, the younger generation of Palestinians in Jerusalem did
not visit the site much but that the quietness at al-Aqsa was also caused by
the site’s sensitive security status and the fact that most of the Muslim popu-
lation from the surrounding areas – from Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, and
Egypt – cannot enter Jerusalem easily because an Israeli permit or visa is hard
to obtain. In later conversations, Inayah repeated her wish to fill Jerusalem
5 Even though there are no diplomatic relations between Israel and Indonesia the countries
have agreed on visa arrangements for guided group tourism in both directions.

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with Muslim life, arguing that Indonesians should make use of the opportu-
nity to visit the place.
Several Christian and Muslim Indonesian groups use different country
names, Israel or Palestine, to refer to the region and express solidarity with one
or the other side, like Inayah or Basuki’s father. In this sense, they relate to a
broader Muslim and Christian community, which could indeed be seen as cos-
mopolitan identification beyond nationality, as members of the global umma
for instance. However, most average pilgrimage participants do not have a
political agenda and, in fact, the practical components of the pilgrimage, as
well as the overall lifestyle that accompanies it, create a rather general sense
of vernacular cosmopolitanism or cosmopatriotism. Images often express con-
nectedness to the world but, as I shall show in the following analysis, what
is most important is what this lifestyle-cosmopolitanism means in the home
context of pilgrims, for instance, as a marker of affluence and of piety.
Moreover, in addition to modern lifestyle features, the contemporary reli-
gious tours create continuities with domestic travel traditions in Indonesia,
such as the custom of praying at gravesites, the transfer of blessings, and the
combination of fun, entertainment, recreation, and devotion. I have shown
this for ritual practices (Lücking 2021a), eating preferences (Lücking 2021b),
and shopping activities (Lücking 2020b). Images are another example of the
practical components of pilgrimage. Apart from the visual content of images,
it is fun to take photos together. Making, sharing and looking at images is a
social event within a general trend towards online communication and visual-
ity (cf. Spyer 2022, 30; Strassler 2020, 13).
4 Holy Lands in Tourism Advertisements
In an interview with an Indonesian travel agent from the travel agency Cheria
Wisata,6 I learned that corporate design and the overall visual language is cru-
cial in the advertisement strategies of travel agencies. He explained that his
travel agency is easily recognizable for customers because of an advertisement
style of simple digital illustrations in a corporate design. In addition to these
illustrations, his company uses photographs of previous tours and photographs
of the travel destinations (personal communication, August 2018).
6 Since the advertisements are public, the descriptions in this article refer to the actual names
of travel agencies with their consent, rather than anonymizing them like for the names of
individual interviewees.

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Image 1
Cheria Wisata advertisement: a colorful collage of
multiple destinations around the world
Use of the image permitted by Cheria
Wisata
Like Cheria Wisata, most travel agencies have a logo and corporate design.
Their advertisements for religious package tours are usually collages of various
elements. As an example, a Cheria Wisata advertisement looks like this: it is
composed of a colorful arrangement of comic-like digital illustrations with the
Kaʿba, a pagoda, the Taj Mahal, and the Eiffel Tower, framed by trees, includ-
ing a palm tree, a camel, a suitcase, a passport, a compass, a camera, and an
airplane, all in bright colors against a blue background (image 1).
Cheria is a Muslim travel agency, and the halal label indicates that the tours
are tailored for Muslim customers. Nevertheless, the advertisement includes
non-Muslim sites and general symbols of travel and tourism, like the camera,
passport, and compass. When I asked a Cheria customer about the company’s
style, she described it as “happy” and “modern.” The evaluation of the com-
pany’s visual appearance echoed her reasons for choosing this travel agency,
saying that the travel agents and tour guides are friendly, young, pious, and
energetic globetrotters (personal communication, November 2019).
The founder and owner of Cheria explained during an interview in Jakarta
that his customers wish to travel in an environment that does not cause dis-
tractions from adherence to the rules of Islam but also maintain their urban
modern lifestyle. On a journey to a non-Muslim destination, it is particularly
important to assure the availability of prayer rooms and halal food, which
he assures through the slogans “wisata halal” or “Muslim tour.” However, he
emphasized that Cheria is a modern company and that religion is not pre-
sented as traditional or boring in the advertisements. Furthermore, in every
place around the world, one could find a link to Islam and, therefore, the adver-
tisements are full of color and various destinations. Cheria tour packages show
to customers Muslim life in diverse destinations, including non-Muslim land-
marks (personal communication, August 2018).
On Cheria’s website, the business is described as “Travel Pelopor Paket
Tour Wisata Halal Dunia” – Travel Pioneer for World Halal Package Tourism –
announcing that it strives towards fulfilling the needs of Muslim tourists, guar-
anteeing the supply of halal food, Muslim tour guides, and adherence to the
rules of Islam while traveling (Cheria 2020).
One of the Cheria posters for al-Aqsa tour packages uses the expression
“Napak Tilas di Bumi Para Nabi” (an excursion in the land of the prophets,

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Image 2 Cheria Wisata advertisement: “Napak Tilas di Bumi Para Nabi” (an excursion in
the land of the prophets)
Use of the image permitted by Cheria Wisata
image 2), listing the names of prophets in Islam, while on other posters the
company uses the term “Ziarah Aqso” (visitation/pilgrimage to al-Aqsa) and
“Tour Halal.” Interestingly, one poster uses the term “wisata religi” (religious
tourism), which is a more neutral term than “wisata halal” and has been used
in Indonesia in reference to domestic travel and pilgrimages, which sometimes
include cross-religious encounters or Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist tourism
(cf. Slama 2014). The “wisata religi” poster, which is published on a Muslim
blog, contains similar elements to the above-described illustration: in addi-
tion to photos of the Dome of the Rock, the al-Dayr Monastery in Petra, the
Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza, camels, and a group photo, the advertisement
shows famous European landmarks like London’s Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, and
New York’s Statue of Liberty, arranged in a collage on the surface of the globe,
airplanes framing the arrangement, advertising: “Wisata Religi Aqso Jordan
Mesir – Bersama Cheria Halal Holiday” (Religious Tourism al-Aqsa, Jordan,
Egypt – with Cheria Halal Holiday) (Linimasaade Blog 2018).
Posters of other Muslim travel agencies are similar, showing famous land-
marks and using expressions such as “tour” and “ziarah.” References to the world
are made through famous landmarks and universal symbols for tourism. As in
Cheria’s advertisements, several companies avoid the use of any country name,
referring to “Aqso” instead of Israel or Palestine, as this might hint at differ-
ences in political orientations between different Muslim groups in Indonesia.
Some Muslim travel agencies do advertise al-Aqsa tour packages as travel

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216 Lücking
to Palestine or use the Palestinian flag on the posters. For instance, Satriani
Wisata, which labels itself as “Spesialis Jalur Aqsa” (Specialist on al-Aqsa Track)
on the company’s website (Satriani Wisata 2022), uses the Palestinian flag in
their advertisement for “Muslim Tour Aqsa” on a collage of the Dome of the
Rock, Petra, the pyramids, and a palm tree. In the numerous YouTube videos
on the agency’s website, customers share their experience of traveling with
Satriani Wisata to Jerusalem, sometimes referring to political discourses, for
instance announcing, “Masjid Al-Aqso adalah milik ummat Muslim” (al-Aqsa
Mosque belongs to adherents of Islam) referring to global Muslim solidarity
(Satriani Wisata 2019a). In the online description for the tour, it says that the
travel agency wants to attract all Indonesians to fill al-Aqsa with life and pros-
perity and give moral and material support to the Palestinian people (Satriani
Wisata 2019b).7 Similar statements were made in interviews and informal con-
versations where it became obvious that people who are closer to Salafi groups
have a stronger political agenda than mainstream adherents of Indonesia’s
large Muslim umbrella organizations.
More obvious than the political subtext is the shining corporate design of
Satriani Wisata’s logo and the uniform orange scarves worn by customers in
photos. Furthermore, the website features group photos for all destinations.
The participants in these photos hold banners with travel dates and destina-
tions. Different from the depiction of famous landmarks, the group photos give
the advertisements a personal touch and a sense of ownership.
In addition to al-Aqsa tour packages, Cheria, Satriani Wisata, and other
Muslim tour operators offer ʿumra tour packages to Mecca and Medina, some-
times in combination with a visit to al-Aqsa, and a variety of packages to
Europe, Central Asia, and East Asia, such as a “Halal Balkan Tour” to Macedonia,
Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia Herzegovina, and Croatia, or a Turkey tour pack-
age. In addition to the images of places and peoples, the advertisements
include information about departure dates, prices, and services.
The advertisements of Christian travel agencies are strikingly similar to
those of Muslim tour operators. Tours to Turkey, for instance, are popular in
the Christian tourism market as well. Here the attraction is winter in Turkey,
advertised with photos in the snow, and a pilgrimage to “the seven churches.”
A Catholic tour operator from Yogyakarta described Turkey as the “cradle
of faith,” referring to the region’s important role during the first centuries of
Christianity (personal communication, August 2019). Like on the websites of
7 Quote from the website in Indonesian: “mengajak semua Penduduk Indonesia untuk bahu
membahu memakmurkan Masjidil Aqsa dan memberikan dukungan Moril dan Materil untuk
Rakyat Palestina.”

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Muslim travel agencies, the Christian travel agents use terms like ziarah, tour,
or wisata religi, and group photos from previous tours in which participants
often wear uniform clothing, like batik or t-shirts in the same color and hold up
a travel banner. More specifically, Christian terms include wisata rohani (spiri-
tual tourism) or Holy Land Pilgrimage. Like on the posters for Muslim pack-
age tourism, images are combined into collages, with holy places and famous,
mostly European or Middle Eastern, landmarks. As an example, a poster by the
travel agent JB-Tour advertises “Ayo!!! Ziarah – Best of Holyland,” the everyday
expression “Ayo” meaning “Let’s go!” Against the background of the globe, the
poster shows famous European sights, again including the Eiffel Tower, and
Jesus with outstretched hands. In addition to the 13-day travel schedule, a spe-
cial price offer and information on bonus services, the advertisement includes
a small photo of the scenery of Jerusalem, labeled “Bukit Zaitun,” the Mount of
Olives (JB-Tour 2019).
The advertisements for both Muslim and Christian religious package tours
use symbols of modern tourism, like airplanes and suitcases, famous land-
marks, and photos of holy places in combination with authentic photos of
tourist groups holding a banner (spanduk) and proving their completion of
the pilgrimage. The group photos of Indonesian tourist pilgrims serve as a
visual reminder of Indonesian presence in, and connectedness to, these places.
Sometimes expressions of belonging to these places exceed personal pres-
ence, as the murals of the Lord’s Prayer in Indonesian languages show. Muslim
and Christian Indonesian travel advertisements create senses of belonging to
global Christianity and global Islam in similar ways and, at the same time, they
relate to the exact same famous landmarks, creating a general imagery of travel
and cosmopolitanism, including Western landmarks.
The fact that most advertisements are collages visually indicates that Indo-
nesians refer to a multiplicity of international religious destinations in an addi-
tive manner – the more the merrier. The combination of various multi-cultural
elements has also been observed by Carla Jones (2021, 176) for the appearances
of foreign converts to Islam in Indonesia; by Hew Wei Weng (2012; 2018) and
James Hoesterey (2016) for cosmopolitan Muslim preachers; by Judith Schlehe
(2019) for paranormal practitioners; and by Martin Slama (2020) who has
shown that for historical contexts that references to the foreign happen in a
selective and pluralist combination of foreign and local elements.
Yet, even though the images convey cosmopolitan pluralism, they are first
and foremost meaningful in the travelers’ return context, and Indonesia ranks
high in a hierarchy of multiple centers. During interviews, pilgrimage par-
ticipants and travel agents acknowledged the Middle East’s centrality as the
birthplace of Islam and Christianity, but they simultaneously emphasized the

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superior moral values in Indonesia. These statements correspond to my find-

ings from previous research on the ambivalent perceptions of Indonesians
regarding the Arab world as a holy yet harsh place with a harsh culture
(cf. Lücking 2020a). In the case of Palestine, there is a special nuance in the
evaluations of Indonesians of the Arab World: in interviews pilgrimage par-
ticipants often emphasized that Palestine has been left alone by neighboring
Arab countries, especially now, after the Abraham Accords, when more Arab
states made peace agreements with Israel. Even beyond tourism, several peo-
ple in Indonesia express their support for Palestine, especially for Palestinian
children, which becomes obvious when violence erupts in the Middle East
and Indonesians post solidarity images in their online social media profiles
and donate significant amounts of charity for Palestinian healthcare, like the
Indonesian hospital in Gaza and a project for another Indonesian hospital
in Hebron.
Regarding the West, in particular Europe and the former colonizer, the
Netherlands, there is a notion of symbolizing progress and modernity but at
the same time Indonesians criticize the moral decay of Western countries
(cf. Schlehe 2013; 2019, 380). From the perspective of travel agents, Europe
is presented as being of interest for both Islam and Christianity. The owner
of Cheria pointed out that Islam can be found everywhere in the world and
the aforementioned travel agent from Yogyakarta maintains a holistic view
of Christian history and authority, with the “cradle of Christianity” in Turkey
and the Middle East, the authority of the Catholic church in Rome, and sacred
places in Lourdes and Fatima, but also in Indonesia itself. The visual references
to these places create an imagery of being Muslim and Christian in the world,
in a long history of Islam and Christianity, but also of Indonesian presence in
these places.
These motifs in advertisements resonate with contemporary pop-cultural
representations of connections to the world within Indonesian religious prac-
tices. As an example, the bestselling novel and its cinematic adaptations 99
Lights in Europe’s Sky: A Journey following the Traces of Islam in Europe (99
Cahaya di Langit Eropa: Perjalanan Menapak Jejak Islam di Eropa) depicts
the experiences of Indonesian celebrity Hanum Salsabiela Rais and her hus-
band Rangga while living in Vienna and discovering Europe’s Islamic heri-
tage. Hanum Salsabiela Rais’s 2012 novel was turned into a successful pair of
films directed by Guntur Soeharjanto (Maxima Pictures 2013; 2014). Hanum is
the protagonist of the film/novel, along with Fatma, a Turkish single mother,
and Marion, a French historian who has converted to Islam. Together, the
three women see themselves as being on a quest to discover Europe’s Islamic
heritage, which is described as being denied, hidden, and forgotten by the

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non-Muslim majority in European countries. The storyline continues from

Austria to France, Spain, and Turkey, where Hanum discovers more and more
fascinating details about Islam’s influence on European culture and civiliza-
tion. The figure “99” in the title of the novel and the films corresponds with
the 99 names of Allah which are found in the Qurʾan and Sunna, representing
highly honorable moral values and abilities.
Similar motifs occur in other successful Islamic-themed films in Indonesia,
where Indonesian women play a vital role and where Muslim others, for
instance Arabs, as well as non-Muslim others, for instance Europeans, are por-
trayed in contrast to gentle, well-educated, polite Indonesian Muslims who
find strength in their faith and act as role models for others (see Eliyanah and
Lücking 2017). Ariel Heryanto (2014, 54) shows that similar Islamic-themed
films promote Western and Indian cultural elements, harmonizing various cul-
tural elements with Islam. In this regard, the films echo Aburrahman Wahid’s
(2007) idea of “Islam Kosmopolitan,” as being receptive to outward influence
but rooted in local wisdom, with Indonesian wisdom, spirituality, and morality
being superior. Even though Muslim pilgrimage destinations are found outside
Indonesia, in the films and in real life Indonesian people are depicted as better
Muslims. Such a notion of spiritual superiority has also been found in Carla
Jones’ study of Korean converts to Islam, who chose the Indonesian tradition of
Islam as their spiritual base. Along with the fascination with Korean converts,
their fans are proud of seeing the foreign adoption of Indonesian religious
tradition and Korea has also become a popular destination for ziyāra (Jones
2021, 188). Thus, Indonesians apparently feel related to various places around
the world with slightly differing evaluations: the West/Europe as center of
modernity, the Arab world/Middle East as birthplace of Islam and Christianity,
and East Asia as center of Asian modernity but all the while maintaining that
Indonesian morality and spirituality are superior.
The pop-culture imagery of traveling the world and being strengthened
in faith through encounters with other cultures has been picked up by travel
agencies, both in domestic and outbound tourism. Several tour packages and
even more so the images and narratives in advertisements, follow similar
motifs, for example popular films, novels, and social media celebrities refer-
ring to Islamic heritage and attention to Islam in other places in the world.
Consequently, besides prominent landmarks, some tours include less famous
destinations, such as the new DİTİB8 Mosque in Cologne.9 Following the idea
8 DİTİB is the abbreviation for Diyanet İşleri Türk İslam Birliği, the Turkish Islamic Union for
Religious Affairs in Germany.
9 See, for instance, Cheria’s (2019) Europe itinerary.

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in the film of Indonesians discovering religion around the world and at the
same time being grounded in their own religious heritage, the cosmopolitan-
ism of the pilgrims is best described as vernacular cosmopatriotism: Muslim
and Christian Indonesian travelers visually document their connectedness to
the world but they also proudly document the presence of Indonesian people
at the travel destinations, making far-away places their own and claiming their
right of presence at the sites. Advertisements attract the attention of custom-
ers and, as the interviews with travel agents and the comparison with films
shows, they express current trends and the self-understanding of travel agents.
Through smart phones, cameras, and online social media, the pilgrimage tour-
ists take part in visuality themselves.
5 Pilgrimage Photography and Cosmopolitan Selfies
Smartphones enable pilgrims to make and publish their own pilgrimage travel
images and to communicate with each other and with friends and relatives
back home, expanding the temporal and spatial limits of the pilgrimage and
taking part in the pilgrimage visuality. Prestigious selfies in front of sacred
sites are proof of “having been there” and the search for authenticity happens
through camera lenses (cf. Senft and Baym 2015, 1595). Moreover, photos can
be a medium of interaction with places and people. Apart from documenting
connectedness to the world and the ability to travel, pilgrimage photography is
a valued act in itself – an enjoyable activity while traveling.
The selfie stick, which can be used as an extension of the arm to take a
photo of oneself, mostly with a mobile phone, is called “tongkat narsis” in
Indonesian – the narcissistic stick. This ironic naming in a society that loves
selfies hints at self-criticism, specifically, that these photos of the self, taken by
oneself, are self-consumed or guilty of putting the self at the center. However,
recent studies (see, e.g., Jones 2017) have shown that among Indonesians,
selfies are in fact mostly “wefies” – self-made photos of a group of people to
express one’s mood or share one’s social activities and also to express alliances,
among other things, in politics. Moreover, even selfies that show only one per-
son are social because the selfie is meant for online publication as a medium
of interaction with one’s peers. In addition, during travel they can become an
occasion for interaction with people outside one’s own travel group.
By definition, a selfie is an image that includes oneself and is taken by one-
self using a digital camera, and is often shared on social networks (Cambridge
Dictionary 2022). Furthermore, a selfie is also “a practice – a gesture that can
send (and is often intended to send) different messages to different individuals,

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and audiences” (Senft and Baym 2015, 1589). The social purpose of a selfie is
part of what makes it a selfie. It is taken to document something that the taker
of the selfie seeks to share with others (Lobinger and Brantner 2015) via online
social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and
Instagram. So, selfies are not only about the self, but they are also about social
relationships, including the people who are portrayed and those who look at
the photo. As Strassler (2020, 24) argues for political images, ordinary people
“become producers, transmitters, and customers of political messages.” In the
field of religious lifestyle, pilgrimage selfies are a means to take part in defining
Muslim identities. Online social media, or Web 2.0, allows more people to take
part in public discourse and yet these forms of communication are not equally
open to everyone, considering the digital divide between more and less afflu-
ent members of society and the public acceptance of things as aesthetic, pious,
moral and legitimate. There has been a “liberalization of the media along with
new freedoms of expression” in post-Suharto Indonesia (Strassler 2020, 18) but
the exploding number of images and representations has also “contributed to
a climate of uncertainty about what constitutes reliable evidence, and who
legitimately speaks for the nation” (Strassler 2020, 21). I often encountered
this uncertainty among Muslim and Christian Indonesian pilgrims and travel
agents, especially in relation to violence and conflict in the Middle East, when
people whom I had met during their pilgrimages contacted me to verify news
reports or information from social media posts, being highly skeptical about
fake news. One travel agent explained that his own frequent travels to Israel/
Palestine help him to understand the situation in the Middle East and to cor-
rect false news, pointing out that any news about war and violence is bad for
business (personal communication, August 2019). In this regard, visual repre-
sentations can be seen as proof of authenticity and presence, especially among
travel agents and frequent travelers. Average pilgrimage participants tend to
look for orientation in their visual pilgrimage documentation and mainly
reproduce images from the above-described advertisements and films.
Moreover, in the case of a pilgrimage to Mecca or Jerusalem, the photo-
graphic proof of “having been there” is prestigious among Indonesians, espe-
cially since overseas travel is costly and thus marks both the affluence and the
spiritual status of a pilgrim. Expressing prestige and power is common in social
media self-representations (Lobinger and Brantner 2015, 1849; Weiser 2015).
However, in Indonesia, I found that similar prestigious visual practices existed
before the use of social media. As an example, in rural Madura, I saw at sev-
eral houses how Mecca returnees put up larger-than-life digitally-edited post-
ers, showing themselves in front of the Kaʿba (Lücking 2020a, 74). Christian
Jerusalem returnees likewise put up photos of their pilgrimages in their homes.

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222 Lücking
Palestinian and Israeli tour guides say that for today’s pilgrimage tours
one of the most important things is sufficient time for photos and shop-
ping. A Palestinian tour guide recalled how he underestimated the time that
Asian pilgrims need for photos, imitating his Indonesian customers, saying
“Mau foto dulu,” meaning “let’s take a photo first” (personal communication,
November 2019).
In the following, I touch upon several aspects of taking and sharing selfies
and photos during Indonesian Muslim and Christian Jerusalem pilgrimages,
focusing on the questions: what do the photos show? Where and with whom
do Indonesian pilgrims take selfies? What do pilgrims do with their photos?
And what does this mean for their self-perception, “world making,” pilgrimage
practice, and presence?
Being representative and serving as proof of presence at the holy sites, a selfie
must include a famous landmark. For Muslim groups this is obviously al-Aqsa
Mosque and the Dome of the Rock – and interestingly, it is for many Christians
as well, since the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock is Jerusalem’s most
famous landmark. In addition, Christians take photos on the Via Dolorosa and
in the numerous churches in the region. During the Egyptian part of the jour-
ney, the pyramids are the most important sight and the archeological sites in
Petra provide impressive backgrounds for selfies in Jordan.
When I accompanied travel groups in and around Jerusalem, the customers
often demanded to take group photos and the travel agencies were prepared
with a spanduk, a banner, that group members held up in the group photo
(photo 2). The use of these banners indicates that the photos are planned and
performed and group members are often instructed to wear their uniform
travel t-shirts or batik shirts. The spanduk are designed in Indonesia, usually
with the specific travel dates for each group, sometimes including a motto like
“Ziarah Ramadan,” when the travel happens during Ramadan or for Christian
groups “Easter Holy Land Tour,” for tours happening during the Easter time.
While such information could theoretically be added through computer edit-
ing software it appears to be important to physically hold the banner and expe-
rience the making of the photo together. Later, upon return to Indonesia or
even during the trip, the participants receive this photo as a printout, some-
times in the special form of a large photo magnet or framed. In fact, some
travel agencies advertise the receipt of a photo souvenir like a photo magnet in
the list of items that are included in the package tour. Through these photos,
the travel agencies connect the reality of their customers in Indonesia with the
travel destination. The Indonesian spanduk becomes part of the travel and the
visual product moves to the homes of travelers. Thereby, the representation of
Indonesian presence at famous holy sites is a form of connecting these places

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Photo 2 Group photo with banner, showing Indonesian presence abroad

Photo by the author
to Indonesia or, using Carla Jones’ (2021, 172) terminology once more, “domes-
ticating foreignness.”
In addition to magnets and printouts, such group photos, selfies, and
other images or “stories” are shared instantly on social media platforms. On
Instagram representation of pilgrimage experiences does not only include
images of sacred sites and ritual performances but also images of more ordi-
nary things like food or the time on the coach or plane, which create a sense
of immediacy.
Thus selfies are not only proof and memories of one’s presence at holy sites,
but they are also a social act of connecting with followers and friends through
social media. This can strengthen the sense of togetherness in the pilgrimage
community and serve as a medium of encounter with new people like pilgrims
from other countries. The word “selfie” is internationally known and in addi-
tion to the gesture of lifting the phone for a photo, everyone understands what
the other person means.
As entry for Muslim people from neighboring countries to Israel is restricted,
Muslim pilgrimage groups often come from further away, from Indonesia,
Malaysia, India, Turkey, South Africa, Europe, and America. Indonesian

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224 Lücking
pilgrims appeared to be especially excited when meeting Turkish groups and

would often invite Turkish pilgrims to take photos with them.
The photographic encounters that I found especially interesting were pho-
tos (including selfies) with Israeli armed forces. Apparently, there is a fascina-
tion with taking photos with the army and police. When I asked about this,
pilgrims explained that, after all, Israel/Palestine is a conflict region and heav-
ily armed security is proof of this conflict. Even though I often saw Indonesian
pilgrims taking these photos, I never saw any of them uploaded to social media,
which indicates that the selfie-takers probably have ambivalent feelings about
these selfies or fear negative reactions from their peers. Selfies with other
travelers or with local Palestinian and Israeli residents are a different matter.
Here, selfies are a statement of solidarity with Palestinians/Israelis or Jewish/
Muslim/Christian people and also, on a more personal level, with shopkeep-
ers, bus drivers, and the tour guides who accompany the group. Sometimes the
seemingly obvious alliances are blurred here as lastly people who work in tour-
ism are individuals and Indonesian groups establish feelings of empathy and
friendship regardless of the religion or ethnicity of their bus drivers or guides.
Moreover, Muslim and Christian Indonesian groups are also excited to meet
fellow countrymen/women, including those of other groups and religious affil-
iations, whom they meet in restaurants or hotels that offer Indonesian food.
Generally, travel agents and pilgrims are particularly proud to show Indonesian
presence at the travel destinations. As an example, when accompanying an
Indonesian Christian group on a boat ride on the Lake of Galilee, the partici-
pants were excited when their Israeli tour guide pulled out an Indonesian flag
and positioned it next to the Israeli flag on the boat. Within minutes, this phys-
ical installation became a photo opportunity. Moreover, the tour organizers
played Indonesian music on the boat trip and the participants enthusiastically
started to dance Indonesian-style poco-poco line dances, filming themselves
and sharing this presence of Indonesianness in the Holy Land with friends and
family through online social media. Informal conversations with the partici-
pants revealed that for many of them, the Indonesianized boat ride was one of
their favorite activities of the whole trip.
This excitement about Indonesian presence in the Holy Land is also reflected
in the visual documentation of the Asian restaurants in which Indonesians
eat during their travel, their filming of bus drivers and souvenir shopkeepers
who are able to converse in Bahasa Indonesia and their photographs of the
aforementioned Indonesian artworks at pilgrimage sites, like in the Church of
the Annunciation in Nazareth. Some Indonesian-speaking Palestinian shop-
keepers have even made it to Indonesian television and numerous YouTube
uploads.

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Obviously, the pilgrims see the spaces they visit through the lenses of their
smart phones and with a homeward perspective, thinking about the reactions
of their friends and followers to their images (cf. Senft and Baym 2015, 1595).
This does not happen without controversy. Many pilgrims whom I accompa-
nied on the Via Dolorosa take selfies, photos, and videos while carrying large
wooden crosses. Some pilgrims explained that the photos would keep the
ritual alive even after returning home. However, an Indonesian priest who
accompanied several groups disapproved of the media-focused documenta-
tion, claiming that many pilgrims were not focused on the ritual itself but only
performed it for the camera (personal communication, March 2018). Similar
critiques have been voiced regarding Mecca selfies and there is a debate about
whether cameras should be allowed inside the Masjid-al-Haram in Mecca.
Yet, apart from performing and transcending pilgrimage experiences beyond
the spatial and temporal context of the pilgrimage, taking pictures is an event,
as the above-described photographic encounters show. This corresponds with
my observations of domestic selfie practices in Indonesia, where “wisata selfie”
(selfie tourism) is a trend (see Lücking and Mayasari 2022). Interestingly, creat-
ing prestigious and cosmopolitan self-portraits does not necessarily require a
big budget. Projects in domestic tourism reach many more people, especially
from Indonesia’s rural areas. Parks with miniature installations of European
landmarks have become famous as wisata mini (mini tourism) and wisata
selfie (selfie tourism). Next to the Eiffel Tower there could be a Dutch tulip
field with a windmill, combined with selfie spots that look out onto Indonesia’s
stunning nature.10 Thus, selfies have become part of an urban, modern life-
style, including people from all walks of life. Schlehe (2017, 87) has shown for
Taman Mini, one of Indonesia’s oldest and most well-known parks with min-
iature installations, that ethnic, religious, and national features are presented
through recurring stereotypes. Such essentializations were generally common
in the representation of culture during the Suharto era (see Pemberton 1989;
Spyer 2022, 14). Karen Strassler (2020, 22) argues that the authoritarian role of
the Indonesian state has been replaced by a tight oligarchical media regime,
meaning that a relaxation of state censorship and control has not resulted in
completely democratic freedom of expression. The recurring motifs in pil-
grimage selfies and their prestigious character of symbolizing middle-class
10 Some of these parks offer extensive installations, like Merapi Park in Yogyakarta, demand-
ing an entrance fee of 20,000–50,000 Rupiah (1.38–3.48 USD), while others are merely
asking for voluntary donations at each selfie spot where signs suggest donations of
1,000–10,000 Rupiah (0.07–0.70 USD). Such parks can become an income source for
farmers (Lücking and Mayasari, 2022).

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226 Lücking
affiliation show that individual visual representations follow hierarchical pat-

terns even though they do also have the potential to challenge Eurocentric
world-makings, as argued in comparison with the Bünting clover leaf map
above. Moreover, the pilgrimage images mainly show Indonesian women at
international destinations. What could be seen as an upper-class hedonistic
activity can have a meaningful impact for people, as Crystal Abidin (2016)
has shown for female social media influencers in Singapore. Abidin (2017,
16) argues that selfies are underestimated and can in fact become media for
“subversive frivolity,” challenging dominant norms and values, for instance in
the case of gender norms, or, in the example at hand, for alignments between
people of different religious and ethnic backgrounds.
6 Concluding Outlook
Indonesian pilgrimage tourists and travel agents visually localize the world
and make it meaningful in their Muslim or Christian lifestyles. Advertisements
and photographic representations are embedded in broader socio-political
discourses and correspond, for instance, with film narratives, where the pro-
tagonists find their way in the world and sometimes educate Europeans and
Muslims from other countries about the virtues of being Muslim. In 99 Lights in
Europe’s Sky, the narrative suggests that Europe belongs to Muslim people just
as much as it belongs to non-Muslim people and the same can be said for holy
sites in the Middle East. In a similar vein, statements by Christian Indonesians
indicate that their visual and physical references to Christian centers around
the world correlate with ideas of strengthening Christianity internationally.
However, all in all, the comments of pilgrims and travel agents on other people
and places indicate ambivalent views on the West and the Middle East despite
the fact that traveling to foreign destinations is prestigious.
This overall ambivalence is a process of making the world one’s own visually,
which challenges perceptions of modernity and cosmopolitanism as things of
non-Muslim European origin and of elite lifestyles. Thereby, Indonesian cos-
mopatriotic imagery challenges static Eurocentric concepts of cosmopolitan-
ism. In a processual manner, vernacular cosmopatriotic images can even be
seen as a form of decentering and decolonizing knowledge production about
centers and peripheries.
Nevertheless, in the case of Israel/Palestine, the prominent imagery pres-
ents not only openness to the world but also dividedness about certain issues.
The online activities of Indonesians are subject to the online and offline reac-
tions of others – especially others at home. In this regard the online pilgrimage
documentation not only affirms the social identity of a person, but it is also a

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form of engaging in a broader discourse, which has been observed similarly for
imagery in other public contexts by Spyer (2022) and Strassler (2020). Due to
the controversies about performing an al-Aqsa pilgrimage while Jerusalem is
under Israeli rule, some Indonesian representations of Jerusalem and al-Aqsa
Mosque emphasize solidarity with the Palestinian people, for instance through
slogans of solidarity. When Jerusalem was acknowledged as Israel’s capital
through the relocation of the US embassy, a Facebook profile photo frame,
saying in Arabic “al-Quds lana” (Jerusalem is ours) became widespread among
Indonesian Muslim travel agents and al-Aqsa pilgrims.
Still, the communicative element in representations of travel destinations
is not always political. Considering that the package tours are big business,
it is obvious that some visuals follow economic interests, such as the adver-
tisements, justifying one’s business against the critique of opponents and in
competition with other travel agents. The competitive business, with negotia-
tions over prices, itineraries, facilities, and services, relies on personal relation-
ships that are maintained through modern communication technologies. The
reassurance of a partner’s loyalty is only a WhatsApp message away, customer
satisfaction comes in Facebook “likes,” and the best promotion is a highly fre-
quented Instagram profile. Taking selfies with business partners can be a sign
of loyalty and a message to competitors. Furthermore, digital media platforms
not only serve commercial and political alignments but in fact become digital
spaces for spiritual activities and religious communities (Husein 2021; Slama
2017; Slama and Jones 2017). Thus, rather than being openly conflictive or pre-
senting Muslim–Christian divisions, the media activities reveal similarities
in media-focused Muslim and Christian lifestyles and social identities, being
modern and connected to the world while simultaneously grounded within
a pride in Indonesianness that is, for instance, indicated through visual repre-
sentations of the presence of Indonesian people, language, food, and culture
at foreign destinations.
The average pilgrimage participants are more concerned with their spiri-
tual experience, community, and social status than political questions. Some
travel groups stay in touch after their return to Indonesia and keep the pilgrim-
age experience alive in online forums, some of which are run by travel agents.
Moreover, during the Covid-19 pandemic, several travel agents offered virtual
pilgrimages or tours. When participating in these virtual tours, from both the
perspective of the camera, accompanying tour guides in Jerusalem on their
lonely city tours, and from a perspective behind a computer screen at home,
I noticed that the Indonesian participants appeared to be more attracted by
interactions with fellow group members – the spiritual community – than
the live footage from Jerusalem, which was probably also caused by the poor
internet connection in the old city of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the travel agents

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228 Lücking
emphasized that their past and future customers would want to see what is
happening during the pandemic in Jerusalem, which means that visuality
remains proof of authenticity in an increasingly media-focused context (cf.
Senft and Baym 2015). The live footage gave people a different sense of connec-
tion to Jerusalem than a film or photos might.
In conclusion, the making and circulation of imagery during contemporary
Indonesian pilgrimages reflects processes of mediating cosmopatriotic middle-
class identities. The intertwinement of class affiliation, religion, national iden-
tity, and views of the world indicates that notions of cosmopolitanism are
strongly related to the home context: Indonesia. Pilgrimage selfies are not only
proof of “having been there” but also of “feeling at home in the world.” This
corresponds to the observations of a simultaneity of Indonesian centrality, or
qibla, and acknowledgement of foreign co-centrality in social media activi-
ties (cf. Slama 2020), fashion and lifestyle (cf. Jones 2018; 2021), and spiritual
entrepreneurship (cf. Weng 2012; 2018; Schlehe 2019). By “domesticating for-
eignness” (Jones 2021, 172), Indonesians integrate global multi-centrality into
everyday views of the world and one’s positioning as central within the world,
as Muslim and as Christian Indonesians.
Coming back to the presumed narcissistic nature of selfies, pilgrimage pho-
tography reveals that selfies/wefies strengthen the pilgrimage community, its
alignment to places, and Indonesian patriotism. The pilgrimage community
expands beyond the actual pilgrimage travel group to a broader community
of fellow pilgrims and fellow Indonesian citizens. Interviews and observations
reveal that Indonesian pilgrims and travel agents include people from outside
their peer group in this community. This religious cosmopatriotism marks
simultaneous references to global and local centers, as well as Christian and
Muslim alignments with non-Christian and non-Muslim groups, for instance,
including Israeli and Palestinian tour guides and shopkeepers in personal self-
ies while traveling. Thus, despite polarizing narratives about religious affilia-
tions and political orientation, contemporary Indonesian religious tourism to
Palestine and Israel – and other places – enhances ideas of cosmopatriotism as
a form of selective inclusion and plurality.
Acknowledgements
I thank the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University and
Konstanz University’s Zukunftskolleg for enabling work on this article. More-
over, I am very grateful to all research participants who shared their travels,

Islam infrom
Asia 2 (2021) 203–231
Brill.com07/31/2023 07:52:24PM
via free access
photos, and advertisements, as well as to Nuki Mayasari for our joint selfie-
research in Yogyakarta, and to three anonymous reviewers for their helpful
comments.
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International Journal of

Islam in Asia 2 (2021) 203–231

Cosmopolitan Imagery: Prestigious Connections

Indonesia – Muslim–Christian relations – middle class – social media – selfies –

1 Introduction: Vernacular Cosmopatriotism

An Indonesian participant in an al-Aqsa pilgrimage package tour pulls out

been there” (May 2019). While accompanying Indonesian travel groups in

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The relevant representations of cosmopolitanism are vernacular. While on

2 The “inward-looking” approach of presentations of Indonesian centrality follows previous

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2 The Religious Centrality of Indonesia and the Middle East

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considering the different meanings of Jerusalem in Muslim and Christian

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3 Contemporary Indonesian Religious Tourism

Until the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, international religious travel

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4 All names of research participants are pseudonyms.

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According to Israeli and Palestinian interviewees in the tourism sector, the

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4 Holy Lands in Tourism Advertisements

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superior moral values in Indonesia. These statements correspond to my find-

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non-Muslim majority in European countries. The storyline continues from

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5 Pilgrimage Photography and Cosmopolitan Selfies

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Photo 2 Group photo with banner, showing Indonesian presence abroad

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pilgrims appeared to be especially excited when meeting Turkish groups and

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affiliation show that individual visual representations follow hierarchical pat-

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JB-Tour. (2019). Facebook Profile. https://www.facebook.com/JBTourIndo. Retrieved

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Maxima Pictures. (2013). 99 Cahaya Di Langit Eropa 1, directed G. Soeharjanto.

International Journal of Islam in Asia 2 (2021) 203–231

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