Uncanny advocates. Conversion and Islamic-Buddhist encounters in New Order Indonesia (1965–1998)

This article explores the subject of religious crossing from the vantage point of a conversion narrative in New Order Indonesia. It follows the story of Ven. Sudhammo and his passage from an Islamic household into the monastic network of transnational Theravada Buddhism. By evoking the monk’s biography from the onset of Suharto’s regime up until its fall, the article casts light on the unfolding of voluntary conversion over extended periods of time, and how religious passage is afforded by encounters of varying scales occurring across ontological planes. The article revises Lewis Rambo’s notion of advocate as an important device for dislocating individual conversion from the domains of revelation and of rational choice while grounding it, instead, in supra-individual encounter vignettes. Contra to the modernist representation of Buddhist affiliation as a rationalized and mostly disenchanted project, that is, the article emphasizes how conversion and its advocates constitute a relevant analytical category that requires a more serious engagement in the anthropology of Buddhism.