A Medium of Islamic Moderation through Islam–Hindu-Javanese Cosmology Negotiation in Topèng Dhâlâng Sumenep

Traditional performing arts in Southeast Asia have long functioned as arenas for negotiating religious and cultural identity. This article examines Topèng Dhâlâng—the Madurese mask-theatre tradition from Sumenep, East Java, Indonesia—as a medium of Islamic moderation (wasathiyah), demonstrating how it orchestrates the coexistence of Islamic values and Hindu-Javanese cosmological elements within a unified performance system. Using Geertz's interpretive anthropology, Berger and Luckmann's social construction theory, and Talal Asad's anthropology of Islam, the study analyses four narrative performances by the Rukun Pewaras troupe: Sembadra Larung, Putra Mahkota Wirata, Titisan Pandawa, and Gatotkaca Rabi. Three mechanisms emerge through which Topèng Dhâlâng operates as a medium of religious moderation: (1) the bhuppa'-bhabu'-ghuru-rato cosmological hierarchy integrates Islamic ethical values into Hindu-Javanese narrative structures, making moderation a lived practice rather than an explicit doctrine; (2) the kiai figure functions as a cosmological mediator enacting wasathiyah through narrative action; and (3) the rokat pandhâbâ ritual context transforms the performance into a community-wide enactment of religious harmony, reproducing the Islamic-Madurese cosmological synthesis as doxa. The study argues that Topèng Dhâlâng represents a distinctive model of community-based religious moderation embedded in aesthetic practice that has sustained inter-religious cosmological harmony in Madurese society for over five centuries.