Domestic violence and Islamic spirituality in Lombok, Indonesia: women's use of Sufi approaches to suffering

This article argues that the Sufi practice of dhikr in combination with Quranic recitation and prayer can be understood as "hidden agency" Muslim women exercise in their mediation of violence and piety, particularly so in attempts at lessening their suffering of domestic violence. Our arguments indicate that women actively work towards employing a spiritual approach to their suffering that can be described as Sufi and that they exercise agency in an Islamic way that is bound by their connection with Allah. Our use of the term agency is therefore a nuanced one that is multidimensional and flexible in that it can expand and contract in different circumstances and is at the same time concerned with one's embeddedness in Allah's Divinity. This understanding of agency contrasts with normative sociological and feminist ones that see agency as a human's capacity to act in response to social structures and power relations without necessarily allocating a dimension for an understanding rooted in Divinity. Based on anthropological fieldwork from 2017 to 2020 in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, we explore Muslim women in abusive marriages by engaging the notion of a pluralized agency that women exercise in an Islamic framework. The article further considers ethical tensions feminists face when working with women victims who do not live from a human rights understanding of domestic violence and instead focus on enhancing piety in response to suffering.