Ziarah Wali: An Inquiry of Contemporary Religious Tourism Development in Indonesia

In the context of modern Indonesia, Muslim saint pilgrimage (ziarah wali) is an old phenomenon centered on the tomb of a holy person considered by many as a saint (wali). It has become one of the religious traditions per-formed by a large part of Indonesian Muslims throughout a year and more crowded when it comes to the special days such as the annual commemora-tion day of a wali’s death or Islamic festival days. Since involving many peo-ple and requiring movement from one tomb to another, it recently inspires local governments to capitalize it to become a religious tourist destination. This does appear on the recent pilgrimage practices in Indonesia that connects tightly with the tourism activities where many terms used in Indonesia plainly resemble pilgrimage and tourism altogether such as Wisata Ziarah (Pilgrimage Tourism) or Wisata Ruhani (Spiritual Tourism). Using a ground-ed research method, this research then attempts to examine the emerging trends of ziarah wali in modern Indonesia, as one of the variants of religious tourism studies. This study attempts to scrutiny the new emerging phenomenon of a wali (muslim saint) and all aspects regarding to ziarah wali in Indonesia in order to (1) examine how pilgrimage and tourism intersect each other to form newly and locally religious tourism phenomena and (2) how the pilgrims, local people and government anticipate the phenomena of religious tourism as a chance to increase their economic values as well as spirituality amidst the ambiguity of religious tourism.