At the Crossroads of Piety and Aging: A Look at ‘Punk Hijrah’ on Java, Indonesia

This article explores how some punks on the island of Java, Indonesia, negotiate piety and punk lifestyle against the backdrop of ageing. While punk originally served as a leftist platform for political protest on Java, the recent Punk Hijrah phenomenon is causing debate within local scenes about the coexistence of punk and Islam. I argue that religious reorientation among Javanese punks may be a side-effect of ageing in a Muslim-majority country. I invoke the concept of transcendence (Andes 1998) to demonstrate how certain punks maintain a peripheral attachment to the scene while responding the new burdens of adulthood and parenthood.