Inventing New Pilgrimage and Religious Tourism in Lombok, Indonesia

In the contemporary Muslim world, especially in Indonesia, the boom in religious tourism is increasingly widespread after the discovery of the grave sites of saints (wali) or people who are considered holy. More than that, pilgrimage is increasingly popular when these sites display natural views and multifaceted aspects, thereby adding to the intimacy of Islamic meditation and veneration rituals. This article focuses on five holy tombs in Lombok (West Nusa Tenggara), considered tombs of Muslim saints. Using ethnography with observational techniques and unstructured interviews, we explore the construction of veneration and the marketing efforts of pilgrimages to the site. This research produced significant findings, such as the construction of veneration, which was formed by combining the dynamism of Javanese Islam and Balinese Hinduism, where the veneration turned into a dynamic rite. Geospatial sacredness is also found at two of the five sites, which adds to the exoticism of the pilgrimage. The Word of the Mouth (WoM) technique is used as a strategy to disseminate the idea of the sacredness of the rites. This research contributes theoretically to the construction of locality based veneration in Lombok, which is formed on veneration-dynamism with geospatial support that supports the sacredness of rites that attract pilgrims globally across trans-regional boundaries. The methodological contribution is formed on a constructive geospatial spectrum linked with mystical folklore. This study argues that there is a continuum between tomb objects and holy places - petilasan in Javanese (Islamic) or pundhen in Balinese (Hindu) which means that these sites should not in fact be called ‘graves’. Apart from that, the power of the ‘sacred’ narrative produced with WoM is the most important factor in the existence of these sites, attracting many pilgrims and tourists..