ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the mockery and indignation in these blogs index two areas of contemporary contestation in Indonesia, namely modernity and Islam. It shows that the contestation, embarrassment and outrage that Kyai Muzakkin's spirits occasioned speak directly to contemporary struggles concerning Islam and modernity, both in the Indonesian public sphere and in villages across the country. The chapter uses the embarrassment that Kyai Muzakkin's spirits produced to highlight the tensions perceptible in contemporary Indonesian ideas about modernity and Islam. The self-conscious emotions associated with shame have been part of Indonesian studies for decades. Kyai Muzakkin's spirits and the bloggers who found them so embarrassing can both be analysed in light of the paradox has highlighted; namely the revitalization of the mystical amidst the hegemony of pious Islam and normative modernity in the Indonesian public sphere.
