Mujahadah as a Sufi Cultural Text: A Roland Barthes Semiotic Analysis of Spiritual Ritual and Religious Meaning

Abstract

This study examines mujahadah in Jam'iyyah Ta'līm Wal-Mujāhadah Jum'at Pon (JTMJP), Padang Jagad, Krapyak, Yogyakarta, as a cultural text through Roland Barthes's semiotics. Whereas previous studies have predominantly approached mujahadah as spiritual discipline or a means of religious character formation, this study asks how ritual meaning is produced through observable signs and how such meaning moves from denotation to connotation and myth. The study employs a qualitative approach combining field observation of ritual practice with a focused literature review. The units of analysis include dhikr, repeated litanies and prayers, tirakat, collective salawat accompanied by hadrah, Qur'anic recitation, collective performance, and the place of religious guidance within the ritual. The analysis shows that, at the denotative level, mujahadah signifies jihad al-nafs, spiritual discipline, and an effort to draw closer to God. At the connotative level, collective performance enables ritual signs to acquire meanings of communal piety, solidarity, religious identity, and interpretive authority. At the level of myth, particular connotations may become naturalized as apparently self-evident understandings of legitimate spirituality. The article also considers the possibility of instrumental or transactional readings of spiritual practice without treating them as evidence that JTMJP itself commercializes mujahadah. The study demonstrates that mujahadah can be understood simultaneously as devotional practice and as a socially situated process of cultural meaning-making.