Muhamad Ali is a lecturer at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is a fellow at the East-West Center.

In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Islamist movements are neither monolithic nor static, but they do tend to be politically moderate. This moderation has several causes: Indonesia’s history of authoritarian rule, its sense of national pride and the religious aims of the country’s Islamists.

The idea of an Islamic state based on syariah (Islamic law)—often seen as the touchstone of an Islamist agenda—has lost some of its appeal over the course of Indonesian history. The country’s two largest Muslim organizations—Muhammadiyah (founded in 1912) and Nahdlatul Ulama (founded in 1926)—initially supported this goal. As a result of the political repression of the Soekarno era (1945-67), these organizations became willing to build coalitions across religious lines in order to play a role in politics. Today, Muhammadiyah and NU members, who make up more than half of all Indonesian Muslims, not only reject these Islamist goals, they themselves are a significant obstacle to the growth of radical movements. These civil society organizations are more interested in initiating dialogues and partnerships between different Islamic movements. Both Muhammadiyah and NU have established their own political parties, the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the National Awakening Party (PKB) respectively, but they work to make these parties inclusive.

The experience of living under an authoritarian regime also led Islamist organizations, which still advocate for an Islamic state, to believe that they would not succeed unless they participated in the political process. Indonesia’s Islamist parties, most of which are politically moderate, garnered about 20% of the country’s 113 million votes in the 2004 parliamentary elections. These parties include the United Development Party (PPP), the Crescent Star Party (PBB), the Reform Star Party (PBR), and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). In particular, PKS did very well (7%) in the recent elections, earning more votes than Muhammadiyah’s PAN party. However, their victory was not tied solely to traditional Islamist issues; rather it arose from their image as a party that was more “clean and caring” than President Megawati’s PDI-P party, thus drawing from less religious, undecided voters as well as Islamists.

A second cause of Indonesia’s moderate Islamism is the country’s sense of nationalism. In 1945, Soekarno introduced what would become the state ideology for an independent Indonesian nation. The Pancasila, or Five Principles, endorsed the belief in one God, humanitarianism, Indonesian unity, consultative democracy and social justice. The appeal of these ideas remains strong among the country’s Muslim majority. Some Islamist activists even assert that to be a good nationalist and a devout Muslim are not contradictory. To love one’s country is part of faith. The result is that, while most Islamists are concerned with Islamic international problems (such as the American war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), they do not make these issues part of the domestic electoral agenda. Indonesian politics focus on local issues.

Thirdly, Islamist movements are religious and moralistic in orientation. They want to purify what they see as a Muslim society corrupted by the negative impact of Westernization, and they believe that they can do this by correcting the government’s policy failures. However, a recent trend among Indonesian Islamists is decreasing their interest in politics. A growing number of Indonesian Islamists are Salafists—i.e., they seek to return to the pure form of Islam practiced during the first three generations—and Salafists are more concerned with religion than politics. Some support secular parties, like Golongan Karya (the leading party under Soeharto). Others are not interested in formal politics at all, preferring to devote their attention to religious matters. For example, a number of Salafist organizations, such as the Party of Liberation (Hizbut Tahrir) and the Mission Association (Jemaah Tabligh), support an Islamic state or the return of the transnational Islamic caliphate, but they do not promote these ideas through participation in political parties.

The radical Islamist organization Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been linked with the terrorist group al-Qaeda, is the exception to the tendencies described above. However, it finds little support among Indonesians, the vast majority of whom denounce its violent ideology. It, and other marginalized radical groups like it, does not support pluralism or democratic politics and subscribes to the idea of a clash of civilizations between East and West. Such an ideology is shaped by international influences, not Indonesia’s tradition of Islamist moderates, who embrace legitimate political participation and love of country.


© 2005 IFES
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