Islam in Asia

Changing Political Realities

Colin Rubenstein, Colin Rubenstein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351511476
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

While the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc has contributed to the decline of communism as a revolutionary political force, religious and ethnic issues have now assumed renewed and increased significance in South East Asia. Since the Islamic resurgence of the early 1980s and 1990s, elements of a more radical political Islam have migrated from the Middle East to Asia. If left unchecked these radical elements could aggravate a number of security and political crises in countries weakened by the consequences of the devastating Asian financial crisis. In an increasingly globalized world, it is not only the exchange of tangible goods across borders that is transmitted with multiplying efficiency and speed, but the exchange of ideas across seamless borders, assisted by the ever-improving communications technology of the Internet and electronic mail. Paradoxically, globalization both creates social change that can spark a backlash in the form of Islamic radicalism, and provides improved means for the spread of Islamic ideals.This critical volume examines the advance and contours of Islamicism and analyzes the potential consequences that such activity poses in South East Asian region. The study tracks the activities of external countries such as Iran, Libya, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia and highlights the key roles these countries play in East Asian economies, politics, religion, and weapons procurement. It focuses on four locations in South East Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern Philippines, and southern Thailand. The introduction treats the Islamic resurgence in Asia, its links to Middle Eastern Islam, and its external influences. Chapters 1 and 2 examine ""Islam and Politics in the New Indonesia"" and ""Islam, Society, Politics, and Change in Malaysia""; chapters 3 and 4 discuss in detail ""Militant Islamic Extremism in the Southern Philippines"" and ""Militant Islamic Separatism in Southern Thailand."" A conclusion follows with an assessment of religious ext

1 Islam and Politics in the New Indonesia

Greg Barton

Introduction: Whither Indonesia?

Religious Violence in the Headlines

For some years now the headlines had been cropping up in the national media. Now and then, a violent incident would occur which appeared, on the surface at least, to represent ethnic and religious conflict. And the headlines had screamed the fact. But they didn’t come that often, and when they did it was generally with good reason. The 1996 church burnings in Situbondo, East Java, for example, appeared to offer fairly dramatic evidence of inter-communal conflict. Similarly, rioting and violence in Tasikmalaya, West Java, or the 1997 fights between transmigrant Madurese and local Iban in West Kalimantan appeared to bear all the hallmarks of ethnic and religious conflict. Across the nation as a whole, however, these incidents were reasonably sporadic, and most journalists, accustomed to a reasonably harmonious and tolerant society in Indonesia were cautious in applying such labels as “religious and ethnic violence.” By 1998 however, the apocalyptic headlines were common place and by year’s end appeared to be reaching a crescendo. By then it was not only the international media that talked of Indonesia breaking up, collapsing under the weight of inter-communal tension and religious ethnic conflict, it was also the local Indonesian media. Indeed, commentators from the level of President Habibie down began to talk of Indonesian society being at a crossroads and of the real possibility of the nation descending into a relentless spiral of violence. Evidence for this view was seen to be the conflict between Ambonese Christians and Muslim migrants to Ambon that continued to fester throughout 1999. On the surface at least, this violence appeared to be markedly religious in nature and unlike most other outbreaks of violence the local communities appeared unable to quickly extinguish it.

Mercifully, however, often just as Indonesian society appeared to be slipping over into the abyss it would pull back. Time and time again across the archipelago, social tensions would erupt into violence and it looked as if whole communities would be swallowed up in anarchy but on most occasions within a day or two the tension would begin to dissolve and the community would pull back from the brink. Mercifully, although the nation seemed just like its drought ravaged forests, tinder dry and ready to burst into flame at the slightest spark, when it did burn the conflagrations remained more spot fires than wildfire, suggesting that Indonesian society was much less combustible than might have been feared. Moreover, there has been significant anecdotal evidence to suggest that many of the most serious eruptions of violence have been deliberately triggered.

Is Religious Fundamentalism a Threat?

So what is going on in Indonesia? On one hand, the nation appears to have all the ingredients for the emergence of virulent religious fundamentalism, along the lines of so many other nations where all hope of building a prosperous and stable future has dissolved in a sea of hatred, attack, reprisal, and counter-reprisal. Indonesia is not, of course, an Algeria or an Afghanistan, by any measure, nor even a Pakistan. But what is to stop it sliding in that direction? According to some analysts the combination of 215 million people struggling to survive in a very tough economic environment where the national currency has lost three-quarters of its value and where around half the population lives below a very meager poverty line, where an authoritarian, and at times dictatorial, military-backed government ruled for over thirty years, and where myriad human rights abuses have occurred wherever the military has enjoyed free reign, is a certain recipe for disaster. And where, in such a country, 87 percent of the population is Muslim, and much of that 87 percent is very poor, it is not surprising that some see the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism as almost inevitable. In recent years even respected moderate religious leaders such as Abdurrahman Wahid, previously leader of the 35-million-strong traditionalist Islamic organization Nahdlatul Ulama and now Indonesia’s fourth President, have spoken of the possibility of an Algeria scenario. Such statements are intended as a “wake up” call rather than a literal prediction, but are worrying nevertheless.

And who can blame the Christians, especially the Chinese (and one term is often used as a euphemism for the other) for feeling vulnerable, even to the point of being somewhat paranoid? If the years of sporadic anti-Chinese rioting and attacks on shop houses was not enough, the awful violence of mid-May 1998, in which Chinese shops and residences were targeted in Jakarta and Solo, Chinese were burned to death as their shop houses were set on fire and Chinese women gang-raped, it is no surprise that members of this small and conspicuous community wonder about their future in Indonesia.¹ That the Habibie government has clearly been unwilling to investigate the rapes and other related acts of terror linked to ABRI only compounds the sense of vulnerability among Indonesian Chinese.

Grounds for Hope?

Are there grounds for hope in Indonesia? Is a slide into religious violence and the emergence of a pervasive fundamentalism inevitable? Or does Indonesia possess sufficient cultural resources, and lessons learned from historical experience to build something better?

Should we be pessimistic or optimistic about the future of Indonesia? And more specifically, should we be concerned about the prospect of religious conflict and the emergence of a fundamentalistic form of Islam? In my opinion, there are very good grounds for being cautiously optimistic. I believe that it is extremely unlikely that we are going to see the kind of Islamic fundamentalism recently seen in Afghanistan and Algeria, emerging on a large scale in Indonesia. One would be foolhardy, however, not to be concerned about current developments in Indonesia. Ongoing violence in which religion appears to play a major role now seems to be inevitable. The only question that remains is not: “will there be further ‘ethnic and religious’ violence?” but rather: “will this violence be contained or will it blaze out of control?”

The Place of Islam in Indonesian Society—The Historical Background

Recognizing the Potential of Islam

Clearly one of the major factors in determining Indonesia’s future is Islam. Perhaps a good place to start this discussion is with a quotation from Daniel Lev, the respected Indonesianist and scholar, who when in 1998 asked his opinion on the danger posed by Islam in Indonesia responded by saying that “There will be no reform in Indonesia over the long-term unless Islam is recognized as the powerful moral force it is.” One of the points that Lev was making was that to see Islam as simply part of the problem is to profoundly misunderstand the whole situation. This is not to say that there may not be problems linked to certain expressions of Islam, indeed that will certainly be the case, but rather that Islam and the way in which it is used by all sides in politics needs to be understood in its context. In particular, we need to understand the potential for Islam in Indonesia to be a powerful, constructive moral force, as well as being simply exploited for narrow sectarian and partisan interests.

If we are to arrive at any useful and genuinely insightful conclusions about the role of Islam in Indonesian society, then we will need to take the time to learn something of the historical, cultural and social context of Islam in Indonesia, and to understand something of all of the forces at work.

The Central Role of Islam

The first point that needs to be made is that, contrary to popular perception in some quarters, Islam plays a central role in modern Indonesian life. For long it has been asserted that Indonesian society is not really Islamic and that Islam in Indonesia represents but a thin veneer over a Hindu-Buddhist core. To the extent that this view makes the point that Muslim society in Indonesia differs significantly from Muslim society in the Arab world it has some validity. Nevertheless, it is based on a serious misunderstanding of the role and nature of Islam in Indonesia.

For most of this century Islam in Indonesia has been dominated by two large mass organizations: Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama. By most measures these two organizations are the largest Islamic organizations in the world, Muhammadiyah claims a membership of 28 million, while Nahdlatul Ulama claims between 30 and 40 million members. And while neither organization is able to produce membership rolls to entirely substantiate these figures there is no doubting that between them they represent a substantial portion of Indonesia’s 190 million Muslims. As is to be expected of such large organizations, each covers a diversity of opinion, political outlook, and religious convictions.

Consequently it is possible to find individuals in both organizations who are unambiguously liberal just as it is possible to find individuals with a reactionary and fundamentalistic frame of mind. Nevertheless, it is possible to speak of the general character of each organization. And in both cases these organizations, in their track records, in the stances of their leading figures, and in their historical approach to engagement in social issues, have shown themselves to be essentially moderate. Indeed an examination of both Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama provides plenty of evidence for Daniel Lev’s assertion that Islam in Indonesia needs to be understood as an important moral force. Moreover, in recent years, there has been good reason to believe that without the stabilizing effect of these two large mass organizations, with their extensive national networks and strong sense of community, the sporadic outbreaks of violence we have witnessed may well have raged out of control and burned without check.

Muhammadiyah and Islamic Modernism

Muhammadiyah was founded in 1912 as a direct outcome of the successful reception of Islamic Modernist ideas bought back to Indonesia by pilgrims and scholars returning from the Middle East. The early Modernists in Indonesia were very much inspired by the ideas of Egyptian reformist, Muhammad Abduh and also by his disciple Rashid Rida. The Modernist movement in Indonesia early in the twentieth century had four broad aims, firstly the encouragement of piety and a serious attitude to the carrying out of religious obligations, secondly the purification of Islamic belief, in practice this meant the rejection of so-called animist or Hindu Buddhist elements of Javanese culture, thirdly, the provision of the sort of social services to their community that the Dutch were unwilling to provide, and fourthly, the development of a modern and sophisticated expression of Islam able to respond to the challenges of modernity and benefit from modern technology and scientific advances. As far as Islamic thought was concerned the main innovation of the Modernists, whether in Indonesia or elsewhere in the Muslim world, was to argue in favor of ijtihad, rational, individual, interpretation of Scriptures and traditions, and against taqlid, or the uncritical acceptance of established interpretation as delineated by the four orthodox mazhab or schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

The practical out-workings of Modernist thought in Indonesia were to be seen in the modern network of schools established by Muhammadiyah, and by its philanthropic institutions such as orphanages and hospitals. Sociologically, Muhammadiyah drew its members from the midst of the lower middle classes of small and medium-sized towns and cities, from Muslim traders, and later increasingly from white-collar professionals, clerks and civil servants.

Nahdlatul Ulama and Islamic Traditionalism

The initial response to the Modernist movement by traditional ulama was reasonably positive. Nevertheless they did take issue with two aspects of the Modernist movement, namely the Modernists’ rejection of traditional religious practices such as praying at the tomb sites of saints and the negative attitude of Modernists to classical Islamic scholarship. Their main concern was that the spread of Modernism would pose a threat to the traditional pesantren, or Islamic boarding school system that was the backbone of classical religious instruction. Not without reason, they feared that the pesantren network might wither and eventually disappear altogether. Consequently, in 1926, a group of leading ulama in East Java got together to form an organization to facilitate networking and co-operation among ulama and their pesantren. They called this organization Nahdlatul Ulama, an Arabic name meaning the awakening of the ulama, commonly shortened to NU. From the beginning NU enjoyed rapid growth and substantial consolidation but never achieved the organizational efficiency and sophistication of the more urban-based Muhammadiyah. Relations with the Modernists in Muhammadiyah were generally good although frequently marked by a degree of underlying tension. For not only were the traditionalists, as they came to be called, concerned about the antipathy towards classical scholarship displayed by the Modernists, they were also offended by their rejection of many traditional Javanese Islamic practices as being Islamic.

Despite the underlying tension, Muhammadiyah and NU were able to cooperate reasonably successfully during the Japanese occupation and subsequent struggle for independence to the point where they entered the independent era working together in one political party, Masyumi. These good relations didn’t last very long however, and in 1952 NU broke from Masyumi and set itself up as an independent political party. The main reason for the split appeared to be frustration within NU with the Modernist domination of Masyumi. What they perceived to be a Modernist assessment of NU members as being unsophisticated and ill-equipped to play a leading role in modern, democratic politics enraged them. The final trigger was the failure of the NU faction to have its candidate selected for the post of Minister of Religious Affairs. Had the Masyumi Modernist traditionalist alliance been maintained a united Masyumi would have dominated in wake of the 1955 election. As it happened both Masyumi and NU received around 20 percent of the votes each, placing them among the leading four parties.²

Islam and Communal Politics under Sukarno

The experience of Islamic politics in the 1950s is particularly pertinent to today’s situation. During the second half of 1998 a large number of new political parties were formed, many of which were expressly styling themselves as being Islamic parties. Most of these parties, however, gained less than 1 or 2 percent of the votes in the June 1999 general elections. Nevertheless, the two big “Islamic” parties, PKB and PPP, polled reasonably strongly in the June 1999 election finishing in the top four much in the same way as did NU and Masyumi in 1955. This is because the great majority of NU members appear to have supported PKB,

while many Muhammadiyah members seem to have supported PPP. Consequently many observers in 1998 spoke of the reemergence of 1950 style communal politics. A view reinforced by the groundswell of popular support for Megawati Soekarnoputri and her PDI Perjuangan mirroring the charismatic following for her father Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president, and the party he was closest to, the secular-nationalist PNI.³ The fact that the period following Indonesia’s first and only free election in 1955 was marked by considerable political instability and a succession of short-lived coalitions, culminating in Sukarno’s pronouncement of Guided Democracy, is seen by many as a grave lesson as we witness the re-emergence of communal politics in the late 1990s.

Sukarno’s declaration of guided democracy, and his increasingly authoritarian style provoked sharp opposition from Masyumi and led to a number of senior Masyumi leaders becoming involved in several ill-fated attempts at regional secession in West Sumatra and Southern Sulawesi. Not surprisingly, this was met with a sharp response from Sukarno and in January 1960 he moved to officially ban Masyumi. The final half-decade of Sukarno’s regime saw Indonesian society increasingly polarized. Finally, the steadily accumulating tensions erupted in a horrific display of violence.

On the October 1, 1965 it was alleged that a small group of Communist leaders had mounted a coup attempt against Sukarno. General Suharto became the man of the hour taking charge and foiling the coup attempt. Because of Sukarno’s close relations with the Indonesian Communist Party he came under a cloud of doubt and was finally forced to officially hand over power to Suharto who then became Indonesia’s second President. Regrettably, the shift in power that occurred in October 1965 precipitated a violent wave of reprisals against Communists and alleged Communist sympathizers. Several hundred thousand people were killed, mostly by civilians and many by their neighbors and fellow villagers. Undoubtedly, much of the killing involved the settling of old scores, although those involved in the attacks on the Communists sought to justify their actions by saying that “if we did not kill the Communists the Communists would have killed us.” Both Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama members were actively engaged in the anti-Communist reprisals, particularly in strongly Muslim areas such as East Java.

The Modernists in particular, who had so fallen from grace during the Sukarno regime, hoped that Suharto’s so-called New Order regime, backed as it was by the military, would be more supportive of their political aspirations and allow a reemergence of Masyumi. These hopes were quickly dashed, however, and while the Suharto regime did allow a formation of a Masyumi successor by the name of Parmusi they were not willing to allow the old Masyumi leadership an active role in leading Parmusi. The military, per...