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Tue, 16 Jun 1998
AsiaWeek, 19 Juni 1998
WORLDLY MATTERS: Islam is changing Indonesian politics
Islam has been a social and spiritual force. Now it is helping re-shape politics too
By Jose Manuel Tesoro / Jakarta
AT THE AGE OF 17, Indonesians must undergo a small but significant rite of passage. Often the teenagers are not even present, though the consequence will last a lifetime. Parents fill out a four-page form and hand it over to the head of the neighborhood. A week or so later, the teenagers receive their first national identity card. It lists their name, date and place of birth, occupation (if any) and religion. Unless the teenagers, or their parents, specify otherwise, they are automatically listed as Muslims, and become at least nominal members of the majority in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Small acts like this, instituted during the Suharto era, have led to a growing consciousness among many ordinary Indonesians that Islam is part of what defines them. Or, at least, they think about how it should. On Fridays, the corridors and shelves in Jakarta office buildings fill up with the shoes of the faithful, who walk barefoot into prayer rooms for their weekly obeisance. Mosques are community centers, everyone from taxi drivers to bankers uses Islamic sayings and religious study groups are popular with students. It goes without saying: Islam is a social and spiritual force in Indonesia, now more than ever. But its political role remains one of the country's largest unresolved questions.
For years, former president Suharto reduced the importance of Islamic politics in his authoritarian system. Then in the last decade of his rule he styled himself as a Muslim leader. The energies released in those years continue to grow in the post-Suharto era. Islam's importance has been augmented, not weakened, by Suharto's fall. Educated and vocal Muslims, some close to President B.J. Habibie, now dominate government and society, while Islam-linked political parties are emerging. As an institution, Islam survived the New Order intact. The question today is: What role will Islam play in shaping the new Indonesia?
Scholar Nurcholish Madjid believes Islam in Indonesia is in a stage akin to adolescence. "It is exuberant, emotional," he says. It is giddy on its new-found power and seeming maturity. The Dutch colonial rulers kept Islam out of politics and gave ethnic Chinese more economic opportunities and education than Muslims. After Independence, Muslims gained confidence with each passing generation. The first two decades of the New Order (beginning in 1966) frustrated self-conscious Muslims who sought to influence state policies. A 1984 requirement that all organizations adhere to the state ideology of Pancasila (which stipulates adherence to one God, but not to one faith), and debates over divorce and marriage laws, brought Suharto into conflict with the Muslim community. The armed forces also closely watched Muslim activism. Tensions peaked in 1984, when soldiers gunned down Muslim protesters in Jakarta's port district of Tanjung Priok.
In the late 1980s, with a push from Suharto, Islam began moving to the center of Indonesian society. Today it occupies a key place in both government and in the opposition. President Habibie, a devout Muslim, maintains close links to the now-influential Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI). Meanwhile, the man who has become the defacto leader of the opposition, Amien Rais, heads the 28-million-member Muslim charitable and educational organization Muhammadiyah (Way of Muhammad). His rival, Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of the 30-million-strong Nahdlatul Ulama (Awakening of the Ulamas), demonstrated his organization's clout by summoning more than one million people to a prayer rally in the city of Surabaya on May 31.
Ismail Hasan Metareum, leader of the Muslim-based United Development Party (PPP) has also tried to position himself and his organization as government critics. But like the other two officially recognized political parties created during the New Order, the PPP appears to be disintegrating. One of the party's constituent groups, the Syarikat Islam (Islamic Union), is vying to become a separate Muslim political force itself. And on June 8, some 300 PPPmembers occupied party headquarters in Jakarta to demand that Metareum step down.
Religious leaders, such as Madjid, Minister of Religious Affairs Malik Fadjar and popular preacher Emha Ainun Nadjib, have acquired a new aura of authority because in a private meeting with Suharto May 19 they urged him to resign - and two days later he did. Meanwhile, on the now very politically active campuses, solid blocks of votes from conservative Islamic students catapult Muslim activists to the leadership of university senates.
The laws regulating political activity have yet to be rewritten, although Habibie has said that parties based on race, religion or ethnicity would probably not be acceptable. But ethnic-Chinese entrepreneurs launched the Indonesian Chinese Reform Party June 5; the next day another group called the Citizens' Forum for Reform introduced itself. Both aim to guarantee the civil rights of ethnic Chinese. At Jakarta's Al-Azhar mosque on May 31, cleric Ahmad Sumargono warned Indonesia's leaders: "Don't prevent Muslims from forming an Islamic party because of fear that it would endanger the nation. That would be a sign of Islamophobia." Habibie will probably be unable to stop the momentum to establish Islamic political groups.
The top leaders of Muhammadiyah and NU are hesitant to establish parties; for them and others, Islamic politics holds not just hope but danger too. Fajrul Falaakh, an NU official, says the central board asked supporters to consider whether founding a party "would sharpen the political tensions that are emerging." NU members, however, may form as many as 11 parties. One group already said on June 7 that it would formally launch a party in August.
Religious symbols may be an easy way for a newborn party to win support. But in the absence of a common enemy, be it communism or Suharto, political conflict may well express itself through religion. Ambitious individuals can also use religion to gain influence and fulfill personal ambitions. "There is sure to be someone who will seek to use religious legitimacy to obtain mass support," says Minister of Religious Affairs Fadjar. Indeed, Boddi Biki, the brother of the murdered Muslim activist Amir Biki who led the Tanjung Priok protest in 1984, refused togive Amir's portrait to a group who wanted to display it during a demonstration at parliament.
Islam's formal entrance into politics, after a long exile, is not something everyone fears, though. "Any political party should pay attention to Muslim interests," says Dawam Rahardjo, the rector of an Islamic university near Jakarta and a front-page columnist for the Muslim national daily, Republika. He believes there is "no harm if Islam is accommodated in the political structure." To marginalize Islam again would be another form of repression, and might force it underground where it would become intolerant.
Yet what issues would appeal to "Muslim interests"? The most popular would be more explicit attempts to diminish the perceived wealth gap between Chinese and other, mostly Muslim, Indonesians. Says Habibie adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar: "If we want to achieve harmony, the only way to do it is to make the indigenous rich." Before the May 14-15 riots in Jakarta, Chinese Indonesians, who make up about 4% of Indonesia's 202 million population, were thought to hold about 75% of the nation's assets. These numbers have no statistical basis, yet are considered conventional wisdom.
One favorite topic of discussion is a Malaysia-style New Economic Policy, which would clearly extend special privileges to non-Chinese Indonesians. Other suggestions include credit programs for small- and middle-scale entrepreneurs and farmers, who are more likely to be native Indonesians. Economic inequality is the root of many of Indonesia's problems, says Rahardjo. "Why don't we settle it once and for all?" But with socialism and communism banished from the national debate, Indonesians have few ways other than race and religion to express what is essentially a class problem. The economic crisis has, of course, only exacerbated the wealth gap - and reducing it is now an even more urgentmatter.
Another issue - though few have yet broached it in the post-Suharto era - is the role of Islamic law, or shariah, in national regulations. There are those, such as Madjid, who would prefer that Islam remain a matter of private morality rather than public accountability. But Fadli Zon, a young Islamic activist, believes that position "is too polite - religion is for the state and society." It is not just the more vocal Muslims who believe this, either. "There is a perception that Islamic law is cruel," says current ICMI chair, retired general Achmad Tirtosudiro. But, he says, its judgments are never automatic; in criminal cases decisions are based on perceptions of guilt and innocence and are just as complicated to reach as they are in Western courts. Shariah, he says, can be a viable legal system.
Subjects like social justice and law can quickly become divisive. Their resolution in a more open political arena could well heighten awareness among Christian, Catholic, Hindu and Buddhist Indonesians of their minority status. But many Muslim thinkers acknowledge that minority rights must be protected; the concept of a single, united Indonesia is at least as strong as the pull of religion. "You are free here," says ICMI's Tirtosudiro to minorities. "But please know your place."
Another possible check on the rise of Islamic interests could be the military, whose commitment in the past to guarding unity and stability included dampening down extremism. But in today's volatile environment, the armed forces (ABRI) may either bend to the new Islamic politics - or seek to channel it. Like all groups in Indonesia today, ABRI has to work to maintain public support. On May 22, ABRI chief Wiranto replaced Lt.-Gen. Prabowo Subianto (Suharto's son-in-law and Wiranto's rival) as head of the army's strategic reserve with a Christian general, Johny Lumintang. But a day later, Wiranto appointed a Muslim, Maj.-Gen. Djamari Chaniago, to take Lumintang's place. The Indonesian army is particularly sensitive to issues of religion. The widely accepted interpretation is that Wiranto, on the advice of other generals, replaced the Christian general to avoid any potential criticism.
Indonesian Islam has always been tolerant; Islamic radicalism has not taken hold on a large scale. The more pressing problem is not the inevitable rise of Islam in politics, but the economy. Harry Tjan Silalahi, a political commentator, says: "A poor Indonesia is a greater concern than an Islamic Indonesia." But some link poverty and the government's "neglect" of Islam. That perception could provide a route for radical Muslims to move from the margins of power to the center.
Can Indonesians promote Muslim interests without alienating non-Muslims? Today that is the challenge and the worry. Madjid says that the Prophet Muhammad preached in order to "unite all communities." Islam, after all, is about inclusion. So too is the idea of Indonesia.