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Indonesia Islamic Political Culture
Of Indonesia's population, 87.1 percent identified
themselves
as Muslim in 1980. This number was down from 95 percent in
1955.
The figures for 1985 and 1990 were not released by the
government's Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS),
suggesting a
further decline that would fuel the fires of Muslim
indignation
over Christianization and secularization under the New
Order.
Nevertheless, Indonesia was still the largest Muslim
nation in
the world in the early 1990s, united with the universal
Islamic
community (ummah) not only in the profession of
faith but
also in adherence to Islamic law
(see Religion and Worldview
, ch.
2). The appeal of Islam was not weakened when it was
supplanted
by modern secular nationalism as the basis for the
independent
Indonesian state. In fact, given the prominence of Islamic
proselytization and reinvigoration, the people's desire to
maintain Islamic institutions and moral values arguably
was at an
all-time high in Indonesia. There was, however, a
separation
between Islam as a cultural value system and Islam as a
political
movement.
Islam in Indonesia is not monolithic. The majority of
Indonesia's nominal or statistical Muslims,
abangan (see Glossary),
are, to varying degrees of self-awareness,
believers
in kebatinan
(see Islam
, ch. 2). Orthodox Islam is,
in
fact, a minority religion, and the term often used to
describe
the orthodox believer is
santri (see Glossary). A
rough
measurement of the appeal of orthodox Islam is the size of
the
electorate supporting explicitly Muslim political parties,
which
in the general elections of 1977 and 1982 approached 30
percent.
In a pluralistic setting, such numbers might be expected
to
represent political strength. This correlation would exist
in
Indonesia if Indonesian Islam spoke with a single, unified
voice.
In the early 1990s it did not. The santri consisted
of
both traditionalists and modernists, traditionalists
seeking to
defend a conservatively devout way of life, protecting
orthodoxy
as much as possible from the demands of the modern state,
and
modernists striving to adapt Indonesian Islam to the
requirements
of the modern world.
The principal organization reflecting the
traditionalist
outlook was Nahdatul Ulama (literally, "revival of the
religious
teachers," but commonly referred to as the Muslim
Scholars'
League) founded in 1926. Nahdatul Ulama had its roots in
the
traditional rural Islamic schools (pesantren) of
Central
and East Java. Claiming more than 30 million members, in
1992
Nahdatul Ulama was the largest Muslim organization in
Indonesia.
Although its rural teachers and adherents reflected its
traditional orientation, it was led into the 1990s by
Abdurrahman
Wahid, grandson of Nahdatul Ulama's founder, a "democrat"
with a
non-exclusive vision of Islam and the state. Modernist, or
reformist, Islam in Indonesia was best exemplified by the
Muhammadiyah (followers of Muhammad), founded in 1912 when
the
spirit of the Muslim reform movement begun in Egypt in the
early
1900s reached Southeast Asia. In addition to modernizing
Islam,
the reformists sought to purify (critics argue Arabize)
Indonesian Islam.
Both santri streams found formal political
expression
in the postindependence multiparty system. The
Consultative
Council of Indonesian Muslims (Masyumi) was the main
political
vehicle for the modernists. However, its activities were
inhibited by the PRRI-Permesta regional rebellions between
1957
and 1962 and the party was banned in 1959. Nahdatul Ulama
competed in the politics of the 1950s, and seeking to
capitalize
on Masyumi's banning, collaborated with Sukarno in the
hope of
winning patronage and followers. Nahdatul Ulama also hoped
to
stop the seemingly inexorable advance of the secular left
under
the leadership of the PKI. Although organized Islamic
political
parties in the New Order were prohibited from advancing an
explicitly Islamic message, traditional systems of
communication
within the community of believers, including instruction
in
Islamic schools and mosque sermons, passed judgments on
politics
and politicians.
Data as of November 1992
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