Indonesian democracy's enemy within<\/p>\n
Sadanand Dhume
\nYale Center for the Study of Globalization
\nPhiladelphia<\/p>\n
As world leaders condemned last October's suicide bombings on
\nthe resort island of Bali, Indonesian leaders set a different
\ntone. Hidayat Nur Wahid, speaker of the People's Consultative
\nAssembly (Indonesia's highest legislative body) pooh-poohed the
\nidea of another terrorist strike just three years after the
\nOctober 2002 attack that killed more than 200 people, and instead
\nblamed the most recent bombings on rivalries within the local
\ntourism industry.<\/p>\n
For those who follow Indonesia, Nur Wahid's comments hardly
\ncame as a surprise. The speaker has been one of the most
\noutspoken defenders of Abu Bakar Ba'asyr, the spiritual head of
\nJamaah Islamiyah -- al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian franchise. Nur
\nWahid is also the former head of the Justice and Prosperity Party
\n(PKS), which threatens to import a more subtle form of radical
\nIslam to Indonesia -- and which is rising rapidly.<\/p>\n
In the seven years since it was founded the Justice Party has
\nemerged as the country's most disciplined political force. In
\nlast year's election it won nearly 7.5 percent of the vote and 45
\nseats, making it the seventh-largest party in Indonesia's
\nparliament.<\/p>\n
The Justice Party has built a reputation for incorruptibility,
\ndevotion to social work and attachment to Islamic causes. Few
\nknow that it draws its ideology and organizational structure from
\nEgypt's Muslim Brotherhood -- whose vision spawned radical
\nIslamist movements like Hamas, Sudan's National Islamic Front and
\n(most famously) al-Qaeda. While Jamaah Islamiyah stands for
\nsuicide bombings, the Justice Party believes in peaceful
\nprotests.<\/p>\n
The magnitude of that threat is most clear in the ideology of
\nthe Justice Party's greatest political inspiration, the Muslim
\nBrotherhood. The Brotherhood's ideology is encapsulated in its
\nslogan: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Koran
\nis our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our
\nhighest hope."<\/p>\n
The movement's most influential thinker was the virulently
\nanti-American Egyptian literary critic Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966).
\nFor him, as for Islamists everywhere, God's laws (sharia) were
\nsuperior to man's laws. Islam belonged everywhere: In the
\nclassroom and the boardroom; in banks, in courts, in movie
\ntheaters.<\/p>\n
On the face of it you couldn't seem to find less promising
\nground for militant Islam than Indonesia.<\/p>\n
During his 32-year rule anti-communist strongman General
\nSoeharto enforced uniform religious education in schools. At the
\nsame time, petrodollars from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf financed
\nmosques and preachers demanding a "purer" reading of Islam. The
\nInternet and desktop publishing imported the discourse of Riyadh
\nand Tehran to Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi.<\/p>\n
It was against this backdrop that Qutb's ideas reached
\nIndonesia in the late 1970s. Activists linked to the Saudi-
\nsponsored Islamic World League began indoctrinating small groups
\nat the prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology with
\nBrotherhood materials. Like the Brotherhood, these groups
\norganized in secret cells, each with a leader and between five
\nand fifteen members. They met once a week to discuss Islam and to
\nlearn how to develop a proper "Islamic personality," studying the
\nworks of al-Banna and Qutb. The movement was called Tarbiyah,
\nArabic for education.<\/p>\n
Indonesia was rapidly urbanizing in the 1980s. Many college
\nstudents were the first in their families to acquire a higher
\neducation or to live in a city. Tarbiyah gave its members a sense
\nof purpose and dignity; simple ideas of right and wrong; a
\nframework for understanding the changes taking place around them.
\nBy the early 1990s it controlled student movements in virtually
\nall of Indonesia's largest public universities.<\/p>\n
The party's top leadership is steeped in Brotherhood ideology.
\nNur Wahid, who resigned from the party chairmanship last year to
\ntake his present position, holds a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from the
\nBrotherhood-founded University of Medina in Saudi Arabia. Party
\nSecretary-General Anis Matta graduated from the Jakarta branch of
\nRiyadh's Al-Imam Muhammad bin Saud University, also linked to the
\nBrotherhood.<\/p>\n
The party has the blessing of today's most prominent Muslim
\nBrother, the Egyptian-born cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who believes
\nthat democratic means can be used to pursue Islamist ends. He has
\nvisited Indonesia several times over the last twenty years and is
\nquoted in the Justice Party's founding manifesto.<\/p>\n
The party has grown from 60,000 members in 1999 to between
\n400,000 and 500,000 in 2004.What explains its extraordinary
\nsuccess? For one, it is the only party in the country based on a
\nnetwork of tight-knit cadres. These well-trained party workers,
\nmany graduates of technical and scientific departments, tend to
\nbe driven and organized.<\/p>\n
The party also takes its self-image as an agent of moral
\nreform seriously. It's virtually impossible to find a Justice
\nParty member who smokes or a female party member without the
\nheadscarf. When there's a natural disaster such as last year's
\ntsunami, party cadres are among the first volunteers at the
\nscene.<\/p>\n
Despite the Justice Party's social work, little separates its
\nthinking from Jamaah Islamiyah's. Like Jamaah Islamiyah, in its
\nfounding manifesto, the Justice Party called for the creation of
\nan Islamic caliphate. Like Jamaah Islamiyah, it has placed
\nsecrecy -- facilitated by the cell structure both groups borrowed
\nfrom the Brotherhood -- at the heart of its organization.<\/p>\n
Both offer a selective vision of modernity -- one in which
\nglobal science and technology are welcome, but un-Islamic values
\nare shunned. The two groups differ chiefly in their methods:
\nJamaah Islamiyah is revolutionary; the Justice Party is
\nevolutionary.<\/p>\n
Of the two, the Justice Party is by far the larger threat to
\nIndonesia. With its suicide bombings Jamaah Islamiyah has set
\nitself up for a confrontation with the government that it cannot
\nhope to win. In contrast, the Justice Party uses its position in
\nparliament and its metastasizing network of cadres to advance the
\nsame goals incrementally, one vote at a time.<\/p>\n
At the same time, by throwing its weight behind Jamaah
\nIslamiyah's Ba'ashir, the party complicates the government's
\nefforts to crack down on terrorists. Indeed, peaceful methods
\naside, the Justice Party's success can only help terrorists: The
\nmore people who believe that the problem with society is too much
\nmodernity, and that a purified Islam is an answer to twenty-first
\ncentury problems, the more likely it is that hotheads among them
\nwill use terrorism to achieve their goals.<\/p>\n
Sadanand Dhume, a former Indonesia correspondent of the Far
\nEastern Economic Review and The Asian Wall Street Journal, is
\nwriting a book on the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia. An
\nexpanded version of this article appeared in the May 2005 issue
\nof the Far Eastern Economic Review. Reprinted with permission
\nfrom YaleGlobal Online, (http:\/\/yaleglobal.yale.edu).<\/p>",
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