Comparing Islamic leftists and rightists

Kornelius Purba, Staff Writer, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

To understand the various developments in Islam in Indonesia, a main reference point should be the activities of Muslim activists in the 1970s, when then president Soeharto initiated various crackdowns on campus activities. Ken Miichi, whose dissertation, Comparing Young Islamic Movements: Islamic Left and 'Kampus Dakwah' (Campuses of Propagation). The following is an excerpt of an interview with Dr. Miichi, who works as a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan.

Question: Why is it important to trace the history of the Muslim youth movement from the 1970s?

Answer: The (movement) is the mirror of Indonesian society over the last 30 years. When Soeharto banned students from political activities, these students knew that they could not resist his regime, so they became active in social and religious activities ... The nature of Islamic life in Indonesia now is different compared to the 1950s.

My own dissertation compares the youth movement of the Nahdlatul Ulama and what I call the Islamic left on one side, and the Islamic right, the Partai Keadilan (Justice Party) and KAMMI (Indonesian Muslim Students Front), on the other side.

It seems that NU students tend to have a "leftist" tendency. They can closely work with "leftist" student groups like FORKOT (City Forum), FAMRED (Student Action Front for Reform and Democracy) and PMII (Indonesian Muslim Students Movement).

As a religious ideology (NU and these student groups) are very different, but their histories and activities are quite similar. So both (youth movements) were born on campus, out of aliran (schools of thought) in the 1950s, and they are very serious in social issues. They tend to work on social movements, setting up NGOs, and tackling labor or farmer problems.

NU students have very good relations with secular groups, Christians and other non-Muslim groups. They can cooperate with each other, and have a kind of inheritance from NU tradition. Their prominent teachers include (former president) Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid.

(In the past, NU youths) also cooperated with the Army to establish the New Order, which marked Soeharto's era. Some of them joined the government and become bureaucrats or technocrats.

(During the New Order) NU youths outside the government helped set up the first non-governmental organizations, such as the LP3ES (Jakarta-based research center the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education and Information). These youths have some (cultural and intellectual) inheritance from the (defunct) Indonesian Socialist Party (PSI) and Masyumi but in time Masyumi tended to become closer to the HMI (Islamic Student Association), and become more conservative. The HMI activists later joined Golkar and the bureaucracy.

In the 1970s, NU students entered campuses. They were earlier educated at pesantren (traditional Islamic schools), and only a few had higher or modern education. (But) in the early 1980s IAIN (State Institute of Islamic Studies) opened its doors to the pesantren in the 1970s. People like Masdar (Mas'oed) were among the first generation of pesantren students who continued on to IAIN and set up NGOs like LP3ES.

KAMMI or the Partai Keadilan has a (similar) history since 1978; after that political student movements failed and many students were arrested. They started dakwah (propagation) or tarbiyah (education) at ITB (Bandung Institute of Technology) and other universities. These are the roots of what I call the kampus dakwah movement, (where) student activists resorted to religion. Their situations are very similar. Since the 1980s, they became very active in mosque-related movements.

Campus mosques are like cafes, students have discussions there and study there. NU students at IAIN also did the same at the mosques -- with one difference: These students are more pluralistic and they work together with non-Muslim groups. While the "rightists" do not work with Christian groups, but they are also very serious about social problems. They started around 1978, with Ikhwanul Muslimin, the Egyptian organization, as a political source. (Students such as those from KAMMI) translated many Arabic books into Indonesian.

Publications from the Salman Mosque at ITB show a diverse range of titles from Arabic writers; there are also those about Syiah figures like Ali Shariati. So (these students) had a kind of pluralistic thinking in the past, which is changing ... they are not wahabi (the school of Islam from Saudi Arabia which is considered to adhere to the strict literal interpretation of the Koran), they are modernist but not like Masyumi or DDII (Indonesian Council for Islamic Propagation).

Members of KAMMI, kampus dakwah students, read Shariati for example. So they have pluralism (in a different way) and intellectuality. These are the similarities and the differences between the two (student movements related to NU and KAMMI).

So are students of the "right" more exclusive compared to those on the "left"?

As I said, the "rightists" do not work with Christians, but they are pluralistic within Islam. They are modernist, they are concerned with democracy, civil society, human rights and the equality of women. If you go to kampus dakwah meetings, women and men are separated. But they are completely equal, and you can see many women activists in Partai Keadilan compared to in other parties. They differ from the western concept of feminism, but they have Islamic ways of equality between man and woman.

They practice democracy. They are totally different from "fundamentalists." Demonstrations by Partai Keadilan are very peaceful, and about half of the demonstrators are women. So this is a significant movement, and very different from past Islamic movements.

Do you see the roots of radicalism in the country?

There are several radical roots in Indonesia. There is still the inheritance of Darul Islam (the formerly active movement charged with trying to set up an Islamic state) in West Java and South Sulawesi. And until today groups like Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia and parts of DDII have ties with the remnants of Darul Islam. And also some parts of the kampus dakwah also have very radical Islamic thoughts, imported from Arab countries.

We should not forget that there is a kind of Islamic radical movement that was created by Soeharto. Soeharto's regime used Islamic radicals to oppress democratization.

Is radicalism growing in Indonesia?

In terms of organization they are growing, but the people have not changed radically. Darul Islam has not grown much. (For instance), not many people supported the aspiration to include sharia in the amendments to the Constitution .... In a national sense radicalism has not increased. However, at the regency or provincial level many want to implement sharia, like South Sulawesi, Banten, Cianjur, Tasikmalaya and Garut in West Java, and one regency in Madura.

I only visited South Sulawesi where I interviewed several ulema. They told me they did not agree with sharia, but in South Sulawesi sharia is directly connected with regional autonomy. It is a kind of tool to use regional autonomy. I don't know about other places yet. But given the very bad economic situation, there are so many frustrated people.

What is more important is that the trust in the military and police is rapidly decreasing. People do not trust the justice system, so they want some alternative. It is too early to conclude that radicalism is increasing here.