Comparing Islamic leftists and rightists

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.