Hardline Islam on the march in Indonesia

Merle Ricklefs The Straits Times Asia News Network/Singapore

There has recently been a major upsurge in the ongoing contest between Islamic liberals and conservatives in Indonesia. Its course and current state may help us to judge which way the religious wind is blowing there.

The immediate issue has been a group known as the Ahmadiyah. This goes back to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (circa 1839-1908), who provoked great controversy when he declared that he was the Islamic Messiah. By some interpretations, he also claimed to be a new prophet.

Orthodox Muslims, who accept the teaching of the Koran that Muhammad was the last of God's Prophets, judged Ghulam Ahmad to be a heretic. After independence, violence broke out between Ahmadis and more orthodox Muslims in Pakistan. Ahmadiyah has been banned in several Muslim-majority nations over the past half- century.

Ahmadiyah arrived in Indonesia in the 1920s and attracted criticism from mainstream Muslims from the beginning. Their numbers are relatively small by Indonesian standards, about 200,000. Only recently has there been significant violence against them.

Indonesia's national-level Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI, or Indonesia Religious Scholars Council) issued a fatwa in 1980 declaring Ahmadiyah a deviant sect outside the bounds of Islam. The Ahmadis, however, continued their low-profile activities.

Meanwhile, the public face of Indonesian Islam came increasingly to be dominated by two conflicting trends. On one side were liberals, represented strongly in the Islamic higher education system, the major national-level organizations Muhammadiyah (about 25 million members) and Nahdlatul Ulama (35- 40 million followers), and in a small group called JIL (Jaringan Islam Liberal, or the Liberal Islamic Network).

On the other side were extremists of various hues: fundamentalist Salafi movements that thrived in the late stages of the Soeharto regime and in the more open political environment after that.

These include Abu Bakar Ba'asyir's Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, groups like Laskar Jihad and the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) which were willing to engage in violence and, most notoriously, Jamaah Islamiyah.

A third leadership group seemed to have lost control of the agenda altogether: The conservative, literalist, not extremist but also not liberal, religious scholars known as ulamas.

The elections of 2004 even demonstrated that however much respect ulamas might receive from ordinary Indonesians, most people were not prepared to take their advice about whom to vote for.

In the middle of 2005, religious conservatives sought to reassert authority. Their first victory was in Muhammadiyah, a modernist organization founded in 1912. Modernism in Islam embraces scientific and secular knowledge and modern social styles, but it also goes back to the basic texts of Islam, the Koran and Hadith (Prophetic traditions), unmediated by the interpretations of the orthodox schools of law, so it also has a literalist, puritan side.

The MUI was just then in the process of issuing new fatwas. On July 28, it issued 11 of them, two of which are of interest to us here. They condemned, firstly, pluralism, liberalism and secularism as against Islam, and secondly, Ahmadiyah as heretical and its followers as murtad (apostates, whom it is lawful to kill according to some interpretations of Islamic law).

The authorities in West Java sealed Ahmadiyah properties in Kuningan, the target of attack in 2002.

In Garut, Ahmadis had machetes put to their necks and were forced to say they had returned to the true Islam. In Bogor, the Ahmadi complex was attacked. The FPI, under its leader Habib Rizieq Shihab, returned to prominence in the West Java anti- Ahmadiyah actions.

The FPI has also been active in forcing the closure of over 20 Christian churches in West Java over the past year. So much for freedom of religion in that part of Indonesia.

In Padang, West Sumatra, religious leaders told Ahmadis they had a week to disband, but elsewhere nothing seems to have happened.

In Jakarta, the authorities sealed an Ahmadi mosque in order to prevent violence, but in Solo and Yogyakarta all was quiet.

In Tawangmangu, Central Java, the local MUI branch said it had no intention of doing anything for there had never been problems between Ahmadis and their neighbors.

So the impact of the MUI fatwa denouncing Ahmadiyah varied from place to place. Where there was a historical background of conflict, as in West Java, it was taken as justification for more action. Elsewhere, it rarely had an impact.

Liberal figures rallied against the MUI fatwas. Ulil Abshar Abdalla of the Liberal Islam Network (JIL), with his unerring gift for infuriating conservatives, called the fatwas tolol, plain stupid.

On Aug. 5, the FPI attempted to lead an attack on the JIL headquarters in Jakarta. The JIL was defended by several hundred people: students from the State Islamic University, Nahdlatul Ulamas youth militia, Muhammadiyah's Security Command, local residents and some 200 police. The mob backed off.

This was an ominous development for the MUI: Conservative and reactionary ulamas might wish to regain the agenda from the liberals and the extremists, but few would wish to see their cause associated with extremist violence. Yet that was what happened: the extremists in a back-handed way were assisting the liberals to discredit the MUI.

Former president Abdurrahman Wahid, major Islamic leaders and other public figures condemned the fatwas and asked why the MUI refused to issue one condemning violence.

Newspapers lauded Indonesia's plural social heritage. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said nothing at all.

Where does this conflict stand now? Conservatives and reactionaries dominate two important organizations, the MUI and Muhammadiyah, to a greater extent than before. But the MUI fatwas so far seem to have been effective only in one area, West Java, where there was already a history of conflict.

Pluralism is a fact of life in Indonesia which the MUI can't wish away. Liberalism is deeply embedded in the educational system and has strong cultural roots. It is probable that the Islamic thugs in robes have assisted the liberal cause by associating the MUI fatwas with anarchic violence. This is a good way to persuade Indonesians that your cause is unacceptable.

This is a perpetual story without endings, but there are grounds for thinking that the progressive liberalism of Indonesia has withstood the attack. With its reactionary fatwas, the MUI may indeed have sidelined itself from the rapidly changing society around it.

We must now wait to see what is done by Din Syamsuddin and his colleagues in Muhammadiyah, an organization of immense importance to Indonesia's future. Will they try to push a conservative agenda even more vigorously?

The writer is a professor at the National University of Singapore. He may be contacted at polrmc@nus.edu.sg.