Islamic student groups must be alert

By Muhammad Qodari

JAKARTA (JP): An article I wrote on Islamic groups and the student movement published on Feb. 15 in this newspaper, has prompted a response from a friend of mine, Andi Rahmat, chairman of the Indonesian Muslim Students Action Front (KAMMI).

In his article on Feb. 20, Rahmat grasped the most important point; that there is a danger that New Order remnants, in pursuing their own goals, may be manipulating Islamic sentiment among students in opposition to President Abdurrahman Wahid, or Gus Dur.

Rahmat, however, has also shown some misunderstanding. I never intended to simplify matters to say that the chief motive behind the movement in opposition to Gus Dur is the Muslim student groups' dislike for Gus Dur and for Nahdlatul Ulama.

I only wanted to disclose that the discourse among the students movement in opposition to Gus Dur is not as simple or as neutral as their rhetoric of the six-point reform vision.

The students' movement is now dominated by a network affiliated with KAMMI, a students' organization with great concerns on the Islamic political agenda. This domination has found expression at the level of discourse and also in the number of its active participants in rallies; this has influenced, to a considerable degree, public opinion particularly on the issue of whether Gus Dur will survive.

Nowadays, when transparency is regarded a prerequisite for democracy, broad segments of the community must enjoy the right to know as much as possible about political figureheads and their respective agendas.

They must be informed that, unlike the multireligious, multi- ideological and multiorganizational 1998 students' movement, the students' movement of 2001 is dominated by one based on Islamic ideology.

This ideological basis is important to take into account not only because Indonesia is a multireligious, multiethnic and multicultural state, but also because it is associated with the essence of democracy, which, as Andi Rahmat has put it, is the agenda of today's Islamic students' groups.

KAMMI and its network now control a number of formal students' organizations across Indonesia.

Rahmat may be right when saying that KAMMI and its network opposed former presidents Soeharto and B.J. Habibie -- though compared to other students' action fronts KAMMI tended to be more passive.

He may also be right in saying that the above network silently boycotted the 1992 and 1997 elections as a manifestation of their disagreement with the New Order.

However it is obvious that KAMMI and its network were not, in their original format, students' groups taking up a frontline position in resisting Soeharto and the New Order regime.

If only the paradigm of democratization prevailing among Muslim students' movement had been as solid as Rahmat had put it, their firm stance towards Soeharto would have surfaced much earlier.

A survey conducted by a team from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences on the 1998 students' movement discloses that in the late 1980s until shortly before Soeharto's fall in 1998, KAMMI and its networks were not on the list of student groups openly opposing Soeharto.

During my student years, elements associated with KAMMI only responded to matters with specific Islamic interests like the national lottery or issues of Bosnia and Chechnya.

The reason is crystal clear: KAMMI avoided direct confrontation with Soeharto. KAMMI itself was not officially established until April 10, 1998, only shortly before the wave of student action peaked.

Rahmat stated that "the students' message portrays the original outlook of Muslim students regarding democratization, and not a mask to cover their fundamentalist face, as some have accused". This statement should not stop at mere rhetoric.

KAMMI activists are known to have, either secretly or openly, campaigned that their candidates for student bodies were purely Islamic, while rival candidates, although also Muslims, were secular or non-practitioners.

Instructions were issued prohibiting followers to elect a non- Islamic leader. This practice went on for years, at least at the University of Indonesia.

This practice is against the principle of democracy, which brings into question their performance in the political arena outside campus.

Rahmat mentioned Islam and Democracy, a book by John L. Esposito and John O. Voll. It is not clear which argument Rahmat wished to defend by quoting from a book on Islamic discourse and practices of democracy in Iran, the Sudan, Pakistan, Malaysia, Algiers and Egypt.

The writers reached the following conclusion,"Both the government and sociopolitical movements in these countries have often made use of religious symbols and jargons in their own interest; they have cashed in on, abused, applied and manipulated religion and politics."

I do not hate KAMMI and its network. I actually admire the activists who are known to be honest and devout. However, any group with an agenda of religious interest and sentiment will always be vulnerable to the political manipulation of religion by such groups as the remnants of the New Order.

The study by Esposito and Voll has only confirmed these fears.

The writer works with the Institute for Studies on the Free- flow of Information, Jakarta.