Asian Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2002
Two Brands Of Islam In Indonesia Jockey For Future
By JAY SOLOMON, Staff Reporter
JAKARTA -- Nursanita Nasution and Syafii Maarif both believe that Islam offers the
best hope of rescuing this increasingly fractured country from political chaos. But the
two respected Muslim leaders have vastly different religious agendas.
Over the past few years, economic woes, separatist revolts and sectarian violence
have battered Indonesia's sense of nationhood. Mrs. Nursanita, an Islamist politician,
thinks the best way to repair the damage is to make predominately Muslim Indonesia
an Islamic state, with a constitution based on Islamic law. As part of her campaign,
the finance professor and mother of seven has led thousands of Muslim women into
the streets to confiscate pornography and protest gambling and corruption.
By contrast, Mr. Syafii, the Western-educated head of the nation's second-largest
Muslim organization, defends Indonesia's tradition of secular government. Instead of
an Islamic state, he urges Indonesians to live by the values, such as peace,
prescribed by Islam's holy book, the Koran. And he hopes that, despite pressure from
religious fundamentalists, most of Indonesia's 220 million people will continue to
practice a moderate -- and less political -- brand of Islam.
Whichever style of Islam gains the most mainstream support is likely to shape the
future of Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population. It also is
expected to shed light on a question posed by many Western policy makers,
especially amid the U.S. war on terrorism: Can political Islam and liberal democracy
coexist in the developing world?
Muslim political parties, many of which advocate the adoption of Islamic law, have
been a major force in the selection of Indonesia's last two presidents, including its
current leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri. Those parties now control about 24% of
parliament. Their secular opponents, meanwhile, worry that the Islamists' growing
influence could destabilize Indonesia by alienating more-moderate Muslims, as well
as the nation's Hindu and Christian minorities. Adding urgency to the debate is the
rising death toll from the violence some Islamic extremist groups have directed at
Indonesian Christians.
In recent weeks, 28 Southeast Asian Muslim militants believed linked to Osama bin
Laden's al Qaeda network were arrested in Singapore and Malaysia for allegedly
planning to blow up the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Singapore. Intelligence officials
believe several Indonesian militants played a key role in hatching these plans.
"There are many faces of Islam maneuvering in Indonesia today, but we're still trying
to work to face modernity," says Mr. Syafii. "We need to offer an alternative vision for
the future."
For decades, the West embraced Indonesia as an economic model for less
prosperous Muslim nations. The country, which encouraged manufacturing and foreign
investment, posted average annual economic growth of 7% for most of former
President Suharto's 32 years of rule. During the Suharto years, Washington also
relied on Indonesia as a Southeast Asian bulwark against communism.
The corrupt Suharto regime wielded an iron fist. To keep his far-flung, multi-ethnic
nation united, Mr. Suharto's military suppressed separatist campaigns that sprang up
on Indonesia's many islands and restricted or banned Islamist groups and political
parties. The strongman's family and cronies amassed business empires. At the same
time, he enforced strict adherence to Pancasila; a secular ideology aimed at defining
the common ideals -- such as social justice for all -- that made Indonesia a nation.
When Mr. Suharto finally resigned under pressure in May 1998, amid widespread
unrest stemming from the Asian economic crisis, he left behind a political and cultural
void. In the wake of his resignation, democracy took root, and about 30 Islamist
political parties sprouted. Many of them drew from Muslim student groups that had
participated in street protests seeking Mr. Suharto's departure. One such party was
Partai Keadilan, or Justice Party.
The Justice Party attracted a wide range of followers, including members of
Indonesia's professional classes, some of whom had been educated abroad. Nur
Mahmudi Ismail, the party's founder, for example, had studied animal husbandry at
Texas A&M University. And the party's leadership also included Mrs. Nursanita,
whose vocal support for women's political rights would make her a controversial figure
in much of the male-dominated Muslim world.
The Justice Party, which says it supports democracy, blames Indonesia's economic
collapse largely on corruption and moral decay. While embracing technology and
some Western influences, most of its members also are suspicious of the goals of
multinational corporations and international financial institutions, such as the
International Monetary Fund. "Our conclusion from the crisis is that there is a lack of
morality and responsibility in Indonesia," says Mr. Nur Mahmudi. "The answers," he
adds, "are in religious teachings."
The 39-year-old Mrs. Nursanita says it was ambivalence toward the West and its
ways that drew her to the Islamist movement. She grew up on the island of Sumatra
near giant oil fields developed by PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia, a unit of ChevronTexaco
Corp. She won a university scholarship from Caltex and says she planned to study
economics at the University of California in Berkeley, before her father intervened. "He
thought I would come back to Indonesia with a white man," she laughs.
Instead, Mrs. Nursanita attended the University of Indonesia in Jakarta, where she
was swept up in the Islamist movement, which Mr. Suharto and his police had largely
driven underground. After earning her doctorate degree, she stayed on at the
university as a lecturer in accounting and finance and cultivated a network of students
and intellectuals who wanted to change Indonesia.
Mr. Suharto's fall gave them their first opening. Mrs. Nursanita, who envisions a vital
role for women in her nation's political debate, recruited an army of unofficial female
morality police. On Nov. 5, she unleashed them on 10 Indonesian cities. Their mission
was to root out a homemade sex video. A university couple in the West Javanese city
of Bandung had videotaped themselves making love. Bootleg copies of the video had
made their way into Indonesian video shops and had become a sensation in university
dormitories, and even among middle-aged women. Similar homemade videos turned
up at other Indonesian universities, and the couple in the original video became
unwitting celebrities. Mrs. Nursanita aimed to stamp out the trend.
In the city of Bandung alone, 1,000 of her women activists, wearing Islamic
headscarves, descended on the mayor's office, the local parliament and a shopping
center to seize sexually explicit videos. "I thought they were going to confiscate all
my merchandise," says Nanda, a local video store operator. But finding no sex videos
in his shop, the vigilantes slapped a sticker on his stall that read: "Save Our
Generation From Pornography."
While Mrs. Nursanita and her party condemn the use of violence, other, more militant
Indonesian Islamists have made it their weapon of choice. Thousands have died, for
example, in a war that one of the most prominent extremist groups, Laskar Jihad, is
waging against Christians in central and eastern Indonesia.
The group is run by Ja'far Umar Thalib, 40 years old, the son of immigrants from
Yemen, who grew up practicing a radical form of Islam imported from his parents'
homeland. His father became a well-known ulama, or preacher, in East Java, a calling
Mr. Ja'far also undertook, while still a teenager.
Mr. Ja'far felt stifled by the Suharto regime, which forbade the use of religious symbols
in political literature and erected other walls between mosque and state. So, Mr. Ja'far
traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan, to further his Islamic studies. From there it was a
short hop across the border into Afghanistan and the 1980s war against the Soviet
Union, where he learned military strategy from the Mujahedeen.
After Mr. Suharto fell, religious tensions exploded in Indonesia. In January 1999, a
simple street brawl in Jakarta between Muslims and Christians escalated into
full-scale war in the Maluku Islands, in eastern Indonesia. Mr. Ja'far, by then back in
Indonesia, was running a fundamentalist boarding school at the time and quickly
assembled the Laskar Jihad, or "Militia of the Holy War," ostensibly to defend fellow
Muslims.
Laskar Jihad now runs portions of the Malukus under Islamic law, its commander
says, and has expelled large numbers of Christians, who once made up half the
population of some areas. At least 9,000 Indonesians have been killed in the Maluku
islands violence, according to Jakarta officials, with another 1,000 killed on
neighboring Sulawesi island. Mr. Ja'far was arrested last year for allegedly stoning a
man to death, but police released him, citing insufficient evidence. Mr. Ja'far doesn't
deny that Laskar Jihad and local Muslim clerics executed a man for rape, but he adds
that the sentence was approved by the local Islamic council.
With Laskar Jihad and other groups spreading fear and militancy in Indonesia, the
challenge of restoring order is being taken up by men like the moderate Mr. Syafii.
Since Indonesia's independence in 1945, Indonesian Islam -- particularly the variety
practiced on Java, the most populous of Indonesia's islands -- has been dominated by
his organization, Muhammadiyah, and by the world's largest Islamic organization,
Nahdlatul Ulama, which together claim 70 million members.
These organizations provide social services and run institutions such as universities,
religious schools and hospitals. Their deep reach into so many Indonesians' lives also
makes them potent political machines. Mr. Syafii's predecessor as head of
Muhammadiyah, Amien Rais, now is speaker of Indonesia's parliament and was
perhaps the fiercest opponent of Mr. Suharto in his final days. Abdurrahman Wahid, a
former chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama, was Indonesia's president until his impeachment
in July.
Mr. Syafii is a product of the Muhammadiyah system. Born to a farmer and merchant
in a remote Sumatran town, the 66-year-old historian says he was "enlightened" by
the liberal Islamic thought of his teachers at Muhammadiyah primary schools and at
university. Though monarchs in the Middle East tended to use Islam as a means of
legitimizing their reigns, Mr. Syafii says he learned that it could also be a tool to
promote democracy and egalitarianism.
As a 45-year-old graduate student, Mr. Syafii left Indonesia for the University of
Chicago, which he attended on a Fulbright Scholarship. He says the experience
tamed some of his more militant instincts. The curse of authoritarianism, he says, is
that it breeds ignorance and suppresses thought. In the U.S., he was exposed to a
variety of views on Islam. He says that is partly why he has pushed the idea of
developing an Islamic culture, rather than an Islamic state, since taking over
Muhammadiyah in 1998.
"To truly understand Islam, you must realize that it has many different sources," Mr.
Syafii says. "And then you'll come to understand that it stands for peace."
Even so, the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. put Mr. Syafii and
other moderates here on the defensive. Washington's war in Afghanistan fueled
anti-American sentiment in Indonesia, with Islamic groups threatening to "sweep"
Americans from the country. Protesters rallied nearly daily outside the U.S. embassy
in September.
Though Mr. Syafii says he felt that Afghanistan's Taliban rulers needed to be
uprooted, he and other moderates in Indonesia were troubled by the unintentional
civilian casualties caused by the U.S. bombing.
But the history professor scrambled to cool down passions. Days after the attacks,
Mr. Syafii traveled to Yogyakarta to debate one of the nation's most militant Muslim
groups, the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council. The council's leaders are lobbying to
establish Islamic law in Indonesia and tried to send fighters to back the Taliban.
Indonesian and Malaysian police have also linked some of the council's members to
the recent plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in Singapore -- though the group denies the
accusation.
At the headquarters of the council, Mr. Syafii and his top aides urged a dozen aging
Islamists to drop their quest for an Islamic state. Most Indonesians don't support you,
Mr. Syafii bluntly told the group's elders. Islamic law will "only break up the nation,"
he said.
The elders retorted that Mr. Syafii was betraying Islam. He said that he knew more
about the faith than they did. In the end, the debate defused the tension. "As Muslim
brothers, we agreed to disagree," Mr. Syafii says.
So will the Muhammadiyah chairman and his millions of followers keep Indonesia on
its moderate path? Or will advocates of Islamic law, like Mrs. Nursanita or the militant
Mr. Ja'far, win the day? The growth of unemployment and Indonesia's withering
security situation have created a breeding ground for radicalism. And President
Megawati is already being criticized by leading politicians for being indecisive and
reluctant to crack down on the extremists.
But the stand taken by Muhammadiyah and other moderate Islamic groups has
largely silenced the anti-U.S. rhetoric in recent weeks. And the Islamic opposition,
while growing, remains fractious. Meanwhile, Mr. Syafii argues that history is on his
side. He notes that Indonesia has weathered religion-inspired revolts in the past,
particularly during the 1950s. "If we can get through this economic crisis," he says, "I
still believe Indonesia can build a model for the Islamic world."
Puspa Madani and Rin Hindryati contributed to this article.
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