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Just how important is Islam in modern Indonesian life? For a long time many observers of Indonesian affairs seemed to believe that Islam was of peripheral importance, an impression reinforced by the relative paucity of academic studies of Islam in Indonesia (Hefner 1997a). Compared with most other large Muslim countries, and Indonesia is after all the world’s largest Muslim country , Islam in Indonesia has been surprisingly little studied. It was as if there was an unspoken assumption that Islam was on the decline, and that as Indonesia modernised and urbanised it would also secularise. Now, at the start of the 21st century, it is no longer tenable to hold such a view. Not only does Indonesia’s most influential Islamic leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, now occupy the presidential palace, he acceded to this position with the backing of a coalition of Islamic parties. This chapter will examine the importance of Islam in contemporary Indonesia and evaluate its prospects for the future. As far as the international media is concerned, Islam in Indonesia continues to be framed by suspicion and misunderstanding. Indeed, to the extent that the Western media paid any attention to Islam in Indonesia in the past, it was usually to point to its backwardness or to the dangers of fundamentalism – a view recast in academic terms in Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilisations (Huntington 1996). Hence from the moment the news of his ascension to the Indonesian presidency was flashed around the world, Abdurrahman Wahid was described negatively as ‘the frail, half-blind Muslim cleric’. Sadly, in the events of the following year it was easy to find evidence to support Huntington’s thesis. Indonesia’s troubled society has struggled to come to terms with the consequences of essentially communal conflicts. First Ambon became Indonesia’s wartime Beirut, a once cosmopolitan city reduced to warring enclaves, and then the conflict rippled outwards as Christians and Muslims turned on each other throughout Maluku. Even in Jakarta the regular 20 THE PROSPECTS FOR ISLAM Greg Barton 244 AA/Part4&5 23/3/01 6:27 PM Page 244 appearance of radical Islamic groups protesting in the streets, or rampaging through nightclubs and bars in the early hours of the morning, has been difficult to ignore. ISLAM AS AN ANTI-MODERN FORCE There are at least three separate aspects to recent developments that suggest, at face value, that Islam is not only reasserting its influence in Indonesian society but that it is doing so as an anti-modern force – threatening progress and clashing with the liberal democratic ideals that it was hoped would take root in the post-Soeharto era. The first phenomenon, not all that recent in origin, is the ‘santrification’ of Indonesian society. Increasing numbers of Indonesians, specifically urban middle-class Indonesians, are becoming more pious and observant in their faith, and more santri (originally the name for students of the pesantren, or Islamic boarding schools, and now also used to identify any conscientiously observant Muslim). Before the mid-1980s it was considered unfashionable to be seen to be too earnest about one’s faith. Some urban professionals were persistent in carrying out the orthodox requirements of their faith – fasting during Ramadan, praying at the five appointed times through the day, being careful to avoid non-halal food and so forth – but they represented the exception to the rule. For most public servants or executives in private firms to be seen to be ‘too santri’ was to risk ridicule and perhaps to jeopardise their careers. That all began to change during the 1980s as the worldwide resurgence of Islam aroused fresh enthusiasm for their faith among increasing numbers of Indonesian Muslims. It was the formation of the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) in December 1990, however, that marked a sea change (Hefner 1997b). Soeharto not only agreed to the formation of the first significant new Islamic organisation targeted at urban professionals, but also indicated his willingness to sponsor the new association by placing it under the generous care of B.J. Habibie, one of his most trusted ministers. It is difficult to know to what extent ICMI and Soeharto’s policy shift contributed to this change and to what extent it was simply the product of it, but there seems no doubting the fact that Soeharto had decided that it was time to woo those whom he had for decades regarded as his enemies. It suddenly became not merely acceptable but desirable to be seen to live a santri lifestyle...

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