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SAIS Review 21.2 (2001) 29-37



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Indonesia, Islam, and the Prospect for Democracy

Mark R. Woodward


Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country and among the world's newest and most fragile democracies. Democratic transitions are difficult in part because they require changes in political culture as well as in political institutions. In societies where concepts of authority and leadership are rooted in deeply-held religious beliefs, transforming political culture requires serious theological reflection. Islam, like Judaism and unlike Christianity, is a religion of law. In principle, Islamic law is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of religious and social life. The ways in which Islamic law is understood and interpreted have profound implications for political development in Muslim countries. Indonesia is no exception.

For nearly four decades, ex-President Suharto's authoritarian "New Order" regime sought to de-politicize and domesticate Indonesian Islam. Scholarship and personal piety were encouraged, but explicitly Islamic political discourse was severely restricted. Ironically, the expansion of Muslim education and reflection on the role of Islam in the modern, secular world system contributed significantly to the growth of the democracy movement that emerged as a major political force following the economic crisis of 1997. There is a new generation of Muslim scholars, Nurcholish Madjid being the most prolific and best known, who have strong theological as well as political commitments to democracy and religious and cultural pluralism.

In the days after the fall of Suharto there was great enthusiasm for democracy. Many Indonesians embraced the view that democracy and elections would provide a quick fix for the nation's shattered economy. Most portentous for Islam was the end of press censorship (and self censorship) and of the restrictions on political parties. It soon became clear that Indonesian Islam was not as apolitical and [End Page 29] domesticated as had seemed in the late new order period. Debate over the role of Islam in public life is a lasting element of Indonesia's civic discourse.

There is widespread concern that the emerging party system may lead to the type of "identity politics" that contributed to the collapse of Indonesia's first experiment with parliamentary democracy in the 1950s. Many observers have noted similarities between the alignment of parties contesting the 1955 and 1999 elections. In both cases party affiliation tends to reflect "primordial loyalties": class, ethnicity, and religion. The major fault lines lie between the Javanese and other ethnic groups and between orthodox (santri) and local (abangan) forms of Islam in Java. 1 The orthodox Muslim community is rent in turn by theological disputes between modernists and traditionalists and between advocates of a secular, democratic state and those who would see Indonesia become an Islamic republic. Indonesians worry that democracy may prove to be just a venue for power struggles among the leadership of these communal groups.

Anderson has suggested that the emergence of an Indonesian middle class may have laid the foundations for a democratic order in which primordial loyalties are less pronounced. 2 Despite the expansion of the middle class and modern education under Suharto, such loyalties predominated in the 1999 election. Of forty-eight parties, fifteen are Islamic in some sense. There is however heated debate about what constitutes a Muslim party. A distinction is often made between parties that are "Islamist" and those that are just based in the Muslim community or established by Muslim leaders. 3 The Islamist faction only accepts parties that explicitly describe themselves as Islamic. Prior to the election, a representative of Dewan Dakwah (the Association for the Propagation of Islam, an Islamist think tank, missionary organization, and publishing house) explained that all Muslims were obligated to choose a Muslim party (in the strict sense) and that those who did not would have "left the path of Islam." This is identity politics in its purest form. It identifies Islam, as a religion, with a small group of Islamist political parties and defines millions who consider themselves devout Muslims as non-believers.

There are five basic religious orientations within the Indonesian Muslim community. (1)Indigenized Islams, in which...

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