Islamism in Indonesia: Politics in the Emerging Democracy

1. The Waning of the Masyumi Tradition

1 The Waning of the Masyumi Tradition T his chapter examines the re-formation process of Islamist politics in the years 1998 and 1999. I argue that an associative spirit of what I term the “Masyumi tradition” was sustained during the New Order. In the early phase of democracy, however, this spirit did not lead to joint political action. Practical considerations determined the reformation of political parties after the fall of Soeharto in May 1998, which led to small support for the establishment of Masyumi legatee parties. Moreover, despite claiming ongoing adherence to the ideals of Masyumi, the devotion of main sections of today’s legatees to the party’s goal of involving the state in enforcing shari’ah on Muslims has largely been formalistic and symbolic. It is especially this part of Masyumi’s ideology which is becoming increasingly hollow. Tensions among the legatees also revealed a lack of clarity on what behaviour, both politically and personally, the dedication to lofty Masyumi ideals has to entail. Overall, 30 The Waning of the Masyumi Tradition 31 the type of Islamism represented by Masyumi and a number of affiliated organizations has gradually diminished in significance and is likely to decline further in the future. The Masyumi is the historical focal point of several of the Islam-based parties formed in the immediate post-New Order era. From 1949 to 1958 Masyumi was headed by Mohamad Natsir (d. 1993). For later generations of Masyumi adherents, Natsir became the paragon, and intellectually, the most dominating figure. He and other Masyumi leaders consented to a number of programmes and ideas that set them apart from Islamists such as Maududi or Qutb. Most importantly, Masyumi took on Western concepts such as a multiparty system, the separation of powers, and parliamentary rule. It deemed free speech and a formal opposition in parliament mandatory for a democracy.1 These were not inherently Islamic issues, but denoted the impact of reformist ideas on Indonesian Islam, in which the “Masyumi tradition” came to grow as an innate, undisclosed component. At the same time, Masyumi took the offensive against Western-style liberal democracy. It contested suggestions that Islam was somewhat faulty if it could not prove congruity to a concept of democracy grounded in Western norms and philosophy. Attempts were made to reconcile a variety of European political conceptions with the ongoing sway held by Islamic doctrinal models over Muslim thought. Typical in the Muslim world of the 1950s and 1960s were amalgamations of concepts such as “Islamic republic” (Pakistan), “Islamic” or “Arab socialism” (Libya, Egypt, Syria). When the Dutch East Indies became independent, the vast majority of Muslim politicians favoured a democracy grounded in an unspecified Islamic temperament, with the state’s penal code to be compatible with an unclear number of shari’ah rules.2 These Muslims helped to create political institutions based on European-derived concepts. But they nevertheless strove to remain equally faithful to what they saw as the commands of their faith. These ideas were still defined by the parameters of classical Sunni political theory. The way Masyumi formulated its aims plainly exposed the inherent predicament. It described a modern political system as a “democratic and constitutional state based on Islam” (negara hukum yang demokratis berdasarkan Islam), and in its 1945 statutes, Masyumi set the primary goals as to “implement the sovereignty of the Indonesian Republic and the Islamic Religion”, to “carry out [melaksanakan] Islamic ideals in state affairs”, and, in a later version, to “carry out Islamic teachings and law in the life of each individual, society and the Indonesian Republic…”.3 32 Islamism in Indonesia This means that, though permeated by modernist rationalism and devoted to Western political concepts, Masyumi remained strongly dedicated to upholding the purity of the Islamic ethos and, therefore, demanded Islam be the ultimate source and the underpinning constraint for all reasoning.4 The somewhat indistinct understanding of a negara Islam (“Islamic state”) thus became a democratic, popularly elected, constitutional state, formally based on Islam and framed by Islamic principles with hazy attributes. Like many Islamists elsewhere in the Muslim world, Masyumi endorsed the view that not every draft law would be eligible to parliamentary debate, but only those not predetermined by Qur’anic directives. Natsir wrote: Islam is democratic, in the sense that Islam is…anti-absolutism, antidespotism . But [this] does not mean that parliament [has to] approve the abolition of lotteries, [issues dealing with] ‘iniquity...