Islam, Politics and Change

Front matter

LUCIS SERIES ‘DEBATES ON ISLAM AND SOCIETY Leiden University Press

At present important debates about Islam and society take place both in the West and in the Muslim world itself. Academics have considerable expertise on many of the key issues in these debates, which they would like to make available to a larger audience. In its turn, current scholarly research on Islam and Muslim societies is to a certain extent influenced by debates in society. Leiden University has a long tradition in the study of Islam and Muslim societies, past and present, both from a philological and historical perspective and from a social science approach. Its scholars work in an international context, maintaining close ties with colleagues worldwide. The peer reviewed LUCIS series aims at disseminating knowledge on Islam and Muslim societies produced by scholars working at or invited by Leiden University as a contribution to contemporary debates in society.

Editors: Léon Buskens Petra Sijpesteijn

Part 1: Islamic Political Parties and Socio-Religious Organisations 21 Kees van Dijk

1 A Study of the Internal Dynamics of the Prosperous Justice Party and Jamaah Tarbiyah 29 Ahmad-Norma Permata

1 2 3 4 5

Historical Developments and Institutional Settings 40 Ideology, Organisation, Factionalism 47

Democratic Participation 61

Appendix 77

2 The Mosque as the Religious Sphere: Looking at the Conflict over the Al Muttaqun Mosque 79

Syaifudin Zuhri

2 The pxs’ View of the Centrality of the Mosque 82

3 ThepxsinKlaten 86

4 Disputes over Al Muttagun Mosgue 88

5 The Conflict between the PKs and Muhammadiyah in Prambanan Reaches its Climax 94 Conclusion 100

3 Enforcing Religious Freedom in Indonesia: Muslim Elites and the Ahmadiyah Controversy after the 2011 Cikeusik Clash 103 Bastiaan Scherpen 1 Introduction 103 2 Muslims, Minorities and Democracy 103 3 The State 106 4 Voices of Islam in Civil Society 115 5 Conclusion 127

Part 2: Sharia-Based Legislation and the Legal Position of Women and Children 133 Kees van Dijk

4 Sharia-Based Laws: The Legal Position of Women and Children in

Banten and West Java 137

Euis Nurlaelawati

2 Women in Indonesias National Statutory and Local Regulations 139

3 Women at Religious Courts: Judges Legal Discretion 143

4 Sharia-Based Local Regulations: Jilbab Reguirement in Cianjur 153

5 The Relevance of Sharia-Based Laws in Indonesia to International Treaties: Some Voices and a Critical Analysis 155

5 ‘The Islamic Court of Bulukumba and Women’s Access to Divorce and Post-Divorce Rights 167 Stijn van Huis 1 Introduction 167 2 Bulukumba, its Islamic Court and its Sharia Byelaws 168 3 The Islamic Court of Bulukumba and Women’s Divorce Rights

174 4 The Islamic Court of Bulukumba and Women’s Post-Divorce Rights 183

6 Women in Local Politics: The Byelaw on Prostitution in Bantul 195 Muhammad Latif Fauzi 1 Introduction 195 2 From the Cepuri Pilgrim to Sexual Favours 197

CONTENTS 7.

The Making of a Prostitution Byelaw 202 Contestation over the Meaning of Prostitution 205 Prostitution and Criminalisation of Women 207 Conclusion 214

Appendix 214 nu W

Part 3: Sharia and Counterculture in Aceh 217 Kees van Dijk

7 Neo-Sufism, Shariatism, and Ulama Politics: Abuya Shaykh Amran Waly and the Tauhid-Tasawuf Movement in Aceh 221 Moch Nur Ichwan 1 Introduction 221 2 Shariatism and Sufism: Never-Ending Struggle? 222 3 Syeikh Amran Waly and Majelis Pengkajian Tauhid Tasawuf (MPTT) 231 Some Aspects of Amran Walys Teachings 234 Fatwa against Amran Waly and His Movement 241 6 The mprt’s Ulama Meeting of 2010: Sharia Ulamas Intervention 242 7 Political Alliance: Struggle for Existence 243 8 Conclusion 245 wn B&B

Reza Idria Introduction 247 Sharia for a Decade: A View from Within 250 Resistance to Sharia: An Overview 254 Sharia and Cultural Resistance: Voices from Below 257 Challenging Arabisation through Arab Films 258 Punk: Resistance to Sharia from the Street 261 Concluding Remarks 267

David Kloos

2 Violence and Religion as Defining Aspects of Acehnese History 273

3 Global Jihad, or ‘Money and Guns? 278

4 From Indra Patra to “Crazy Aceh’: A Brief Genealogy of Struggle 284

Bibliography 295 Glossary 313 About the Authors 323

Index 327

TABLE 1

TABLE 2

TABLE 3

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

List of Tables and Figures pKs Involvement in local governments implementing Sharia regulations 77

Results of the National and Bantul Elections in 2004 and 2009 214

Prostitution actions in the Bantul court (2007-2011) 215

Sub-division of Indonesian Muslim Brotherhood 35 Female MPs (2009-2014) and candidates (2009) in the Indonesian Parliament 55

Organisational structure of the PKs 58

List of Illustrations

PDI-P poster in the streets of Jakarta showing Megawati Soekarnoputri in2000 23

PDI-P poster in the streets of Jakarta showing Megawati Soekarnoputri in2002 25

Cover of vcp used for campaigning by the pxs in the run up to the 2004 general elections 54

The present al Muttaqun mosque, Prambanan, Klaten, Central Java (by courtesy of pcm Prambanan) 92

Amien Rais speaking at cornerstone-laying ceremony for the reconstruction of the TK ABA Ngangkruk building (by courtesy of pcm Prambanan) 97

The head office of the Nahdlatul Ulama in Jakarta 117

Circuit court hearing conducted by the Islamic court of Tangerang (by courtesy of Islamic court of Tangerang) 164

Islamic Court of Justice, Bulukumba 173

Waiting in front of the courtroom, Bulukumba 184

Sanctuary of Cepuri, 28 km south from Yogyakarta 198

Sacred rocks inside sanctuary of Cepuri 201

Amran Waly (3rd from right) with Shaykh Muhammad Fadil Al- Jaelani (4th from right) and the Wali Nanggroe of Aceh (2nd from right) during “Muzakarah Tauhid Tasawuf” 2014 (by courtesy of Harian Aceh) 245

Hills around Jantho where the confrontation with alleged terrorists took place 271

All photographs are by the authors, unless stated otherwise.

Introduction

Kees van Dijk and Nico J.G. Kaptein

Islam in Indonesia has long been praised for its tolerance, at home and abroad, by the general public and in academic circles, and by politicians and heads of state. Among the aspects highlighted are the incorporation of rituals and beliefs that, strictly speaking, do not conform to Islam, and the willingness of Indonesian Muslims to accept in their midst Christians, other non-Muslims, and fellow Muslims who are considered heretics by mainstream Islam. However, this image of tolerance has been challenged in the last ten to 15 years by armed confrontations, if not civil wars, in the Moluccas, Lombok, Poso on Celebes, and Banjarmasin on Borneo, in which religion was one of the motivating factors; by mob violence perpetrated by local Muslims and Islamic vigilante groups of which the rp1 (Front Pembela Islam, Front of the Defenders of Islam) is the best known; and by the emergence of terrorist organisations. Initially, terrorism in Indonesia was the work of Jemaah Islamiyah (Islamic Community), a group made up of Indonesians and Malaysians who had close links with al-Qaeda and Islamic insurgents in the Philippines; inspired, if not headed, by one of Indonesia’s most radical clerics, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, Jemaah Islamiyah was responsible for bombing outrages on Bali (12 October 2002) and other terrorist attacks in the early years of this century. Most of its former leaders and members have now been killed, jailed or executed. Recent reports suggest that Jemaah Islamiyah has been replaced by a number of smaller terrorist groups, less capable of building large bombs like the ones used in Bali, but also, in the absence of one mother organisation, more difficult for the authorities to detect and round up.

The ugly side of Islamic radicalism has also come to the fore in the, at times, violent protests by local Muslims against the presence of Christian churches and ordinary houses where congregations meet, and, to a lesser extent, against Chinese temples, often leading to such places being closed down or regular services being discontinued. Part of the problem can be traced back to a joint decree by the Ministers of the Interior and Religious Affairs issued in 1969 and revised in 2006, requiring the consent of the local administration and local residents for the building of houses of worship, a condition not always easy for Christians to meet in an Islamic environment, and giving protestors a legal argument to justify their actions."

Christians and Chinese are not the only victims of intolerance. The vast majority of Indonesian Muslims are Sunni, and in the last couple of years Ahmadiyah members and Shi‘ites have become the victims of some brutal attacks (see the contribution by Bastiaan Scherpen in this volume). Such incidents were already taking place during the New Order, the years between 1965 and 1998, when Suharto was in power and, generally speaking, political Islam was forbidden and its proponents were liable to prosecution, and radical groups were kept under close watch. After 1998, the year Suharto was forced to step down as president, the protests and attacks became more frequent, with a steep increase in the last couple of years. According to figures published in the newspaper The Jakarta Post on 29 October 2010, the number of cases amounted to 470 between 1967 and 1998, and 700 between 1998 and 2010. A more recent figure, published by the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, which has the promotion of religious tolerance as one of its aims, was 144 attacks against religious minorities in 2011 and 264 in 2012. Another NGo with the same objective, the Wahid Institute, mentioned a figure of 274 for 2012. The latter institute also noted an increase in such incidents over the years since 2009, while a Human Rights Watch report published in February 2013 concludes that violence against religious minorities — it also mentions attacks against the Bahai — had ‘deepened.’

Such violence against religious minorities cost Indonesia a reprimand by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, when she visited Indonesia in November 2012. After meetings with representatives of groups experiencing the consequences of this violence she said that she ‘was distressed to hear accounts of violent attacks, forced

1 According to the Indonesian 2006 regulation regarding religious practices, a new place of worship should be used by at least 90 people while 60 local residents of another religion should agree to its construction. In Aceh these figures are 150 and 120 (Peraturan Bersama Menteri Agama dan Menteri Dalam Negeri nomor 9 tahun 2006, nomor 8 tahun 2006 tentang Pedoman Pelaksanaan Tugas Kepala Daerah/Wakil Kepala Daerah dalam Pemeliharaan Kerukunan Umat Beragama, Pemberdayaan Forum Kerukunan Umat Beragama, dan Pendirian Rumah Ibadat, art. 14; Peraturan Gubernur Nanggroe Darussalam Aceh nomor 25 tahun 2007 tentang Pedoman Pendirian Rumah Ibadah, art. 3).

2 The Jakarta Post, 29 December 2012, 3 February 2013; Human Rights Watch, In Religion’s Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia, February 2013, report available at http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/indonesiao213 _ForUpload_o.pdf (accessed 16 June 2014).

displacement, denial of identity cards and other forms of discrimination and harassment against them’ She warned that Indonesia's ‘rich culture and history of diversity and tolerance’ might become a thing of the past if the situation did not change and if ‘firm action is not taken to address increasing levels of violence and hatred towards minorities and narrow and extremist interpretations of Islam.”

Mainstream Muslims have to respond to efforts to bring about a further Islamisation of Indonesian society. One important development facilitating this process was the promulgation of the Law on Regional Government in 1999 and its revision in 2004, which gives regional governments - those of the provinces, regencies and cities - far-reaching autonomy, and has provided proponents of a strict Islam with an additional means to advance their cause. The law allows for regional administrations to issue local regulations (peraturan daerah, in short perda) independently of supervision or control by a higher administrative level, except in a few fields that remain the prerogative of the national government, of which religion is one. The fact that local administrations are not allowed to issue religious byelaws has not prevented them from implementing so-called Sharia Regional Regulations. These may take a variety of forms. Some require civil servants to attend Islamic courses in the fasting month or make the ability to read the Quran a prerequisite for entering secondary education or for concluding a marriage. A number of new byelaws, and among those most criticised, affect the lives of women. They force them to conform to Islamic dress codes (a headscarf and ‘unrevealing garments’) at government offices and institutions of secondary education, or introduce a kind of curfew, not allowing women to leave the house unaccompanied by a male relative in the evening or making them afraid to do so. In August 2012 the (Indonesian) National Committee on Violence against Women counted 282 byelaws discriminating against women. Ninety-six of them concerned regulations on prostitution and pornography which, as Euis Nurlaelawati and Muhammad Latif Fauzi argue in this volume, can have a wider effect, complicating the lives not only of prostitutes but also of other women; 60 of them were related to dress codes and ‘religious standards’ and 38 restricted ‘women’s mobility.*

A special case is Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra. In an effort to persuade the separatist Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka,

3 ‘Indonesia must tackle rising discrimination and violence, says UN human rights chief, un News Centre, 13 November 2012, www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp ?NewsID—43478 (accessed 21 January 2013).

4 The Jakarta Post, 17 September 2012.

GAM) to lay down arms, Jakarta granted the province special autonomy in October 1999. Aceh was given the right to draft its own laws and regulations in the fields of religion, education and local customs, a power other provinces do not have. The result has been a number of Islamic laws (ganuns) promoting ‘correct’ Islamic behaviour (including the way women dress; men seem to escape such restrictions), forbidding non-Sunni practices and beliefs, making acts like gambling and the consumption of alcoholic beverages punishable, and giving local authorities the power to act upon and punish illicit sexual relations. This includes the assumption that two unmarried persons of different sexes without close family ties who are alone together in a secluded space are guilty of illicit sex (see the contribution by Reza Idria).

It is not just in Aceh that the central government cannot interfere when such laws and regulations are promulgated; in other parts of Indonesia too, regional autonomy makes the annulment or revision of local legislation difficult. The argument that the Law on Regional Government does not allow the issuing of religion-inspired byelaws does not prevent proponents from enforcing such legislation. They argue away the Islamic nature of such regulations, stressing instead the need to uphold Indonesian and local (if not Asian) values and norms of morality as the reason for their introduction, at times also suggesting a connection between the way women dress and sexual harassment. Politicians equally do not seem to mind or, when forced to comment, advance similar arguments. It took until February 2006 for the central government to announce that it might interfere with and annul such local regulations, yet two years later the then Minister of the Interior, Mardiyanto, was still quoted as saying that there were no Sharia regulations in force in Indonesia, only ‘byelaws that implement the Islamic dos and don'ts.’ In January 2012 his successor, Gamawan Fauzi, mentioned an impressive number of byelaws reviewed by his ministry since he was appointed in 2009: 15,000; resulting in the rejection ‘partially or completely’ of 915 of them. Since 2002 his department has ‘annulled’ a total of 1,878 byelaws. Over 1,800 of these are said to concern local taxes and levies, 22 the sale of alcoholic beverages.° Other instances of ‘Sharia byelaws’ were not mentioned. This in itself already indicates that the most contested local religious regulations escaped scrutiny. Moreover, annulled may not be the right word. The 1999 Law on Regional Government still gave the central government the authority to annul byelaws that are in violation of higher legal products or against the general interest (art. 114, par. 1);

5 The Jakarta Post, 16 February 2008. 6 The Jakarta Post, 18 January 2013.

the revision of 2004 (art. 145, par. 3) reguires a Presidential Decree (Peraturan Presiden) to do so. The Minister of the Interior does not have the authority to cancel byelaws, and a governor cannot annul a byelaw issued in a city or regency in his province.’

Some of the information presented in the media and in scholarly and NGO reports about interreligious violence, assaults on religious minorities, and discrimination against women as a consequence of a greater stress on Islam in Indonesia or support for the implementation of Islamic law in all its aspects may overstate the case." On the other hand, using the description ‘smiling Islam’ to sketch the nature of mainstream Islam in Indonesia is to view the situation, both past and present, through rose-tinted glasses. Though the collapse of the New Order in 1998 was a watershed in Indonesian history which was followed by a period of real democracy and freedom of expression known in Indonesia as the Reformasi or Reform Era, the topics discussed in this book are not simply the outcome of decentralisation, the introduction of a democratic political system, and of greater freedoms that came after 1998. As pointed out in a number of contributions, Islamic radicalism in Indonesia did not suddenly appear after 1998. Its roots can be traced back to the New Order, not only to its closing days, but also to its early years, and even further back in Indonesia's history. Efforts to promote Islam have also been initiated by the New Order government, for instance by financing the building of mosques and Qur’an recitation competitions. In this respect, special mention should be made of defining the competence of religious courts and the publication of the Kompilasi Hukum Islam through which the government aimed further to codify Islamic family and inheritance law on the national level and which is to be consulted by Muslim judges in giving judgment (see the contributions by Euis Nurlaelawati and Stijn van Huis).

7 Itseems extremely unlikely that many of the disputed local regulations can be cancelled. The law requires that a Presidential Decree be issued within 60 days after the regional administration has submitted a byelaw to the central government for scrutiny (which has to take place within a week after its promulgation). In 2012 two Joint Regulations of the Ministers of the Interior and of Justice and Human Rights were issued on regional regulations. These take the form of guidelines for local governments in drafting them to ensure that they are not a breach of human rights.

8 Ms Pillay, for instance, also expressed her concern about Aceh condemning ‘enforcing brutal punishments of stoning’ there, which, as is pointed out in the Aceh section of this book, are included in the draft of a new Islamic Act, which did not come into force because the governor refused to sign it.

The present book reports on a number of important contemporary developments, which all show how Islam in Indonesia is developing and how far it has moved beyond the stereotype of a smiling Islam. These developments are taking place against the background of a growing adherence to the prescripts of Islam in the wider society. As in the rest of the Muslim world, the number of people dressing and behaving in an Islamic way has grown; institutions to propagate the faith, such as Islamic schools and religious meetings, have increased in number and in popularity; and the exponents of radical Islam have become more vocal, staging demonstrations and organising mass gatherings. By dealing with a number of these developments, this book aims to shed light on an intriguing paradox. We observe that in spite of an ongoing Islamisation of Indonesian society, Islamic parties do not fare so well in Indonesia, while at the same time we see that, despite this subordinate role of Islamic parties, legislation which is clearly Islamic can in fact be promulgated.

This book is a spin-off from a joint research effort which was made by a number of Dutch and Indonesian researchers in the framework of the research programme entitled ‘Strengthening Knowledge of and Dialogue with the Islam/Arab World, in short the ‘Islam Research Programme’ (IRP). This programme was funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and aimed at supplying a number of embassies in the Muslim world with relevant academic information on contemporary developments in eight countries. The present book is based on the final report of the Indonesian branch of this project.” The 1rp Jakarta research project ran from 2010 until December 2012 and was embedded in the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS).

Through intermediate reports and in-depth discussions with the Netherlands Embassy staff in Jakarta and invited experts, the project aimed to analyse religious trends in contemporary Indonesian society and specifically looked at developments relating to the role of Islam in political, cultural and socio-legal contexts. The project staff was attached to one of three research clusters, each cluster consisting of a cluster leader, an Indonesian post-doctoral researcher, and a junior Indonesian and a junior Dutch researcher. The entire project was managed by Marise van Amersfoort. The three research clusters were 1) Islamic political parties and socio-religious organisations (led by Kees van Dijk, L1as); 2) Sharia-based legislation and the legal position of women and children (led by Léon Buskens, tras); and 3) Sharia and counterculture in Aceh

9 See for the other country projects the website of the Project Office rrp: http:// www.projects.leiden.edu/irp (accessed 6 December 2013).

(led by Nico J.G. Kaptein, L1as). Much of the research consisted of field work in Indonesia, complemented by desk research, both in Indonesia and in the extensive library collections on Indonesia in Leiden, the Netherlands.

The present book is based on the final report and is organised in line with the three research clusters mentioned. In the first section the leaders of the Islamic political parties and the large socio-religious organisations affiliated with them take centre stage. They are prime actors in determining to what extent national and regional legislation can reflect Islamic principles. They also play an important role in the Islamic debate in Indonesia, either as a driving force of a further Islamisation of society and legislation, such as the Islamist pxs (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera/Prosperous Justice Party) and the Jemaah Tarbiyah (discussed in detail by Ahmad-Norma Permata), or as people called upon to take an active role in countering intolerance and radicalism, such as in the case of the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah. The second section deals with the conseguences of the introduction of Sharia-based legal products in Indonesia in general, and the final section discusses the support for and resistance against enforcing an Islamic way of life in Aceh, where, as already mentioned, this was allowed more extensively than in other parts of the country.

This publication is the result of teamwork and it is impossible to thank all the participants in the rrp Jakarta research project individually. However, a number should be mentioned here. First of all, it is our pleasure to thank Koos van Dam, Annemieke Ruigrok, Tjeerd de Zwaan, Onno Koopmans and Wachid Ridwan who in different phases of the project all played a vital role on behalf of the Netherlands Embassy in Jakarta. In Leiden, our thanks go to the Leiden Institute for Areas Studies (LIAS), in particular the former manager of L1As, Rogier Busser, and to the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (Lucis) for its administrative support in the final phase of the project. Lucis also supported and facilitated the publication of this book. Two members of its staff were especially helpful: Heleen van der Linden who edited the IRP report which formed the basis of this book, and Annemarie van Sandwijk, who together with Hannah Mason, took care of the final editing process.

Part 1 Islamic Political Parties And Socio-religious Organisations

Kees van Dijk

A paradox in present-day Indonesia is that Islam is thriving but that Islamic political parties are not. With one exception, the PKs (Prosperous Justice Party/Partai Keadilan Sejahtera), their results in elections held after 1998 have been poor. This is even more remarkable because some of these parties are closely linked to socio-religious organisations that do seem to thrive and have a large following, which in the case of Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah amounts to tens of millions. This indicates that recruiting or winning over national and local religious leaders to gain more votes at general elections appears to be less effective than is often assumed.

Disappointing past election performance confronts politicians of Islamic parties with a dilemma. They may reach out to non-Muslims, accepting them as members and recruiting them as candidates, or they may focus on non-religious issues in their campaign. Such approaches, however, can backfire. Immediately after May 1998 when the Reform Era was taking shape new political parties were established, among them Islamic parties being ‘oper to others, i.e. to Indonesians with another religion, due to concerns with Amien Rais of the PAN (Partai Amanat Nasional/National Mandate Party) and Abdurrachman Wahid of the PKB (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa/National Awakening Party) about the intensity of communal conflicts in those days, which in some regions had taken a very violent form. Gradually, the selection of candidates with a different religion and the downplaying of Islam became a strategy to tap into new groups of voters, but it has been argued that the decision not to stress their own, specific, religious stance may have cost votes, and, indeed, could well explain the poor election results.

While preparing for the general elections of April 2014 a number of politicians told The Jakarta Post in January 2013 how they intended to deal with what the newspaper called ‘the country’s increasingly secular voters?"

1 ‘The Jakarta Post, 23 January 2013.

The pAN would ‘no longer use Islamic attributes, while the PKB stressed that it had never ‘introduced itself as an exclusive Islamic party. Speaking on behalf of the pxs, a political party that owes part of its success in the past to its image of being a ‘clear’ party, ie. its leaders not being tainted by corruption, the chairman of the pxs faction in Parliament, Hidayat Nur Wahid, underlined the importance of impressing the electorate with the party’s commitment to good governance and corruption eradication. A few days later the chairman of the pxs would be arrested on suspicion of corruption. Shortly after the arrest of Luthfi Hasan Ishaag, a sex scandal followed when a close political friend of his, Ahmad Fathanah, was arrested in a hotel - in bed with a girl who certainly was not his wife. In November of that year, Ahmad Fathanah was found guilty of corruption by the Jakarta Anti-Corruption Court and sentenced to 14 years in prison. In March 2014, the Jakarta High Court added two years to the sentence. In December 2013 Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq got 16 years. Some PKs members tried to belittle the incident by calling the friend a ‘secret agent whose mission it is to ruin the party’s image ahead of the 2014 elections.”

The ppp (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan/United Development Party) and PBB (Partai Bulan Bintang/Crescent and Star Party) refused to change their religious approach. The ppp announced that it would not recruit non-Muslim candidates and seemingly intended to reach out to fundamentalist groups, such as the rp1 (Front Pembela Islam/Front of the Defenders of Islam) and even the mysterious Al-Zaytun boarding school, linked to a sect brainwashing its members and aiming at the establishment of an Islamic state.” The PBB lashed out against ‘hypocritical, pragmatic politicians who were prepared to cast aside their ideology just to win seats.*

In April 2014 the PKs and PBB saw their share of the vote drop compared to the general elections of 2009. The PKs obtained 6.8 per cent of the votes instead of 7.9 per cent; the PBB 1.5 instead of 1.8 per cent. The ppp performed slightly better and saw an increase from 5.3 to 6.5 per cent. The PAN and PKB also saw their positions improve. They gained 7.6 and 9 per cent (instead of 6 and 4.9 per cent) of the vote respectively.

2 The Jakarta Post, 13 May 2013.

3 The Jakarta Post, 14 March 2013, 1 April 2013. Maklumat Partai Bulan Bintang, 23 January 2013 (http://bulan-bintang.org/ maklumat-partai-bulan-bintang, accessed 12 May 2013).

ISLAMIC POLITICAL PARTIES AND SOCIO-RELIGIOUS ORGANISATIONS 23

PDI-P poster in the streets of Jakarta showing Megawati Soekarnoputri in 2000

One of the reasons for the weak election performance of Islamic political parties is that they do not have a monopoly on Islam. Labelling their rivals, Golkar, pD1-p (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia-Perjuangan/Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle) and Partai Demokrat, ‘secular parties’ or using the term ‘secular voters’ fails to appreciate the role of Islam in politics in general. Already during the New Order politicians and office holders, including President Suharto himself, rushed to Islamic institutions and gatherings to increase their popularity. Organisational ties were also developed. During the New Order Golkar established links with traditional and modernist Muslims via a number of organisations of which the Gupp1 (Gabungan Usaha Pembaharuan Pendidikan Islam/Joint Effort to Modernize Islamic Education) and an association of former members of the HMI (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam/Islamic Student Association) are the best known, while in August 2007 the PDI-P launched its Islamic wing, Baitul Muslimin (House of Muslims). At times the secular PDI-P even appears to be an Islamic party. At the close of the New Order, protestors supporting the pD1-p suspended their street protests to pray, while Sukarno’s daughter, Megawati, the party's popular leader, initially appeared on party posters with her hair uncovered, but was later depicted wearing a headscarf.

A second factor contributing to the poor election results of the Islamic political parties is that they and the organisations they turn to for mobilising support are complex entities. Within one and the same party or organisation members have different, even mutually exclusive, opinions about what an Islamic society should look like and what reaching it involves; disputes amongst the leaders can be frequent and bitter. Adding to this is a built-in source of conflict: the presence of religious advisory boards and fatwa councils, institutions that clash with their executive boards, one of the most important points of friction being the primacy of religious considerations over political ones. This certainly comes to the fore in Permata’s in-depth analysis of the rivalries within the pxs and the socio-religious organisation affiliated with it, the Jemaah Tarbiyah, and between the two. The pxs is a proper choice because it is an Islamist party which, together with the Jemaah Tarbiyah, strives for and identifies itself with the promotion of a drastic Islamisation of Indonesian society. Yet the delicate internal relationships described in Permatas report are also very present in the other Islamic parties and socio-religious organisations. It also underscores that in the relation between political party and affiliated organisation, the latter may be or intends to be a moral compass, something that also comes to the fore in Bastiaan Scherpen’s report about reactions to the Ahmadiyah persecution in which he touches upon the relations between