A Manichaean Reinterpretation of the History of Indonesia

5Although very widespread today, the conspiracy theme is relatively recent in the history of Islamic thought in the Archipelago. Until the 1970s, the movements inspired by Muslim reformism advocated a renewal necessitated by a sclerosis of the Islamic world. Some values of the West—for example, individualism—were certainly denounced, colonialism was similarly condemned and the fate of Islam in Indonesia was often decried; yet these grievances were not totted up as irrefutable proof of a systematic attempt to destroy Muslim culture.15 Even Persatuan Islam (Persis), the most intransigent Muslim organisation between the two world wars, never descended into rhetoric comparable to the hostile tirades of its contemporary epigones. Its main theoreticians did assail the activities of Christian missionaries in Indonesia and engaged in vigorous theological quarrels with priests and pastors regarding the position of Jesus in the Bible or Christianity’s capacity for the moral regulation of society.16 However, these polemics were often in reaction to discourse that denigrated Islam.17 Thus they arose from indignation and were based on arguments that were intended to be rational. The Christian missionaries were accused of taking advantage of the colonial government’s encouragement to proselytise and of participating in a political plan to turn Indonesia into a state with a Christian majority, one that would be more easily governable for the colonial authorities who were highly suspicious of Muslims. The explanations forwarded arose from political reasoning that could be discussed by all.18 Moreover, far from demonstrating a simplistic anti-Christian stance, the leaders of Persis expressed admiration on occasions for the missionaries’ work in education and development. Soon the debate on nationalism ceased to be framed by religion. In the years preceding the Second World War, the birth of the first Christian parties and their firm support for independence, as well as the increasingly explicit acknowledgement by Muslim organisations of a struggle for a multi-confessional Indonesia, led to the permanent disassociation of Christianity with the colonial powers.19

6At the time of the declaration of independence in August 1945, the representatives of Islamist groups, as we have seen, had to abandon all hopes of seeing an Islamic state proclaimed. By signing the Jakarta Charter two months prior to Independence with the representatives of so-called ‘secular’ nationalists, they had accepted that obligations linked to the application of the sharia be limited solely to Muslims. In thereby excluding Christians from the application of the Islamic law that called for a ‘protégé’ but inferior status (dhimmi), they were de facto recognising Christians’ legitimacy as citizens, on a par with Muslims. In spite of these concessions, the Muslim personalities who decided on the final text of the Constitution accepted the withdrawal of this explicit reference to Islamic law as they feared the Christian regions would not join the Republic. Pancasila, placed in the preamble of the Constitution, thus contented itself with affirming the religious foundation of the state, without any particular mention of Islam. At that time, this compromise respecting the rights of minorities was not really contested within the Muslim community, which agreed, along with Masyumi, to pursue its struggle in the framework of a parliamentary democracy.

7It was only a few years later that the Darul Islam movement, breaking away from the main Muslim organisations, wanted to put an end to the status quo and proclaim an Islamic state.20 Nonetheless, Kartosuwiryo and his disciples did not dwell on the past martyrdom of Indonesian Islam, preferring instead to indulge in illusions of a radiant future. Nor did the dominant current of political Islam, represented by Masyumi, cede to the theme of historical grievances until the end of the 1950s. The tone was more one of critical introspection. Taking up one of the major themes of reformism, the theoreticians of the Islamic party felt that if the Muslim world in general showed such a great lag behind the West, it should look within itself for answers. Colonisation by a more advanced Europe was the consequence, not the cause, of Islamic civilisation’s lag. For it to regain its grandeur and independence, one had to look to the principles spelt out in the Qu’ran and the Sunna in the light of a modernity exemplified by the West. The majority of its leaders, formed within the colonial educational system and nurtured by the classics of political literature, dug into the history of European nations for lessons in the political construction of their young country.21 Moreover, the Western world was not perceived of as a monolithic block: in particular, the United States, which had exerted pressure on the former colonial powers in favour of Indonesia’s independence on numerous occasions and which constituted the surest bulwark against atheist communism, was regarded as a benevolent power. In effect, the militants of political Islam felt, as early as the late 1940s, that atheist Marxism was the greatest threat for their community. It was for this reason that Christians and Christian parties (Parkindo and Partai Katolik) were loyal allies of Masyumi, supporting the governments they led and the majority of the projects they presented. The failure of the party in the elections of 1955, its unyielding defence of democratic ideals to the point of rebellion and finally the banning of the party in 1960 created, as we have seen, the political conditions for its radicalisation.22 The brutal fall of the Indonesian reformist leaders from respected personalities at the beginning of the 1950s, to hunted pariahs less than ten years later, led them to view the recent history of Indonesian Islam in a new light. Their sense of betrayal stemmed from this period of repression and persecution, fears and injustices. Latent at the start of the 1960s, it became an obsession after the beginning of the New Order when years of imprisonment were succeeded by tremendous hope pinned on the leaders of the party. With the fall of Soekarno and the wiping out of the communist enemy, all seemed to point towards their being hailed as heroes. Instead, the new regime’s distrust of political Islam made them pariahs. Deprived of all political activity and frustrated at the silence surrounding their role in the fight against communism, some of these reformists fell back on the plaintive discourse of the hurt and betrayed, a discourse that spread gradually in Indonesia through the publications of the Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council (DDII).23 Through a rereading of the recent history of Indonesia, this generation, and those claiming to be their heirs, began their mutation towards religious intransigence.

8The discourse on the oppression of Indonesian Islam advanced tirelessly for almost three decades now is founded on a supposedly unshakeable postulate: representing almost nine-tenths of the Archipelago’s population, Muslims have the right and the duty to live under the rule of the sharia. As such, each page of the revisited history of independent Indonesia describes in minutia the imagined baseness, traps and betrayals carried out by the enemies of Islam to obstruct the legitimate advent of Islamic law. The key episode of this martyrdom, one that never fails to crop up in every defence of radical Islam and one which has spawned its own literature, is of course the abandonment of the Jakarta Charter.24 Jettisoned by the dominant group of political Islam at the end of the 1940s, calls for the institutional recognition of Islamic law resurfaced in public debate during the Constitutional Assembly in 1957. Then, faced with the unbending attitude of secularist Pancasila supporters, the representatives of Islam spoke out and started to develop the theme of unfulfilled promises.25

9In July 1959, the debate was temporarily wound up by a presidential decree establishing that the Jakarta Charter had “inspired” the 1945 Constitution. This solution, which left out the famous seven words,26 was considered a failure by the representatives of Islam, who then tried at the start of the New Order to ensure that the Charter was more clearly inserted in the preamble of the Constitution. However, the army refused to include this issue in the agenda of the Assembly debates that took place between 1966 and 1967 and continued to oppose any fresh discussion on this subject in the following years.27 With the passing of years and accumulation of disappointments, a section of the reformist Muslims adopted an increasingly aggressive discourse. The theme of unfulfilled promises gave way to that of betrayal and conspiracy.28

10Within the groups that were increasingly radicalised, this rhetoric grew inordinately: “the removal of the Jakarta Charter”29 became little by little the cause of all the troubles plaguing the Muslim community of Indonesia since Independence. One of the most striking examples of this reconstruction of history is the first chapter of a pamphlet published under the title Islam Diadili.30 This publication is the reworked translation of a long investigation published in London in 1987 by a “committee for the defence of political prisoners” (Tapol) defending the Islamist militants then embroiled in several trials. Characteristic of the sleight of hand typically employed in radical Islamist circles, the semantic shift of the title adopted for the translation—Islam on Trial—as a substitute for Indonesia: Muslims on Trial attested to the spread of the martyrdom theme in the 1980s. Returning to the abandonment of the Jakarta Charter on 18 August 1945, which in their eyes caused the transformation of “the victory of Islam” to a “humiliating defeat”, the work stigmatised the secularist (sekular) leaders led by Soekarno, blaming them for this catastrophe. For the authors of the Indonesian version, herein lay the cause of the bloody conflicts that had ensnared the Archipelago at the end of the 1990s. Henceforth, the Darul Islam militants on trial and their epigones a decade later were no longer perceived as troublemakers but as courageous opponents of a policy consistently implemented by the two successive regimes after Independence aimed at suppressing Islam.

11This rhetoric of paranoia, describing Indonesian Islam as a long-suffering victim of the sly manoeuvres of those in power, has since been taken up regularly. It was, for instance, the central theme of a work entitled The Tragedy of Muslims in Indonesia, 1980–2000, first published on 16 July 1998, then completed and re-edited five times over the next two years. The book, authored by Al Chaidar and supported by a mysterious “Tapol assistance team” as well as “Amnesti International”, tried to ride on the legitimacy of the prestigious human rights organisation and the Indonesian investigation committee of political prisoners (Tapol) mentioned earlier.31

12The Tragedy of Muslims in Indonesia, 1980–2000 also revisited the recent history of Indonesia by adopting ad nauseam the thesis of a vast conspiracy against Islam, hatched by the collaborators of Soeharto, who was himself conveniently spared of the accusation. The authors alleged that this machination, first led by General Moertopo, then by Benny Moerdani, the Christian general presented as one of his heirs, was organised to discredit the Islamist militants fighting to defend their fellow believers. The authors linked, with a semblance of logic, Opsus’ manoeuvres during the 1970s and the Tanjung Priok incident in the early 1980s, with the exactions committed in East Timor and in Ambon in 1999. Their revisionist interpretation presented the latter events as evidence of the pursuit of this terrible conspiracy.

13Innumerable works and articles expanded on the myth of a united Islamic community, victim of its devotion to the nation. Taking great care to never evoke the defeat of Muslim parties in the 1955 elections, the spokespersons of radical Islam relentlessly juxtaposed the Muslim majority of the country and the impossibility of having Islamic law recognised. Thus Abu Bakar Ba’asyir declared in 2000:

It has been 55 years since Indonesia gained independence and the Islamic community had its rights usurped and manipulated. This shows that something strange is happening in Indonesia, a country where the rights of the majority are overridden by a minority. The Muslim community has become a “dhimmi majority” as its right to implement its religion, to carry out the obligations of its faith are ceaselessly blocked by its minority citizens. This is such an obvious fact that even a child in primary school would be able to see the injustice done to the majority citizens of this country.32

The Indonesian Archipelago, Paradigm of the ‘Clash of Civilisations’

14The Indonesian radicals were not content to denounce the acts of those in power: in progressively widening the target of their Manichaean remonstrances from their country to the world, they made Indonesia but one of the sites of a worldwide and centuries-old confrontation between good and evil.

15In an article entitled “The persistently betrayed Islamic community” published in May 2000 in the Laskar Jihad’s bulletin, Husein Umar relooked at the twentieth century and endeavoured to show how, despite the key role Muslims had played in the fight against colonialism, some ‘minority groups’ unscrupulously took advantage of the circumstances to deprive Muslims of the right to enforce their (Islamic) law.33 In the same vein, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir’s speech at the Second Congress of the Mujahidin in August 2003, read out by Irfan S. Awwas (Ba’asyir was then in prison), reminded all of the “devils in human form” (syetan manusia) who had prevented the enforcement of divine law in Indonesia—the European colonisers, of course, but also their allies, the “secularists and crusaders, even more perverse (licik) than the colonisers”.34

16Further widening the perspective, H. Hartono Ahmad Jaiz’s book, In the shadow of Soekarno-Soeharto. The political tragedies of Indonesian Islam, from the Old Order to the New Order, published in 2001, situated the misfortunes of Indonesian Muslims in a more extensive history, one of a succession of conspiracies against “true” orthodox Islam.35 A textbook representative of this new generation of radical thinkers (he was born in 1953), the author was a member of KISDI and a journalist at Media Dakwah, the organ of the Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council. For a few years now, he has produced many hate-filled pamphlets, for instance, the above work which meticulously listed the phases of a worldwide and centuries-old plot, starting from the betrayal of the Shiites in the early ages of Islam, to the machinations of the “secularist Westerners and their accomplices” in Indonesia in the twentieth century.

17Churned out tirelessly, the theme of the unjust Western hegemony constitutes, in some ways, a refashioning of the reformist ideas from the beginning of the twentieth century. Noting the lag of the Muslim world, the leaders of this current—Arabs, Indians or Indonesians—saw it, above all, as a reflection of the internal weaknesses of Islamic societies and proof of the necessity of rethinking Islam. Almost a century later, Indonesian radicals present the end of legitimate Muslim domination over the world as the result of cunning and brutal intrigues, from the time Napoleon landed in Egypt until the suppression of the caliphate in 1924, alongside the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire by Europe and the actions of Kemal Atatürk, a “Zionist freemason born of a Jewish mother”.36

18This almost hysterical search for proof that the international conspiracy against Indonesian Islam dated from a long time ago often produced great contradictions. Ahmad Mansyur Suryanegara, presented as a historian by the magazine Sabili, explained with the utmost seriousness that the United States had organised the fall of Soekarno because he was the “champion of freedom and of Islam in the Asian and African countries”. His analysis was in flagrant opposition to the classic (and common) Islamist vision of Soekarno as the advocate par excellence of secularism and an avowed admirer of Kemal Atatürk, and concluded just as absurdly that American imperialism was responsible for the failure of the Indonesian IPTN public enterprise because this pharaonic project of the Indonesian aeronautic industry supported by B.J. Habibie attested to the vigour of Islam and threatened the West’s technological hegemony.37

19The propaganda, developed one or two decades ago, proclaiming the oppression of Indonesian Muslims by the West, thus represents a major ideological turnaround within the Islamist movement. Perceived in the 1950s and 1960s as a necessary ally in the fight against communism, the Western world became the symbol of a dangerous moral corruption in the 1970s. After the fall of the Soviet Empire, it was seen as the principal enemy of Islam, seeking, together with its Zionist ally, domination of the Muslim world. By inscribing Indonesia’s recent history in the struggle against this new incarnation of evil and by situating it in a series of tragedies that had befallen Muslim countries in recent years, the radical Islamist press of Indonesia put forth a simplistic and efficacious reading of the painful events that had marked the Archipelago since 1996. Southeast Asia was henceforth implicated in this vast conspiracy that included the massacres of Bosnian Muslims by the Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats, with the at least passive complicity of the West,38 and the renewal of Jewish repression against Palestine. The aim—amongst others—was to separate the Christian regions from the rest of Indonesia so as to install Australian (or American, depending on whose version of this preposterous story) military bases. The independence of East Timor, presented as the centre of Muslim persecution for years, was viewed as the first successful step of this lethal project whose aim was to spark off a series of secessions in the east of the Archipelago. The next stages would be the Moluccas and Central Sulawesi, where—in the eyes of the radicals—the conflicts started by the Christians amounted to the beginnings of declarations of independence. Bali, whose Hindu population and tourism-generated wealth could encourage its detachment from the motherland, was also cited as a potential target.

20Owing to its important role in East Timor’s accession to indepen-dence in 1999, Australia was generally seen as the principal organiser of this terrible machination. The Australian Chief of Staff wanted to install military bases in Indonesia so that in the event of a war with China, the battle will be fought there instead of on its own soil.39

21The conspiracy theory was thus largely in place by the end of the Soeharto regime and its instrumentalisation continued under Reformasi, sustained by insinuations and deceptions. Rumour is omnipresent and solid investigations and indisputable proof are lacking. Readers’ forums of newspapers were often resorted to, allowing newspapers to spread the most fantastical news without having to bear full responsibility. The publications close to the radicals thus threw their columns open to pure prattle from unidentified sources. By using phrases as varied as “sudah diketahui bahwa” (we know that), “kata orang” (it is said) or questions feigning naiveté, for example, this declaration by a reader of Suara Hidayatullah in June 2000: “There are signs (indikasi) showing that numerous problems affecting Indonesia are caused by foreigners”, the worst accusations could be cunningly propagated.40 Photos—including close-ups of torn bodies from the Moluccan conflict—were frequently used as evidence of the dangers menacing the Muslim community, but more insidiously, also to designate the enemies of Islam. As an accompaniment to a lengthy dossier in October 1999 on the dangers of Christianity to Indonesia, Sabili used a photo of Pope John Paul II receiving the bishop of East Timor, Monseigneur Belo. The full implications of this apparently ordinary photo were only revealed in the caption: “The Vatican’s conspiracy”.41 These rumours were widespread in Indonesian society. At times they were even repeated at the highest political level: after the assassination of three United Nations representatives in East Timor in September 2000, Abdurrahman Wahid’s Defence Minister, Muhammad Mahfud, evoked in the press a “certain country”, which he could not name for ‘ethical reasons’, thus indirectly blaming Australia or the United States for this incident which actually involved pro-Indonesia Timorese militias.42

22Finally, as we saw earlier with The Tragedy of Muslims, imposture surrounding the authorship of pseudo-scientific works was also frequent. This unwittingly revealed the ambiguity in the relationship between the radical Islamist movement and the West. That NGOs and American or European academics, generally presented as pure agents of imperialism, frequently had their good name usurped, attested in fact to the credibility they enjoyed within these groups. This was why the publication in September 2003 of the translation into Indonesian of the controversial book L’Effroyable Imposture 43by French author Thierry Meyssan, on the September 11 attacks, was welcomed with enthusiasm by many Muslim Indonesians, from the most radical to the most moderate.

23Through the publication of numerous works and articles in the press, the theoreticians of radical Islam in Indonesia plunged their readers into a binary world where the opposition between good and evil was embodied in a struggle between Islam and the West. This explains the particular insistence on the theme of the crusades as an unchangeable framework for analysing the behaviour of Christian nations since the eleventh century.44 The events following the September 11, 2001 attacks fitted perfectly into this ideological system. For several Indonesian commentators, the attacks organised on this day by the enemies of Islam (Americans, Jews, or both, depending on whose version45) had but one aim, that is, to discredit Islam and to justify American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, which had been planned way in advance.46 The bombings organised in Bali and Jakarta in October 2002 and August 2003 (later also 2004 and 2005) by the Jemaah Islamiyah networks were also slotted into this absurd rhetoric, providing for many radicals additional evidence of the attempts by the CIA and/or MOSSAD to discredit the Muslim world. The wildest rumours and the most improbable experts and sources were cited to confirm this theory: Z.A. Maulani, former head of the secret services, declared that the type of explosives (C4) used were made only in the United States.47 In a similar article published by Republika Online, one read that the United States itself was likely to have been behind the bomb because “not a single American life was lost”.48 (In reality, several Americans were killed.) A researcher from the prestigious Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (LIPI, National Centre of Research) also took up the conspiracy theory: Reza Sihbudi, specialist in Middle Eastern politics, wrote eight days after the Bali bombings that it was the work of the “secret service of the United States, the CIA, in collaboration with the Israeli secret service, MOSSAD, and perhaps, Indonesian elements”.49 Within a few weeks, the rumour of a nuclear—and thus foreign—micro-bomb was so widespread that the Council of Ulama had to ask a team of Indonesian physicists to investigate and deny the allegations.50

24Confronted with evidence unearthed gradually by investigations, these conspiracy theories all but abandoned the terrain of bombings. Yet the radicals’ paranoia did not cease and subsequently found many other outlets for expression. For example, the issue of ‘deviating groups’ (aliran sesat) was a recurrent mobilising theme. The various movements considered as non-conforming to Sunni orthodoxy (Ahmadiyah, Lia Eden, Qu’ran Suci, Qiyadah) are accused not only of religious deviance but also of affecting national unity—enough of a threat to suspect the hand of ‘foreign intelligence’ (intelijen asing) behind their actions.51 In effect, all bad news affecting from afar or near the Indonesian Muslim community is liable to be reinterpreted and integrated into this Manichaean vision of the world. Thus the wildest rumours circulated when Indonesia was in the grip of the bird flu epidemic in 2007–2008: for example, Sabili revealed that the strain of virus sent by the United States in order to develop a vaccine was treated by the national laboratory of Los Alamos in New Mexico. This being the same body that had assembled the first atomic bomb in history, the newspaper ‘logically’ wondered if, on the pretext of researching a vaccine, the United States was not actually trying to develop chemical weapons with this Indonesian strain.52 A recent inter-view by Soeripto, head of the PKS board of experts, illustrates well the cumulative effect of these cleverly distilled rumours. This former intelligence officer (BAKIN, Badan Koordinasi Intelijen Negara) revealed a programme aimed at “destroying the Muslim countries in 2010”.53 Listing all the problems in the world, this ‘intelligence specialist’ explained how the Zionists were behind most of these troubles and warned his compatriots gravely that after Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Indonesia was next in line. Exploiting the chronic backwardness of the Muslim world (which was aggravated by organising, for example, the fall of the Century Bank), the enemy, under the pretext of assistance, had penetrated to the heart of the community and its structures (pesantren, mosques, etc.). It seeks to weaken the representation of Islam by sowing discord amongst the Islamic parties and breaking up their union where necessary. Responsible for the fratricidal wars between Sunnis and Shiites elsewhere, in Indonesia, it attempts to pit the followers of Wahhabism against those of liberal Islam. The Zionist enemy tries to undermine the country by targeting its youth and encouraging them along the slippery slope of decadence such as “entertainment” (in English in the text) or drugs. A mechanical historic reconstruction implacably integrating events as and when they occurred, these descriptions of a merciless conspiracy were intended to attest to the magnitude of the threat and gravity of measures to be taken. They also signalled the emergence of new agents of betrayal.

Traitors and Enemies

25To complement the themes of permanent conspiracy and oppression, the notion of betrayal was also developed progressively. Its function became clearer in time: to deflect outside of the Muslim community responsibility for its problems. Initially, the ‘bad Muslims’, ignorant of the basic duties of their religion, were blamed for the failure to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia. Thus an entire literature developed around the theme of the abangan, guilty of syncretism.54 However, for the Islamist militants, this vision was not without its weakness: likening unorthodox believers who maintained links with former religions, animism, Hinduism or Buddhism, to quasi-infidels, could cause the umma to lose its majority status and the legitimacy of its demands for imposing the sharia. Thus emerged, alongside attacks against secularists, the figure of the bad counsellor who, from the most obscure village of the Archipelago to the summit of the state, tried to turn the good Muslim away from his duties. This character was for a long time embodied by the communist, the non-believer who pushed the believer into atheism. The PKI, as we have seen, was singled out by the entire spectrum of political Islam as the enemy and the cause of its downfall. After the fall of Soekarno and the bloody anti-communist repression that accompanied the advent of the New Order, the traitor took on a new face. A virulent anti-Christian discourse, totally opposed to the alliance between Masyumi and the Catholic and Protestant parties in the 1950s, started developing within modernist Islam. This rhetoric took off with rumours of mass conversions of Muslims to Christianity.55 It was channelled from the start of the 1970s through the Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council (DDII), which played up in its publications the theme of the Muslim community’s victimisation in the hands of a New Order regime colluding with the Christian minority.56 The memory of the 1950s was reconstructed during this period with the discourse of tolerance towards Christians eclipsed by incessant reminders of the battles during the colonial period (when the Christians were also the oppressors) and by the denunciation of sinister manoeuvres attributed to Christians under the New Order.57

26Up till the 1990s, this anti-Christian rhetoric was relatively contained due to censorship. However, with the emergence of new media from radical Islam such as Sabili, Suara Hidayatullah or Bulletin Laskar Jihad, it degenerated into a peculiar hysteria and helped fan the interreligious conflicts that multiplied as of 1996. Henceforth Christians, and missionaries in particular, were blamed for far more sinister acts. In the 1970s, they were accused above all of unfair competition—taking advantage of their dominant economic situation to spread their religion and using their money to attract converts. Twenty years later, the radical Islamist press denounced actions that were much more criminal. Sabili and Suara Hidayatullah were filled with sordid accounts of kidnappings, drugging, hypnosis or blackmail where medication was used in order to gain converts, leaving broken families and abandoned children in its wake. Sabili, for example, dedicated a dossier in 1999 to an alleged vast plan to have young Christian men seduce Muslim girls for the sole purpose of bearing Christian children.58 Descriptions of these grand plans also detailed the supposed new methods employed by the missionaries in line with their new ambitions. While their predecessors had acted on the margins of the umma, the new missionaries’ ultimate objective was the disappearance of the Muslim community in Indonesia through a complete conversion to Christianity. According to Sabili, one of the first steps of this vast plan targeted the Sundanese region (West Java). Called Jericho 2000, this project aimed to detach the entire region from Islam.59 Faced with this threat, the radical press welcomed certain initiatives such as the improbable Forum in Anticipation of Apostasy (Forum Antisipasi Kegiatan Pemurtadan), which for some months systematically denounced all attempts at reconciliation between religions as mere manoeuvres aimed at bringing about more conversions.60 The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq gave the Indonesian Islamist militants greater reason to mobilise. Adian Husaini reminded the militants that they should not be lulled into letting their guard down by these “crude acts” (of the United States) but should be wary of the even more sinister attempts at conversion closer to home by the missionaries in Indonesia:

Physical terror, like that of American fragmentation bombs launched at Iraq, easily provokes much reaction. Muslim activists descend by the thousands to the streets to voice their opposition to the American offensive in Iraq. But in reacting to “terror of speech” camouflaged by “love”, Muslims generally react too late.61

27Anti-Christianisation has remained one of radical Islam’s favourite themes for mobilisation in the last years. Taking advantage of the extreme difficulty Christians have in legally building new places of worship in regions where Islam is the majority religion, the Islamist press has an easy time denouncing the unauthorised building of temples or Catholic churches. Encouraging popular protests, it constantly denounces the hidden agenda of Indonesian Christians whose intentions, it alleges, spill beyond mere worship.62 In this regard, the radical thinkers manage to integrate into their speeches clearly contradictory trends. While announcing triumphantly, based on an American survey, “the collapse of Christians in the world”63 and the “return of the grandeur of Islam”, Sabili also warns Indonesian Muslims about the new methods of Christianisation. Henceforth targeted by the “papists” (kaum papah, a term that designates Protestant churches as well, and even the West) are the excluded and the marginalised, be they the blind, orphaned or victims of natural disasters, that is, potential victims of Western NGOs.64

28For many radical Muslims, the Christian Indonesian had thus changed in status. From a dishonest competitor in the 1970s and 1980s, he has become a willing partner in the vast Judeo-Christian conspiracy to annihilate Islam. Thus inserted into this centuries-old confrontation described earlier, he is a likely target of a holy war.

Jihad’s Search for Legitimacy

29The radical Indonesians’ discourse on holy war reflects above all a desire to legitimise their actions. Emphasised is the global dimension of this jihad fi sabilillah (combat in God’s path) that, by suppressing innovations (bid’a), impiety (kufr) and vice (maksiat), should allow believers to live out fully their faith in Allah. This does not automatically necessitate the use of force but it becomes necessary, indeed, obligatory, when obstacles arise in the path between the Muslim and his God. The extent of the field of application of this violence, which radicals want legalised on their terms, has been subjected to much nitpicking.

30Ja’far Umar Thalib, the commander-in-chief of Laskar Jihad, re-minded all that legitimate use of force within the sharia falls into two categories. The first is thalabi (offensive) jihad, which offers infidels the following alternatives: convert, pay a tribute or be subjected to war. This solution is, however, strictly regulated by the law; it cannot be carried out by an individual but is to be undertaken under the direction of a leader who has the support of the whole community.65 This explains why it was the second type of holy war, the difa’i (defensive) jihad, that was invoked by the Laskar Jihad and a few weeks later by the leaders of the Council of Mujahidins. Where believers are subjected to aggression, war is a collective obligation (fardhu kifayah) for the entire community. It may even, under certain conditions, become an individual duty (fardhu’ain) falling upon the shoulders of each Muslim.66 Behind this meticulous legitimism was a barely veiled threat to some of the Muslim leaders whom the radicals felt were too mild. Quoting Ibn Taimiyya, Ja’far Umar Thalib reminded them that even if they fulfilled their religious duties, the sheer fact that they failed to impose the sharia was enough for them to be con-demned as infidels and thus become potential targets of a holy war.67 To meet the requirements of the defined legality, Laskar Jihad’s intervention in Ambon was preceded by a series of consultations that was spelt out on the Forum Komunikasi Ahlus Sunnah wal-Jama‘ah (FKAWJ) website throughout the Moluccan war. As we have seen, no fewer than seven fatwas were issued by just as many muftis, Saudi and Yemenite, confirming the right of fighters in what was to become the war in the Moluccas.68 Yet, two years later, Ja’far himself was condemned by a number of sheikhs in Medina for having divided the Muslim community with “political games that benefited the Muslim Brotherhood”.69 The strict Salafists disliked the way Ja’far was becoming a mediatised and politicised personality, and criticised him for advantaging the Brotherhood. The aim was thus not to delegitimise the jihad but the divisions it provoked within the Indonesian Muslim community. Ja’far Umar Thalib, who was himself suspected (wrongfully, it appears) of links with Al Qaeda, further rose up against Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, qualified by some Salafists as the “new KGB” (Khawarij Gaya Baru [new-style Kharijite]).70

31Advocates of a truly offensive jihad—this time not only in the Moluccas but also in the Archipelago—made open declarations after the Bali bombings, for example, the confessions of Ali Gufron alias Mukhlas, or those of Imam Samudra.71 These “jihadists-Salafists” (to use the ICG term) differentiated themselves from the ‘purist’ Salafists in many ways: they considered that it was legitimate to rebel against a government, even a Muslim one, and to organise themselves under a distinct structure.72

32Radical Indonesians often invoked an underlying right to legitimate defence, though not always as detailed as that put forth by the FKAWJ leaders, which justified a resort to violence. Discourse on terrorism was characterised by a fundamental ambiguity in subscribing to two levels of the conspiracy theory. Generally, fatal bombings, such as the September 11 attacks, were proof in the eyes of the radicals of a vast machination against Islam to unfairly inculpate Muslims and further repress them. But when pressed with evidence and in confessing to their crimes, some perpetrators of the Bali bombings tried to justify their acts by citing the threat hanging over the Muslim community, from Ambon to Kashmir and the Philippines, in an international conflict waged under the flag of holy war. When it became obvious that the terrorism committed by Jemaah Islamiyah was largely counter-productive in the eyes of the Indonesian public (something that became very clear in 2009), the radical Islamist press adapted its discourse. It started to attribute the veering off of some groups to external interventions including Zionist or Western ones. Most of all, it denounced vehemently the “unjust repression” suffered by radical milieux closely or loosely linked to terrorist movements.73 Naively, it expressed indignation that the police should be investigating the pesantren where these terrorists were educated whereas the education of other types of criminals was never questioned.74

33Aside from the menace of the secret services and armed forces that the Muslim community had to face, the theoreticians of Indonesian Islamism also denounced the more sinister influence exercised by the West over society in the Archipelago. This “Western toxification” (westoxikasi) described by Din Syamsuddin was producing a modern version of the jahiliyyah, the godless society that had preceded Islam and which should be kept at arm’s length.75 To this end, the radicals described and sometimes attempted to implement the utopia of a perfect imitation of the Prophet’s society.

Imitating the Prophet

36The paradigm constructed by the deeds of the Prophet and his immediate successors is an unquestionable source of legitimacy and an absolute model of society for the majority of Indonesian radicals. These new theoreticians of Islam only recognise three sources in their religion: the Qu’ran, the Sunna, and the words and deeds of the Prophet, his companions and the first two generations of Muslims (the ‘pious predecessors’ or salaf who gave their name to the Salafist current). For them, the very notion of society or civilisation cannot be envisaged outside of these models and they dismiss anything else as belonging to the dark ages of barbarianism.78 The life of the Prophet, as described in the Qu’ran and the Sîra, naturally constitutes their principal source of inspiration. Abdullah Said, central figure of the Salafist pesantren Hidayatullah, explains that every Muslim should in his own life closely imitate the five phases of life that Muhammad underwent: orphan, shepherd, merchant, husband and mediator in the Hira cave. These five phases are described in the five Suras of the Qu’ran (al-‘Alaq, al-Qalam, al-Muzzammil, al-Muddathir and al-Fatihah), a guide for a path that the believer has to follow step by step.79 But on certain points not clarified by the Qur’an, the imitation of the salaf, the immediate successors of Muhammad, with no heed to the historical or cultural context, is the only way to prepare oneself for an Islamic life in accordance with the manhaj nubuwwah.80 This desire to return to the original purity of the salaf was already underlying, in very diverse ways, the Muslim reformisms from Ibn Hanbal (780–855), Ibn Taimiyya (1263–1328) to the vast modernist movement at the end of the nineteenth century initiated by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. All of these currents are sometimes known as Salafiyya. The term ‘Salafist’ is a more direct reference to the contemporary neo-fundamentalist movements of which some of the radical Indonesians studied here are the epigones.

37The first function of this falling back on early Islam is to reassure believers of the legitimacy of their practices. By miming as closely as possible the founders of their religion, some Indonesian Muslims, not well versed in theological subtleties, hope to miminise the risks of deviation from the right path. They are encouraged by the Salafist leaders’ fierce attack on ‘local tradition’ in the name of divine unicity (tauhid), which they interpret as a complete uniformity of religious practice.81 The anathaemas launched against the multiple and insidious forms of shirk (associationism), which could lead the honest Muslim astray from the true faith, can be avoided by a fidelity to the manhaj salafi.82

38For the followers of these movements, the ostensible imitation of early Islam is also a tangible sign of the strength of their faith, an externalisation of their piety that allows them to isolate themselves from a corrupting environment. By forming islands of virtue in a decadent world and by embodying true religion, they set out to be the rallying points of Indonesia’s renewed conversion to Islam. But most of all, they afford their believers relief from the world, its temptations and its channels of information (for which they substitute their own). Like the followers of other sectarian movements, the believers are emotionally and culturally dependent. They lose the other aspects of their identity and are no longer Javanese, Sudanese or Madurese. A common phenomenon in Salafist currents around the world, this characteristic is particularly striking in Indonesia. As we have seen, this led to the emergence of a new generation of leaders who tapped into their links with the Arab world for legitimacy—either from their Yemenite origins or their studies in Middle Eastern universities.

39Finally, in wanting to reproduce the Arab society of the first century of the Hegira (seventh century CE), the Salafists return to the broad question of the forms of universality in Islam and lend a radical response to this age-old debate in the Archipelago. Structured around the notions of cultural (or substantialist) Islam as opposed to formalist (or integral or literal) Islam, this controversy pits, through interposing publications, partisans of a civil society of a secular inspiration and defenders of a scripturalist approach to the past. The question of the historical and theological status of early Islam in particular is articulated around a semantic opposition between ‘civil society’ in the general sense of the word (or its moderate Muslim version, masyarakat madani, from the Arab ‘city’) and ‘Medina society’ (masyarakat Madinah), which insists on an unerring imitation of the social organisation of the holy city governed by the Prophet.83

Expression of a Desire for Rupture

40Aside from these debates, which are inaccessible to the majority, the desire to return to the beginnings of Islam is also expressed through the way of life adopted by some radical movements which try to reproduce the most visible aspects of this imagined ideal society. Thus the communities based on this model cleverly act out the first age of Islam, creating veritable living tableaux dedicated to the edification of the masses. This alternative mode of ideological communication appeared in the 1970s and spread in the following decade. It had the advantage of not being bound by limits placed on political activities and in this regard, was part of the larger fall back on the dakwah operated by the former members of Masyumi at the end of the 1960s. Consequently, the local branches of the Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council were particularly active in the diffusion of this kind of experiences.84

41Several movements of diverse inspirations strove to realise this ideal Islamic society in daily life. First came the isolated Islamic communities, often arising from the Darul Islam movement, that were cushioned by their autarkic mode of functioning.85 One of these pioneer villages developed around the Islamic school Hidayatullah, started in East Kalimantan since the early 1970s. Subsequently this type of community developed in other regions of Indonesia in different ways, each with its own particularity: in Yogyakarta, Jamaah At-Turats Al-Islami founded several such communities as early as the end of the 1980s; in 1985 collaborators of Abdullah Sungkar started an autarkic community in the vicinity of Lampung (South Sumatra) around a certain Warsidi who found them work in the coffee and pepper plantations. The Lampung community illustrates well the intentions of the instigators of such isolated communities. More than Warsidi, who was but an organiser of the terrain, it was Nur Hidayat who was their ideological leader in the absence of Sungkar, who had since moved to Malaysia. During his trial in Jakarta in 1990, he explained his project to separate his fellow believers from infidels who were inclined to “abandon themselves to vice, sinning, wickedness, rage and oppression”:86

At the beginning, Muslims must practise conceptual hijrah (departure) or hijrah in religion by quitting the kafir (infidel) political parties or the parties of syetan (demon), they have to proclaim that it is haram (forbidden) to choose as leaders kafir, thogut (those who violate the Islamic law), syetan, and they have to proclaim that it is haram to pronounce the law according to the pagan law, and haram to obey orders of kafir with love.87

42But isolation did not always imply geographical distancing. Inspired by the doctrine of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the usroh movement, as we have seen in Chapter Three, spread the ideal of social rupture in Indonesia. Organised in small groups of a dozen members, often recruited through mosque youth associations (pemuda masjid), which were themselves federated within the Coordinating Corps for Mosques Youth in Indonesia (Badan Koordinasi Pemuda Masjid Indonesia, BKPMI), the militants were encouraged to let religion seep into every aspect of their lives. As seen earlier, these small multiplying cells contributed to the slow extension of a radical Islamism at the crossroads between networks of former supporters of Darul Islam and circles of young militants recruited in the universities.

43Until the 1990s, the geographic or social isolation of these communities was not implemented for solely ideological reasons: it was also a way to escape surveillance by the authorities.88 During the last years of the New Order and especially with the Reformasi, these rigorist models were promoted openly. For many militias that strove for a strict adherence to religious norms, reference to Islam’s past, source of their legitimacy, was generally transmitted through their adopted dressing, supposedly inspired by traditional Arab clothing: long white tunics worn over wide pants, with thick turbans as headgear. These outfits, rather incongruous with the humid tropical climate, marked their wish to break away from the Indonesian environment. It was also a physical manifestation of their discourse, visible and accessible to the greatest number, a dramatisation of their desire to change society. The high point of the First Congress of Mujahidin, held in Yogyakarta in August 2000 to demand the adoption of the Jakarta Charter, was a march of militias from the various groups represented. Clad in diverse uniforms according to their affiliation, some with trellises, others with white tunics worn over pants, they made for a spectacular sight, thus assuring the congress much media coverage. At the movement’s second congress in August 2003, taking place soon after the Marriott bombing, the atmosphere was less theatrical and more oppressive: the majority of the small group of militias were in trellises and amongst them, a few had their faces wrapped in cheches that covered all but their eyes.

A Frozen and Retrograde Project

44The discourse that succeeded these images took on millenarist accents, describing a crumbling world that reserved a terrible punishment for all who did not respect the commandments of Islam. For example, at the Second Congress of Mujahidin, Ismail Yusanto, representative of Hizbut Tahrir in Jakarta, expounded on the theme of divine punishment. Supported by statistics falsely attributed to the World Bank, his speech painted a picture of a society in plain decline with almost 100 million Indonesians (60 per cent of the population) living under the poverty threshold, exploding criminality (1,000 per cent increase in the province of Central Java), a 400 per cent increase in divorces, a 300 per cent increase in the number of incarcerations and 60 times the number of suicides.89

45The imminent collapse of this decadent world should incite Indonesian Muslims to follow scrupulously the teachings of true Islam, which alone can distinguish between infidels and hypocrites. In line with reformist movements but infused with a renewed vigour, the Salafist-inspired groups oppose all traditional religious practices, abundant in Indonesian Islam. Ceremonial meals (selamatan); ascetic practices that impart supernatural power (ilmu kekebalan); ‘superstitions’ (khurafat) or certain rites such as tahlilan (the repetition of litanies and various readings from the Qur’an before and after the burial) and talqin (reminding the dead during the burial of the answers to give to the angel); dzikiran (litany); and yasinan (the reading of the Surah Yasin) were fiercely opposed, sometimes with forceful interventions.90

46As to be expected, most of these groups distinguished themselves very early on by a particularly rigorous practice of what they considered as the duties of the good Muslim. For example, the Warsidi usroh at Lampung imposed various practices that went beyond the classic obligations (prayers five times a day) and the strict fast during the months of Ramadan: children under training were also subjected to the tahajud, the most difficult prayer usually considered as optional, at two or three in the morning, as well as to fasting every Monday and Thursday—a rarity at the time, even amongst the practising milieux.91

47These Indonesian Salafist phalansteries set out to create the most faithful reproduction possible of what they imagine Medina society in the mid-seventeenth century to have been. By maintaining a permanent clash between values and environment, and motivated by the conviction that in recreating the latter, values would automatically be respected, their leaders are in fact trying to erase almost 14 centuries of social evolution. Lacking confidence in human nature, they try to protect their disciples from all temptations that could potentially make them stray from their faith. All entertainment (dance, music, theatre) and all ‘pleasure spots’ (cafes, discotheques) are relentlessly banned. The majority of these groups condemn sources of information and exposure to the world such as cinema, television and even photography.92

48In the community, women are perceived as fragile beings in need of protection. The obsession of separating men and women is reflected in their dressing, of course, but also in very strict rules banning women from all contact with men without the presence of their husbands or a muhrim (Indonesian term derived from the Arabic mahrom, designating family members whom a girl cannot marry). These restrictions greatly complicate the lives of women in these groups, especially in the Indonesian environment which largely ignores the separation of sexes: the At-Turats community thus made arrangements such that female members could go to the neighbouring boutiques without crossing any men.93 Aside from these rules enforcing the strict separation of sexes, the role of women in society provokes divergent opinions in radical Islam. All were united in their fierce opposition to the accession of Megawati Soekarnoputri to the presidency in 1999 but concerning the militant engagement of female members in their groups, views are divided, reflecting the profound differences in sensibilities. At the Second Congress of Mujahidin in August 2003, female militants objected vigorously when an orator, Muhammad Thalib, declared that it was illicit (haram) for a woman to engage in politics. Why deprive the campaign to implement Islamic law of their energies, they asked? Bouncing back, the right-hand man of Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, Irfan S. Awwas announced a change in strategy: henceforth women would be the driving force behind the attainment of the mujahidins’ aims and their work would start “from below”, in the smallest mosques.94

49At the end of the day, the extent and diversity of expression of these efforts to return to the original Islamic society call for several remarks. The first is that it touches on an ontological vision of Islamic radicalism and, without doubt, its limits as well. Such a rigid imitation of the first Muslim communities reveals a very pessimistic vision of human history—perceived in effect as a process of degradation since the illumination of the Revelation. Reference to early Islam compensates for the absence of structured programmes and deflects reflection and discussion by proposing a simplistic reproduction of a society considered as perfect. But it also puts paid to any hope of a compromise between Islam and Indonesian identity, on the one hand, and between Islam and modernity on the other. The utopia of an in-depth re‑Islamisation of the Archipelago through the multiplication of these Salafist communities thus clashes, once past the issue of sectarianism, with agents of modernity as well as those of Indonesian tradition. No doubt conscious of the limits of this type of action, part of the radical Islamist movement thus wishes to enlarge its base by investing in the political field.

Fragile Man: Finding Refuge in the Sharia

51Considered by radical Indonesians as the apex of the struggle for Islam, the call for the sharia is an omnipresent theme in their rhetoric. Islamic law plays a complex role within the Islamist cluster. It is above all a symbol, a flag around which they can assemble to help each other and gain strength in numbers. It has an almost sacramental function; its mere invocation seems to be a means of approaching Allah. Virtues verging on magical, or thaumaturgic in any case, are ascribed to it: the sharia, if applied rigorously, would cure all of humanity’s ills.96 It allows mankind to surpass itself and is thus a “fundamental need for humanity, which only functions at 10 per cent of its capacity when the sharia is not in place.”97

An Imprecise Project

57Behind these thundering demands and the façade of unanimity amongst the Islamists lies an ill-defined project. The Indonesian radicals struggle to establish the modalities for implementing what they call for. Cacophony reigns even over issues as symbolic as the hudud, these corporal punishments that symbolise the harshness of Qu’ranic prescriptions. When asked in the summer of 2000, at the very moment when their representatives in parliament were supporting an amendment to the Constitution to recognise the Jakarta Charter, the Partai Bulan Bintang (PBB) leadership was incapable of furnishing the details of its implementation.109

58This wavering may have been one reason for convening the Congress of Mujahidin in August 2000. Apart from its highly publicised demands for an immediate application of the sharia, it also created a permanent body (Badan Majelis Mujahidin), composed of two councils, to define the modalities of this implementation. The first, called Ahlul Halli Wal’Aqdi, a sort of committee of experts on religion designated by the congress, was charged with codifying the Islamic law “in all domains of life” and to issue fatwas necessary for its application. The second, named Lajnah Tanfidziyah, nominated by the former, was entrusted with the implemen-tation of the committee’s decisions with the help of regional delegations.

59Four years later, the institutions designated by the Congress of Mujahidin had produced several texts. Aside from some brochures created by the Markas Mujahidin of Yogyakarta, which fell outside of the legitimate delegation’s procedures, the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI) composed a proper Islamic penal code very close to that produced by the Negara Islam Indonesia (NII) group.110 The Second Congress of Mujahidin (August 2003) openly lamented the lack of cooperation of moderate Muslim leaders, who were denounced, along with the other Muslims who had rejected the sharia, as “infidels in their faith” (kufuri’tiqadi).111 Without power, however, nothing is feasible, and responsibility for the implementation was thus thrown back to the public authorities. As one of the speakers, Muhammad Thalib, declared: “The obligations of the sharia cannot just be asserted individually or collectively as it is necessary to have a strict framework to control its application so as to create a life of prosperity and security. Logically speaking, this implies the existence of an institution wielding a strong authority over individuals and society and which possesses the capacity to apply by force the legal precepts generated. The institution meeting these criteria is the state and the government.”112

Rejection of Democracy

60There is much contention between radical Islam and Indonesian democracy. In spite of having benefited amply from the political liberalisation that made their discourse accessible to the greatest number, the Islamist movements show little gratitude to the political system. Most criticise democracy violently, some even condemn it categorically, blaming the groups that participate in the parliamentary game of sacrificing their Islamic virtue. This rejection derives from a syllogistic observation: Muslims are a majority in Indonesia, the Republic has never recognised the leading role of Islam, therefore democracy is the worst regime.