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Bilveer Singh, Vice-President, Political Science Association of Singapore
THE STATE OF ISLAMIST THREAT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA – FOCUS ON INDONESIA
Introduction
The threat posed by Islamist militants, extremists, radicals and terrorist is not new in Southeast
Asia. This is partly because the region is home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the world
after South Asia and the Middle East. Historically, the Padri War can be regarded as the onset of this
threat when returning Indonesian pilgrims, under the influence of Saudi Wahhabists, tried to implement
a ‘purified’ Islamic order in Sumatra, resulting in violent conflicts with the local Muslims and the Dutch
colonial authorities in the 1860s. Since then, Indonesia has seen an ebb and flow of this challenge,
especially since 1945 when radical Muslims, organised under the banner of Darul Islam, tried to fashion
the newly proclaimed Republic into an Islamic one. Even though it failed, this was at the cost of great
loss of lives with remnants and followers of the movement continuing to pose a challenge to what is
largely a secular-oriented state even though it is the largest Muslim one. In addition to Indonesia, both
Thailand and the Philippines also had to brace themselves from the Islamist threat for more than half a
century.
The Problematique of Islam in Indonesia
Indonesia, as the largest Muslim state, is strategically positioned to exude the state of Islam
globally. While historically it has been associated with moderate Islam, partly due to the dominance of
Javanese syncretic Islam and the peaceful manner it was spread in the archipelago, this is fast
changing. The rising radicalization of Indonesian Islam has impacted upon the character of national
Islam, imbued conflicts among Muslims, between Muslims and non-Muslims as well as complicated
Indonesia’s foreign policy and its image in world politics. While Indonesian policy makers and even
scholars are usually in a state of denial about Islamist radicalism in Indonesia, the fact of the matter is
that Indonesian Islam has transformed immensely with the radicals gaining influence and power, with
potentials to transform Indonesia into a state that defines itself more and more along Islamist lines. This
is already having wide-ranging ramifications for the region and beyond and the potential of complicating
the regional security architecture is even more foreboding.
There continues to be much debate about the sources and origins of Islamization in Indonesia.
As was stated by Riklefs, “when, why and how the conversion of Indonesians began has been debated
by several scholars, but no definite conclusions have been possible because the records of Islamization
that survive are so few, and often so uninformative”. 1 It is widely believed that Muslims were present in
Indonesia from the seventh century onwards when Hindu-Buddhist empires ruled the land, with the
Srivijaya Empire in power. Trade route through the Malacca Straits was the key reason for the presence.
However, Islam was only adopted by the rulers and later, common people, in a big way from the
thirteenth century onwards, especially from the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, following the collapse of
Srivijaya Empire. Islam is believed to have spread when Indonesians came into contact with Muslims
and converted or when foreign Muslims settled in Indonesia and inter-married locals and spread the
faith. The initial role of Muslim traders, especially Arabs from Egypt and Yemen, Indians from Gujerat
and Malabar, and Chinese from South China, was particularly vital. This was mainly due to Indonesia’s
strategic position along the sea routes of international trade, with many Muslims from the Middle East
travelling to India and China. The initial regions in Indonesia to adopt Islam in a big way were Northern
Sumatra, especially in Pasai and Samudra, and in Eastern Java. Muslim Sufis were also important
bringers of Islam into Indonesia, especially in adapting the religion to the new surroundings in Java and
Sumatra. A Moroccan, Ibn Battuta, who travelled to China in 1345-46 and passed through Samudra in
Northern Sumatra, observed that the Islam practiced there was of the Shafie School, which later also
dominated Indonesian Islam.
1
M.C.Riklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1200 (Third Edition). Houndmills, Basingstoke,
England, 2001, p.3.
1
The rise of Islam in Indonesia was evident from the dominance of Muslim kingdoms that
eclipsed the then existing Hindu-Buddhist empires. Islam spread to Indonesia mainly due to its
egalitarian attractions compared to the highly hierarchical Hindu-Buddhist social order, the decline of the
Hindu-Buddhist empires as well as the benefits that the royalty and elites saw in becoming Muslims to
trade and develop ties with Muslim-based political powers in the region such as the Malacca Empire
and beyond, especially in the Middle East. A full-fledged Islamic Empire is believed to have emerged in
Pasai-Samudra in Northern Sumatra by the thirteenth Century. Later, Aceh emerged as a powerful
Islamic centre in Sumatra. Similarly, in Northern Java, Islamic kingdoms emerged in Demak, Cirebon
and Banten by the fifteenth century. Islamic kingdoms were also found in the Malukus, Kalimantan,
Ternate and Tidore. Indonesia’s Islamic era lasted from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, when
Western colonialism posed the strongest threat and eventually succeeded in subjugating the
archipelago for the next three hundred and fifty years. Even though, by this time, the majority of the
populace were Muslims, Indonesia was occupied by the colonialists, especially the Dutch, who only
abandoned the territory in 1949.
Even though Indonesia is today the largest Muslim state, the spread of Islam took place
intermittently, with Muslims co-existing peacefully with Hindus and Buddhists for more than five to six
centuries before the religion became dominant. In many ways, Islam has been spreading in Indonesia
continuously for many centuries and this was largely undertaken peacefully, often beginning with the
royalty and elites being converted, and later by the followers. At the same time, Islam in Indonesia coexisted with local Hindu-Buddhist practices, leading to the emergence of a syncretic type of Islam. This
was mainly because when Islam was initially adopted, the difficulties of travel to the cradle of Islamic
civilization in the Middle East, led to Islam being merged with existing local practices and rituals. This
led Riklefs to argue that “the Islam of Indonesia was full of heterodoxy and heresy, a fact which later
encouraged major reformist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”. 2
As more Indonesians, through the Haj (pilgrimage) and study, came into contact with Islamic
centres in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, there were attempts, since the nineteenth century, to reduce or
terminate mixed practices in Islam and to follow ‘pure’ Islam as much as possible. One of the earliest
attempts to purify the religion broke out in the Minangkabau region of Sumatra, culminating in what
historians have referred to as the ‘Padri War’. This marked the onset of what was later to dominate the
discourse of Indonesian Islam, with the ‘modernists’, who wanted to reform the religion and bring it in
line with the rest of the world and the ‘traditionalists’ who supported the status quo, preferring to practice
Islam in line with the culture and traditions found in Indonesia, especially in Java. The modernists
eventually established the Muhammadiyah organization and the traditionalists, the Nahdatul Ulama, in
early twentieth century, representing two streams of Islam that have dominated and co-existed in
Indonesia ever since.
The Rise of Radical-Militant Islam in Indonesia and the Attendant Consequences
Religious activism, reformism and radicalism have formed an integral part of Islamic history and
discourse. Scholars have addressed this in the context of Islamic revivalism and reformism. Historically,
Islam has always served as a vehicle for the expression of socio-political and economic dissent,
particularly in times of crisis. The religion’s idealistic and egalitarian character has also provided the
impetus for protest, even rebellion. 3 Perhaps, more than any other religion, as Islam has a militant
potential, it lends itself to expressing protest, often couched in terms of reforming and fortifying it. 4
Muslim scholars such as Khurshid Ahmad have argued that modern Islamist movements, including its
fundamentalist variant, is part of an overall Islamic historical pattern, known as tajdid (renewal), and is
2
Ibid, p.14.
3 Mahmud A. Faksh (1997), The Future of Islam in the Middle East Praeger:
London, p. 23.
4Jacques Waardenburg (2002), Islam: Historical, Social and Political Perspective
Walter de Gruyter: Berlin and New York, p. 365.
2
consequently “a perennial phenomenon in Islamic history and not particularly new or modern.” 5 As
Islamic renewal has a long history, it does not depend upon the existence of a challenge from the
Western world and has indeed occurred long before the expansion of the West. 6
While reform within Islam in the pre-Western period is important, the rise of modern Islamist
fundamentalism cannot be understood outside the broader framework of the Muslims countries
relationship with the West. 7 The dominant discourse is often to portray Islamist fundamentalism as a
socio-religious phenomenon evolving primarily in reaction to the West’s penetration into the Muslim
world. 8 Here, Islamic fundamentalism is interpreted as a protest against Western dominance and a selfdefence against Western encroachment on Islamic identity. 9 Some have even viewed it as “a
psychosocial phenomenon taking from under European domination and in direct reaction to it”. 10
Historically, have been three main types of Islamic responses to the increasing military, political
and cultural dominance of the Western powers in the Muslim world: revivalism, modernism, and
fundamentalism. 11 The first movement was developed in the early eighteenth century marked by the
emergence of the Wahhabi movement in the Arabian Peninsula and militant ideas of Shah Waliullah in
India. The premise of the movement was that Islam as a complete and perfect religion had been
corrupted by man-made innovations (bid’a) and renewal of existing regimes was necessary to cleanse
Islam and observe the Sharia law. 12 To Islamist revivalists, tajdid was not to accommodate new ideas
but rather to reappropriate the unique and complete vision of Islam as preserved in its revealed
sources.13
While in a broader context, Islamist fundamentalism emerged as reaction to the Western
dominance, in a more specific context, however, it evolved in response and opposition to other Islamic
movements. In this regard, Islamic revivalism and Islamic modernism are crucial in the emergence of
Islamic fundamentalism as it was only in response and competition with these two Islamic movements
that Islamic fundamentalism emerged. 14 In what follows, this study seeks to explore how the early form
of revivalism, as introduced by Muhammad Wahhab, had an enduring influence on contemporary
Islamic movements, especially with regard to Indonesia, the largest Muslim state in the world.
THE WAHHABI DOCTRINE: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT
The reformist religious movement known as the Wahhabiya, sometimes anglicized as Wahhabism, was
based on the teachings of Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1791), who wrote on a variety of
Islamic themes such as theology, exegesis, jurisprudence, and the life of Prophet Muhammad. A
follower of the Hanbali school 15 and inspired by the ideas of the thirteenth century Hanbali jurist, Ibn
5Cited in Ibrahim Abu Rabi’. (1996), Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in
the Modern Arab World, State University of New York Press: New York, p. 54.
6 John. O. Voll, Op. Cit, p, 23
7 Bruce Lawrence. (1998), Shattering the Myth: Islam beyond Violence, Princeton
University Press: Princeton, p. 33.
8 Ibrahim Abu Rabi’, Op. Cit, p. 54.
9 Jacques Waardenburg (2002), Op. Cit, p.365.
10 Ibrahim Abu Rabi’, Op. Cit., p. 52.
11 John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford University Press; Oxford,
New York), p. 126-27.
12 Derek Hopwood, ‘Introduction: The Culture of Modernity in Islam and the
Middle East’ in John Cooper, Ronald L. Nettler, and Mohamed Mahmud (eds.),
Islam and Modernity: Muslim Intellectuals Respond (IB Tauris: London), p. 6.
13 John L. Esposito, Op. Cit., p. 116.
14 Nader Saiedi (1986), What is Fundamentalism in Jeffrey K. Hadden (ed.),
Prophetic Religion and Politics (A New Era Book: New York), p. 176.
15 Ibn Hanbal is generally considered the most literal of the four schools of
Islamic law. His thought focused on several principles. The first is the primacy of
the revealed text over reason. Ibn Hanbal saw no contradiction between reason
3
Tammiya 16 , Wahhab was disturbed with what he saw as the weakening of Islam by pre-Islamic
traditions and local practices of the Bedouin tribes of central Arabia. He also perceived Islam of his time
as being contaminated by what he considered as innovations (bid’a), blind imitations (taqlid) and idolatry
(shirk). To remedy this, he called for a return to the fundamentals of the religion and to the Islam as
practiced by the so-called pious predecessors, as-salaf as-salih, the first three generations of the
Prophet Muhammad’s followers. In doing so, Wahhab placed particular emphasis on the central Islamic
tenets of monotheism (tawhid) and promoted a strict, literal reading of the Koran and the Sunna. In
practice this meant an asault on mystical and popular Islam, notably Sufism and its tradition of saint
worship as well as Shi’ism. 17
Wahhab, who had been a Sufist in his youth, later came under the influence of Ibn Tammiya’s
writings, whose bitter denunciation of Sufi superstitious accretions and the Sufi intellectual doctrines,
especially the doctrine of the Unity of Being as expounded by Ibn al-Araby, had a decisive influence
upon him. In a small treatise entitled The Book of Unity (Kitab al-Tawhid), Wahhab attacked the
commonly held belief in the powers of the saints and pious men, and the practices consequent upon
these beliefs, namely, worship of saints and their tombs as well as reliance upon the intercessions of
the Prophet and the saints. 18 He also attacked the blind acceptance of authority in religious matters. As
acceptance of Sufism had become a part of medieval Islam, Wahhab found it imperative to recognize
only two authorities, namely, the Koran and the Sunna of the Prophet along with the precedents of the
Companions. However, since the Hadith was actually authoritatively collected from the third century
onwards, Wahhab and his followers modified their stand and accepted the ijma or consensus of the first
three centuries of Islam as binding. 19
Wahhab and his followers were engaged in rhetorical tirades against prominent medieval and
contemporaneous jurists whom they considered heretical, and even ordered the execution or
assassination of a large number of jurists with whom they disagreed. Wahhab saw the juristic tradition,
save that of Tammiya, as largely corrupt and viewed deference to the established schools of
jurisprudential thought or contemporaneous jurists as heretical. Among the medieval jurists that the
Wahhabists explicitly condemned as kuffar (infidels) were scholars such as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d.
606/1210), Abu Sa’id al-Baydawi (d. 710/1310), Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati (d. 745/1344), al-Khazin (d.
and scripture. Unlike the mutakallimun (scholastic theologians) who subjected the
revealed text to reason, he dismissed ta’wil (subjective or esoteric interpretation)
of the text and explained them in accordance with Arabic philology, Hadith, and
the understanding of the Prophet’s companions and their successors. The second
principle is the rejection of kalam. The Salafiya considered the issues raised by
the theological schools as bid’a (innovation) and confirmed the orthodox view of
these matters. The third is strict adherence to the Quran, the sunnah, and the
consensus (ijma’) of the pious ancestors. In line with the major Sunny schools,
Ibn Hanbal held the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet to be the
authoritative sources for understanding the matters of religion, from which the
principles of the shari’ah are derived. He set strict guidelines for the use of ijtihad
(independent reasoning) and restricted the use of qiyas (analogical reasoning).
16 Taqi al-Din ibn Tammiya, a follower of the Hanbali school, jurist, and
theologian, contributed greatly to the evolution of the Salafiya. He combated
accretions and innovations on religious practices and beliefs, particularly those
introduced by the Sufi orders (such as pantheism, syncretism, and saintworship), and he criticized vehemently the different theological trends. Ibn
Tammiya regarded himself as a mujtahi within the Hanbali school, but as a result
of changes in times and conditions, he departed from it in some respects: he
rejected taqlid (adherence to tradition) and ijma and approved of the use of
qiyas, and also maintained his own views on several jurisprudential issues.
17 Anthony Bubalo and Greg Fealy, Joining the Caravan, The Middle East,
Islamism and Indonesia, Lowy Institute Paper, 2005, p. 11.
18 Ibid., p. 242.
19 Ibid., p. 243.
4
741/1341), Muhammad al-Bakhi (d. 830/1426), Shihab al-Din al-Qastalani (d. 923/1517) and Abu Su’ud
al-‘Imadi, (d. 982/1574). What bound these jurists, in terms of textual interpretations, was that they were
not strict literalists. Some were even suspected of harboring Shia sympathies or had integrated
rationalist methods of analysis into their interpretative approaches. 20 Wahhab was obsessed with the
doctrine of shirk (associating partners with God) and he pronounced that there was no middle of the
road Muslim – a Muslim was either a true believer or not. For those whom Wahhab considered as ‘nonMuslims’, he had no qualms in declaring such a person an infidel and hence, could be targeted for
extermination. While the practice of takfir (accusing Muslims of heresy and of being infidels), strongly
characterized Wahhabism, equally prominent was the ideology’s hostility to creative activities such as
poetry and art in praise of the Prophet. 21
Part of the dogmatism associated with Wahhabism emanated from the transformation of
Wahhab’s creed into a state ideology following his alliance with a local tribal chieftain, Muhammad Ibn
Saud. It was highly likely that Wahhab’s ideas would not have spread in Arabia had it not been for the
fact that in the late eighteenth century, the Wahhabi movement united itself with the Al Saud family and
rebelled against the Ottoman rule in Arabia. Armed with religious zeal and a strong sense of Arab
nationalism, the rebellion became widespread, at one point reaching as far as Damascus in the north
and Oman in the south. Wahhab’s preaching questioned the dominant social and political order;
challenging both the loyalty of Bedouin tribesmen to their tribal leaders and the religious orthodoxy
vested in the Ottoman Sultan. The various Wahhabi rebellions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
were very bloody as the Wahhabists indiscriminately slaughtered Muslims, especially those belonging to
the Sufi orders and the Shia sect. In 1802, for example, the Wahhabi forces massacred the Shia
inhabitants of Karbala and in 1803, 1804, and 1806, the Wahhabists executed a large number of Sunnis
in Mecca and Medina whom they considered heretical. This led several mainstream jurists writing during
this period, such as the Hanafi jurist Ibn Abidin (d. 1253/1837) and the Maliki jurist al-Sawi (d.
1241/1825) to condemn Wahhabists as a fanatic fringe group, labeling them the “modern day Khawarij
of Islam”. 22
Ibn Saud put this to political effect and struck an alliance with Wahhab. The latter legitimised
and help expand Saud’s political authority over other tribes while the former helped spread Wahhab’s
religious message along its puritanical lines. The first short-lived Saudi state was destroyed in 1818 by
the Ottoman Khedieve of Egypt, Muhammad Ali. 23 Wahhabi ideology, however, was resuscitated in the
early twentieth century under the leadership of Abd al-Azizi b. Al-Sa’ud (r. 1319/1902-53), who adopted
the puritanical theology of the Wahhabists and allied himself with the tribes of Najd, thereby establishing
the nascent beginnings of what would become Saudi Arabia, the base of Wahhabism in the world.
Given the dismissive attitude of the Wahhabists towards Islamic history and law, the movement
came under severe criticism from a considerable number of contemporaneous scholars, most notably
Wahhab’s own brother, Sulayman, and reportedly, his father as well. The main criticism leveled against
Wahhab was that he exhibited very little regard for Islamic history, historical monuments, Islamic
intellectual tradition and the sanctity of Muslim life. Sulayman claimed that Wahhab, an ill-educated and
intolerant man, was dismissive of any thought or individuals that disagreed with him. Sulayman accused
Wahhab of being among the most extreme and fringe of fanatical elements, something unprecedented
in Islamic history. Wahhab, according to his brother, did not concern himself with reading or
understanding the works of the juristic predecessors but merely treated the words of some Hanbali
jurists such as Tammiya (d.728/1328) as if they were Divinely revealed, not to be questioned or debated.
But even here, Wahhab was very selective, citing Tammiya’s that he agreed and suited his purposes
and ignoring others. Sulayman and other scholars, noted the irony, the fact that Wahhab and his
20 Khaled Abou el-Fadl, “The ugly modern and the modern ugly: reclaiming the
beautiful in Islam” in Omid Safi (ed), Progressive Muslims on Justice, Gender and
Pluralism (One World: Oxford) p. 51.
21 Ibid., p. 50.
22 Ibid., p. 53.
23 Anthony Bubalo and Greg Fealy, “Joining the Caravan, p. 12.
5
followers, while prohibiting taqlid (imitation or following the precedents of jurists), ended up affirming and
mandating it in a different form. While prohibiting the practice of taqlid as far as it related to jurists whom
they disliked, at the same time, they demanded that Muslims imitate them blindly and unthinkingly.
Sulayman observed that Wahhabi methodology was based on despotism, where the whole of the
Islamic intellectual tradition was dismissed and Muslims given the choice of either accepting the
idiosyncratic Wahhabi interpretations of Islam or being declared kafirs (infidels) and killed. Effectively,
Sulayman argued, the Wahhabists behaved as if they alone, after several hundreds years of history,
had discovered the truth about Islam, and they considered themselves as infallible. If a Muslim
disagreed with them then, by definition, that Muslim is a heretic even though Tammiya himself
prohibited the practice of takfir (branding Muslims as infidels). 24
A number of factors contributed to the success and survival Wahhabism in contemporary Islam.
First, by rebelling against the Ottomans, Wahhabism appealed to the emerging ideologies of Arab
nationalism in the eighteen century. By treating Muslim Ottoman rule as foreign occupying power,
Wahhabism set a powerful precedent for notions of Arab self-determination and autonomy. Second,
Wahhabism advocated the return to the pristine and pure origins of Islam. Accordingly, Wahhabism
rejected the cumulative weight of historical baggage, and insisted upon a return to the precedents of the
“rightly guided” early generations. This idea was intuitively liberating for Muslim reformers since it meant
the re-birth of ijtihad. Third, by controlling Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia became strategically
positioned to exercise a considerable influence on Muslim culture and thinking. The holy cities of Mecca
and Medina are the symbolic heart of Islam, and are the sites where millions of Muslims perform
pilgrimage each year. By regulating what can be considered orthodox belief and practice, Saudi Arabia
was able to influence the belief systems of Islam. Fourth, and most importantly, the discovery and
exploitation of oil provided Saudi Arabia with high liquidity. Particularly, in the post-1975 period, with the
sharp rise in oil prices, Saudi Arabia aggressively promoted Wahhabi thought in the Muslim world. As
Riyadh controlled the holy shrines and places of worship for Muslims, it would have been politically
awkward for her to be the custodian of the shrines and yet adopt a system of belief that was at odds
with the rest of the Muslim world. In the 1950s and 1960s, Saudi Arabia came under considerable
pressure from republican and Arab nationalist regimes which considered Saudi system archaic and
reactionary. In the 1970s, with the financial means, Saudi Arabia, instead of re-inventing itself, decided
to pressure the Muslim World to change, in line with Wahhabism, and therein lies a key factor in the
globalization of the phenomenon. 25
It should, however, be noted that substantial changes have taken place in the last decade or
so in Saudi Arabia, especially within the local political-intellectual field. Critical among this is the rise to
prominence of “Islamo-liberals” who are made up of former Islamists and liberals, Sunnis and Shiites,
calling for a democratic change within an Islamic framework through a revision of the official Wahhabi
religious doctrine. Although not all have given much importance to religious criticism as they have to
political criticism, the critique of Wahhabism, in its political, social, and religious aspects, has
undoubtedly been one of the thrust of this new trend. That is not to say that this phenomenon is
completely without precedence in Saudi Arabia: certain doctrinal aspects of Wahhabism had, at times,
come under attack by prominent Ulemas from al-Hijaz and al-Hasa provinces and, though less
commonly known, from “dissident” ulemas from the Najd region, the birthplace of Wahhabism. However,
the term “Wahhabism” was has remained a taboo. What we have today is quite different: the critique of
Wahhabism, which is now often bluntly called by its name, has gained ground. It touches upon all
aspects of the Wahhabi tradition and even comes from within Wahhabism’s own ideological and
geographical core.26
Among the non-Shiite critics include Saudi liberals such as Turki al-Hamad, who for decades
had denounced social manifestations of Wahhabism, such as the religious police or the ban on
women’s driving. This group has, in the post-9/11 climate, considerably sharpened its criticism and
24 Ibid., p. 51.
25 Khaled Abou el-Fadl, The ugly modern, p. 54.
26 Stephane Lacroix, ISIM Review, 15/Spring 2005, p 17.
6
identified their opponents by name. Second, a group of young and daring intellectuals such as Mansur
al-Nuqaidan and Mishari al-Zaydi, being the two best known, have taken advantage of the Islamic
credentials inherited from their Islamist past in order to develop an Islamic critique of Wahhabism.
Through their writings, they denounced “the excesses of the Wahhabi doctrines” notably drawing an
explicit link between it and the jihadi violence experienced by the country since 2003. Third, some
Islamic thinkers have since the mid-1990s formulated a salafi critique of Wahhabism. Hasan al-Maliki,
the most prominent among these, castigates the doctrinal rigidity of Wahhabism and its tendency to
slavishly imitate Wahhab and Tammiya rather than to create thoughts on the basis of genuine Salafists
tenets. Abdallah al-Hamid shares al-Maliki’s belief that Wahhabism has only become a caricature of true
Salafism and calls for a return to the latter. This is a condition which becomes for him the theoretical
basis of his pro-democracy activism. Last, a fourth kind of critique has appeared which could be called a
Wahhabi critique of Wahhabism. One of its champions is Islamist lawyer and political activist Abd alAziz al-Qasim, who insists on the internal plurality of the original Wahhabi tradition as it has developed
over the past 250 years and believes that he can revive some of its most tolerant aspects. 27
THE WAHHABISM-SALAFISM NEXUS
Given the peripheral origins of the Wahhabi creed, it did not spread in the modern Muslim
world under its own banner but rather under the aegis of Salafism. As the term “Wahhabism” was
considered derogatory to the followers of Wahhab, they preferred to see themselves as the
representatives of Islamic orthodoxy. In this regard, Salafism was a far more credible paradigm and
became an ideal vehicle for the propagation of Wahhabism. This mainly accounts for Wahhabi clerics
describing themselves as Salafists and not Wahhabists.
The term salafiya is often closely linked with the notion of islah (reform) and tajdid (renewal),
which are fundamental concepts in Islam. For some, the term connotes reaction and rigidity because of
Salafiya’s strict adherence to the Koran and Sunnah, and its exaltation of the past. The word Salafiya is
derived from the Arabic root salaf, “to precede”. The Koran uses the word salaf to refer to the past. In
Arabic lexicons, the salafs are the virtuous forefathers (as-salaf as-salih). The issue of who is
considered a member of the salaf is a controversial one; however, most Muslim scholars agree that the
salafs comprise the first three generations of Muslims. They span three centuries and include the
companions of the Prophet, al-Sahabah, who ended with Anas ibn Malik (d. AH 91/710 CE or 93/712);
their followers, al-Tabi’in (180/796); and the followers of their followers, Tabi’ al Tabi’in (241/855).
Ahmad ibn Hanbal (164-241/780-855) is considered the last of the generation of salafs. These three
generations were highly respected by later Muslims for their companionship with the Prophet, and
understanding and practice of Islam. Some suggest, however, that salaf are not confined to a specific
group or to a certain era. Muslims recognize later prominent scholars and independent figures such as
members of the salaf, including Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), Ibn Tammiya (d. 1328), Ibn Qayyim alJauziya (d. 1350), Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792) and others. 28
Due to their connection to the Prophet and the divine revelations, Salafists believe that the
Companions enjoyed a better understanding of the religion. Subsequent understanding, they argue,
were sullied by innovations (bid’a) and the development of schisms in the Muslim community, which
pulled the community of the faithful away from the straight path of Islam. Deviations occurred with the
passage of time and were reinforced by the syncretic incorporation of local customs as Islam spread to
other cultural settings outside the Arabian peninsular. Popular practices such as celebrating the
Prophet’s birthday, visiting the tombs of saints and various Sufi rituals were decried as un-Islamic
deviations that threatened the purity of the message as revealed by the Prophet. The goal of Salafi
movement is to eradicate these innovations by returning to the pure form of Islam practiced by the
Prophet and his Companions. 29
27 Stephane Lacroix, ISIM Review 15/Spring 2005, p 17.
28 Ayman al-Yassini, ‘Salafiyya’, p. 307.
29 Quintan Wiktorowicz, ‘The New Global Threat: Transnational Salafi and Jihad’,
Middle East Policy, Vol VIII, No. 4, 2001, p. 20.
7
Methodologically, Salafism is nearly identical to Wahhabism except that Wahhabism is far less
tolerant of diversity and differences of opinions. 30 The founders of Salafism maintained that on all issues,
Muslims ought to return to the original textual sources of the Koran and the Sunna of the Prophet. In
doing so, Muslims ought to re-interpret the original sources in light of modern needs and demands
without being slavishly bound to the interpretive precedents of earlier Muslim generations. As originally
conceived, Salafism was not necessarily anti-intellectual, but like Wahhabism, it tended to be
uninterested in history. By emphasizing a presumed golden age in Islam, the adherents of Salafism
idealized the time of the Prophet and his Companions, and ignored or demonized the rest of Islamic
history. Furthermore, by rejecting juristic precedents and undervaluing tradition as a source of
authoritativeness, Salafism adopted a form of egalitarianism that deconstructed traditional notions of
established authority within Islam. According to Salafism, effectively, anyone was considered qualified
to return to the original sources and speak for the Divine Will. By liberating Muslims from the burdens of
the technocratic tradition of the jurists, Salafism contributed to a real vacuum of authority in
contemporary Islam. However, unlike Wahhabism, Salafism was not hostile to the juristic tradition or the
practice of various competing schools of thought. In addition, Salafism was not hostile to mysticism or
Sufism. The proponents of Salafism were eager to throw off the shackles of tradition, and to engage in
the rethinking of Islamic solutions in light of modern demands. As far as the juristic tradition was
concerned, Salafi scholars were synchronizers; they tended to engage in a practice known of talfiq, in
which they mixed and matched various opinions from the past in order to emerge with novel approaches
to problems. Importantly, for the most part, Salafism was founded by Muslim nationalists who were
eager to read the values of modernism into the original sources of Islam. Hence, Salafism was not
necessarily anti-Western. In fact, its founders strove to project democracy, constitutionalism or socialism
onto the foundational texts, and to justify the paradigm of the modern nation-state within Islam. 31
Although Muhammad Abduh and al-Afghani are usually credited with being the founders of
Salafism, and some people even attribute the creed to Ibn Tammiya (d. 728/1328) and his student Ibn
Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350), it was Rashid Rida who best exemplified the ideas and
contradictions of Salafism, and its elusive relationship with Wahhabism. Rashid Rida, a prominent
Syrian reformer who trained in the al Azhar seminary, and lived in Egypt, was one of the most influential
jurists of the early twentieth century. Today, however, he is demonized by Wahhabists for his rationalist
and humanitarian approaches to Islam, and his jurisprudential works are banned and frequently
attacked in Saudi Arabia, and outside of Arabia, by various puritan Salafi groups. This is ironic because
Rida was a staunch defender of the Wahhabi movement against criticisms of various Azhari jurists,
most notably the Maliki jurist al-Dijawi (d. 1365/1946), and even a friend of King ‘Abd al-Aziz of Saudi
Arabia. Even conceding that the founder of the creed, Wahhab, was intolerant towards others, and that
Wahhabism of his time engaged in fanatical behavior, Rida still insisted that the Wahhabists deserved
the support of Muslims as a salafi movement. In many respect, this claim was incongruous because,
contrary to the Wahhabists, Rida advocated a critical approach to the evaluation of the authenticity of
Prophetic tradition (hadith) and also advocated the use of rationalist methods in the practice of Islamic
law. Rida consistently argued that in response to modernity, Islamic law must be interpreted in such a
way that human rights and public interests are adequately respected, and supported the study of
philosophy, and the practice of parliamentary democracy, both of which were an anathema to the
Wahhabists. In addition, quite unlike the Wahhabists, Rida, who was a classically trained jurist himself,
was strongly supportive of the juristic tradition, and the status and role of the classically trained jurists in
modern Islam. 32
There were certain commonalities between Rida, as a salafi and the Wahhabists. Rida was
critical of the practices and theology of Sufi order, particularly the doctrine of intercession and saint
worship, and he was also critical of the doctrine of taqlid (imitation). A strong advocate of renewed
ijtihad, his position was considerably more subtle and nuanced than the Wahhabists. The commonalities,
however, were not sufficiently compelling to explain Rida’s willingness to overlook the intolerant and
30 Khaled Abou el-Fadl, The ugly modern, p. 55.
31 Ibid., p. 55.
32 Ibid., p. 55.
8
frequently violent practices of the Wahhabists. Nonetheless, Rida defended the Wahhabists on grounds
of politics – Rida, being an Arab nationalist, was increasingly anti-Ottoman. It is clear from his writings
that Rida welcomed the Wahhabi rebellion against the Ottoman, as an Arab revolution being waged
against the Turkish masters. 33
By the 1960s, Wahhabism was able to rid itself of some its extreme forms of intolerance. It
proceeded to co-opt the language and symbolism of Salafism in the 1970s until the two became
practically indistinguishable. Both Wahhabism and Salafism imagined a golden age within Islam; this
entailed a belief in a near historical utopia that is entirely retrievable and reproducible in contemporary
Islam. Both remained uninterested in critical historical inquiry and responded to the challenge of
modernity by escaping to the secure haven of the text. These similarities between the two facilitated the
Wahhabi co-optation of Salafism. 34
This Wahhabi-Salafism link is crucially important to an understanding of contemporary Sunni
Islam drawn from the thinking of Qutb and Maududi. The two currents share certain major points of
doctrine – notably the imperative of returning to Islam’s “fundamentals” and strict implementation of all
its injunctions and prohibitions in the legal, moral, and private spheres. 35 The similarity of the two
movements had a decisive effect on the fortunes of Sunni Islamism, for it was in Saudi Arabia that many
of Egyptian Muslim Brothers driven out by Nasser found refuge after the mid-1950s. At the same time,
the Saudis were beginning to profit substantially from their oil revenues, and the Muslim Brothers from
abroad arrived just in time to supply a class of organizers and intellectuals who were better educated
than their Saudi counterparts. They played an influential role at the University of Medina, completed in
1961, where the doctrine of the Brothers was taught to students from all over the Muslim world. Many of
the refugee Brothers built up personal fortunes which they partly reinvested in Egypt after Nasser’s
death in 1970, contributing to the creation of an Islamic banking sector that would eventually finance the
militants Islamist movement. Well before the full emergence of Islamism in the 1970s, a growing
constituency nicknamed “petro-Islam”, included Wahhabi ulemas and Islamist intellectuals who
promoted strict implementation of the sharia in the political, moral, and cultural spheres; this protomovement had few social concerns and even fewer revolutionary ones. Indeed, the contrast between
the tharwa (wealthy) Islamists and the thawra (revolutionary) ones was a standing pun in Arabia. Qutb’s
advocacy of revolution and his denunciation of existing regimes, including those on the Arabian
peninsular, as anti-Islamic or jahiliyya were generally viewed by those in power as exaggerations,
brought on by the tortures endured by the Brothers in Nasser’s jails. Nevertheless, Sayyid Qutb’s
writings, which were edited and published by his brother, Muhammad Qutb in Saudi Arabia, were held
in high esteem by his growing contingent of followers there. 36
From the late 1960s onward, Saudi Arabia, a conservative country, held a somewhat aloof but
far from unsympathetic attitude toward radical Islamist thought, whose harshness it sought to temper
rather than confront. Determined by Riyadh’s rivalry with Cairo, it gave refuge to radical members of the
Muslim Brotherhood that were being hounded out of Nasser’s Egypt. It is worth noting that Abdullah
Azzam, a Palestinian who was evicted from the University of Jordan where he had taught and led the
youth sector of the Muslim Brothers, went to teach in Jeddah at Abd al-Aziz University. Osama bin
Laden was his student. Azzam moved to Peshawar, Pakistan in 1984, where he published Al Jihad,
promoting the idea that jihad in Afghanistan was an obligation for all Muslims and the cause of the
Palestinians was the cause of all Muslims. 37 As teachers in Saudi universities during the 1960s, the
Muslim Brothers introduced revolutionary Islamism to students from all over the world. Many of them,
taking their cue from Sayyid Qutb, denounced the Arab nationalist regimes in Egypt and Syria as
unbelievers (takfir), saying that they were not truly Islamic but lived in a state of ignorance (jahiliyya) that
made them legitimate targets against whom holy war (jihad) could be waged. They also instilled in their
33
34
35
36
37
Ibid., 56.
Ibid., 57.
Ibid., p. 51.
Giles Kepel, Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam, 2002, p. 51.
Ibid., p. 51.
9
students the conviction that Islam was being undermined by Zionists/Christians and secular forces so
that militant actions must be taken in its defense. 38 This extremist and radical philosophy in the socially
and culturally conservative ethos of Saudi Arabia was an explosive brew that appealed to three critical
constituencies –the most socially conservative, the most disillusioned and disempowered, and the most
idealists – and united them in a union potentially destabilizing the Saudi regime. 39
During the Cold War, this Wahhabite-Islamist trend prospered under the protection of the Saudi
monarchy, whose worst ally was the United States. Hence, in the early 1970s, Islamism was kindly
looked upon by the Western bloc, and Muslim regimes contending with leftist opposition broadly
encouraged their bearded Islamist students. They had no way of knowing that by the end of decade
many of these same students would build up a virulent opposition to the established order. 40 For the
time being, the Saudi monarchy seemed quite capable of containing Islamism and making it serve the
kingdom’s own international purposes. In 1962, the Muslim World League, a non-government
organization funded by the Saudis, had been founded in Mecca; this was the first coherent and
systematic institution whose avowed intent was to ‘Wahhabize” Islam worldwide and thereby, negates
the influence of Nasser’s Egypt. It operated by sending out religious missionaries, distributing the works
of its main ideologists (notably, Ibn Tammiya and Ibn Abd Wahhab), and above all, raising funds for
building mosques and subsidizing Islamic associations. The League identified worthy beneficiaries,
invited them to Saudi Arabia and gave them the recommendation (tazkiya) that would later provide them
with largesse from a generous private donor, a member of the royal family, a prince, or ordinary
businessman. The league was managed by members of the Saudi religious establishment, working with
other Arabs who either belonged to the Muslim Brothers or were close to them, along with ulemas from
the Indian subcontinent connected to the Deobandi Schools or to the party founded by Mawdudi. 41
The 1970s’ oil boom changed Saudi society. Two distinct social groups emerged. The first
composed of young, often Western-educated technocrats sought to develop Saudi infrastructure and
adapt Saudi administrative, educational, and financial systems to Western standards. The second were
ulemas, who graduated from newly-established religious schools and universities. They, too, enjoyed
the economic boom but feared that rapid modernization could endanger Saudi Arabia's Muslim identity.
These young clerics did not oppose modernization per se like their predecessors but demanded that
new technologies be harnessed to promote Islam. They did not oppose television broadcasts, for
example, but demanded that any programming be Islamic in nature and free of Western influence.
Influenced by the teachings of Egyptian Islamists who found refuge in Saudi Arabia, their approach to
modernization was, in fact, more Salafi than Wahhabi in thrust. 42
As modernization progressed, these young ulemas became increasingly discontented with the
path of the Saudi kingdom. They opposed the growing number of girls attending school, the
mushrooming number of television sets, temporal courts, and a banking system that did not adhere to
the Islamic legal prohibition against charging interest. The personal extravagance of some young Saudi
princes added insult to injury. The authoritarian nature of the Saudi system allowed little outlet for their
discontent. When, on November 20, 1979, a young Saudi former national guardsman named Juhaiman
al-‘Utaibi and a small band of followers took control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca to demand the
overthrow of the House of Saud and the severing of all relations with the West, most ulemas stood
alongside the king. 43
However, their unease did not dissipate but rather than coalesce into a formal opposition
38 Ibid., p. 51.
39 Mohammad Ayoob, “Political Islam: Image and Reality”, World Policy Journal,
Fall 2004, p. 4.
40 Ibid., p. 52.
41 Ibid., p. 52.
42 Uriya Shavit, “Al-Qaeda's Saudi Origins”, Middle East Quarterly Fall 2006, Vol
XIII Number 4.
43 Ibid.
10
movement as they preached the dangers of poorly supervised modernization. They cautioned that the
kingdom and the broader Muslim world were subject to a sophisticated Western "cultural attack" (alghazw ath-thaqafi) or "intellectual attack" (al-ghazw al-fikri), which sought first to weaken Muslim faith
and morals, and then re-conquer Muslim territories and convert Muslims to Christianity. Its tools were
Western textbooks, Western television programs, Western sports, Western cafés and Western banking
systems. The proponents of such a conspiracy theory did not differentiate between the capitalist West
and the communist bloc; both were variations of the same enemy. 44
The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was, in the eyes of those cautioning against a
Western cultural attack, affirmation of their assumptions. The struggle for Afghanistan gave young,
religious Saudis—graduates of the kingdom's new religious universities—an opportunity to defend
Islam. A few hundred traveled to Afghanistan to join Muslim guerilla fighters, the mujahidin. The United
States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan assisted them financially and logistically. For the Saudi regime, their
activity was a blessing: not only did it portray Saudi Arabia as a leading force in the liberation of
Afghanistan without the kingdom having to directly intervene in the conflict, but it also kept the most
radical and adventurous young Saudis far from Saudi Arabia. Instead of fighting the U.S. presence on
Saudi soil, the kingdom's young radicals fought Soviet penetration on Afghan soil. 45
There, many Saudis — including Osama bin Laden — became followers of Abdullah Azzam. A
Palestinian who fled to Jordan after the Six-Day war, Azzam joined the Muslim Brotherhood and
obtained a doctorate in Islamic law from Cairo's Al-Azhar University in 1973 before settling down to
teach Islamic law at the University of Jordan. He was fired for involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood
and moved to Saudi Arabia where, in 1981, he joined the faculty of King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz University in
Jeddah. He did not stay long and traveled to Islamabad and then to the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier to
organize the anti-Soviet jihad. Bin Laden became Azzam's close ally, assisting him with finance and
logistics. 46
Azzam argued that it was the personal obligation (fard al-‘ayn) of every Muslim to defend
Islamic lands against the penetration of the infidels. This duty was no different than the responsibility to
fast or pray. A son neither would need his father's approval nor a wife her husband's approval to fulfill it.
Primary responsibility for the fight against occupation of the infidels rested upon the victimized residents
but, if they did not possess enough power to resist, every Muslim should join them in battle. Waging war
against Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and Israel were the highest priorities because these two states
represented beachheads from which the infidels would expand. However, Azzam argued that
Afghanistan was more urgent because the battles at the time were at their peak and because in
Afghanistan, the resistance was purely Muslim; there was no Christian population, as there was on the
West Bank. 47
Several Saudi ulemas endorsed Azzam's ideas. He also claimed to have the endorsement of
Sheikh Abd al-Aziz bin Baz, head of the Council for Senior Ulemas, the highest religious authority in
Saudi Arabia even though he offered no proof for this claim. However, he went beyond the concerns
articulated by the Saudi ulemas: he made the struggle an individual one, giving up on the idea that
Muslim states are able to defend Muslim soil. He also shifted the struggle from the socio-cultural to
military dimension. While his colleagues in Saudi Arabia preached about the dangers of Western
penetration into the Muslim world, Azzam transformed his ideas into a successful armed struggle for
which he eventually sacrificed his life, dying with two of his sons in a November 1989 explosion in
Peshawar, apparently the work of Soviet agents. It was this legacy of an active, armed, and
nongovernmental struggle against Western penetration that he bequeathed to bin Laden when the war
in Afghanistan ended in a Soviet defeat. 48
44
45
46
47
48
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
11
Despite the fact that most Salafists condemned Islamist activism, some Islamists have drifted
toward Salafism. In part, was a consequence of the failure of Islamism. Another major factor in this drift
was the role of Saudi Arabia, which since the 1960s and 1970s had been co-opting Islamists and
promoting its own conservative Wahabist creed. Wahhabism is a salafi movement par excellence. It
should, however, be viewed as a distinct form of Salafism given that it is not just an approach to religion
but also a state ideology. In many cases, salafists are oriented toward Saudi Arabian religious scholars
including the late Sheikhs Abd al-Aziz Bin Baz, Mohammed bin Saleh al-Uthimeen and Nasir ad-Din alAlbani and current figures such as Sheikhs Salih Ibn Fawzan al-Fawzan and Sheikhs Salim al-Hilali.
Apart from the extensive material support provided to salafi groups worldwide, Saudi Arabian religious
institutions have become a key vector in the establishment of salafi network. Not all leading salafi
scholars are Saudi or Wahabi. A prominent example being the Yemeni Sheikhs Muqbil Bin Hadi al-Wadi.
And not all Salafists are oriented toward Wahhabi religious scholars. Indeed, Salafism should not be
seen as monolithic; the international salafi community is riddled with disputes and Salafists spend
considerable time debating each other over matters of orthodoxy. 49
Most of the revivalist and Islamist movements have reflected a Salafists approach to some
degree. But contemporary Salafists distinguish themselves from the historical Salafiya of Afghani,
Abduh and Rida and from Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Salafism is distinct from
Islamism in a number of respects. Islamists and Salafists often hold similar views on the challenges
facing the Muslim world but differ on what to do about them. Historically, for Islamists, the solution has
been to establish Islamic states via political or revolutionary action. By contrast, for most Salafists, the
solution is personal salvation through faith (iman) and the correct practice of Islam, in particular by
avoiding anything considered to be an innovation (bid’a), idolatrous (shirk), or blind imitation (taqlid).
Salafists believe that sharia is the only law under which a true Muslim should live, but do not see the
existence of Islamic state as necessary for this to occur. Indeed, Salafists tend to eschew political
activism, or any form of organisation, believing that this leads to the prioritisation of material concerns
over the spiritual (and thus potentially an innovation or idolatrous). Typically, therefore, the key activity
for most Salafists is preaching (da’wa). This indifference to political activism also means that Salafists
are less prone to revolt against Muslim rulers and unlike some Islamists, reject jihad against unjust
rulers. They do, however, believe in the necessity of jihad to defend the umma, but tend to accord it less
priority than da’wa and typically impose stricter and more legalistic conditions on when it can be
undertaken. 50
Despite Salafism’s emphasis on religiosity, the line between salafi activism and politics is
sometimes blurred. Even if Salafists typically avoid specifically political activism, their preaching can still
have political implications. Despite the formal condemnation by Saudi scholars of al-Qaeda’s brand of
terrorism as un-Islamic, and their effort to blame Saudi involvement in terrorism on outside influences –
usually those of the Muslim Brotherhood – a few former Saudi militants have pointed the finger inward.
They have openly criticised what they characterise as the xenophobists and ‘hate-filled’ teaching that
emanates from the Saudi religious establishment. Moreover, some salafi groups, while ostensibly still
preoccupied with religiosity, will cross the line into violence; for example, launching vigilante attack on
video stores considered to be promoting immorality. There is, however, a distinct and extreme minority
of self-described Salafists who go beyond even this into organized terrorism. Labelled jihadist-Salafism,
it substitutes a focus on violent jihad for the traditional focus on da’wa. It is to this current that al-Qaeda
and its partisan belong. 51
Notwithstanding the prominent role Saudi Arabia has played in its promotion, Salafism is an
excellent illustration of the extent to which some forms of Islamic religiosity is becoming less specifically
Middle Eastern. Salafism copes better than many forms of Islamic religiosity with what Roy and others
have called the ‘de-territorialisation’ of Islam. That is one of the major consequences of globalisation,
49 Anthony Bubalo and Greg Fealy, Joining The Caravan, p. 39.
50 Ibid., p. 12.
51 Ibid, p. 41.
12
with Islam less ascribed to a particular region or territory as many of the world’s Muslims live outside
traditionally Muslim countries. 52
Salafism adapts to de-territorialisation precisely because it is an effort to reduce Islam to an
abstract faith and moral code, purifying it of national or cultural identities, traditions and histories —
whether Western or those of traditional Muslim countries. The ‘portability’ of the highly idealised Islamic
identity propagated has enabled it to gain an audience among Muslims who feel alienated or
marginalized living in the West. But even in predominantly Muslim countries, it provides a vehicle for
individuals to distinguish themselves from the ‘corrupted’ society around them. This is not just a case of
rejecting Western influences, though Salafists are often more anti-Western than Islamists. Often, the
first target of Salafists is the indigenous culture of Muslim countries in which the live that is perceived to
have distorted ‘true’ Islam. 53
TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF THE WAHHABI-SALAFI NETWORK
The transnational Salafi da’wa movement first began to flourish after Saudi Arabia set up the
Muslim World League (Rabitatt al-Alam al-Islam) in 1962 in Mecca. Following this, the Rabitat was
urged by Riyadh to play a pro-active role in institutionalizing its influence in cultural and religious
activities throughout the Muslim world (Schulze 1990: 215-6). As a result of the increased oil revenues,
the Rabitat received substantial financial support from the Saudi state which was distributed to a variety
of Islamic organizations globally (Fraser 1997: 222). Through the Rabitat, the kingdom acquired
enhanced status as the defender of Muslim interests, particularly following the defeat of its rival, Egypt,
in the Arab-Israeli war (Voll 1994: 295-6).
The Iranian revolution of 1979, which provided Islamists all over the world with a model for the
struggle to establish an Islamic state (Sidahmed and Eshteshami 1996: 9-10), challenged the position of
Saudi Arabia in the Muslim world, particularly in relation to the legitimacy of its ruling elite, who had long
proclaimed themselves as the most committed defenders of Islam. To counter these challenges, the
Rabitat and its related organizations, such as the World Council of Mosques and the World Assembly of
Muslim Youth, intensified the spread of the Salafi da’wa movement, an important ideological component
of which is anti-shi’ism (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996: 151).
Saudi Arabia has always demonstrated its support for calls to jihad in different trouble spots in
the Muslim world, thereby seeking to bolster its claim to be the “protector of the Muslim community.”
The first such instance occurred when the Afghan war broke in the 1980. At that time, Saudi Arabia, in
collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Arab Islamist organizations, mobilized jihadi
volunteers from Arab and other Muslim countries (Rubin 1997: 185). Thousands of Salafists were able
to participate in jihad. They joined the offices of the Rabitat and the Muslim Brotherhood in Peshawar
became the centre for the recruitment, training and coordination of volunteers. Later, this training centre
developed into the Service Bureau of Arab Mujahidin run by Abdullah Azzam (1941-88) and Osama bin
Laden.54
In his effort to legitimize the call for jihad in Afghanistan, Azzam expounded upon two kinds of
jihad against unbelievers. The first is an offensive attack in enemy territory when the enemy is not
gathering to attack Muslims. This is said to be a collective responsibility. The second is a defensive
jihad to protect Muslim territory and population, considered an obligation for every individual. Although
this doctrine was derived from classical sources, Azzam’s attempted to popularize the jihad doctrine
within the specific context of armed resistance in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union was welcomed
by radical Islamists as an attempt to resurrect jihad as an essential religious duty. 55
52
53
54
55
Ibid, p. 40.
Ibid, p. 40.
Rohan Gunaratna, Al-Qaida, 2003, 28.
Quintan Wiktorowicz, “The New Global Threat”, p. 24.
13
Not surprisingly, during the Afghan Mujahidin War, the Salafists gave increasing attention to
jihad, that is, armed struggle against outside forces such foreign powers and their armies. A problem
arose when the Salafists, who had participated in the jihad in Afghanistan, returned to their countries of
origin. Their unflagging eagerness to fight was only intensified when they heard about the miseries
afflicting Muslims in other trouble-spots such as Kashmir, southern Philippines, southern Thailand,
Bosnia and Chechnya. They argued that, just as in Afghanistan, it was obligatory to wage jihad to
liberate these regions from the invasions of enemies of Islam. While Saudi Arabia and other Gulf
countries provided funding, a number of prominent Salafi authorities, including Bin Baz, Nash al-Din alAlbani and Muhammad Salih ibn Uthaymin, were happy to issue fatwas encouraging the presence of
volunteers in those regions. 56
Elements within the Salafi movement, particularly those linked with bin Laden, expanded upon
Azzam’s original call to defend the Muslim community in Afghanistan. They broadened the meaning of
jihad to include a permanent armed struggle against any infidel oppression embodied in the so-called
“Judeo-Crusade” coalition led by the United States. This broader understanding of jihad became
problematic, however, when the Saudi government invited American troops onto its territory to answer
the threat posed by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Bin Laden then criticized the royal family and lobbied
the official ulemas to issue fatwas declaring the presence of non-Muslims in the country to be forbidden.
His protest marked a turning point for many Salafi-Jihadists, to use Kepel’s term 57, who reiterated the
call for a global jihad that now included the Saudi government as an enemy regime.
From his Afghan exile, bin Laden issued "a declaration of war" and, in several press interviews,
called for an armed struggle against U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. He also claimed responsibility for the
June 1996 explosions in Dhahran, which killed nineteen U.S. servicemen, saying they were a warning
and a response to the collusion between the Saudi regime and the "Zionist-Crusade" alliance. While he
drifted apart from the mainstream Saudi opposition of the early 1990s, his emphasis on the withdrawal
of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia and his consistent criticism of the House of Saud reflected the
concerns of Hawali and ‘Awda, and made him merely a Saudi opposition figure.
In the late 1990s, bin Laden altered his political profile and embarked on an effort to become
the leader of a global jihad against the United States and its allies. Using his fortune and his operational
skills, he recruited radical Islamists willing to attack Western targets and trained several hundreds in
camps in Afghanistan. On February 23, 1998, bin Laden announced the establishment of "The World
Islamic Front for the Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders" (Al-Jabha al-Islamiya al-‘Alamiya liJihad al-Yahud w'as-Salabiyin) in the Arabic daily Al-Quds al-‘Arabi and positioned himself to head its
supreme council. Joining him were jihadist leaders from Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but their
alliance was weak, and they did not agree upon the front's hierarchy and goals.
The present Wahhabi-Salafi authorities in Saudi Arabia face a delicate problem in connection
with the global question of jihad. On the one hand, they do not want to undermine their position as
defenders of Muslims against attacks by belligerent infidels. At the same time, they need to defend
themselves against Bin Laden’s criticism of complicity with the United States. Hence in addition to
supporting the dispatch of Salafi volunteers to wage jihad in trouble spots like Kashmir and Bosnia, the
Saudi authorities have also developed counter-discourses that will answer the challenges posed by Bin
Laden. This counter-discourse emphasizes that Muslim society must first be Islamized through a
gradual evolutionary process that includes education (tarbiya) to encourage proper Muslim practices
and purification (Ar. Tashfiya). Only then is jihad permissible. 58
56 Ibid., p 24.
57 Giles Kepel, 2002: 219.
58 Norhaidi Hasan, “Between Transnational Interest and Domestic Politics:
Understanding Middle Eastern Fatwas on Jihad in the Moluccas”, Islamic Law and
Society, 2005, 12, 1.
14
WAHHABI’S TRANSMISSION INTO INDONESIAN ISLAM
Historically, when Islam came to Southeast Asia in the third wave of its expansion brought by
Sufi missionaries from West and Central Asia, it adapted to the multi-cultural milieu of societies that had
long been influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism. A division developed in the nineteenth century
between the Sufi-influenced practices of the Kaum Tua and the Wahhabi-influenced approach of the
Kaum Muda in Indonesia and later, in the then Malaya. The Kaum Tua represented the traditional courtcentered doctrines in Malaya and the inclusionist beliefs of the Javanese heartland, which had
accommodated pre-Islamic and Sufi practices and beliefs. The Kaum Muda represented the modernist,
Muslim reformists, who were strongly influenced by the pan-Islamic revivalist movements originating
from Egypt. It sought to expunge the pre-Islamic beliefs that had been woven into the fabric and practice
of Islam in Malaya and Indonesia. As a result of the large numbers of pilgrims who went on the haj to
Mecca and Muslim clerics who had attended madrassahs in Arabia and India, the austere literal
interpretation of the Islamic faith contained in Wahhabi doctrines had a deepening impact on the region
since 1870s. 59
The first alleged incursion of Wahhabism into Indonesia occurred in 1804, when three pilgrims
returned from Mecca to West Sumatra and initiated a radical and occasionally violent movement of
religious and social reform. Dutch observers soon assumed that these pilgrims had been influenced by
Wahhabi ideas during the Najdi occupation of Mecca in 1803, and this assumption has been adopted by
most Indonesian authors, although the evidence is extremely thin and there are many indications to the
contrary. The large Indonesian community resident in Mecca was a medium through which knowledge
about Wahhabism reached Indonesia, but the community itself appears to have remained virtually
immune to Wahhabi influence. 60
Wahhabism only became a hotly debated issue after the second Wahhabi conquest of Mecca
in 1924. Indirectly, it gave rise to the major traditionalist organization, Nahdatul Ulama, which had as its
chief objective the defense of beliefs and practices that were attacked by the Wahhabi, namely, wasila,
ziyara, tariqa, taqlid, fiqh. The middle part of the twentieth century was characterized by fierce debates
over traditional practices, in which their opponents were invariably dubbed Wahhabists by the
traditionalists. In reality there was little direct influence of [the Saudi version of Wahhabism on
Indonesian reformist thought until the 1970s. There was, however, a certain convergence: the puritan
Persatuan Islam movement appeared to have developed its strict Salafi ideas almost in isolation from
the contemporary Middle East, but evolved towards positions that were almost indistinguishable from
those that were internationally sponsored by the Saudis. The fatwa rubric of Persatuan Islam journal Al
Muslimun was indicative of the strict Salafi approach adopted by Persis. 61 Each consecutive generation
of pilgrims returning from Mecca has tended to reject the local forms of Islam existing at home in favor
of the supposedly "purer" Islam that they had encountered and studied in Saudi Arabia. The reform of
Islam has been an ongoing process through the centuries, and each generation of new returnees from
the Haj has brought forth a new wave of reform. 62
According to van Bruinessen, we may distinguish two independent components of reform
(although in real life they may be hard to separate from each other). The most important of these was
the effort to bring belief and practice of the Indonesian Muslims more in line with those of the Muslims of
Saudi Arabia, especially those in the Holy Cities, whose religion was assumed to be purer and more
authentic. The struggle against indigenous rituals, beliefs and values has been the chief concern of
reformists. The second component, the importance of which has tended to be exaggerated by outside
observers, is derivative of the various reformist and revivalist movements in the Middle East, from the
Wahhabiya through the Salafiya to more recent movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and even
59
Martin van Bruninessen, "Wahhabi influences in Indonesia, real and imagined", paper presented at
the Journée d’Etudes du CEIFR (EHESS-CNRS) et MSH sur le Wahhabisme. Ecole des Hautes Etudes
en Sciences Sociales / Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, 10 June, 2002.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
62
Martin van Bruinessen, "Global and local in Indonesian Islam", Southeast Asian Studies (Kyoto)
vol. 37, no.2 (1999), 46-63.
15
the Iranian revolution. The Islamic ideas that successive generations of hajis and students encountered
in the Holy Cities were not the same. Debates taking place in Mecca or elsewhere in the Muslim World
impacted on Indonesia and were replicated there. 63
It was certainly not the case, however, that returning hajis were exclusively, or even primarily,
agents of puritan, sharia-oriented reform in Indonesia. All sorts of developments in the Muslim World
were mediated by the same channel. For instance, Indian sufi order Shattariyya, flourishing in the
subcontinent in the 16th and 17th centuries and known for its easy accommodation with local practices,
reached Indonesia by way of Medina. Some of the hajis returning from Mecca in the first half of the 20th
century were sharia-minded reformists, determined to purge Indonesian Islam of "alien" practices;
others, however, brought mostly magical lore back from Saudi Arabia. Both existed side by side. 64
Indonesia was not a passive recipient in this process — the new influences were incorporated
into existing religious and cultural patterns and thereby, to some extent modified — but it was a
recipient, not an active actor in these global exchanges. Well into the twentieth century, a centreperiphery model with Mecca and Medina as the dual centers and Indonesia as the periphery
represented Indonesia's relationship with the world of Islam. Other peripheral regions generated global
influences which also reached Indonesia through the Holy Cities. Indonesian Islam produced its own
specific cultural forms but these, at best, spread within the region and probably never made an impact in
the wider world of Islam. It was only in the case of the Arab communities settled in the Archipelago that
one can speak, if one so wishes, of Indonesian influences on non-Indonesian Islam.
Demographically, Muslims were a huge majority in Indonesia. But politically, Islamists were a
minority both within and among the new state’s founding fathers. The idea of officially implementing
Islam was strongly rejected by non-Muslims, who saw it as an invitation to use the state to transform the
archipelago’s statistically Muslim majority into a formidable and, from their standpoint, dangerous
political force. The Islamist’s project was as a result easily defeated and the consequently non-Islamic
character of the new state prevailed, a profoundly disappointing fact for the more self-consciously
Muslim segment of Indonesian society. 65 Thus, despite the fact that Muslims constitute 88% of
Indonesia’s total population, from the early period of independence, Islam has played a much less
prominent role in the country's political life than its demographic prominence would suggest. 66 Having
played an important role in anti-colonial resistance since the very beginning of the nationalist
movements, Islam was excluded from the framework of Indonesian nationhood and a more secular
state ideology, Pancasila 67was chosen by post-colonial Indonesian leaders as the foundation of the
newly born nation. 68
Secular-nationalist-oriented Indonesian nationhood and developmentalist vision of modernity
have since then dominated political discourse and practice in the country for the next three decades. As
with Marxism, Islam was discursively and constitutionally marginalized from the state power and
ideology. Formally, Islam had no established place in the state power and ideology. 69 At the same time,
political Islam never dominated national politics and political organizations committed to explicitly
Islamic goals were never been able to attract sufficient popular support. 70 When Indonesian political
63
Ibid.
Ibid.
65
Ibid., p. 122.
66
Martin van Bruinessen, “Islamic State or State Islam?” Fifty Years of State-Islam Relations in
Indonesia’ in Ingrid Wessel (ed.), Indonesia am Ende des 20 (Jahrhunderts. Abera Verlag:Hamburg),
p. 20.
67
Pancasila means “Five Pillars”. It consists of five principles considered as the basis of Indonesian
nationhood: belief in One God, humanism, national unity, consensus and social justice.
68
Robert W Hefner, “Islam in an Era of Nation-States: Politic and Religious Renewal in Muslim
Southeast Asia” in Robert W. Hefner and Patricia Horvatich (eds.), Politics and Religious Renewal in
Muslim Southeast Asia, (University of Hawai’i Press: Honolulu, 1997), p. 21.
69
Sven Caderroth, “Indonesia and Malaysia” in David Wasterlund and Inguar Svanberg (eds.), Islam
Outside the Arab World (Curzon: Surrey, 199), p. 274.
70
Harold Crouch, “Indonesia” in Mohammed Ayoob (ed.), The Politics of Islamic Reassertion, (Croom
Helm: London, 1981), p. 190; See also Robert W. Hefner, “Islam and Nation in the Post-Suharto Era”
64
16
elites were deliberating about the country’s independence in 1945, some Muslim leaders tried to include
in the preamble of the Constitution of what was described as the Jakarta Charter, referring to the
obligations of Muslims to observe religious laws (sharia). This was opposed by secular nationalists,
many of whom were Muslim themselves as well as by non-Muslims who feared that this would lead to
the rise of an Islamic state. The unattractiveness of an Islamist-oriented political system in Indonesia
was clearly evident in the 1955 elections, the first free to be held in the country, when the Islamic
parties together won no more than 44% of the total vote and the party most vocal in support of the
Jakarta Charter, Masyumi, received only 20.9% of the vote. 71 The latter was finally suppressed by
Sukarno for being involved in a secessionist movement, the PRRI/PERMESTA rebellion in 1957
Masyumi represented a wide range of reformist Muslim attitudes, ranging from liberal and
modernist to puritan and conservative. The most puritan strand within Masyumi was the association,
Persatuan Islam or Persis, which militated uncompromisingly against local beliefs and traditional
practices (including some, which for many Muslims belonged to the core of their religion). Persis relied
heavily on a literal reading of the Koran and authentic Hadith, and on many issues, it adopted positions
that were close to those of the Wahhabists — although Persis’ chief religious authority, Ahmad Hassan,
appeared to have reached these positions independently. Unlike other reformist currents in Indonesia,
Persis never showed much interest in social and political teachings that could be derived from Islam but
concentrated on its strict application in personal life. Through its schools and youth training, and in the
journal Al-Muslimun, which during the New Order, found a readership well beyond the limited
membership of the organization itself, Persis carried on a struggle for the purification of rituals and
beliefs that was consonant with the understanding of Islam sponsored by the Saudis.
Under Indonesia's New Order, brought about by General Suharto and his closest advisers, the
country's relative economic and cultural isolation from the West ended. Great foreign-assisted
investments in infrastructure (schools, roads, telecommunications) under the supervision of the World
Bank and the IMF led to significant economic growth and firmly integrating the Indonesian economy into
the capitalist world system. Indonesia was also opened to foreign cultural influences brought about by
increased foreign travel, study abroad, the presence of large expatriate community as well as due to the
influence of radio and television. The process of globalization, bringing about Westernization or, more
precisely, Americanization, affected the middle class, where various facets of Western lifestyles and
norms were adopted. In reality, however, cultural flows were much more complex with countries such as
Japan, Singapore, India and the newly affluent Arab Gulf countries exerting as much, if not greater,
influence on Indonesian economy and culture than it was apparent at first sight.
The Islamization of Indonesia was a function of the ongoing complex process of globalization.
By this time, Islamizing influences no longer reached Indonesia from a single centre, as had long been
the case in the past. Besides Mecca (where traditionalist learning was precariously surviving under
Wahhabi rule), Cairo had from the early twentieth century become a source of great influence, where
increasing numbers of Indonesians studied at al-Azhar or one of the other universities. Many reformistoriented Indonesians went to Cairo, attracted by the fame of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida. 72
However, Indonesia’s Islamization was affected by a host of Islamic centers. British India was one such
centre when the Ahmadiyah movement sent its first missionaries to Indonesia in the mid-1920s, and
had some success in spreading modernist Islam among Java's traditional elite. Indonesia's present
Ahmadiyah communities maintain contacts with the centers at Lahore and Qadian. The Lucknow-based
traditionalist education centre Nadwatul Ulama regularly attracts a number of Indonesian students (and
the works of the leading ulemas of this centre are widely available in Indonesian translations). After the
Islamic revolution, Iran made a significant impact (although the first contacts with its modern Shi`i
thinkers were made through English and Arabic translations).
in Adam Schwartz and Jonathan Paris (eds.), The Politics of Post-Suharto Indonesia (Council on
Foreign Relation Press: New York,1999).
71
Martin van Bruinessen, “Islamic State or State Islam?” p. 22-23.
72
Ibid.
17
The centre-periphery model, in which the periphery, Indonesia, responded to influences of a
dominant centre, was long an adequate and acceptable model to explain the process of Islamisation in
the archipelago. However, by the 1970s, not only were there more centers but the influences had also
become more diffused, and a network model represents the flow of Islamization more accurately. One
did not have to go to Mecca or Cairo to find new Islamic ideas. Students of medicine or political science
at an American university were as likely to emphasize their Muslim identities through their encounter
new Islamic concepts and thought. Journals and books in English, Arabic and in Indonesian translations
became major vehicles of disseminating Islamic ideas.
Indonesian Islam has always been characterized by pluralism and many approaches and
understanding to Islam have existed side by side. The proliferation of Islamic publishing that began in
the 1980s reflected this pluralism and the openness with which many Indonesian Muslims accepted
these ideas. Students and the emerging Muslim middle class showed a great enthusiasm for Islamic
literature, where numerous discussion circles were formed and books and writings critically analyzed.
Other than materials from the Muslim Brotherhood and Mawdudi as well as the traditional materials from
the pesantrens, many other writings were accessible, including works of Fazlur Rahman, Fritjof Schuon,
Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Sayyid Naguib al-Attas. Works and studies on the great Sufis and Muslim
philosophers were translated. There was also a growing number of Indonesian Muslim intellectuals
publishing collections of their lectures, speeches and sermons, responding to the increased in
readership in the country. The ideas that made perhaps the strongest intellectual impact were those of
the Iranian thinkers such as Ali Shari`ati and a few years later, Murtaza Mutahhari. The writings of the
two authors had a high readership due to their association with the Iranian revolution, which fascinated
many young Indonesians.
In the beginning of the New Order, it seemed that Islam would have a greater role in
Indonesian politics when Suharto, with his political base in the army, formed a de facto alliance of
expediency with a broad range of Islamic and nationalist groups for the purpose of eliminating the
Indonesian Communist Party and its suspected sympathizers. It soon became clear, however, that the
New Order had no intention of sharing power with mass-based political organizations of any kind,
including nationalist and religious groups. Under Suharto, power was centralized in Indonesia to an
extent that was never “achieved” in much of the rest of Southeast Asia, with the exception of the citystate Singapore. Thus, one persistent feature of Indonesia’s New Order was the tendency to destroy
any sign of opposition or potential threat, from within or outside the regime, and to do so with a
comparatively high degree of effectiveness, even brutality. 73
It is clear then the New Order’s ideology was exclusionary. Muslim groups were particularly
targeted by the New Order’s due to its need for homogenization of politics. As these aspirations were in
conflict with Islamist ones, not surprisingly, it was the Muslim groups that were among the earliest critics
of the New Order. Thus, once the PKI and its sympathizers were domesticated, the New Order began
suppressing the Muslims on grounds of national unity and preventing the rise of sectarianism. 74 While
the New Order provided generous grants to build Muslim schools and mosques, it however opposed
any attempt to reassert Islam through politics. This stemmed, in large part, from the New Order’s
aversion to mass-based politics. It was also a reflection the New Order elite’s cultural prejudices, who
were composed mostly of Abangan background, in partnership with their secular and Christian
colleagues who feared the emergence of Islamic parties and politics that could undermine the New
Order. 75
During the first two decades of the New Order, while religious observance was strongly
encouraged, political Islam became a principal target of the state’s exclusionary politics as well as the
73
Ariel Heryanto and Vedi R. Hadiz, “Post-Authoritarian Indonesia: A Comparative Southeast Asian
Perspective”, Critical Asian Studies, 37:2 (2005), p. 254.
74
Ariel Heryanto, Ideological Baggage and Orientation of Social Sciences in Indonesia (Quinox
Publishing, 2005), p. 64.
75
Ibid., p. 64.
18
focus of ideological and political distrust. 76 At least until the late of 1980s, political Islam was effectively
marginalized through an extensive public indoctrination that stigmatised Islam as a politically dangerous
to the unity and prosperity of the state. Political Islam was ultimately undermined institutionally and
ideologically in 1985 when all Muslim political parties were forcedly to merge into a single party strictly
controlled by the government and had to accept the official state ideology, Pancasila, as the only safe
and legitimate ideology. 77
Given the dual character of Islamic policy of Suharto: the promotion of personal piety and
opposition to the politicization of religion, the de-politicization of Islam has been coupled with the
relatively deep Islamization of Indonesian society and culture. 78 However, since the 1980s, Indonesia
has experienced an Islamic revival of historically unprecedented proportion. 79 The nature and
consequences of Islamic resurgence in the country are complex rather than simply shifting from secular
nationalism to “conservative” Islam. 80 Unlike some of its Middle East counterparts, a key feature of this
revival has been the emergence of what Hefner identifies as “civil pluralist” Islamic discourse, one which
consistently claims that the modern ideals of equality, freedom, and democracy are not uniquely
Western values, but modern necessities compatible with, and even required by, Muslim ideals. 81
Indonesian Muslim reformism, especially those associated with the Muhammadiyah
mainstream, up to the 1970s was influenced by the Egyptian reformers such as Muhammad Abduh and
Rashid Rida. Several Masyumi leaders had in fact studied in Cairo, which they associated with Abduh’s
modernism. Among NU’s ulemas, however, the preferred place for higher studies had long remained
Mecca, where they studied classical fiqh texts with traditionalist scholars and had little contact with
representatives of official Wahhabism even though in the second half of the 20th century, an increasing
numbers of NU youths chose Cairo’s Al-Azhar as their destination for studies. During the 1950s and
1960s, Masyumi was so heavily involved in practical politics that it paid little attention to Islamic thought
— this appears even to have been true of some non-political reformist associations such as
Muhammadiyah. It was the ban of Masyumi and the general depoliticization imposed on Indonesian
Islam under Suharto that caused a turn to Islamic thought. The ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood then
became a major focus of orientation for people of Masyumi background. Initially, the Islamic socialism of
the Syrian Brother, Mustafa al-Siba`i (whose book Islamic Socialism was translated early, banned under
Suharto, and later reprinted with a different title) had a strong appeal, reflecting Masyumi’s socialdemocratic leanings. Later, al-Banna became the leading authority, along with the Pakistani Abu’l-A`la
Mawdudi. Several of Sayyid Qutb’s works were also translated, including Ma`alim fi’l-tariq (‘Signposts
on the Road’), but his more radical political ideas appear not to have made the impact in Indonesia as
they had elsewhere. It was the non-revolutionary, Saudi-sponsored brand of Brotherhood materials that
became most influential in former Masyumi circles in the 1980s and 1990s.
During the Sukarno years, Islamic discourse and action in Indonesia had been dominated by
the large Muslim political parties, Masyumi and NU. Under Suharto, the dominant discourse, dominant
at least to some extent because of official sponsorship and proscription, was that of the so-called
"renewal" (pembaharuan) movement that emerged from the Muslim students' association HMI, with
Nurcholish Madjid as its most eloquent and charismatic spokesman. This movement distinguished itself
by its rejection of primordial Muslim politics — famously summed up in the slogan "Islam yes, partai
Islam no!" — and by its tolerance towards other religions, which it did not see (at least Christianity) as
erring but as valid alternative ways of worshipping God. Impatient with the externalities of religion, the
pembaharuan group emphasized that Muslims had to seek the essence of God's message to the
Prophet and not content themselves with a formal and literal reading of scriptures. This inevitably
76
R. William Liddle, “The Islamic Turn in Indonesia: A Political Explanation”, the Journal of Asian
Studies, 1996, August, 55, 3 p. 621.
77
Greg Fealy, “Islamic Politics: A Rising or Declining Force?” in Damien Kingsbury and Arief Budiman
(eds.), Indonesia: Uncertain Transition (Crawford House Publishing: Adelaide, 2001), p. 120.
78
R. William Liddle, Op. Cit., p. 622.
79
Robert W. Hefner,. Secularization and Citizenship in Muslim Indonesia in Paul Heelas (ed.), Religion,
Modernity and Postmodernity, (Blackwell Publisher: Oxford, 1998), p. 148.
80
Robert W. Hefner, ‘Islam in an Era of Nation-States’, p. 45.
81
Ibid., p. 45.
19
necessitated sensitivity to context — the context of revelation as well as the context where the message
had to be put into practice. Nurcholish' thought was initially influenced by American sociology of religion
and liberal theology. Later he did a doctorate in Islamic Studies in Chicago under the Pakistani neomodernist scholar Fazlur Rahman. In an attempt to promote a more open, tolerant and pluralistic
approach to the relationship between state and Islamic society, this new Islamic discourse denied the
necessity of a formally established Islamic state. Instead, it emphasized that it was the spirit and not the
letter of Islamic law (sharia) to which Muslims must attend, stressed the need for programs to elevate
the status of women, and insisted that Muslim world’s most urgent task was to develop moral tools to
respond to the challenge of modern pluralism. 82 Without any centralized coordination, a great
movement for a civil Islam was spontaneously developing in both “traditionalist” and “modernist” circles.
The modernist side was led by Nurcholish Madjid and the traditionalist side, by the activist Abdurrahman
Wahid. 83 The movement’s intention was the establishment not of “a monopoly-creating and diversitydenying “Islamic” state, but of a Muslim civil society dedicated to the Islamic values of justice, freedom,
and civility in difference.0 84
From a comparative Islamic perspective, the degree to which these Muslim groups engaged
with these ideas was remarkable. As Hefner noted, the reform-minded Muslim democrats, and not
secular nationalists, have been the largest audience and supporters for democratic and pluralist ideas in
Indonesia since the 1980s and “nowhere in the Muslim world have Muslim intellectuals engaged ideas
of democracy, human rights, pluralism, civil society and the rule of law with a vigour and confidence
equal to that of Indonesian Muslims”. 85 It is with this remarkable engagement with democratic and
pluralist ideas that these Muslim groups had played a prominent role in accepting and supporting
Pancasila as the final foundation of Indonesian nationhood and its political implications, especially with
regard to the non-sectarian and harmonious relations between the various faiths, in the interests of
national unity. 86 In the course of the 1970s and 1980s, the pembaharuan group managed to gradually
entrench themselves within the professional, bureaucratic and business elites. Their ideas received
generous press coverage and patronage because they gave an Islamic legitimization to the New
Order’s development and efforts to attain national unity. This group constituted the core of an emerging
Muslim middle class, both self-consciously middle class and self-consciously Muslim.
It was these political developments that pushed a segment of the Indonesian reformists,
notably the Indonesian Islamic Da`wa Council, towards closer cooperation with the Saudis (through the
Rabitat) from the late 1960s onwards, paving the way for revitalization of puritan Islamic ideas. DDII was
a body that had been established in 1967 by Muhammad Natsir and other former leaders of the
Masyumi party. The party had been a principled opponent of Sukarno’s Guided Democracy and had
been obliged to dissolve itself in 1960, with many of its leaders jailed by Sukarno. Although released
from jail after Suharto’s takeover, they were not allowed to establish a new party, which no doubt
contributed to their devoting themselves entirely to dakwah. The DDII established close contacts with
the Saudi-sponsored and financed Islamic World League (Rabitat al-`Alam al-Islami or briefly Rabitat)
and through its Rabitat connections, increasingly came under the influence of Middle Eastern currents
of Islamic thought, of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Wahhabi” (Saudi-Salafi) varieties. 87 The
DDII became the Saudis’ preferred counterpart when Riyadh began using its oil wealth to finance the
82
See R. William Liddle, ‘The Islamic Turn in Indonesia,’ the Journal of Asian Studies, 1996, August,
55, 3; Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam, (Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford, 2000);
Emanuel Sivan, 2003. ‘The Clash within Islam’, Survival, Spring, 45, 1. p. 25-44; Saiful Mujani and R.
William Liddle, ‘Politics, Islam and Public Opinion: Indonesia’s Approaching Elections’, Journal of
Democracy, 2004, 15, 1. p. 109-123.
83
Saiful Mujani and R. William Liddle, ‘Politics, Islam and Public Opinion: Indonesia’s Approaching
Elections’, in Journal of Democracy, 2004, 15, 1., p. 117.
84
Robert W. Hefner, Islam in and Era of Nation-States, p. 47.
85
Robert W. Hefner, , ‘Islam in an Era of Nation-States’, p. 50.
86
Emanuel Sivan, 2003. ‘The Clash within Islam’, Survival, Spring, 45, 1. p. 25-44.
87
Martin van Bruinessen, "Post-Suharto Muslim engagements with civil society and democracy”, paper
presented at the Third International Conference and Workshop “Indonesia in Transition”, organized by
the KNAW and Labsosio, Universitas Indonesia, August 24-28, 2003. Universitas Indonesia, Depok)
20
spread of conservative and puritan brands of Islamic teachings and ideology. 88 As a result of the
quadrupling of oil prices in the 1970s, Saudi Arabia became a major force in the promotion of Wahhabi
doctrines in Southeast Asia. Financial support and grants were given by the Saudi government and
private organizations such as the Jeddah-based World Muslim League to those groups who advocated
more fundamentalist approaches to Islamic doctrines and were most active in seeking the creation of
Islamic sates. 89
Through its Rabitat connections, DDII increasingly came under the influence of Middle Eastern
currents of Islamic thought, of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Wahhabi” (Saudi-Salafi) varieties.
However, ideologically, the DDII remained closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to Wahhabism. AlBanna's Muslim Brothers appeared to have served as the model that the Dewan wished to emulate; it
always refrained, however, from open political opposition and never openly embraced Sayyid Qutb's
more radical views. The Saudis financially sponsored a range of educational activities, even among
moderate traditionalists, with the effect that Hanbali instead of Shafii fiqh dominated in several
traditional pesantrens (madrassahs). 90
As a result of such cooperation, many Indonesia have had the opportunity to study in wahhabi
centres in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, including the Wahhabi-dominated Qatar. Upon their
return, they established teaching circles and published hundreds of books. All of them have been
involved in competition to attract the attention of Saudi Arabia and the petrodollars of the Rabitat. It is
not surprising that the Rabitat has become one of the most important centres of the Islamic international
network, defined by Roy (1996: 112) as more a network of financing and distribution than a command
structure in which all branches follow a centrally defined strategy. The competition became more
intense after 1980, when Saudi Arabia established the Institute for the Study of Islamic Science and
Arabic (Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Islam dan Bahasa Arab). 91
DDII often claims that Indonesia is under siege from an aggressive project of Christianization,
and this plays an important role in enhancing its legitimacy in the eye of the Rabitat. The Rabitat has
also imbued DDII with anti-Zionist views that are increasingly visible in the Indonesian public sphere
(Van Bruinessen 1994; Siegel 2000). Since the beginning of the 1980s, DDII has sponsored campaign
against the Iranian revolution and tried to curb its influence. While countering the alleged proliferation of
Shi’ite influence, DDII has also campaigned against the ‘liberal’ model of Islam propagated by
intellectuals such as Nurcholish Madjid and Abdurrahman Wahid. The DDII represents the politically
uncompromising wing of Indonesian Muslim "modernism" or more aptly, "puritanism", which is a more
appropriate description. Its major objective is to purge rituals and beliefs of all elements that do not
derive from the Koran and Hadith. It finds as unacceptable traditional practices and liberal new
interpretations and as such, has increasingly drifted towards the Hanbali-Wahhabi views of its Saudi
sponsors. 92 In the 1980s and 1990s, an unending stream of anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian,
anti-Shi`a, anti-Ahmadi and anti-liberal tracts, many of them of Saudi or Kuwaiti provenance, flooded the
cheap book market in Indonesia. The Saudi Embassy attempted to intervene in Indonesian religious
debates and graduates from Saudi institutes of learning had an increasing impact on public debate. The
final decade of Suharto’s rule gave this variety of Islam, innocuous to the regime, a wide support base. 93
Another influence that became increasingly felt in many campuses in the 1990s was that of the
extremely puritan Islam of Wahhabi ulema from Saudi Arabia, something its adherents preferred to refer
as ‘Salafi Islam’. This influence was mediated though the Saudi-financed Institute for Islamic and Arabic
Studies, LIPIA, in Jakarta and through a growing number of Indonesians who studied religious subjects
at Saudi universities or with Saudi or Yemeni ulema. However, only a small percentage of these
88
Van Bruinessen, Genealogies of Islamic Radicalism in post-Suharto Indonesia, Southeast Asia
Research.
89
Barry Desker, Islam and Politics After 11 September, 2002.
90
Ibid.
91
Norhaidi Hassan, Between Transnational Interest.
92
Van Bruinessen, Genealogies of Islamic Radicalism.
93
van Bruinessen, Global and Local Islam.
21
students, upon their return, came to represent the austere teachings of Wahhabi Salafism (which may
be seen, perhaps, as an extreme form of the puritanism represented in Indonesia by Persis). It was they
who organized a growing network of discussion circles to spread their version of true Islam, which at
least in theory rejected involvement in worldly politics. The Salafi study groups even avoided contact
with society at large — at least until 1999, when the conflict in the Moluccas caused a major faction of
them to mobilize for jihad. 94
Masyumi circles then become the most vehement critics of the pembaharuan movement. The
Masyumi Party had been dissolved in 1960 after its participation in an abortive regionalist rebellion
against Sukarno. Even though the party supported the fall of Sukarno and the destruction of the
Communist Party, Suharto never allowed its leaders to play a prominent role in political life. The party
then transformed itself into an organisation for Islamic dissemination (dakwah), the Dewan Dakwah
Islamiyah Indonesia, and occasionally spoke out as a political critic from the margin. Al-Banna's Muslim
Brothers appear to have served as the model that the Dewan wished to emulate; it always refrained,
however, from open political opposition and never openly embraced Sayyid Qutb's more radical views.
The Dewan Dakwah established close contacts with the Saudi authorities and was financially backed by
it. Mohamad Natsir, the chairman of both Masyumi and Dewan Dakwah, became a vice-president of the
World Muslim League (Rabitat al-`Alam al-Islami), and the Dewan Dakwah came to represent the
conservative, neo-fundamentalist form of Islam emanating from Riyadh.
The leaders of the Dewan Dakwah opposed many of the ideas represented by the
pembaharuan movement. For instance, its stand against Muslim political parties, its legitimation of the
New Order, its defense of secularisation, its openness towards other religions, and its respect for local
forms of Islam. Dewan Dakwah polemicised against kebatinan, against Christianity and Judaism. Their
worldview became increasingly one in which Islam was under threat from a new Christian Crusade and
international Jewish conspiracies. Following the Iranian revolution, Shi`ism (which appealed strongly to
Indonesian Muslim students because of its perceived revolutionary potential) was added to the list of
threats; the Dewan published a whole series of anti-Shi`a tracts and books.
Ideologically they remained closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to Wahhabism, however.
The ideas of the Brotherhood and the Jama`at-i Islami were in Indonesia mediated by the DDII and
spread to various mosque-based networks. Somewhat simplifying, we may distinguish university-based
networks and networks connecting non-campus mosques, which developed independently although
they were aware of one another. The major non-campus network was the semi-official Badan Kontak
Pemuda dan Remaja Masjid Indonesia (Contact Organ of Indonesian Mosque Youth, BKPRMI or
shorter BKPM). Apparently unknown to the authorities, the most radical ideas and plans were
communicated in this network, and several of the most radical jama`ah emerged here, such as the
jama`ah of the radical preacher Imran in Bandung, whose followers assaulted a police station to acquire
firearms and later hijacked a Garuda airplane.
The radical teachers Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, of Jama`ah Islamiyah fame,
recruited their followers from this same network. They linked up with the underground Darul Islam but
set about organising and training their following in a more systematic way, in small, closely-knit groups
known as usrah (‘family’) that were connected in a hierarchical structure in which most members knew
no other members apart from those in their own usrah. This pattern of organisation, copied from the
Muslim Brotherhood, was called an Islamic jama`ah or jama`ah islamiyah. In reports from the early
1980s, it was not clear whether the name only referred to this type of organisation or also referred
specifically to Sungkar and Ba’asyir’s network of usrah.
Sungkar and Ba`asyir, who jointly led a pesantren (Islamic boarding school) near the town of
Solo, were arrested in the late 1970s for their involvement in a violent underground movement popularly
known as Komando Jihad. This movement aimed at the establishment of an Islamic state in Indonesia
and carried out a number of bombings of cinemas, night clubs and churches. Interestingly, Komando
94
Ibid.
22
Jihad was to a considerable degree controlled by one of the intelligence services and served the useful
function of legitimatising clampdowns on less radical and non-violent Muslim politicians. Komando Jihad
consisted mostly of men who had been active in the Darul Islam movement, which from 1949 to 1962
opposed the secular Indonesian republic and fought for an Indonesian Islamic State. The Darul Islam
movement did not have a clear concept of what an Islamic state was to be like, apart from the general
idea that all laws should be based on the shari`ah, Islamic law.
Sungkar and Ba`asyir were late joiners but they contributed to the movement ideas that they
borrowed from the Egyptian Muslim Brothers (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). The struggle for an Islamic state,
according to these ideas, was a step-by-step process, in which the activist had first to engage in moral
self-improvement, then to be part of a ‘family’ (usrah) of like-minded people who guide, help and control
one another. These are steps towards the building of an Islamic community (jama`ah islamiyah), which
in turn is a precondition for the establishment of an Islamic state. From their Islamic school near Solo,
Ba`asyir and Sungkar set up a network of committed young Muslims, some of them quietist, some of
them militants, all of them opposed to the Suharto regime, organised in ‘families,’ that together were to
constitute a true community of committed Muslims, a Jama`ah Islamiyah. Following a wave of arrests,
the authorities spoke of the ‘Usrah movement’ or ‘the’ Jama`ah Islamiyah.
Ba`asyir and Sungkar remained under detention for several years and upon release in the
1984 escaped to Malaysia. This move may have been related to their recruitment for the Afghan jihad,
which occurred around the same time. According to sources close to the Usrah movement, a Saudi
recruiting officer visited Indonesia in 1984 or 1985 and identified Sungkar’s and another Darul Islamrelated group as the only firm and disciplined Islamic communities (jama`ah) capable of jihad. Both were
offered financial support to send 50 fighters to Afghanistan. Sungkar found only 4 men willing to go, the
other group 8 men. The following year, slightly larger groups of volunteers were sent, and so it went on
until 1989, when the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan. The Afghan infighting of the following years
was not considered as jihad, and Sungkar and Ba`asyir’s Jama`ah Islamiyah looked elsewhere for a
worthy cause and training ground. Henceforth, they sent their militants to the southern Philippines.
For fourteen years, Sungkar and Ba`asyir remained in Malaysia, living in a village with a circle
of their closest disciples and travelling around delivering religious sermons. Dozens, altogether perhaps
a few hundred, of their followers travelled to Afghanistan to take part in the jihad against the Russians
and to get training in guerrilla tactics and the use of firearms and explosives. After the Russian retreat
from Afghanistan, the southern Philippines became the favourite training ground. The group around
them included mostly other refugees from Indonesia; they were visited by radicals from Indonesia and
other regions of Southeast Asia. By the late 1990s, there was a network of local groups covering
Malaysia, Singapore, parts of Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi and the southern Philippines. The network had,
at least on paper, a tight hierarchical structure resembling a military organisation, with a commander
(amir) and a governing council at the top and four regional commands (mantiqi) each consisting of
smaller units called, by decreasing level, wakalah, khatibah, qirdas and fi’ah. In practice, the
organisation was less rigid than this formal structure suggested. After Suharto’s fall, they returned to
Indonesia. Sungkar died in Jakarta during his first return visit; Ba`asyir resettled in his pesantren at
Ngruki near Solo. In 2000, members of the network founded a legal front organisation, the Majelis
Mujahidin Indonesia, MII, where Ba’asyir, following Sungkar’s death in 1999, became the amir. The
establishment of the MMI in August 2000 gave him a very public profile.
The emergence of similar groups and networks around the campus mosques was to some
extent also a response to the suppression of student political activism and the legal ban of activities by
‘extraneous’ student movements such as HMI on the campus from the early 1980s on (the so-called
‘Normalisasi Kampus’). Most student dissent became internalised; many students turned to religion and
appeared preoccupied with efforts to be good Muslims. Two DDII-affiliated activists with international
contacts (with Malaysia’s Islamic youth movement ABIM and the Saudi-sponsored World Association of
Muslim Youth, WAMY), Imaduddin Abdurrahman and Endang Saifuddin Anshari, organised a new type
of training courses for students in Bandung, based on the training, tarbiyah, developed by the Muslim
Brotherhood. This was a very different type of course from the ‘basic training’ that HMI members
23
received in their organisation, which consisted mostly of debating, public speaking and simple
management tasks. The new tarbiyah was more systematic, focusing on discipline and indoctrination,
and many students felt strongly attracted by it. The most highly motivated participants in these tarbiyah
sessions organised themselves into usrah, which were really study groups. Members of an usrah, who
might number five to ten, met a few times a week, one of them acting as a trainer (murabbi),
occasionally meeting with a more senior member of the movement.
Like Sungkar and Ba’asyir’s usrah movement, the groups on the campus were underground
and to this day, not much has been revealed about their internal structure, recruitment and initiation, nor
about the exact relations between the usrah and the more public study circles, halqah, on the
campuses, which appeared to be more loosely connected to each other. The former movement was
more overtly political, and was especially fiercely opposed to the regime’s curtailment of political Islam
and its imposition of Pancasila as the sole accepted ideology. This group saw the objective could not be
attained without armed struggle. Establishing a jama`ah islamiyah, a disciplined hierarchical
organisation, was a first step in preparing for the necessary social, political and military struggle. From
the 1980s onwards, members of this network have been involved in numerous violent incidents. The
campus-based network, also known as the Tarbiyah movement, was less directly political and did not
prepare for armed struggle. Disciplining the self and developing an Islamic personality (syakhsiyah
islamiyah), took priority over the more distant aims of an Islamic society and an Islamic state.
The Tarbiyah movement, which considered itself as the Indonesian sister organisation of the
Muslim Brotherhood, was strongest in the secular universities, especially in the science and technology
faculties. Most members remained active in the movement after their graduation. Many of the alumni
made careers in the bureaucracy, in education or in business, and collectively they experienced a
similar vertical mobility as a quarter century earlier did the HMI alumni of the ‘Generation of 1966’.
Towards the end of the Suharto regime, student groups of the Tarbiyah background established the
Islamic student movement, KAMMI (which took active part in anti-Suharto demonstrations but supported
Habibie). Soon after Suharto’s political demise, in May 1998, their elders established the Partai
Keadilan (Justice Party, PK, later renamed, Partai Keadilan Sejatera, or Prosperous Justice Party),
arguably the only political party with a clear program and transparent structure.
The Jama`ah Islamiyah and the Tarbiyah movement were not the only bodies with a jama`ah
structure in Indonesia. A third one that has recently been quite visible is the Hizb ut-Tahrir, a
transnational movement that strives for the establishment of a world caliphate, an Islamic state
encompassing all Muslim-majority regions. The Hizb ut-Tahrir rejects democratic politics and the nation
state as incompatible with divine sovereignty and does not take part in Indonesian politics and boycotts
elections — but it did take part in demonstrations at the People’s Consultative Assembly in favour of the
Jakarta Charter. 95
In retrospect, present Muslim student activists speak as if a unitary and coherent movement,
which they call the Tarbiyah movement, took shape in the 1980s. It is hard to say whether anything as
coherent as that ever existed but it is true that tarbiyah, education or perhaps indoctrination, came to
replace overt political activism after 1978. Group discussions and “mental training” sessions organized
in the Salman Mosque at Bandung’s Institute of Technology inspired activities elsewhere. Some study
circles (halqah) convened in campus mosques, organized more secretive discussion groups known as
usroh (Ar. usra, “nuclear family”, the term used by the Muslim Brotherhood for its cells) and often met in
the homes of their members. The major aim of these interconnected, informal discussion groups was
tarbiyah; seniors acted as instructors (murabbi) training and disciplining junior members. There were
also occasionally larger training sessions, which tended to be dramatic events, aiming at effecting
personality change in the participants. The teaching materials consisted mostly of Muslim Brotherhood
95
Martin van Bruinessen, "Post-Suharto Muslim engagements with civil society and democracy”, paper
presented at the Third International Conference and Workshop “Indonesia in Transition”, organized by
the KNAW and Labsosio, Universitas Indonesia, August 24-28, 2003. Universitas Indonesia, Depok.
24
materials and the writings of Maududi. The emphasis was on personal morality and piety, discipline, and
an inner rejection of the Pancasila state and of un-Islamic practices in modern Indonesia.
The dominant influence on these student activists was undeniably the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood. One network of discussion circles in fact called itself Ikhwanul Muslimun and presently
claims to be the Indonesian branch of the Brotherhood. Despite claiming to be highly cohesive and
united, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, this was more apparent than real. Rather, various groups
were influenced by the Brotherhood independently of one another and through different channels. The
Brotherhood’s influence was mostly mediated through its literature, but there were also some personal
contacts through international Muslim youth organizations. For others, Malaysia’s Muslim youth
movement ABIM served as an important role model to be emulated — an indirect and somewhat diluted
Brotherhood influence. What came to be known as Indonesia’s Usroh movement was far from
homogeneous, and did not adopt the same combination of Brotherhood ideas. Most of the student
groups were quietist and apolitical; they were primarily concerned with individual moral selfimprovement and with the Usroh as a moral haven in an immoral world. But there were also Usroh
groups affiliated with such NII/TII leaders as Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, which believed in the necessity of
establishing an Islamic state and imposing the sharia on fellow Muslims. No firm boundaries between
these various groups existed.
Since the fall of Suharto, a few radical Muslim groups have acquired a disproportionate
influence to their size. The largest and best organized of the various Muslim militias, until it was
suddenly disbanded in early October 2002 following the first Bali bombing, was Laskar Jihad. This was
established in response to the onset of civil war between Christians and Muslims in the Moluccas in
2000. Until the outbreak of the Moluccas crisis, the movement was largely an apolitical and strongly
influenced by the most puritan form of Wahhabi Salafism. From 1994 to 1999 they contented
themselves with teaching and preaching the strictest Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, but the conflict in
the Moluccas propelled them into radical activism, spurred on by fatwas requested from their Arabian
mentors. It opened a training camp in West Java and soon was sending thousands of members to the
Moluccas as relief workers and holy warriors.
Ideologically, this movement was very close to the Saudi religious establishment. Its leader,
Ja`far Umar Thalib, had studied with strict Salafi ulemas in Saudi Arabia and Yemen,and taken part in
jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. After his return to Indonesia, he became one of the leading lights of
the Indonesian Salafi movement, promoting Wahhabi style, apolitical Islam based on a strictly literal
reading of the Koran and Hadith. Most members appeared to be students, university graduates and
even dropouts. Many of its members had also taken part in other Islamic student movements or been in
contact with the illegal Darul Islam movement. Religious leadership was provided by young men, mostly
of Arab descent like Ja`far himself.
Following September 11 2001, Laskar Jihad immediately took pains to distance itself from
Osama bin Laden. Ja`far declared that he had met Osama back in the 1980s when he fought in
Afghanistan but did not consider him as a good Muslim. The Laskar Jihad website reproduced a fatwa
by the late grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz bin Baz, in which Osama bin Laden was declared an
errant sectarian and rebel and whose example no pious Muslim should follow. Unlike the MMI, the
Laskar Jihad accepted the Indonesian government as legitimate in principle, and it did not strive to
establish an Islamic state in its place. This did not prevent the organisation from opposing Indonesia’s
last two presidents for other reasons: Abdurrahman Wahid because he refused, in their view, to protect
the Moluccan Muslims against their Christian oppressors and often made pro-Christian statements, and
Megawati because she was a woman and in the Salafi view, could not be a legitimate ruler. Relations
with her vice president, Hamzah Haz, were however cordial. 96
The Laskar Jihad does not appear to believe that Islam enjoins a specific economic and
political system — a major difference with Muslim Brotherhood-inspired movements — but is inclined to
96
Martin van Bruinessen, The violent fringes of Indonesia’s radical Islam.
25
place its own interpretation of the shari`a above human-made law. It rejects the notion of democracy
and popular sovereignty as conflicting with Islam (in accordance with the Wahhabi view that democracy
is kufr, sinful) and was outspoken in its rejection of Megawati’s presidency because of her gender. The
Laskar Jihad claimed it does not take part in the struggle to conquer the state and turn it into an Islamic
one because it considers the struggle to improve each individual member’s quality as a Muslim more
important. However, Ja`far’s frequent meetings with military commanders and other power brokers
appear to be inconsistent with this claim. Its relations with the Dewan Dakwah, especially the more
conservative leaders of this Saudi-influenced body, have been cordial. After the Laskar had executed
one of its members for having an illicit sexual relationship, the first instance of a hudud punishment in
modern times in Indonesia, it was congratulated by the Dewan for upholding the shari`a; the young man,
who had agreed to this punishment, was posthumously given the “shari`a award”.
The MMI gives a different emphasis to its shari`a discourse, associating it with the Jakarta
Charter and the historical struggle of the Darul Islam movement. It is a front of various groups that all
have some relation with the Darul Islam, its chief organizer being the man who in the early 1980s
published a series of semi-clandestine bulletins in Yogyakarta, Irfan S. Awwas, and its chief religious
authority or ahl al-hall wa’l-`aqd being Abu Bakar Ba’asyir. The MMI held its first congress in Yogyakarta
in August 2000. It was attended by some 1500 people, including several prominent guest speakers such
as the historian Deliar Noer, the Madurese kyai (traditional `alim) Alawy Muhammad and the chairman
of the Justice Party, Hidayat Nur Wahid This suggested a reunion of the former underground Darul
Islam movement with some of the most outspoken voices of the legal Islamic opposition to the Suharto
regime, or at least an endorsement of the former by the latter. The congress focused on the
implementation of the shari`a in Indonesia and the shape that an Islamic state should take; several of
the speakers called for a new caliphate. The congress elected Ba’asyir as the supreme leader of the
movement, the amir al-mujahidin.
Following this, the MMI members began lobbying Muslim parliamentarians on the incorporation
of the sharia into the Constitution and have been agitating actively in various provinces and districts
(mostly old Darul Islam strongholds) for the enactment of the sharia at the regional level — which they
believe to be a possibility under a new law on regional autonomy that allows for locally adopted
regulations (although the law leaves matters of religion explicitly with the central government). In
concrete terms, imposition of the sharia appears to be understood primarily as the suppression of “vice”,
a ban on the sale of alcohol, forced veiling of women, and restrictions on the movement of women
unaccompanied by a male protector. Impatient vigilante groups have begun enforcing these bans even
before their enactment, raiding bars and hotels, and harassing “improperly dressed” women. The MMI
was also very concerned about the conflict in the Moluccas, in which it perceived an international
conspiracy against Indonesian Islam, and like the Laskar Jihad, though in smaller numbers, it is
believed to have sent members to the Moluccas to take part in jihad.
After September 11 2001, both Laskar Jihad and MMI came under suspicion for their links with
Usama bin Ladin. The Laskar refrained from demonstrating against the American assault on
Afghanistan — although Ja`far Umar Thalib later went on record with strongly anti-American statements.
The MMI’s spokesman Irfan Suryahardi Awwas, on the other hand, defiantly spoke of his admiration for
Bin Ladin while denying direct contact with the al-Qa’ida organization. Transnational connections and
combat experience in Afghanistan are a matter of pride in these circles. The claim by a well-connected
young activist that no less than 15,000 were trained in Afghanistan appear much exaggerated.
Following the arrests of radical Muslims in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, all of whom were
allegedly involved in terrorist activities and all of whom appeared to have links with Abu Bakar Ba’asyir,
the latter came under close international scrutiny and pressure was put on the Indonesian authorities to
arrest him.
Ba’asyir had in fact spent a decade and a half in exile in Malaysia, having fled after his first
prison term when a new trial was pending. He established a network of contacts among committed
Muslims in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, occasionally referred to as Jamaah Islamiyah. The
pesantren in Ngruki was an important node in the network. In the 1990s, its students came from all over
26
Indonesia and included a few from Singapore as well. Preachers from Malaysia regularly visited the
pesantren, and an Indonesian who was arrested in Manila with a large amount of explosives was a
former student at the pesantren. The Malaysian and Singaporean police authorities perceived Ba’asyir
as the regional al-Qa’ida commander, organizing terrorist actions all over Southeast Asia. The publicly
available evidence however does not bear this out. It is after all not surprising that many radicals know a
man who has for two decades been considered as a leading Darul Islam figure, but there is no
indication of his actually controlling these allegedly violent cells. The degree of organization of his
network also appears strongly exaggerated.
Another militant group, in fact the first to get organized and keep up a visible presence in the
streets of Jakarta, was the Front for the Defence of Islam (Front Pembela Islam, FPI), which was widely
perceived to be more like a racket of mobs for hire than a genuine Islamic movement. Its chief leader,
Habib Rizieq Syihab, is a Jakarta-born Hadrami sayyid, who studied in Saudi Arabia, and several other
members of Jakarta’s habaib (sayyid) community play leading roles in it. The rank-and-file appear to be
mostly poor and of low education, from the circles where habaib are held in great respect, and one of
the functions of the FPI’s activities appear to be to give these habaib some leverage with the political
elite. The FPI carried out raids on bars and brothels but also held political demonstrations, one of them,
calling for reinstatement of the Jakarta Charter. They also ransacked the offices of the National Human
Rights Commission, which they felt had not been objective in its investigation of the Tanjung Priok
massacre (where the army had shot hundreds of Muslim demonstrators). The FPI also threatened
actions against Americans in Indonesia in retaliation for the assault on Afghanistan.
The rise of such radical Islamic organizations shows that, as Fealy and Bubalo have argued,
that various currents of Islamism and neo-fundamentalism have had an impact in Indonesia. Most often
these ideas have been imported by Indonesian Islamists looking for new modes of thinking about the
relationship between Islam, politics and society or indeed new models for activism. Various mechanisms
have served as vectors for these ideas, from Indonesian students who traveled to the Middle East to the
jihadist who went to Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s to the proliferating sources of Islamists
information available through the internet and satellite television. These vectors have served, however,
to mediate the transmission of a range of ideas, from the more mainstream thinking of the Muslim
brotherhood, to the jihadist-salafism of al-Qaeda. 97
In terms of human movement, students have been perhaps the most important contemporary
conduits of Islamist ideas from the Middle East to Indonesia. They went to the Middle East, and
especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in large numbers to study with prestigious Islamic scholars and
immerse themselves in an ‘authentic’ Islamic culture. In recent years, the number of Indonesians in the
Middle East has risen dramatically, due not only to the increase in Indonesian government scholarships
but also additional financial assistance from Middle Eastern governments and private donors. While
these students did not typically study Islamist ideas, the time spent in the region has provided
opportunities to interact with Islamist groups and exposed students to their ideas. In Egypt, for instance,
Indonesian students often circulated in Muslim Brotherhood circles. 98
But a key conduit of jihadist ideas was the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. More than 300
Indonesian – and possibly as many as 600 — also went through foreign mujahidin training camps from
the early 1980s until the mid-1990s. Their reasons for attending these camps are complex. Some
responded to the active recruitment efforts of Islamic organizations, notably the Saudi-based Muslim
World League. For other, like the many Arab Islamists who traveled to Afghanistan, more practical
motives also seem to have been at play; in particular, the opportunity Afghanistan provided for gaining
military training that could be used in their home countries. 99 By far the largest group of Indonesians that
was sent to Afghanistan by the future Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) founder Abdullah Sungkar, who used his
97
Anthony Bubalo and Greg Fealy, Between the Global and the Local: Islamism, the Middle East and
Indonesia, Analysis Paper, Number 9, 2005, The Saban Centre for Middle East Policy and The Brooking
Institute.
98
Ibid., p. 18.
99
Ibid., p. 18.
27
networks within the Darul Islam movement for this purpose. Most of JI’s senior leadership and many of
its middle-level operatives were Afghan veterans. Other Indonesian organizations, such as the Islamic
Youth Movement (Gerakan Pemuda Islam/GPI), also assisted members and sympathizers to travel to
Afghanistan. It is important to note in this regard that the JI did not exist as an organization when
Indonesians started traveling to Afghanistan. 100 Indonesian mujahidins had a varied exposure to their
Arab counterparts. On arrival in Pakistan, many went through Abdullah Azzam’s Maktab al-Khidmat,
before going on to the training camp of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the Afghan commander who had the closet
ties to Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden. A small number of Indonesian mujahidins trained at the
camps of other Afghan leaders such as Gulbudin Hekmatyar and Jamil ur-Rahman. 101
A second conduit for Islamist ideas has been education and da’wa supported by government
and non-government organizations and individuals from the Middle East. Saudi sponsored educational
and da’wa activities in Indonesia expanded dramatically in the 1980s, probably as part of Saudi Arabia’s
broader ideological conflict with Iranian Islamism. It would be wrong, however, to view Saudi activism in
Indonesia as reflective of a coherent strategy or aim. Saudi religious propagation and educational
activities often seemed to manifest different motives and sometimes competing interests. Saudi
sponsorship did undoubtedly provide these groups whose religious inclinations were closest to
Wahhabism, notably Indonesian salafi groups. But it has by no means been limited to them. Nor does
Saudi largesse always seem tied to a particular religious or ideological ends. 102
Where the goal has been the propagation of Wahhabi-oriented forms of Islamic practice,
ostensibly the concern has been with religiosity rather than politics or violence. In short, the purpose
was to purify or correct the form of Islam practiced by Indonesian Muslims. The line, however, between
strictly apolitical propagation and politically motivated one, or one that had political consequences was
often murky. In some cases, Saudi funding had been provided to groups involved in more explicitly
political and violent forms of activism. An example of this being Saudi’s links with Wahdah Islamiyah. 103
The key institution of Saudi-sponsored Islamic education in Indonesia remains Lembaga Ilmu
Pengetahuan Islam dan Arab (the Indonesian Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences or LIPIA), a
branch of Al-Imam Muhammad bin Saud University in Riyadh. A former student noted that the study of
Ibn Tammiya was ‘a must’ at LIPIA and he characterized the teaching as hostile to local Indonesian
culture and Muslim practices. Other former students also noted a Wahhabist-salafist orientation, though
they characterized it as more ‘open’ than what one would find in Saudi Arabia. 104 Alongside a salafist
disposition, however, LIPIA also had, to varying degree throughout its history, notable Muslim
Brotherhood influences. Many of its teachers have a strong Brotherhood background. This is hardly
surprising given that Saudi institutions of Islamic education have long employed Muslim Brothers. This
tolerance of Muslim Brothers had begun to recede in Saudi Arabia in recent years, as the regime has
come to blame the movement for encouraging extremist ideas in the Kingdom. This does not appear to
have had an impact on LIPIA at this stage. Sidney Jones characterized LIPIA as basically Brotherhooddominated these days. 105
This distinct influences mediated by LIPIA over its history are reflected in the trajectories of its
graduates. On the one hand, no single institution seems to have done more than LIPIA to propagate
contemporary forms of salafism in Indonesia. Graduates of LIPIA have become leading figures in the
Indonesian salafist movement and are particularly prominent as publishers, preachers, teachers and
ulemas. In particular, LIPIA graduates have gone on to establish salafist pesantrens, often with Saudi
funding. 106 On the other hand, LIPIA has also served as a seedbed of Brotherhood ideas. Many
graduates emerged steeped in Brotherhood thinking, including some who would go on to be leaders of
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
18.
18.
21.
21.
21.
21.
22.
28
the Brotherhood-oriented Prosperous and Justice Party (PKS). The obvious question is whether the
difference between salafist and Muslim Brotherhood approaches is meaningful in practice. There is
much in common with respect to religious faith and doctrine. In the past, the Saudi religious
establishment – and the Saudi regime — saw no difficulty employing Muslim Brothers in teaching
positions, with the tacit understanding that the political dimensions of the Brotherhood’s da’wa would not
be propagated in Saudi Arabia. Many Muslim Brothers began drifting toward salafism as they became
more disconnected from the societies from they originally came. 107
Nevertheless it is the Brotherhood’s more overtly political activism and its generally
accommodating attitude to both political pluralism and religious diversity that still distinguishes it from
contemporary salafism. As already noted, the latter tends to eschew politics and to be intolerant toward
what it perceives as impure or innovative religious practices. In Indonesia, this distinction has been
manifest in the efforts of Indonesian salafist ‘purists’ to discourage their followers from attending LIPIA
from the mid-to late 1990s onward, because they believe the institution to have been excessively
compromised by the Brotherhood ideas. Nevertheless, it is also possible that the combination of a
salafist curriculum and Muslim Brotherhood teachers may at times have produced graduates that
combine a puritanical religious outlook with more overtly political forms of activism. 108
Three organizations, in particular, have received significant Saudi support, both government
and non-government: Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia (DDII; Indonesian Islamic Prediction Council),
Jamiat Islam wal-Irsyad (The Islamic Association for Enlightenment, usually known as simply al-Irsyad);
and the Persatuan Islam (Persis; Islamic Association). Al-Irsyad, founded in 1913, is primarily devoted
to Islamic education and propagation, and Persis was established in 1924 as a modernist Muslim
organization. Both al-Irsyad and Persis have Islamic schools that have featured prominently in the
education of Indonesian Islamists. 109
Together with LIPIA, DDII was critical to the growth of salafism in the 1970s and early 1980s.
DDII, as the main disburser of Saudi money in Indonesia during these decades, provided scholarships
for young Indonesian Muslims to study at Middle Eastern institutions, including several of the leading
centres of salafist education such as al-Iman University in Riyadh. But again Saudi support did not
orient DDII specifically toward Wahhabism or salafism. DDII also played a key role in popularizing
Brotherhood thought, translating a number of seminal Brotherhood texts in the late 1970s and 1980s,
the most popular of which was Sayyid Qutb’s ‘Signpost’. 110
In general terms, Indonesian salafist groups have benefited the most from Saudi and Gulf
states’ funding. Two salafist organizations that receive significant support from the IIRO are Yayasan alSofwah and Wahdah Islamiyah (WI). The former was largely involved in salafist propagation. The latter
has, however, produced a number of Indonesian militants including Agus Dwikarna and even among
Indonesian salafists the movement is seen as leaning toward jihadist-salafism.
In specific instances, notably via Saudi propagation, these ideas have also been exported to
Indonesia. Saudi support – financial and otherwise – has been critical to the emergence of a salafi
current within the Indonesian Muslim community. Most salafists seem essentially concerned with
questions of morality and religiosity –albeit of an intolerant form—limiting their activities to preaching
and education. Nonetheless, some salafi groups do cross into acts of vigilantism and sectarian violence.
For the most part these groups should, however, be seen as distinct from those self described salafi
groups involved in terrorism. The clamp down on Saudi funding for global Islamic causes has placed a
number of these organization in difficult circumstances and may see some of them disappear. 111
107
108
109
110
111
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.
p.
p.
p.
p.
22.
22.
23.
23.
29
Saudi propagation has also served as a vector – if possibly unintentionally—for the ideas of the
Muslim Brotherhood. Indonesian Islamists seem, however, to have been selective in their appropriation
of Brotherhood ideas. The gradualist approach of Hassan al-Banna has been utilized more than the
revolutionary thinking of Sayyid Qutb and his radical heirs. In this respect, there are parallels between
PKS’s pragmatic adaptation of its ideology and the shift occurring among some Islamists in the Middle
East (notably Hizb al-Wasat); although in Indonesia, the existence of a democratic politics means this
process is more likely to realize its full, moderating potential. Nonetheless, some of the darker sides of
the PKS also seem to have been influenced by anti-Western conspiracy theories subscribed to by some
of its members.
There have been other more insidious influences flowing from the Middle East, particularly with
respect to the emergence of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). Significant parts of its doctrine and operational
techniques are drawn from Middle Eastern sources, making it a far more lethal jihadist organization than
preceding movements such as Darul Islam in the 1950s and early 1960s. There is no denying in that alQaeda has had a significant impact on JI’s supranational worldview, and how it chooses its targets,
reflecting linkages forged in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. It is not, however, a command
and control relationship and there remains a tension within JI over national versus global objectives.
Many within the movement are more than happy to inhibit al-Qaeda’s virtual umma and its vision of
perpetual conflict with the West. But perhaps knowing that this is also a caravan to political
marginalization, some in the movement may be keener to return to a more nationally focused project
that enables it to build a broader support base among Indonesian Muslims. 112
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The discussion above illustrates that while there is influence of Islamist and neo-fundamentalist
ideas from the Middle East in Indonesia, rarely is this impact unmediated or unmodified. In most cases,
a process of indigenization has taken place. In terms of Muslim Brotherhood thinking, the gradualist
approach of Hassan al-Banna has been utilized more than the revolutionary ideas of Sayyid Qutb and
his radical heirs because it was seen as more appropriate to political conditions to Indonesia. While the
influence of Middle Eastern salafi sheikhs on their Indonesian followers has been significant, that
influence is sometimes open to manipulation by Indonesian salafists. And JI is as much an heir to the
violent and largely endogenous Darul Islam tradition in Indonesia as it is a local branch of al-Qaeda. 113
The nature of Muslim political movements appears to be a response to the changing political
environment (and the availability of foreign funding) rather than to some inherent internal dynamic.
Transnational networks — along which people, money, and ideas move — have become extremely
important but they are not the sole determining factor. Saudi money has undeniably played a role in
shaping debates in Indonesian Islam and in promoting certain interpretations and attitudes rather than
others. The remarkable prominence of Indonesian Arabs in the leadership of the more militant groups is
probably related to the increasing importance of transnational communications too (besides the religious
prestige commonly attributed to Arabs in Indonesia). Arabs have played a prominent part in the
transmission of neo-fundamentalist and jihadist discourse from the Middle East to Indonesia. This,
however, has not been universally welcomed; there are now signs of an anti-Arab backlash among
indigenous Indonesian Muslims, who consider this radicalism as alien. 114
112
Ibid.
Ibid.
114
Martin van Bruinessen, Genealogies of Islamic Radicalism in post-Suharto Indonesia, ISIM
Newsletter.
113
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