There was one area in which the uncoordinated scramble of elite politicking and the religious fervor of pious Muslims to support the revolution in Islamic ways intersected with major consequences for Indonesia’s revolutionary success: diplomacy. Because the new state had no infrastructure abroad to promote its case to other countries, this gap was filled initially by Indonesians who happened to find themselves overseas when the revolution broke out. In the Middle East, where thousands of Indonesians were living in the 1940s, this led to the emergence of a kind of Islamic diplomacy by students and Muslim scholars. This Islamic diplomacy was so successful that it led to Indonesia’s first de jure recognition by a foreign state and helped to elevate the country’s dispute with the Netherlands to the United Nations. Thus, although diplomacy was a crucial part of the political revolution to achieve Indonesia’s sovereignty, it took on the characteristics of the grassroots Islamic struggle in the war of independence.