In one of his inscriptions at the monumental temple at Tanjavur, King Rajendra Chola is praised for having dispatched in 1025 “many ships in the midst of the rolling sea and having caught Sangrama-vijayottunga-varman, the king of Kadaram, together with the elephants in his glorious army, (took) the large heap of treasures, which (that king) had rightfully accumulated; (captured) with noise the (arch called) Vidhyadhara-torana at the ‘war gate’ of his extensive city, Srivijaya with the ‘jeweled wicket-gate’ adorned with great splendour and the ‘gate of large jewels’ ”. The inscription enumerates likewise twelve other port cities on the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and the Nicobar Islands, which had been raided by the South Indian navy.

Rajendra's mighty overseas expedition against Srivijaya was a unique event in India's history and its otherwise peaceful relations with the states of Southeast Asia which had come under India's strong cultural influence for about a millennium. The reasons of this naval expedition are still a moot point as the sources are silent about its exact causes. Nilakanta Sastri concluded in his monumental work on the Cholas that “we have to assume either some attempt on the part of Srivijaya to throw obstacles in the way of the Cola trade with the East, or more probably, a simple desire on the part of Rajendra to extend his digvijaya to the countries across the sea so well known to his subjects at home, and thereby add luster to his crown”. The American historian G.W. Spencer interprets the naval expedition of the Cholas as the culmination of their “politics of plunder” and expansionism which the Cholas had been employing for decades already in wars in South India and Sri Lanka. In 1995 Tansen Sen pointed out that “the possibility of a ‘trade war’ cannot be completely ruled out because the Zhufan zhi [Description of the Barbarous People by Chau Ju-kua, AD 1225] records of Srivijayans forcing foreign ships to stop at their sea ports, and if the ships failed to do so, then, they would be attacked by the powerful Srivijayan navy and destroyed. Therefore, the Cola raid on Srivijaya can be concluded as an ambitious maneuver with a pretext to remove hindrance from the trade route.”

In this chapter, I deal with a number of dilemmas for Islamism in pluralist politics and their impact on electoral strategy. I discuss in particular the hesitation of Islamist parties to promote shari'ah issues until after the June 1999 elections. I argue that these parties were uncertain about voters’ preferences; during the early democratic period they, therefore, concentrated on issues of broader political reform.

HIGHLIGHTING POPULAR ISSUES OVER SHARI'AH CONCERNS

It is crucial to note that the 1998 student-led reformasi movement did not put pressure on political parties to Islamize the state and constitution. This greatly influenced the policies and strategies of Islamist parties in the immediate reformasi era. At the outset, no Islamist party had an official shari'ah policy. The electoral strategy of Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (“Unity Development Party”, PPP), Partai Bulan Bintang (“Crescent Star Party”, PBB) and Partai Keadilan (“Justice Party”, PK) was based on a staunchly reformist agenda. They did not want to appear sectarian, while at the same time they wanted to ensure a broad appeal to Muslims. Between 1998 and mid-2000, they only showed determination on those Islamist issues deemed uncontroversial and which did not seem to cost votes in the elections. The reason for downplaying shari'ah goals was the uncertainty over voters’ response. It appeared to be more helpful for political survival to focus on issues of broader political reform. Also, accentuating shari'ah issues was likely to leave Islamist parties open to charges of sectarianism and endanger their democratic credentials. With the elections scheduled for June 1999, only a little more than a year after the fall of the old regime, it was crucial to avoid any images of Islamist politics as divisive.

Then, in mid-2000, PBB and PPP added shari'ah to their agenda. The policy outlook of PK, by contrast, was steadier as it temporarily put aside shari'ah goals. This cloaked the party's underlying dogmatism and unbending worldview. All Islamist parties, therefore, pursued a strategy that differentiated between short-term and long-term concerns. After the end of the New Order, it was paramount for parties to struggle to foster democracy and combat corruption. Both the Islamist and the secular-national camp believed these issues to have great popular appeal. The shared claim to defend reformasi ideals meant that in the early democratic period, ideological differences between Islamists, pluralist Muslims, and secular-nationalists were somewhat hidden.

In the years after 2003–04, Indonesian political parties beefed up their Islamic credentials, whilst simultaneously aiming to hold on to the pluralist message of Pancasila. For the overall shift towards a greater Islamic profile, it was not necessary for Islamists to increase their share of political power significantly. In the 2004 polls, Islamist parties continued to perform relatively poor. As in 1999, they were outperformed by the nationalist-secular camp.

A majority of Indonesian politicians continue to believe that a comprehensive Islamist agenda will be unable to get significant electoral support. Above all, they still hold the notion of an Islamic state to be “inopportune” in multireligious Indonesia. Several surveys over recent years have suggested ongoing high approval rates for Pancasila as the best state ideology for Indonesia. Accordingly, a majority of Indonesian Muslims have continued to vote for non-Islamist parties and Islamist parties have once again taken a backseat in the 2009 elections. At the same time, a sizeable section of pious Muslims continue to vote for parties which, while championing a number of pro-umat issues, do not defend an Islamist platform.

Yet other polls have at the same time suggested equally high approval rates for shari'ah. They have also indicated that many Indonesians see secularism, “immorality” and the country's woes, for example corruption, as being intrinsically interlinked. To cater to these beliefs and to cozy up with what they see as Muslim majority electorates, Golkar, the Democrat Party, and even PDI-P (Indonesian Democratic Party—Struggle), have taken on a greater Islamic identity in recent years.

It is helpful to recollect that, from the 1930s to the 1950s, there were clear ideological divisions and often schisms between the secular and the Islamist side of Indonesian politics. These divisions were obscured during Soekarno's Guided Democracy (1959–65) and Soeharto's New Order (1966-98). Democracy could have brought these divisions back to the forefront. However, as I highlighted throughout the text, divisions were kept muted because in 1998 and in the following years all parties concentrated on pursuing major policy issues of the reformasi movement that helped to end the New Order.

What is the nature of political Islam? Twenty or more years ago, there was considerable agreement among scholars on how to answer this question. Political Islam comprised parties and movements that sought the formal application of Islamic law in politics and society. The cornerstones of Islamic party platforms at that time were usually the implementation of shari'ah and Islamization of the state. Many Islamic parties competed in democratic elections, but were ambivalent about the compatibility of liberal democracy with Islamic principles, believing that religious principles and law should be paramount rather than the will of a populace whose knowledge of and commitment to faith was not assured. Such parties were often exclusivist or sectarian and steadfastly asserted Islam's superiority as a system of moral, legal, and political guidance. They were also committed to dramatic change, preferably in the short term.

More recently, characterizing Islamic politics has become more difficult and contentious. In many majority Muslim countries, new patterns of Islamic political activism are emerging, sometimes manifested in newly formed parties, and other times evident in the reorientation of long-established parties. The features of this trend are a declining emphasis on, and sometimes complete abandonment of, prior shari'ah-ization and Islamic state agendas, and their replacement with a more inclusive, pluralistic form of politics which stresses Islamic values and upholds democracy as the final system within which political contests should be fought. Parties evincing these principles are gradualist in outlook and accept the need for cooperation with other political forces, including non-Islamic ones. Scholars coined various terms for this new form of Islamic politics, including “neo-Islamism”, “post-Islamism” and “Muslim democracy”. The party best exemplifying these new traits is Turkey's Welfare and Justice Party (AKP), led by Tayyip Erdogan, but other instances are the Justice and Development Party in Morocco, and Egypt's Muslim-Brotherhood-based proto-party Hizb al-Wasat.

While there is a rich literature on political trends in the broader Islamic world, especially the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Central Asia, there have been relatively few detailed studies of Islamic politics in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world.

This book is a revised and updated version of my PhD thesis from the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. It is an analysis of Islamist political behaviour during the early democratic years in Indonesia, concentrating on the period between 1998 and 2003, yet with large attention given to related historical developments. The book, at the same time, draws on some more recent data which had not been part of the original thesis. I used some of this material for the “closing remarks”, which conclude most of the chapters, and especially for the Postscript.

The idea of this study came to me in late 1997, after I graduated from the University of Hamburg. Indonesia was approaching the peak of economic and financial turmoil at the time and there were signs that the authoritarian regime under President Soeharto might crumble soon. During my undergraduate studies, I had become increasingly interested in Islamic politics in Indonesia. The fall of the New Order in May 1998, then, enabled the establishment of Islamist parties and organizations for the first time in nearly forty years. How popular would Islamism turn out to be after this long break? Where would it stand ideologically? Would it fit fully into democratic structures? These were among the initial questions that led me onto my PhD. Almost ten years later Indonesia is one of the few functional democracies in the Muslim world.

The bulk of the book's material draws on documentary evidence and interviews as the main sources of information. Between May and August 1999, July 2000 and May 2001, October and November 2001, November 2002 and January 2003, I conducted more than one hundred interviews with members of Islamist political parties and organizations. The bulk of these interviews were done in Jakarta. Most of the print material comes from the headquarters of Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (“Unity Development Party”, PPP), Partai Keadilan (“Justice Party”, PK, later renamed as “Justice Prosperity Party”, PKS), Partai Bulan Bintang (“Crescent Star Party”, PBB), and Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia (“Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council”, DDII). This material includes records of party congresses and official statements by party boards. Other valuable material comes from the PBB, PK/PKS, and PPP party journals Buletin Bintang (“Star Bulletin”, later Abadi) and Suara Keadilan (“Voice of Justice”) and Media Persatuan (“Unity Media”, later Petiga). In addition, I use newspaper reports and articles, most of them of Indonesian origin.

In this study into the nature of Indonesian Islamism, I argued in favour of a nuanced examination of the beliefs and behaviour of Islamist parties in the early democratic period after the end of the New Order. Many scholars of Indonesian Islam have characterized Islamist politics as somewhat monolithic and contrary to the “essence” of Islamic teachings. They, in effect, portrayed Islamism as an undesirable element in a transitional democracy such as Indonesia's. I have critiqued this discourse as biased in its depiction and promotion of Islam as a pluralist-friendly religion and questioned the binary conceptions which it uses to analyze Islamist agendas. I argued that Indonesian Islamism's faithfulness to the constitution and commitment to reformist goals have been far greater than this scholarship suggested. I also highlighted that rather than being clear-cut and unwavering, as many of their critics appear to claim, many other aspects of Islamist politics have rather been contradictory (such as the stance on religious pluralism) and shallow (such as the shari'ah agenda of several parties). Pragmatism, however, has, in most cases, prevailed, due to the need to appear pluralist and pro-reform.

A central theme of the book was the Islamist view that Islam should provide the major cultural and legal framework for Indonesian society. This conviction, to some extent, explains their aim to control the government in order to achieve Muslim supremacy. I further pointed out that Islamist motives originate in a sense of loss of Muslim identity. For Islamists, gaining control of government meant shifting political power away from secular and non-Muslim forces, both of which they see as having accumulated a disproportionately large share of power since colonial times. The objective in controlling government thus meant to counter the long-term effects of colonialism, which had estranged Muslims from Islam and prevented devout Muslims from having a prominent political role in independent Indonesia. Because of this belief, members of Islamist parties are able to explain the electoral success of nationalist and secular parties — such as in the June 1999 and 2004 elections — as being the consequence of a larger transformation of Muslims along Western-secular parameters, together with the West's negative propaganda against shari'ah.

It is a key feature of Islamists adhering to the Masyumi tradition to claim greater socio-cultural authenticity than other religions and beliefs. This claim is framed by the truism that Indonesian cultural identity is grounded in a shared religious awareness. Masyumi legatees have always asserted to be the vital component of this identity. They, in effect, have been guarding an essentialist position of Islam's role in Indonesian history and society.

The view that postulates the Indonesian nation and Islam as being interrelated and inseparable is shared by tarbiyah activists, but Islamists following the Masyumi tradition have voiced this claim with special vigour. Typically, when asserting a leading position for their religion, they tend to speak vaguely about Islam, while, in fact, referring to the explicitly political and shari'ah-related aspects of faith. This view basically discounts that Islam, like all political cultures has, at some point in history, been learned and incorporated into Indonesian society. Followers of the Masyumi tradition usually find the thought particularly objectionable, but their tradition is, of course, equally foreign in origin as it was shaped by the concepts of Islamic reformism coming from the Middle East to today's Indonesia during the early decades of the twentieth century.

Their essentialist view of the position of Islam in a religious society depicts supposedly “imported” belief systems such as secularism, communism and — at times, too — Christianity, as alien and, therefore, illegitimate parts of Indonesian identity. Adherents of the Masyumi tradition are especially outspoken in their condemnation of “non-Indonesian” beliefs. This was highlighted by the fact that Masyumi's solidarity with Pancasila very much depended on the latter's usefulness as a tool against the rise of communism.

Conviction in the leading role of Islam had strong implications for how Masyumi legatees decreed the legitimacy of their ideals in the early post-New Order era. Moreover, while maintaining a preoccupation with defending Islam against domestic foes and threats such as Christian campaigns to convert Muslims, and Sino-Indonesian economic hegemony, a large number of Masyumi legatees adopted the notion of an absolute and timeless cultural tension between Islam and the West, made popular by revivalist writers and activists. The result combines a commitment to political participation through representative governmental institutions with feelings of cultural demise and global suppression of Muslims. Its attributes bear all the hallmarks of a great number of Islamic organizations elsewhere in the Muslim world.

In 1998, demokrasi had brought about the long-awaited opportunity for Islamist parties to regain political power. The most fundamental challenge Islamists faced in the following months and years was to find a balance between promoting religious ideology and making the most of the chances provided by power politics. In this chapter, I will continue to stress that, ultimately, the achievement of political goals was of more immediate relevance than ideological ideals. This being constitutional Islamism, the practical imperative often came about as a consequence of political participation. This is thus different to a number of other Muslim-majority countries, perhaps nowhere more manifest than in Saudi Arabia, where the application of shari'ah has not been framed by constitutional confines.

The pragmatic Islamist imperative was illustrated by their shifting support for presidential candidates from various ideological backgrounds. The Islamist parties’ recognition of ideologically opposed governments again underlined their strong constitutionalism. Their willingness to support contenders for the presidency to whom they were ideologically opposed, was at the same time, coupled to the latter's willingness to give Islamist MPs powerful positions in their cabinets. Short-term goals were thus of more urgent importance than long-term goals — a matter Islamists often explained with the predominance of constitutional rulings over ideological principles.

As Islamist parties were strongly opposed to Megawati's Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (“Indonesian Democratic Party–Struggle”, PDIP), they wanted to diminish that party's chances of winning the election and securing the presidency for Megawati Soekarnoputri. In the circumstances of 1998 and 1999, Islamist parties saw Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim se-Indonesia (“Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals”, ICMI) chairman and Soeharto's last deputy, Habibie, as their best chance in the presidential race. When Habibie's prospects dimmed, however, Islamist parties shifted their support behind Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (“National Awakening Party”, PKB) Chairman Abdurrahman Wahid to thwart Megawati's bid for the presidency. Despite this, these parties later depicted Abdurrahman's presidency as a failure and worked to bring about his downfall. In early 2001, parliament set up a commission to investigate Abdurrahman's alleged mishandling of public funds.