Religion in political arena by Nina Mariani Noor

In his article, Samson points out that Islam could hardly separate from Indonesia politics. For me, looking at the development of Indonesia as a nation state, Muslims have been playing significant roles in shaping and coloring politics in Indonesia. There are many disputes among Muslims themselves that occur in political arena. For example, the controversy of Jakarta Charter and decision on the form of the new state at that time. Furthermore, these disputes seem to present nowadays. On one hand, there are Muslims who accept the nation state based on Pancasila. On the other hand, there are also a lot of Muslims who do not think that Pancasila is well suited for them as Muslims. Therefore, they are still struggling to make Islamic Nation State real in Indonesia by doing revolt or separatism, or even suicide bombing.

In talking about the role of kiyayi, I do agree with Geertz opinion that kiyayi who do not have capability in politics but involved in politics, usually they are only utilized by political parties to attract as many as voters. This situation also still appears today. We can see several kiyayi’s names were in the list of representative candidate in the past general election, or some kiyayis are recruited to be vice governor candidate or vice regent candidate to convince people to vote for him. Consequently, sometimes, since they are not really good at politics, they only do what the political parties recommend and it is completely not good at all for their people.

Kenneth M. George sees Al Qur’an Mushaf Istiqlal as a kind of political tactics of Soeharto. It is interesting for me, since before I read his article I never thought that it is political agenda also not only religious or art programs. It is may be because during Soeharto’s era, he had depolitized Muslims so that it affects my way of thinking in looking an event. In addition, in my opinion, Soeharto seemed to think that he was successful in keeping Muslims at distance to politics in his reign, but it is completely wrong since there were many underground political activities done by people and then finally could compel him to resign in 1998.

Readings: Allan A. Samson, “Islam In Indonesia Politics”, asian Survey, Vol 8, No. 12 (Dec 1968)
Kenneth M.George, Designs on Indonesia’s Muslims Communities
Clifford Geertz, The Javanese Kijaji: The Changing Role of a Cultural Broker