Revisiting Southeast Asian Civil Islam: Moderate Muslims and Indonesia’s Democracy Paradox

Abstract

Abstract: There has been an intensive scholarly debate about the development
of Indonesia’s post-New Order democracy. Some scholars have lauded
Indonesia’s surprisingly successful transition to democratic consolidation,
while others have disputed such a notion, arguing that Indonesia’s democratic
process tends to be stagnant and even regressive. However, the absence of
a progressive civil society as a result of the increasingly dominant position
of oligarchic political elites in the structure of state power and democratic
institutions, are a number of important factors that encourage the decline
of democracy. This article investigates the conditions that drive the role of
moderate Islamic organizations (or what Hefner calls a civil Islam) were
declining rather than increasing in fighting for a democratic agenda. Referring
to the research data obtained through interviews, documentation and case
studies on Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) activism - the largest moderate Islamic
organization in a predominantly Muslim country (Indonesia), this article argues
that the decline of civil Islamic organizations is closely related to socio-political
fragmentation and the strengthening of the conservative wing within moderate
Islamic organizations. At the same time, the decline of the organization which
had a glorious reputation as a champion of tolerance, pluralism, and democracy
in the 1980-1990s had implications for the regression of Indonesian democracy
marked by, among other things, the exclusion of religious minority groups such
as Shi’a from the public sphere.