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

Authors

  • M. Khusna Amal

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31436/id.v28i1.1577

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.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Downloads

Published

2020-06-23

How to Cite

M. Khusna Amal. (2020). Revisiting Southeast Asian Civil Islam: Moderate Muslims and Indonesia’s Democracy Paradox. Intellectual Discourse, 28(1), 295–318. https://doi.org/10.31436/id.v28i1.1577

Issue

Section

Articles