4 - Liberal and Conservative Discourses in the Muhammadiyah: The Struggle for the Face of Reformist Islam in Indonesia

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Since the conquest of Mecca by the Wahhabis in 1924, the Muhammadiyah has often been associated with the Wahhabi movement. This perception is partly due to the similarities between the efforts made by the Wahhabi and Indonesian reformists to purify religious beliefs and practices through the eradication of elements considered external to Islam, opposition to Sufi practices, and calls for a return to the Qur'an and Sunna to replace the practice of taqlid. Recently, scholars and journalists such as Khaled Abou El Fadl (2005) and Stephen Schwartz (2003) have pointed to strong connections between Wahhabism, which is the official religious ideology of Saudi Arabia, and the upsurge of radical and fundamentalist movements throughout the Muslim world. This has raised the question whether the Muhammadiyah's ideology today can still be compared with the Salafism of Saudi Arabia, and whether it has similarly played a part in the emergence of radical movements.

The Muhammadiyah became even more strongly linked with Islamic radicalism when young people with Muhammadiyah family or school backgrounds were arrested for involvement in violent radicalism. Only a few days after the 45th Congress of the Muhammadiyah in Malang in 2005, for instance, an activist from this organization, Joni Achmad Fauzani, was arrested by the Indonesian police on charges of harbouring a terror suspect in Pacet district, Mojokerto regency, East Java (Nugroho 2005). Furthermore, a number of known convicted terrorists, including the Bali bomber Amrozi, were raised in Muhammadiyah families or educated in Muhammadiyah schools. This has added to the confusion, particularly in the West, about the religious stance of the Muhammadiyah: is it a fundamentalist group or a moderate Muslim group that leans towards conservatism?

In order to unravel these tangled perceptions of the Muhammadiyah, this chapter will analyse the development of the organization since 1995, a year that marked the beginning of a series of competing religious discourses in the Muhammadiyah.