2 - The “Muslim Nation” Dogma

Summary

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.