Managing Politics and Islam in Indonesia

ISLAMIC REVIVAL AND STATE CONTROL 5together concerning the regulation of state-Islamic relations, regime maintenance,pluralist challenges, and regime decay.Although many authors have scrutinised the Suharto regime’s policies towardsIslam, and regime manipulations of Islamic political organisation, not muchattention has been given to specific strategies adopted by the regime to structurestate-Islamic relations. Authors such as Boland, Noer, van Dijk, and BuyungNasution have outlined historical developments in the political and ideologicalstruggle of Indonesian Muslim organisations as they have sought to build anddefine the nation-state in rivalry with other Muslims and non-Muslim interests. 2A number of scholars have studied political interactions between the state, Islam,and non-Muslim group interests during the New Order period of PresidentSuharto. For example, Kamal, Vatikiotis, McVey, Jones, Samson, Ward, Hefner,Schwarz, Ramage and Syamsuddin have looked at Muslim political, ideological,intellectual and organisational responses to nation-state building and governmentpolicy concerning Islam. 3 Studies by Fealy, van Bruinessen, Feillard, Nakamura,Noer, Tanja, and Federspiel have analysed in detail major Islamic organisations,including their relationship with larger political structures of the state. 4In particular, the studies of Hefner, Schwarz, and Ramage have explored someof the issues that have led to my examination of state-Islamic relations. Hefnerargues that Suharto’s efforts in the 1990s to co-opt Islam were a response to thechanging composition of society, which was characterised by a notable rise inthe educated Muslim middle classes and a deepening Islamisation of society andthe government bureaucracy. Schwarz also acknowledges changing socialcomposition as a factor influencing Suharto’s decision to try to bring Muslimcritics into the ‘establishment fold’ and neutralise them as a source of opposition.Hefner, Schwarz and Ramage canvas a range of opinions held by governmentofficials and Muslim and non-Muslim community leaders in order to identify thecomposition of the Muslim middle classes, their value-orientations and lines ofcleavage between political groups. Much of the analysis of these scholarsconcerned how and why the state-Islamic accommodation came about and whatimplications this had for Indonesian politics and developments in Islam.However, these early studies, because of the time that they were made, wereunable to explore in depth the outcomes of Suharto’s strategy of co-optation andwhat implications this had for broader state-society relations. With the advantageof hindsight, my study examines some of the outcomes and implications of thestate-Islamic accommodation. By applying a corporatist framework of analysis toSuharto’s management of Muslim interests, the study identifies the specificlinkages and structures of power that tie the state and Islamic political interestsinto a series of complex relations. The study provides further insights into theshifting patterns of repression, co-optation, accommodation, and conflictbetween the state and Islam. Although scholars have applied a corporatistframework to their analyses of Indonesian politics, there is no single substantialstudy on the corporatisation of Muslim interests. 5 Schwarz, in particular, doesnot look far beyond the idea that Suharto repressed Islamic politics. My study