Claiming "True Islam": The MUI and the Indonesian Ahmadiyya

• In Event: Islamic Authenticity and Uncivil Society in Indonesia - Sponsored by the Indonesia Timor Leste Studies Committee (ITLSC)

Abstract

Sixteen years after the fall of Suharto, many observers hail Indonesia as a successful story democratization, and rightly point out that Islamism remains a relatively small phenomenon, if measured in numbers. Yet, stricter interpretations of Islam are a controversially discussed and crucial axis in Indonesian politics. Islam in Indonesia has undergone important changes and has increasingly become fragmented. Central to this transformation have been the discussions about “aliran sesat” - deviant sects. The most prominent example is the Indonesian Ahmadiyya, an organization whose members are persecuted for their supposedly heterodox beliefs. The Ahmadiyya debate has become a contested field in which their opponents and defenders deploy the languages of religion, security, human rights and nationalism. Several mechanisms of exclusion cut across these different vocabularies, for instance the accusation of foreign connections. The Ahmadiyya case shows how the Council of Indonesian Islamic Scholars (MUI) used the debates on the Ahmadiyya to position itself as the strongest moral authority on questions concerning aqidah (faith) in Islam. Here, a discernible shift from a supposedly non-religious political framework to a state that integrates religious elements into its rhetoric and law is underway. My presentation concludes with a discussion of the attitudes and violence towards the Indonesian Shia, a theologically more complex case that highlights different nuances within the larger public debate.

Author

• Saskia Schaefer, Freie Universität Berlin