Sectarian Violence Under Consolidating Democracy

• In Event: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion

Abstract

Following a peaceful democratization in the late 1990s, Indonesia witnessed various expression of religiosity and the rise of (Islamic) religious organizations which were not present before, including the extremists/radicals. In contrast to the mainstream-moderate organizations, radical groups tend to reject the Western style of modernization, including democracy, on the grounds that it is not compatible with religious values. One consequence of the creation of these new groups is sectarian violence. These violence episodes are mainly carried out in the name of religion, with the rhetoric of “purification".

This work attempts to understand the strategies employed by these new, radical groups, especially how they regionally target their activities with respect to the presence of the two long-established mainstream-moderate religious organizations: Nahdhatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah. In particular, I want to test whether these activities are more likely to be targeted in regions where either: a) the existence of moderate groups is weak/non-existant or b) the competition between the existing groups is fiercer (the strength of the two moderate groups are balanced), enabling the entry of the new organizations. This study attempts to capture the “cultural war" among these groups to define the boundaries of identity of this large community, i.e of what does it mean to be an Indonesian Muslim.

Inspired by Fearon and Laitin's work on the construction of ethnic identity, sectarian violence, in this essay, is seen as the manifestation of this internal group conflict. In particular, it is understood as a way in which the new groups signal to the public that their organizations are “the true defender of religion", hence, to attract sympathy and followers. It is an attempt to stand out against the moderates and the old establishment.

I build a dataset which consists of the list (location and date of establishment) of various public facilities: schools/madrasah, hospitals/clinics and economic units affiliated to Muhammadiyah and NU across the archipelago. From these data we can map the relative strength and infuence of these organizations in a given district. One way of doing this, for instance, is by calculating the Herfindahl-Hirschman indexes for the power of the old established organization. This information is then combined with a newly minted dataset, compiled by the World Bank Jakarta, on violence, named “National Violence Monitoring System (NVMS)", which contains detailed information about incidence of sectarian conflicts in the country since 1998.

The first part of the study examines a number of case studies of violence episodes involving these new radical organizations. The second part of the study uses statistical analysis using the above mentioned dataset to examine how does the strength of the established organizations affect the location where violence takes place.

The identification strategy in this study relies on using the distance of a given district to the founding city of the two old moderate organizations as an instrument for the strength of the organizations themselves. The logic is that the further the location of a district, the weaker the strength of the organization, and hence the more likely the new radical organization to target their operation there.

Author

• Naila Shofia, Bocconi University