Sejarah Islam

Orientalism has been for long assessed in pejorative terms  by Muslims. This is due to how Muslims have perceived the works of Western scholars. Islam has been for hundreds years described inaccurately and even falsely compared with real Muslim conditions, Qur’anic teaching and the Prophet Muhammad’s life. On the one hand, historically, as evidenced by some Western scholars themselves such as Edward Said, the false pictures of Islam have been intentionally produced as a Western project to maintain its political and cultural hegemony over Muslims. On the other hand, huge collections on Islam written by Orientalists have advantageous impact for Islam behind Western scholars’ endeavours to weaken Islam and Muslims as examined by this essays. Unpredictably, it is something like a boomerang to the West itself.

The development of Islam in Indonesia during the New Order period can be seen as cultural struggle between groups which Geertz called abangan (nominal Muslim with less Islamic concern), santri (the ‘pious’ Muslims) and priyayi (elite group). By the mid-1980s, abangan and priyayi were associated with Soeharto and his government who dominated Indonesian politics (Emmerson 1976; Anderson 1990). The santri, on the other hand, were powerless, marginalized and known as the ‘outsiders’ (McVey 1983). The rivalry between these groups emerged for the first time when, in the early New Order, Soeharto backed by the military, did not approve rehabilitation of the Islamic party, restricted Muslim political activists, and made alliances with non-santri political actors in running modernization and economic development.

The New Order’s commitment to development through the economic growth paradigm resulted in restriction and suppression of any political group who developed a political ideology. Those who suffered most from this policy were the santri group. In the 1970s and 1980s, when  there was Islam-phobia amongst government officials, the restriction applied to Muslim religious activities. Anyone who intended to expand Islamic influence in national life was suspected and accused of trying to establish an Islamic state and being anti-Pancasila. Dakwah activities were strictly controlled; criticizing authority was illegal and often condemned as subversion. Santri believed that the government was ‘hostile to Islam.’ The state was hegemonic and the New Order became an authoritarian regime. Restriction after restriction made the santri resentful as though they were outsiders in their own country.

However, during the 1980s and 1990s, facilitated by the movement of ‘cultural Islam,’ a Muslim redefinition of their earlier ‘ideological or political Islam,’ Indonesia experienced an Islamization almost in every social group and all social levels, from students to government elite circle. There was a significant increase of religious activities within Muslim society. The agenda of ‘cultural Islam’ was that, the image of Islam should be changed from ‘ideological’ to ‘cultural’ through the activities of mass education, dakwah (religious predication), arts and anything that was not ‘political.’

Supported by the success of Indonesian economic development, the changing face of Islam and the problems of dislocation and identity crisis that accompanied the urbanization process, the result of cultural Islam was remarkable: there was an Islamic education boom, Islam was no longer linked to a political party but conversely viewed as ethical support for development. Through cultural Islam, ‘ideological Islam’ changed to be ‘benign Islam.’ Political orientation shifted to cultural orientation. After 1985, there was a ‘deideologization of Islam’ and Islam-phobia gradually disappeared. Various social and political communities started adopting Islamic teaching and applied it in their daily life. Identifying as Muslim identity became a trend among various groups of people from the students up to government elite. The abangan gradually declined in numbers and santri increased. Because of these changes, many believed that Geertz’s trichotomy was no longer useful in analysing Islam in Indonesia (Hefner 1997, 1998; Anwar 1998).

The most interesting phenomenon in the emergence of religious revival is found  amongst the middle class people. This thesis argues that in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a shaping of the Muslim middle class identified by five cultural traits: First, is the wearing of the veil. Beginning in university mosques, head-scarves spread to schoolgirls and middle class women. Since the 1980s, the veils have been worn by civil servants, government officers, business people, professional groups, actresses etc. For the middle class, veil wearing has become a religious means for catering to their psychological needs to escape from the problem of dislocation and identity crisis. Second, is the emergence of kasidah songs of Bimbo. The Muslim middle class is a class of people who have been urbanized and transformed into urban life and modernized whose aesthetic taste has also changed. Bimbo’s kasidah emerged to cater to the changing taste of the Muslim middle class. Third, the clearest evidence of the formation of a Muslim middle class was the establishment of ICMI in 1990 (Kuntowijoyo 1991; Ramage 1995; Hefner 1993, 1997; Vatikiotis 1997). ICMI was possible due to the Islamic education boom from the 1970s that has been the basis of Islamization in the New Order bureaucracy called ‘Islamization of bureaucracy.’ A huge number of university graduates became civil servants and government officials. The expansion of educated Muslims has an inevitable political impact, and this in the resulted establishment of ICMI. ICMI is the organization supported by qualified human resources with 75 per cent of its participants are university graduates. Fourth, print media is another means whereby the Muslim middle class articulated their taste and ideas. The journal Ulumul Qur’an (UQ), daily Republika and weekly Ummat were three Muslim media with similar traits: modern life oriented, professionally organized, and liberal. These were the media where educated Muslim middle class articulated themselves. Showing Islam as relevant to modern life, these media received an enthusiastic welcome from educated people. In short, these media emerged as the expression of the changing taste of knowledge of Muslim society. Lastly, the phenomenon of prestigious religious learning activities called “kelompok pengajian elit” was another trait of the Muslim middle class. Since the mid 1980s, there has been a new trend where religious learning activities overwhelmed the middle class people. Professional groups, businessmen, government officials etc. returned to religious devotion. The pengajian activities were regularly held in hotels and prestigious places. These five cultural phenomena —emerged during the same period— are put and analised in the context of Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ that is class codes that reinforced one another to link behaviour, ideology and identity. These cultural codes demonstrate the emergence of Muslim middle class during the New Order period. They indicate the decline of the abangan culture and symbolize the santri’s “cultural domination.”