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The Modern Political Economy
New York
1993
9. The Tanjung Priok Incident
Devout Muslims and their organizations were a prominent force in the anticommunist and anti-Sukarno actions of the mid-1960s. The Nahdatul Ulama, and particularly its youth wing, Ansor, played a major role in the killings of Communists in East Java in 1965. And the Association of Islamic Students provided most of the manpower for the demonstrations against Sukarno in Jakarta in 1966. These were, in addition, national organizations of consequence, with histories dating from the 1920s. Their support lent considerable legitimacy to the transfer of power to Soeharto, and their leaders expected to be offered significant roles in the New Order. This did not occur, and Muslim leaders were deeply disillusioned well before the long haggling over the rehabilitation of the Masyumi.
Successive Soeharto cabinets consistently failed to include any prominent member of the santri community of devout Muslims. The government projected an image of distance from the self-consciously Muslim element in the society. A series of policy initiatives by the government, moreover, persuaded many notable figures in the country's major Islamic organizations and institutions that the government was intent on co-opting and controlling them. The manipulation of parties, the constraints on elections, and a series of bills pressed in the Parliament all seemed designed to push Islam to the margins of public life.
A radical fringe was less accepting of these circumstances, and was able to draw on a tradition of political violence. Anti-Chinese riots erupted with some frequency from late 1965 on. National elections continued to be marred by violence. Such violence often had an Islamic coloration, and on certain occasions Islam was central. The Komando Jihad of 1977 might well have been trumped up, but it enhanced the image of Islam as a violent government opponent. That image was further strengthened when a small group of Muslim activists hijacked an airliner in 1981.
The violence involved in these events was on a limited scale, however, compared with that which occurred on the night of September 12, 1984, in the port district of Jakarta known as Tanjung Priok. A crowd of some fifteen hundred Muslims, intent on freeing several local leaders from a nearby police station, was fired on by government troops. Estimates of dead or wounded were widely divergent, but all were sufficient to establish the incident as the bloodiest confrontation between the Indonesian army and the Muslim community since the 1950s.
Violence did not end with this single late-night outburst. The following months saw a whole series of fires and bombings across the island of Java and elsewhere around the archipelago; among those later traced to the Tanjung Priok incident was the spectacular bombing of the ancient Buddhist stupa of Borobudur in Central Java. Angry criticism of the government also continued in the form of sermons, cassette tapes, and leaflets, the discovery of which led in turn to a seemingly endless series of arrests and trials. Among the trials was that of retired Lt. Gen. Rekso Hartono Dharsono, former commander of the Siliwangi Division and, though not a member of the original Petition of Fifty group, a highly active figure in the dissident community from shortly after the launching of that attack on the Soeharto presidency.
The Tanjung Priok incident raised several questions. Why was the violence occurring? Was radicalism on the rise in Indonesia's Muslim community? And how were moderate Muslims responding to a government that many viewed as being opposed to fundamental Muslim values?
The Environment in Tanjung Priok
Like most port areas in the world's poorer countries, Tanjung Priok in 1984 was still in an early stage of modernization. The port's day-to-day operation was predominantly a labor-intensive activity, and the district contained a disproportionately large number of men, many of them young, out of school, and looking for work. They comprised a polyglot population, drawn from many disparate parts of the Indonesian archipelago: Muslims from other port towns, including Bantenese from the Java coast west of Jakarta and Bugis from the coast of Sulawesi; Christians from Flores and other eastern islands; all attracted to the capital in the hope of earning a better living than could be earned at home. But for those who got no further than Tanjung Priok, life could be exceedingly harsh. Work was often no more than brute labor, wages for many were barely sufficient for survival, and living conditions could be as mean as anywhere in the nation. Drunkenness and gambling were common, and ethnic gang fights frequent. The national police chief said that the area was unique in the nation for the extent of its labor disputes, narcotics, smuggling, counterfeiting, thievery, arson, and violent crime. 1
In the latter months of 1984 the economic situation in the port district was more than usually depressed. The recession in the industrialized nations, which had led to the cancellation or postponement of numerous industrial projects in Indonesia the year before, was now being felt in the prices of ordinary commodities. With oil revenues down, the government had slashed its subsidies of rice, sugar, and domestic fuel prices. In addition, a government program to modernize the port had led to the closure of a large number of small stevedoring firms. Gen. L. B. Moerdani, commander of the armed forces, described Priok at this time as "a poor, overcrowded area with high unemployment." 2 That was an understatement.
If this were not enough, Islamic preachers had recently been offered an ideological issue to be added to the list already available for their denunciation. The government had sent to the Assembly five draft bills on political matters, one of which would require all social organizations to declare their adherence to the five principles of Pancasila as their "sole basis." What this meant or was intended to mean was itself a matter of dispute. On August 17, 1984, National Independence Day, the Petition of Fifty group issued a pamphlet strongly protesting that the bill would mean the permanent control or suppression of all Islamic and other independent organizations.
At around the end of August a lay preacher by the name of M. Nasir or Natsir (not to be confused with the former Indonesian prime minister, Mohammad Natsir) came to Sindang Road in Priok to address what was described as a large gathering of Islamic young men. In a long and rambling sermon, Nasir derided the government for recently "inviting" him to appear at the Office of Religious Affairs, presumably to explain some of his recent sermons. 3 "If you want to invite [me]," he said, "invite me to the mosque. We can have a discussion in the mosque and provide many people to be witnesses. If a person invites only one other," he said, "one of them does not return home." Then, more ominously, he continued: "Brothers, buy and change [your] cars every day. . . . Nowadays, this is the way people [must] act. If not, they will kill. The way they [will] kill is easy. . . . [They will] send people, wait until [you] come out of a house, bring a car and use a sack. Or to make it [even easier]. . . . [they will] lift [an] M-16 from afar--[and] that's it, preacher."
Nasir went on to denounce the local Chinese as "the scoundrels of Indonesia," and their non-Chinese friends as no better than the dogs that guarded the houses of rich Chinese. He also denounced the Javanese for being no better than ducks that could be herded, in large numbers, by a single person. Nasir also attacked the Christians. "Nowadays the brains of Muslims who hold power have been poisoned by Christians," he said, through schools financed by the Chinese. He denounced Muslim women for going to work in factories--usually for Christian employers, he said--and for going to the hospital to have their private parts examined, and plastic spirals inserted as contraceptives, "like so many goats." As to government corruption, Nasir observed, if Islamic law were observed, and stealing were punished by the cutting off of hands, "officials . . . would be without hands and feet and would roll like a ball."
Without mentioning Pancasila, Nasir also addressed the imputation that if the government treated all religions equally before the law, they were all of equal merit. If religions were all the same, he said, and someone died, angels would come from every "faction"--Islamic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu and Javanist--to fight over the corpse. "People who die will [have to] carry a whistle so that when the angels fight, [they can whistle] priiiit --[and call] offside!"
Other speakers were less crude but equally provocative. Abdul Qadir Djaelani, who was later sentenced to seventeen years in prison for involvement in several bombings, gave a talk in Tanjung Priok in late August or early September. According to a cassette recording that circulated subsequently, he called on his listeners "to continue this struggle until you die the noblest death, the death of a martyr!" 4 Another talk in Priok in late August or early September, by Syarifin Maloko, who also was later jailed, was followed by a prayer:
Oh Allah, oh our God. If indeed you are going to take away Islam from the face of the earth, in particular from our beloved Indonesia, we appeal, oh Allah, that it is much better for us who have suffered so much to be taken away before you take away Islam . . .
Bring down your curses on those who will not confess that this earth is your creation, oh Allah. Shut the mouths of those who say that this earth is the creation of the Pancasila eagle.
Inspire us to rise up all together in protest against those tyrannical people, oh Allah. If we rise to protest, it will no longer be through words, but we will go to them with our daggers and cutlasses, oh Allah. 5
It was in this environment that notices were posted on a prayerhouse wall located on Alley No. 4 of the port area's Koja district.
Events of September 8 to 12
A wholly reliable account of what followed is not yet possible. General Moerdani issued a statement and answered questions at a press conference on September 13. 6 Twenty-two people, sixteen of them members of the Petition of Fifty group, issued a White Paper on September 18. 7 The signers included retired Lt. Gen. Hartono Rekso Dharsono, the one-time Siliwangi Division commander; Ali Sadikin, the retired marine general and former governor of Jakarta; and Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, who had served as head of the republican government in the 1940s and was now general chairman of the Muslim Preachers Korps (Korps Muballigh Indonesia ). Underground leaflets offered further alternative versions of what happened; a highly detailed account appeared in a document apparently completed at the Al Araf Mosque in Tanjung Priok on September 20. 8 Comparing information from these sources suggests that what happened was as follows:
On September 8 two security officers came to the As Sa'adah prayerhouse. They tried to remove posters they believed might incite hostility; one officer was said to have entered the prayerhouse without taking off his shoes, the other to have smeared gutter water on the posters.
These events were reported to a number of civil and military officials in the area. They also were reported to Amir Biki, a student activist of 1966, who was now a prominent figure in the Islamic community of Tanjung Priok and a financial supporter of Islamic missionary activities there. He telephoned local military officers to protest the incident and to ask that something be done about it immediately. On Saturday evening several religious teachers, including M. Nasir, preached on the street to a crowd that was larger than ever before.
On Monday, September 10, a group of people from the prayerhouse community confronted the two officers and demanded an apology. The men denied the accusations made against them, and some in the crowd, becoming impatient, began to push and shove. An officer was slapped. Sand and stones were thrown. The officers managed to extricate themselves from this situation, but a motorcycle belonging to one of them was set afire. Reinforcements arrived and four local people were arrested, including the head of the prayerhouse.
On Tuesday evening members of the prayerhouse community met with a number of civil officials. They protested the behavior of the security men and demanded the release of the four detainees. The officials seemed sympathetic, but the four were not released.
On Wednesday evening, September 12, the usual local teachers were joined by Amir Biki, and the theme of freeing the detainees dominated their talks. Amir Biki seems to have been particularly frustrated by his inability to have the men released. Speaking before a large crowd, he proposed that if the four detainees were not released by 11:00 P.M., he and the people should go to the place where they were held and set them free. Thus, at about 11:00 P.M., Amir Biki and the crowd set out, chanting "God is great," and carrying the national flag, as well as a green banner proclaiming in Arabic, "There is no God but Allah."
Soon the crowd found its way blocked. A line of armed soldiers stood across the roadway, while to the rear of the crowd, armored vehicles and military trucks appeared, blocking the crowd's retreat. The White Paper observes that these armed men were not antiriot police; another source identified them as members of an air defense regiment based in Tanjung Priok. In addition, the White Paper noted, the crowd did not encounter fire hoses or tear gas, but automatic weapons. One source said they were M-16s.
The crowd could not be deterred. It surged forward, and the soldiers fired into the crowd. Amir Biki was shot; at least two accounts say he tried to get up but was bayoneted. In not more than thirty minutes it was all over. Estimates ran to as many as 63 killed and more than 100 severely wounded. Families subsequently reported 171 as missing. In the melee, a pharmacy and a shop were burned down.
One of the first questions General Moerdani was asked by local journalists was how such an event could have happened without security authorities having anticipated it. Moerdani pleaded ignorance. "We didn't plan anything," he told the press. "We were trapped." 9 He later told Reuters that there was no time to call in the riot police because there had been only twenty-seven minutes' warning. 10 It is possible, of course, that senior security officials were caught by surprise. This should not have been the case, however. Testimony at later trials made it evident that public security officers had mounted a considerable surveillance of Muslim preachers in the Jakarta area prior to the Tanjung Priok incident, including widespread taping of their sermons, and calling many of them in for interrogation. Moreover, the crowd of fifteen hundred grew in the course of several evenings, as well as over the course of the evening of the twelfth. So the use of air defense troops to deal with the crowd was a case of either serious misjudgment or serious lack of preparedness. The defense in one later trial charged that the security forces knew the situation was explosive and let it explode--as an object lesson to government critics. The truth has not been established. Appeals for an independent investigation were not acted on, and no official inquiry has been made public.
Interpreting the Violence
The larger meaning of the violence also could not be ignored. According to the White Paper , "The greater and more basic calamity [was] the political system and social conditions which brought about the September 12, 1984, incident." Tensions had been smoldering for a long time "below the surface of pseudo-stability." Events had been adversely affecting public opinion and creating a restless atmosphere, as a number of the people's former leaders, including the late Mohammad Hatta and the late Adam Malik, had brought to the attention of those in power.
The causes of the unrest come back to one source, namely, deviations in the execution of authority by the national government from the letter and spirit of the 1945 Constitution, which peak[ed] in the five bills concerning the 'ordering' of political life, and above all the provisions concerning Pancasila as the 'sole basis.' Meanwhile, the people did not have the power to change the situation through democratic means. Thus, the calamity of September 1984 in Tanjungpriok is not an incident which stands on its own. It is a consequence of the existing system. 11
The Al Araf statement that came a few days later, by which time the scale of the violence was increasingly clear in the Muslim community, contained no such cool analysis. After an extended day-by-day account, the statement concluded:
This TRAGEDY will be seen by other sides at the surface from the statements of government supporters, public officials, and groups in society. It is certain that the actual expressions of feeling of the Islamic community and the Indonesian people still are BURIED deep in their hearts.
THEN what will be the impact of this tragedy in the coming days? Is this tragedy a sign of the END of a tyranny and the BEGINNING of the coming of JUSTICE? What is certain is that from this tragedy WILL ARISE NEW BIKIs AND NEW AMIRs FROM THE YOUNG GENERATION OF INDONESIAN MUSLIMS! 12
Twenty-eight young men were arrested by the end of September on charges of assault, of damaging a Chinese house before the riot began, and of setting fire to Chinese homes and shops after the confrontation with the military. In the early months of 1985 they were tried and sentenced to one to three years. 13 But that was not to be the end of it.
Underground leaflets began circulating within a few days of the incident. (Arrests for possession of these were made by year's end not only in Jakarta, but also in Bogor, Bandung, Tasikmalaya, and Cirebon in West Java; in Yogyakarta in Central Java; in Surabaya in East Java; and as far away as distant Ternate.) 14
On September 18 the White Paper was signed at a meeting at Ali Sadikin's house. That evening another meeting was held at a prayerhouse adjoining the house of A. M. Fatwa, where the Tanjung Priok incident also was discussed. On September 19 Fatwa was arrested on charges of subversion.
On October 2 General Moerdani gave another public account of the incident at a combined meeting of four committees of Parliament. Accompanied by senior officers of the three armed services and the national police, he charged that an effort was being made to discredit the government. Illegal leaflets were being circulated, he said, that endangered national unity.
On October 4 bombs exploded in two Jakarta branches of Bank Central Asia and at a shopping center in Glodok, the old Chinese business quarter. The bank was owned by Liem Sioe Liong, the Chinese businessman well known as a financial associate of President Soeharto and his family. Two people were killed.
General Moerdani made a public statement to the effect that the armed forces were responsible for the protection of everyone--Chinese, Arabs, and every other ethnic group. The following day, Armed Forces Day, Soeharto urged all sides to avoid being provoked by destructive elements who wanted to separate the armed forces from the people. In the next day or so many military and civilian political figures made similar public comments. 15
On October 9, H. Mohamad Sanusi, a former cabinet member, former parliamentarian, and a signer of the Petition of Fifty, was arrested in connection with the bombings. 16
Spiraling Reactions
In the last half of the month a series of fires and explosions occurred in various parts of Jakarta. A fire burned down a noodle factory on October 17. 17 The largest fire experienced in Jakarta in years destroyed the government-owned Sarinah Jaya department store in suburban Kebajoran on October 22. 18 On October 29 fire destroyed a Chinese-owned restaurant and adjoining theater that featured a strip-tease show. Bomb threats were received at many large buildings in Jakarta, including those housing the central telephone exchange, several foreign banks, and a hospital sponsored by Mrs. Soeharto. 19 None of these events was ever traced to the Tanjung Priok incident, although they certainly heightened the sense that the situation was rapidly getting beyond the government's control.
The sense of crisis became even more acute when, on the evening of October 29, a munitions dump at a marine corps base on the outskirts of Jakarta began exploding. Huge columns of flames rose into the sky. Shells fell and other damage occurred within a radius of six kilometers from the center of the blast. Radio and television bulletins warned residents to leave the area; windows and doors were blown out of homes in an expensive residential district in the vicinity; a nearby hospital evacuated its patients. It was later announced that more than 20 tons of munitions had exploded, fifteen hundred houses had been damaged, fifteen persons had been killed, and twenty-six more had been wounded; hospital sources indicated that casualties were greater. 20 It did not escape comment that the explosions might have been set off deliberately by members of the marine corps itself. It was recalled that the marines had been counted as strong supporters of Sukarno, and that Ali Sadikin was a former three-star marine general, and A. M. Fatwa a former marine chaplain. 21
On November 8 General Dharsono was arrested and on the following day was charged with subversion in connection with the September 18 meetings. 22 He was the seniormost retired army officer arrested by the Soeharto government up to this time.
At this point General Moerdani began a rapid personal campaign to assure friendly Islamic leaders that the government harbored no ill-will toward them. In Kediri in East Java he told eighteen hundred Muslim preachers that he was just an official who happened to be Catholic and that the government had no interest in putting the Islamic community at large "into a corner." In Demak in Central Java he told a similar audience of four thousand that those arrested had been disturbers of the peace who just "happened" to be Muslim. "It was not because they were Muslims that they were arrested." In Bandung in West Java he told a meeting of some two thousand Muslim preachers that religion was being used, as were houses of worship, to promote issues that had nothing to do with Islam. 23 No such effort, however, was made to open a dialogue with the critics.
Fires of unknown origin continued to occur. On November 11 a fire burned out two floors of a centrally located hotel in Jakarta. On the night of November 13 a fire destroyed the sixth through fourteenth floors of one of the largest buildings in the modern center of the city. On the following day bomb threats against a number of large buildings led to massive evacuations. An expensive office building belonging to the family of Liem Sioe Liong was evacuated for the second time in a week. Two nights later six separate fires broke out in the capital. 24
Government Prosecutions
On November 19 and 20 officials of the attorney general's office began, in a series of briefings for the national press, to outline the cases they intended to prosecute in connection with the Tanjung Priok incident and the Bank Central Asia bombings.
It was said that General Dharsono participated in the meeting at Ali Sadikin's house and that ways of capitalizing on the Tanjung Priok incident were discussed. Some who attended allegedly urged selective bombings and threats of other terrorist acts through anonymous telephone calls. Mention was made of blowing up facilities of Pertamina, the state oil company; Perumtel, the state telephone company; and other vital facilities. Dharsono also was accused of inciting people present at the meeting at A. M. Fatwa's house to participate in the bombings that occurred later. 25
A. M. Fatwa also was being held on charges of subversion. Fatwa, in addition to being a former marine chaplain, had been secretary to Ali Sadikin when Sadikin was governor of Jakarta, was one of the signers of the Petition of Fifty, and was secretary of its continuing Working Group. He also was at this time Chairman II of the Indonesian Muslim Preachers Corps. He was said to have been frequently arrested from 1979 on for sermons critical of the government. 26
H. Muhammad Sanusi, who was not present at these meetings, was alleged to have provided some of the funds for the Bank Central Asia bombings. It was reported independently that money was borrowed from Sanusi by one of the bombing suspects, reportedly to buy a motor scooter. 27
Eventually, all three major figures were found guilty and sentenced: Sanusi to nineteen years, Fatwa to eighteen years, and Dharsono to ten, later reduced to seven. Dharsono's principal counsel, the courageous and controversial Buyung Nasution, an early supporter of the New Order, was found guilty of unethical conduct. Sanusi was later charged also with involvement in a plot to assassinate President Soeharto, and one man reportedly died in custody after refusing to implicate him. 28
Three "extremist lecturers" who spoke in Priok on the night of September 12, including M. Nasir, were reportedly detained. At least five other "extremist lecturers" were said to be in detention. An official of the attorney general's office was reported as estimating that altogether about two hundred people had been arrested in connection with the Priok incident. 29
Further Reactions
There was relatively little serious effort made at the time to interpret these events.
The head of the National Intelligence Coordinating Board Gen. (ret.) Yoga Sugama said that recent terrorist acts had been carried out by extremist groups. He identified four such groups: remnants of the Communist Party of Indonesia; Muslims who still hoped to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia; "movements sponsored by certain groups aimed at replacing the present government under the pretext of implementing Pancasila in a genuine and consistent manner," which presumably referred to the Petition of Fifty group; and those influenced by liberal democratic ideas who were "pretending to be human rights advocates" in order to undermine the authority of the government, an apparent reference to the capital's courageous civil rights lawyers. 30
Kompas , Indonesia's largest and most influential daily newspaper, which was widely seen to be the voice of Roman Catholics from Central Java, commented on these developments in an editorial on November 23:
Dharsono is a quite well-known figure as the first Secretary-General of ASEAN, Indonesian Ambassador to Cambodia and Thailand, and Commander of the Siliwangi Division. In this last capacity, his role in establishing the New Order was more than just marginal. . . . If it is true as charged that he participated in a secret meeting that masterminded the violent acts of bombing after the Tanjung Priok incident, then clearly he must be held responsible for his involvement. For an act with a political background with a figure of his reputation, the question does not stop there. One of the questions that immediately emerges is why he might have gone so far. He has no extreme left and no extreme right background. . . . The achievement of stability is not without sacrifice. What has been sacrificed is democratic expression by society and groups within it. There has been a curtailment of criticism. . . . Peripheral criticism is tolerated, but criticism which touches the heart of problems is not recommended. Not all people can accept and adapt themselves to such a development. A group of people who feel that they, too, rendered their contribution in 1945 and in 1966 have shown consistent opposition and have tried various means to get themselves noticed and heard. The more narrow the room for maneuver, the more varied are the means sought. The question is to what extent the case of H. R. Dharsono can be placed in this context. . . . The government is expected to be far-seeing. . . . What we must build is a political system and culture which makes it possible for anybody to express his opinion and have it listened to and considered. 31
Merdeka , a daily newspaper with a strong nationalist orientation, published an editorial on November 26 that said:
The government is faced with something without precedent in the experience of the New Order and which could have been foreseen by those prepared to assist the country. . . . The situation is worrisome. The political front is not calm any more and is all stirred up. . . . We can sense that the government itself is finally aware that its political demolition strategy aiming at a New Order has serious weaknesses. . . . From historical experience we can determine that the greatest danger to the unity and union of Indonesia occurs when political forces each consider themselves most able and most competent to control national developments. . . . We suggest that if disorder and anarchy are not to result from further developments, there must be an attitude of introspection on all sides. 32
But confrontation continued to be the principal means of expression. The government produced a continuing stream of actions and statements designed to demonstrate its control. Muslim activists repeatedly struck back with violence.
On December 22 the Parliament passed two draft bills into law, one requiring all political parties, and the government quasi-party Golkar, to accept Pancasila as their "sole basis." On Christmas Eve bombs damaged a Protestant church and a Roman Catholic church in East Java. These bombings were eventually tied to Tanjung Priok.
On January 2, 1985, President Soeharto made his first pronouncement on the recent violence. In a radio and television address, he said:
We fully regret and feel concerned about violent incidents carried out by irresponsible people motivated by deep fanaticism. . . . We will never bow to extremist threats or terrorism. . . . We will wipe out terrorism before it develops into a national disaster. . . . We are all responsible for resolving differences of opinion through democratic and constitutional procedures.
In regard to Pancasila he offered the view that after Parliament passed all five political bills a strong legal foundation would exist for strengthening national unity. With Pancasila as their sole principle, political and social organizations would focus on their "real programs" in implementing national development. Organizations would no longer suffer the bitter factional and ideological frictions of the past, and all extreme activities and crises would be avoided. 33
The first trials in the Bank Central Asia bombing case began on January 7. Testimony in the Tanjung Priok case began on January 10.
Continued Confrontation
Even with all the fires and bombings that had so far followed the Tanjung Priok incident, public opinion was unprepared for the violent event that occurred on January 22. In the early morning hours time bombs exploded on an upper level of Borobudur, a Buddhist monument dating to the eighth century and reckoned to be the world's largest Buddhist monument after Angkor Wat. Nine stone stupas, or bell-shaped, lattice-worked shrines, and two stone statues of the Buddha were damaged. The monument was one of Indonesia's most cherished national symbols. In a single stroke Muslim activists, later tied to Tanjung Priok, had struck out at a major symbol of pre-Islamic values; at the Chinese, who were the principal practitioners of Buddhism; at the military and civilian elite, which was still decidedly Javanese and Java-centric; and at Soeharto himself because of his association with all of these, and because Borobudur rises up majestically from the plains of Central Java, the president's own home province. 34
As 1985 wore on, the pattern of confrontation continued with the predictability of a wayang performance. The Assembly passed into law the controversial bill regulating social organizations. No voting took place; the bill was passed by acclamation in a session attended by only 55 percent of the membership--hardly an enthusiastic turnout for a bill that involved considerable government prestige. 35 By June subversion trials against Islamic teachers and students accused of speaking and writing against the government were occurring across the island of Java. 36 Fires of unknown origin continued to occur sporadically. In July alone, fires in Jakarta destroyed a major shopping complex, a nine-story office building, and the building that housed the state radio and television stations. 37
The conflict between the government and elements of the Islamic community, some bent on violence, others expressing only dissent, seemed never ending. Arrests of Muslim activists in Central Java continued during 1987 and 1988. Many of those arrested came from towns or villages that had been centers of Muslim dissent in the past, and several had been imprisoned before for suspected subversion in the late 1970s. 38 As late as 1989 violent clashes between army troops and aroused Muslim groups took place in the south Sumatran province of Lampung, in which the death toll was variously estimated between forty-one and more than a hundred, and in the small island of Bima in West Nusatenggara. Although authorities initially characterized these incidents as further manifestations of Islamic extremism, it became clear in time that the issues were not primarily ideological. Poor people, who had been treated with extreme severity in land disputes, had looked to Islam as a vehicle for the expression of their frustration and anger. It was, to some extent, Tanjung Priok revisited in a rural setting. 39
Islam and the Indonesian State
Islam played an important role in the development of political awareness in preindependent Indonesia. The first patently political indigenous organization in the Indies was the Islamic Union (Serikat Islam ), founded in 1913, initially to promote the interests of indigenous traders in competition with the Chinese. But the incipient divisions within Islamic society led to an early split of the Union. In 1923 a radical group spun off, providing the nucleus for the later founding of the Communist Party of Indonesia; a strictly Islamic wing never developed into more than a minor Islamic political party.
This fissiparous tendency persisted. The first all-encompassing Islamic organization, the Masyumi (an acronym for Madjelis Sjuriah Muslimin Indonesia , or the Advisory Council of Indonesian Muslims) was created by the Japanese occupation authorities in 1943 to facilitate their own political control. The Masyumi hardly survived independence in its original form. The largest component organization, the Nahdatul Ulama (NU ) (Revival of the Ulama), took an early opportunity to pull out. The NU had been founded initially, in 1926, as a result of divisions within the Muslim community. It was founded by traditionally oriented Islamic leaders, predominantly leaders of pesantren (Koranic boarding schools) in Java; they were reacting against the efforts of other Muslims to propagate a literal interpretation of the Koran, holding out instead for their long existing tradition of cultural compromise and adaptation. 40
The pluralism of ideas among Indonesian Muslims came to a sharp focus with the need to write a constitution, which began under Japanese auspices in May 1945. With such a culturally varied society one might have thought that Indonesia was ready made for a national federal state, along the lines of India or Nigeria. But it seems not to have been seriously considered in 1945. The experience of political organizations from the 1920s on was one of constant divisions and rivalries, cliques and factions, even in the face of the Japanese occupation. Moreover, the spirit of "one people, one nation" was a major element in the thinking of such figures as Sukarno. The Indonesian nation was not comprised only of individuals living in their varied ethnic provinces, he said; it was also "all the human beings who, according to geopolitics ordained by God Almighty live throughout the entire archipelago of Indonesia from the northern tip of Sumatra to Papua!" Traditional Hindu ideas of the state were present as well; only twice, Sukarno said, had the Indonesian people experienced a national state--"in the time of Sriwidjaja and in the time of Madjopahit." The Indonesian state was to be a unitary state. 41
But if it was to be a unitary state, could it be an Islamic state? Mohammad Hatta, who was both a Sumatran and a devout Muslim, and who in August 1945 was to become the first vice president of independent Indonesia, said at the first meeting of the constitutional drafting committee that the new unitary state would have to be separate from Islam. A Javanese member of the drafting committee agreed, observing that an Islamic state would create problems with Christians and other minorities, but adding that this did not mean the state had to be a secular one. 42
Sukarno took up this latter theme also in his speech to the committee on June 1. He argued that the state should be committed to the five principles of Pancasila--belief in one God, nationalism, humanism, social justice, and democracy--which had meaning for all the religious elements within the society. His speech has since been seen as marking "the birth of Pancasila." 43
This was not enough to satisfy some Islamic interests represented in the committee. The issue was referred to a subcommittee, which produced a restatement. It was hoped that the restatement would serve as a preamble to the constitution. It read as follows:
The constitution of the Indonesian state which is to exist in the form of the Republic of Indonesia, and to be based upon the sovereignty of the people, is founded on the following principles: Belief in God, with the obligation for adherents of Islam to practice Islamic law, the principle of righteous and moral humanitarianism; the unity of Indonesia, and democracy led by the mutual deliberations of a representative body which will lead to social justice for the entire people. 44
The statement did not produce a consensus. The key phrase was: "with the obligation for adherents of Islam to practice Islamic law." Some committee members thought this provision went too far in conceding the power of the state to Muslim ideological interests.
That is where things stood when the Japanese suddenly surrendered, and Sukarno and Hatta were obliged quickly to proclaim Indonesian independence. In these new circumstances of uncertainty, the nation's unity became an overpowering concern. The preparatory committee dropped the controversial phrase. It was a bitter defeat for those Muslim groups that had pressed for its inclusion. The original statement came to be known as "the Jakarta Charter"--and as a symbol of Islamic disillusionment. 45
The disillusionment first took the form of insurrections committed to the founding of an Islamic state. These broke out in the late 1940s and early 1950s in West Java, South Sulawesi, and Aceh, and continued into the early 1960s. They were followed by Masyumi support for the larger revolts that broke out in parts of Sumatra and Sulawesi in 1958, aimed at replacing the Sukarno government with a pro-Western, anticommunist one. None of these movements attracted widespread popular support, further weakening the political position of the Muslim parties and their leaders that remained. 46
Islam and the New Order
Muslims played such an important role in helping to bring down Sukarno and the Communist party that from the beginning they assumed they would receive seats in the government that followed. This did not happen, and thus much Muslim opinion was disaffected even before Soeharto refused to renew legalization of the Masyumi Party prior to the 1971 elections. Golkar's overwhelming victory at the polls, and the subsequent merger of all the Islamic parties into a single Party for Unity and Development (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan , or PPP) had the effect of making political Islam the principal opposition force. The term opposition , however, was neither conferred by the government, which did not officially recognize the existence of any opposition, nor sought by the party, which depended almost entirely on the government for its existence.
Not all Muslims saw Islam and the New Order as unalterably opposed. Mintaredja, who was Soeharto's selection to chair the somewhat-less-than-reborn Masyumi under the name of Parmusi in 1970, represented a new breed of Islamic leadership that was prepared to work more cooperatively with the New Order. Mintaredja himself, before the 1971 elections, published a lengthy rationale for accommodation to the new sociopolitical realities of the New Order and for aiming at material victories. 47
This view, almost certainly a minority one at the time, also was championed by the general chairman from 1970 to 1972 of the Islamic Students Association (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam , or HMI). Nurcholish Madjid argued that the time had come for the Muslim community to turn away from the leaders of the past and their tendency to regard all aspects of human life as governed by religious norms and values. It was time to give more weight to human knowledge, to be more open to other groups in society, and to take more seriously the need for economic and social justice--in effect, the need for development. 48
Any hope of a new era of good feeling between the government and Islam was dashed in 1973 by the government's submission of a bill to Parliament to create a single system of laws regarding marriage and divorce. The proposal produced a massive Muslim reaction; members of Parliament walked out, and Muslim youths at one point occupied the floor of the Parliament. The government capitulated, and a compromise bill was passed the following year. 49 Some writers have seen the outcome as a partial victory for the Muslims; but not all Muslims agreed. One Muslim intellectual saw it this way:
The new marriage law was a real victory for the government, and a way-station on the road to getting control over the Muslim community. The problem of conflicts between the national law and religious law was a long-term issue. The Muslims wanted to see their aspirations reflected in the national law, and the nationalists wanted to see a single legal system for all Indonesians. There were demonstrations, of course. And the Muslims walked out of the Parliament at one point. So there were some concessions. But the Muslim community saw the outcome as a victory for the government. They saw it as a step that put the religious law under the national law. 50
Islamic dissatisfaction erupted again over the conduct of the 1977 elections, as we have seen, leading to Soeharto's Pancasila speeches, with their thinly veiled accusations of Muslim disloyalty.
Islam's image as a violent opponent of the government was considerably enhanced on March 28, 1981, when a small group of Muslims hijacked a Garuda Airlines DC-8. (They got as far as Bangkok, where Indonesian commandos, with the permission of Thai authorities, stormed the plane, in the course of which seven people died). Imran bin Mohammad Zein, thirty-three years old, was found guilty of stirring up his followers with sermons at the Istiqamah Mosque in Bandung, attacking a police post to obtain weapons which resulted in the deaths of three police officers, murdering one of his followers accused of being a turncoat, and, finally, carrying out the hijacking. He had returned from Mecca five years earlier and, according to his widow, had "indeed been eager that the teachings of Islam should be fully put into practice here." 51
The 1982 election campaign degenerated into serious violence. About a million people turned out for a PPP rally in Jakarta. When Golkar attempted to match this performance, some PPP supporters attempted to disrupt the motorcade. According to one report:
In some parts of the capital the procession met with hostility. Stones were thrown, banners were torn down and some people were attacked. Security forces reacted sharply, particularly after some policemen and troops were injured. Although it was claimed that guns were fired only as a warning and then into the air, there were reports that in some instances security forces fired into the crowd. As the campaign drew to a close, security forces were told to shoot at the legs of demonstrators and, if this failed, to shoot to kill. 52
Admiral Sudomo, the head of national security, said that 7 people were killed and 97 injured, 20 by gunfire. He said 130 people had been arrested. 53 The news magazine Tempo , which broke an unofficial ban by reporting the event, was closed by the government for two months. 54
The violence of the electoral campaign, and the fact that the PPP attracted more votes in Jakarta than Golkar did, undoubtedly were major considerations in moving Soeharto to renew his efforts to reduce Muslim influence in social and political life. He had sent a draft bill to the Provisional Parliament in 1969 that would have required social organizations of every sort to accept Pancasila as their ideology, as a condition of their continued legal existence. He had sent a draft bill to Parliament that would have imposed the same requirement on political parties in 1973. Neither of these efforts succeeded, mainly because of Muslim resistance. On August 17, 1982, Soeharto renewed both initiatives in his Independence Day address before a plenary session of the Assembly.
The proposals generated immediate objections. Perhaps the most serious came from the leaders of the religious communities. In December official spokesmen for the national Muslim scholars council, the Protestant council of churches, the Catholic bishops, and the national councils of Hindus and Buddhists issued a joint statement. They did not disregard Pancasila, they said. On the contrary, their aim was "to guide their respective communities to become faithful followers of their religion while simultaneously being citizens of a Pancasilaist state." At the same time, they said:
The respective religions have their own religious basis which is universal in character, holds for all places and times, and which may not be incremented by any other thinking beyond the authentic basis. Therefore, social organizations which are inspired by or are religious in nature remain based on their religion and respective religious beliefs. 55
When the People's Consultative Assembly met in April 1983 to elect him to another five-year term, Soeharto returned to the topic. He rejected charges that his government was suppressing dissent. He said, however, that the country "is not going to journey backwards." The multiparty system of politics "was a failure." It was time, he said, for Indonesia to consolidate politically and accept the national ideology. "We must remove the remnants of conflicts, disunity and suspicion." 56 The division of opinion was well represented by the statements of spokesmen for the opposing sides in July 1983. On July 7 Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, the long-time Islamic leader, addressed a letter to Soeharto. He said, in part:
If Muslims are no longer allowed to establish Islamic associations--whether political organizations or social organizations--then Islam will come to be regarded as a private matter, which is completely contrary to Islamic teachings. The Islamic religion is not merely a private matter, but is also, and primarily, a matter of the "Ummat" (Community).... If the Indonesian Muslim Community is to be prohibited from establishing and maintaining Islamic associations, whether in the political field or in other social fields, this is not only in contravention of the 1945 Constitution--and thus in contravention of the Pancasila itself, but, in practice means an attempt to kill Islam--through the Pancasila! For the Pancasila, being a creation of men, can be interpreted and applied according to the wishes and thoughts of men, namely those men who hold power, the power-holders controlling the Armed Forces! And in the long run, the teaching of religion--particularly the Islamic religion will--so I fear--be suffocated by Pancasila Morality, Pancasila Economy, Pancasila Law, and all other such Pancasila offspring. 57
That same month the following statement was made by Soedjono Humardhani, the retired army general and long-time confidant of Soeharto who was well known for his championing of Javanese mysticism as a system of beliefs that should have equal standing with Islam before the law:
Maybe it is only wishful thinking on their part, but the idea of an Islamic state is still there. The moderates want a state that at least "smells" Islamic. And there are always extremists who want more. They haven't changed. The Constitutional Convention was stalled in 1957-58 because of Islamic ideology. The MPRS (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat Sementara , or Provisional People's Consultative Assembly) in 1966 failed to reach an agreement on anything but economic policy. It was discussed again in 1968. And they walked out of the MPR (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat , or People's Consultative Assembly) in 1978. Now the issue is being pursued outside the MPR. Islamic organizations like the HMI don't want to follow the government. They will have to take responsibility for the war that will take place. 58
Opinion was undoubtedly hardening, and the legislation proceeded at a pace that can only be characterized as studied. On May 30, 1984, the government finally conveyed a draft bill on social organizations to the Assembly. It provided that all voluntary associations in the country must recognize Pancasila as their sole basis. They were given two years to bring themselves into line with the new rule by inserting the necessary language in their statutes. But the bill aimed to do more than control the ideology of private organizations. It also empowered the government to provide "guidance" to every social organization in the country, to control all foreign aid to them, and to dissolve any social organization that "carries out activities which disturb security and public order." 59
In August senior members of the Petition of Fifty group sent all members of the cabinet and the Assembly a booklet, entitled Save Democracy (Selamatkan Demokrasi ), that offered a critique of all five political bills before the Assembly. It contained a statement by Gen. A. H. Nasution that said, in part:
Pancasila actually carries within itself harmony between diversity and unity. One cannot occur without the other. Stressing only diversity could damage unity. On the other hand, stressing only unity by making diversity disappear will bring us to the regimentation of state, national, and social life, narrowing the room for initiative, creativity, and dynamism. . . . So long as diversity of motivations and aspirations is not aimed at changing the principles and nature of the Republican state proclaimed in 1945, then the parties involved have to be given the freedom of association, assembly, and expression guaranteed by the 1945 Constitution. 60
Such protestations notwithstanding, the Assembly passed the social organizations bill as expected. Passage was delayed by the Tanjung Priok incident. Hearings had already been held, but, as was common in parliamentary affairs in this period, only the bill's supporters had been heard. Now the hearings were extended to permit testimony from moderate critics. The final draft also included cosmetic changes. In such fashion it became law in mid-1985. 61
A leader of the Nahdatul Ulama reflected on the whole experience:
What happened at Tanjung Priok was a tragedy. All those men killed and maimed. It did not need to happen, and it would not have happened if the two sides were communicating with each other. These people had real economic grievances. They work in the port, and they see Mercedes automobiles being unloaded, while they are lacking even clean water in their homes. But they are poor and unorganized, and the government doesn't pay any attention to them. They also are very devout, and they believe they have great power when God is on their side. Many of them believed that Pancasila was a threat to Islam. Of course that was not true. Pancasila is a matter of the law, and the law has to be one that is acceptable to all our people, while Islam is a matter of ethics, and speaks to all of us who accept it. But the government tried to move quickly, and did not think about people like these; it did nothing to help them understand its intentions. They did believe the government was acting to harm Islam, and some of them did have the idea of raising a holy war against the government. But none of this would have happened if there had been communications between the two sides. 62
Whither Islam?
In 1985 the Nahdatul Ulama voted at a national congress to leave the PPP. One of the leaders of the Nahdatul Ulama discussed his plans to bring this about:
I want to disassociate NU from the PPP. I want NU to have minimal contact with politics. The political choice now is either the status quo or revolution. So it is important for us to pull out.
Initially NU had the right to distribute fertilizer, and this helped the Islamic scholars to become rich and powerful. Then Golkar took all the patronage, and the scholars lost power and became radicalized. NU politicians always included some close to the scholars and others who were really closer to the government. The ones like ------, who were close to the government still got some patronage; for example, ------ has a timber concession in Kalimantan. But NU has much less patronage than before, and it can't meet the expectations of the pesantren. So the politicians who speak for them in the NU now oppose nearly everything the government does. 63
He later reflected on how the departure was accomplished:
It had to be handled in a way that was not threatening to the government. Ideally an organization like NU would not need the government, and would be able to raise the funds it needed for its programs from its members at the grassroots. But that is not possible in this economy; the government is too important, and if it feels threatened, it can cut off everything. . . .
I reached an agreement with the government. They agreed that all NU people who had been civil servants, and left the civil service to take political posts with PPP would be reinstated. They also agreed they would give preference to NU people in making new appointments to the civil service, assuming they met the necessary requirements. The government also agreed that NU would receive licenses for economic activities, so we can support ourselves by our own efforts. We have gotten government approval to develop 1,000 hectares in Sumatra to produce spices for export to India and the Middle East, and a bank loan to begin to develop the area. I am advising our local branches to do the same thing. 64
The departure of NU meant the end of the PPP as a significant political force. When elections for parliamentary seats were next held, in 1987, a substantial number of NU members would shift their vote to Golkar. But this decline of Islam in politics also might have been possible because Islam was growing stronger. It was not a strength that came from increased numbers, but rather one that came from an increased awareness within the existing Muslim community of its "Muslim-ness."
That an Islamic revival was occurring in Indonesia at the time of the Tanjung Priok incident seems undeniable. One daily newspaper reported that the revival was occurring in the country's other major religions as well, but the evidence in the case of Islam was particularly impressive. The paper's reporters found that mosques were packed for the five obligatory daily prayers in Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya in Java, and in Padang and Medan in Sumatra. On Fridays one major mosque in Jakarta was regularly filled to capacity an hour before prayer time, and one in Bandung erected tents to accommodate the overflow crowds. In addition, places of worship were alive with many new activities--missionary corps, Koran recitals, and youth groups. Moreover, new study groups were meeting in people's homes. 65
The Muslim revival was attributed, in part, to the rapid social change that people of all religions were experiencing, particularly in urban areas. There was "a need for a set of guidelines that can order, explain, and give meaning to an otherwise confusing set of events." Proselytizing increased, through radio and television, organized efforts by Islamic universities and social organizations, and personal efforts by individual scholars. But orthodox Islam also seemed to be increasing in popularity because it was fulfilling social needs, more or less along the same lines as the urban Christian churches. "Nearly every local mosque has its volleyball team, its scout troops, its kindergarten, and its women's association." 66
Several international factors contributed to the increasing tendency for Muslims to think of themselves in Islamic terms. Sidney Jones observed:
The triumph of Khomeini and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan have evoked feelings of solidarity with the world Islamic community. Furthermore, the exchange of people and ideas between Indonesia and the rest of the Muslim world has been steadily expanding. The number of pilgrims to Mecca, where Indonesians constitute the largest foreign community, continues to grow. Each year, scores of Indonesian students leave to study at Muslim universities in Cairo, Medina, Baghdad, Damascus, and Qum. Increased contact with other Muslims has brought with it a new prestige in being Muslim, a sense of identity and belonging. 67
Thus a prominent oppositionist, a member of the Petition of Fifty, but himself not particularly identified with Islam, reported at the same time:
Islam is attracting more and more of the interest of young people. They are thirsty for something to believe in. And it isn't any longer a matter of sitting on a dirt floor listening to an old man wearing a sarong. The other night my son wanted to borrow the car. I asked where he was going. He said he was going to the house of the president of Bank ----, a brigadier general, for a meeting of an Islamic study group. 68
Other evidence emerged that a new sort of Muslim was entering the national elite in the mid-1980s. Former leaders of the Muslim Students Association were working for multinational corporations, in the oil industry, for example, and in banking. Eight ministers and junior ministers in the cabinet formed in 1988 were former Muslim activists. These were men engaged in activities that lay wholly outside the traditional world of Islam, familiar with the management of large secular institutions, and enjoying economic benefits undreamed of by the founders of Serikat Islam.
These new elite Muslims were nevertheless still a small minority. That members of this group should have made their peace with the secular establishment was hardly surprising. That their values should be shared by many Islamic teachers and intellectuals, who also were increasing in number in the faculties of universities and in such professions as journalism, also was to be expected. It did seem that, with their upward mobility in secular society, a shift was occurring in the pattern of Islamic leadership, that while the role of Islamic teachers was narrowing to "religious" affairs, that of middle class Muslims with university educations was expanding in social and economic life. 69
This was occurring as inequality was increasing in urban Indonesia, most markedly in Jakarta. If the urban poor were most likely to look to Islam as a vehicle to express their economic and social demands, the question of who would represent their interests to the authorities was becoming increasingly urgent--not, presumably, the highly educated Muslims entering the upper ranks of the bureaucracy. Nor does it seem conceivable that the government could, or would wish to try, to police all the mosques, prayerhouses, and study groups of urban Indonesia to prevent future Tanjung Prioks from occurring.
One would like to think that the spirit of Pancasila might prevail. Preaching and teaching about Pancasila is a large enterprise in Indonesia. Senior government people have been obliged to go through a hundred hours of officially prescribed lectures and discussion. Almost everyone, at least in what economists would call the organized or modern sector, has had to go through a Pancasila "upgrading" course of some length, right down to drivers and others who perform the most simple tasks in government agencies, and an ever-widening circle of people in the private sector. Yet, it was difficult to find support in private conversation for what foreign scholars have seen as a civil religion, or even as a cult "complete with rites and commentaries." 70
One major figure in the teaching program, Javanese by birth, a life-long civil servant, politically well connected at the very start of the Soeharto regime, and still a senior official in it, assessed his experience with Pancasila:
The whole experience with Pancasila has been extremely frustrating. I am a "manggala" or "super guru" in the program, which really got started in 1978. We have to have an ideology, of course; we have to have a basis for unity. We have rejected communism. We have rejected capitalism. We need a set of values, of ideas, that we stand for as a people. And Pancasila has the potential to be that. . . .
The trouble is that there is a huge gap between the ideals laid down in Pancasila and what is really going on in the society. People want to talk about the real problems that concern them--about corruption, the lack of social equity, things like that. But it's not allowed. The leader has a script to follow, and that's that. Most people feel it's just indoctrination. They feel that all you can say is that the program tells them how the present government interprets Pancasila. The whole thing is gone about in a mindless way. There is no preparation, no selection, and no follow-up. Everybody just has to do it.
At the University of Indonesia in 1983 students who were accepted for admission were obliged to attend a Pancasila indoctrination program at the start of the academic year. At the opening ceremony they drowned out the official speakers with a spontaneous outbreak of hoots and handclapping. One of the young university lecturers, a former student leader assigned to help run the indoctrination program at the time, reflected on the students' behavior:
Ideological indoctrination is a risky business. If there is too big a gap between a regime's ideals and the actual situation that people are experiencing, they are going to express their frustration and disbelief. All the demonstrators in Eastern Europe have been indoctrinated in Stalinism. The 1966 generation of students here were all indoctrinated in Nasakom. The students who are being indoctrinated in Pancasila will be the first to turn against it. And their criticisms will be all the more serious because they will be based on a good understanding of it, of all its strengths and weaknesses.
Thus a half century after Indonesia's declaration of independence and its first grappling with the writing of a constitution, relations between Islam and the state remain a fundamental problem for the Indonesian nation. Yet, it is not this alone that confounds Indonesian political life. There has been a paucity of political ideas to deal with the place of Islam, one acceptable, that is, to at least the major groups on each side of the issue, and an absence of institutions in which these ideas could be expressed and tested. The Soeharto government's record in dealing with Islam has been one of attempts to deny Islam a political role, and yet Islam remains a political force. It is not the case that the institutions of the Indonesian state have been "cleansed" of politics. It is rather that they have been made irrelevant to much of the political life that has sought expression, narrowed down to reflecting only the factional struggles within the military and civilian elite.
Note 1: Indonesia Reports: November Log , December I5, I984, p. 8. Back.
Note 2: Ibid., December Log , January I5, I985, p. 29. Back.
Note 3: The sermon by M. Nasir appears in English translation in Dwight King, trans., "The Last Grumbles of Brother Nasir," Indonesia Reports: Politics Supplement , no. I0 (August I985). Back.
Note 4: Indonesia Reports: Politics Supplement , no. I3 (November I985), p. 3. Back.
Note 5: Indonesia Mirror , no. 5 (March I987). Back.
Note 6: The full text appears in English translation in Indonesia Reports: December Log January I5, I985. Back.
Note 7: Saleh et al., "White Paper." Back.
Note 8: "Bloody Wednesday Night in Tanjung Priok (Tragedy, background, and impact)," September 20, I984, Indonesia Reports: Politics Supplement , January I5, I985. Back.
Note 9: "Excerpts from Transcription of Murdani's Q and A with Reporters," Indonesia Reports: Politics Supplement , November I5, I984. Back.
Note 10: Indonesia Reports: December Log , January I5, I985, p. 29. Back.
Note 11: Indonesia Reports: Politics Supplement , November I5, I984, p. 7. Back.
Note 12: "Bloody Wednesday Night in Tanjung Priok (Tragedy, background, and impact)," September 20, I984, Indonesia Reports , p. 9. Back.
Note 13: Amnesty International, Muslim Prisoners of Conscience p. 9. Back.
Note 15: Ibid., pp. 13-16. Back.
Note 20: Ibid., pp. 33-36; see also Indonesia Reports: November Log , December I5, I984, p. 4. Back.
Note 21: Ibid., pp. 28-29. Back.
Note 23: Ibid., pp. 20, 24-26. Back.
Note 24: Ibid., pp. 24-22, 26, 28, 30. Back.
Note 25: Ibid., pp. 34-35; see also Tapol, Muslims on Trial , p. 37. Back.
Note 26: Ibid., p. 35; see also Amnesty International, Muslim Prisoners of Conscience , PP. 27-30; Tapol, Muslims on Trial , PP. 62-64. Back.
Note 27: Ibid., p. 35; see also Tapol, Muslims on Trial, PP. 73-74. Back.
Note 28: Amnesty International, "The Torture and Death of Muhammed Djabir," cited in Indonesia Reports: Human Rights Supplement , no. 18 (October 1986). Back.
Note 29: Indonesia Reports: November Log , December 15,1984, P. 37. Back.
Note 31: Ibid., pp. 39-40. Back.
Note 33: Indonesia Reports: January Log , February 20,1985, P. 3. Back.
Note 34: Ibid., February Log, March 20,1985, P. 46. Back.
Note 35: Indonesia Reports (July 1985), P. 2. Back.
Note 36: Indonesia Reports (July 1985) reported trials in Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, and Malang. Amnesty International reported the arrest of dozens of Muslim activists in Central Java alone in late 1985 and early 1986; see Amnesty International, The Imprisonment of Usroh Activists . Back.
Note 37: Indonesia Reports (August and September 1985). Back.
Note 38: See, in addition to its numerous reports concerning individual cases, Amnesty International, The Imprisonment of Usroh Activists . Back.
Note 39: Asia Watch, "Violence in Lampung, Indonesia." Back.
Note 40: For an excellent summary of this twentieth-century history see Johns, "Islam and Cultural Pluralism," pp. 206-9. Back.
Note 41: Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution , p. 123. Back.
Note 42: Johns, "Islam and Cultural Pluralism," p. 209. Back.
Note 43: Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution , PP. 122-27. Back.
Note 44: Johns, "Islam and Cultural Pluralism," p. 210 Back.
Note 45: Ibid., pp. 21O-11. Back.
Note 46: Ibid., pp. 211-15. Back.
Note 47: Hassan, Muslim Intellectual Responses , PP. 84-86. Back.
Note 48: Ibid., pp. 91-113. Back.
Note 49: For an excellent summary of relations between Islam and the New Order through this event, along with much useful analysis of the historical background, see McVey, "Faith as the Outsider," pp. 199-225. Back.
Note 50: Personal interview, July 21, 1986. Back.
Note 51: Tempo , April 23, 1983. Back.
Note 52: Susumu Awanohara, "An election-eve salvo," Far Eastern Economic Review [hereafter FEER ], April 30, 1982. Back.
Note 54: New York Times , April 13,1982. Back.
Note 55: Basic Thoughts of Indonesian Religious Councils in the Religious Communities Consultative Body, December I9, I983. See Indonesia Reports: Politics Supplement , no. 8 (I985). Back.
Note 56: Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly (April I983). Back.
Note 57: Prawiranegara, Letter to the President of the Republic of Indonesia, pp. 80-8I. Back.
Note 58: Personal interview, July 2I, I983. Back.
Note 59: Indonesia Reports: Politics Supplement , May 25, I985. Back.
Note 61: Lincoln Kaye, "Legislating harmony," FEER , June I3, I985. Back.
Note 62: Personal interview, July 26, I986. Back.
Note 63: Personal interview, May 31, I983. Back.
Note 64: Personal interview, July 26, I986. Back.
Note 65: Kompas , January I3, I985, cited by Indonesia Reports: January Log , February 20, I985, p. 24. Back.
Note 66: Jones, "'It Can't Happen Here."' Back.
Note 67: Jones, "What Indonesia's Islamic Revival Means," p. 46. Back.
Note 68: Personal interview, May 28, I983. Back.
Note 69: Samsuri and Tebba, "The Shift in Pattern of Islamic Leadership." Back.
Note 70: Purdy, "Legitimation of Power and Authority"; Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures , p. 225. Back.
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