It has never been more important before for Indonesian muslims to ask that question. The widely celebrated Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahja Purnama (Ahok) was narrowly defeated in the dramatic popular April votes by educator-turned-politician Anies Baswedan, who had enjoyed massive supports across the wide spectrum of muslim community.
The election of Baswedan, to whom President Joko Widodo had given one of his most popular ministrial seats before took it back only after 20 months, helped tighten the next presidential race (yet to be held two-years away in 2019). While he was one of Widodo’s staunch allies and viable campaigners during the 2014 elections, Baswedan resorted for the governorate to Gerinda Party’s ticket in a clear sign of opposite stand against the former patron.
Gerindra is the vehicle for the Retired Major General Prabowo Subianto, with which he has successfully built not only a giant block of mainly muslim-based parties, but also a very strong and effective base of utilizer of Islamic sentiments. Baswedan owed much his victory to this very sentiment, which gained extremely powerful unprecedented boost to shake up the political stage.
Ahok's slip of the tongue and sectarian politics
Ahok’s controversial slip of the tongue, citing one Qur’an verse during his official visit to a Jakarta’s island district, triggered the Islamic sentiments to grow even wider and wilder. This went completely in line with the fast-changing developments since the 2014 presidential elections. The last three years have seen among other things an increasingly strong phenomenon of sectarian politics that turned out to challenge once established views held by most political scientists: the dominance of moderate Islam in Indonesia.
Up until the first two direct presidential elections, enabled by a series of amendments of the Constituion between 2001 and 2004, there has never been a considerable success story of Islamic parties. Like their predecessors in the Old Order era, Islamic parties always fell well below the nationalist parties. Muslim voters of this biggest muslim country in the world loved to give their support to nationalist parties, instead of ones which relied upon Islamic sentiment issues.
New pictures of future muslim voters
Now, it seems that things are no longer like they were. Islamic sentiment sells effectively and massively. A recent survey by the Ministry of Religious Affairs shows even more surprising trends. The survey, which was carried out in the two provinces, Central Java and the Special Region of Yogyakarta by a local office of the Minsitry from 29 to 31 March 2017, was aimed at finding out how muslim students of favorite state senior secondary schools (SMA Negeri) see the politics.
One of the surprising findings from the survey was that they rated much higher Habib Muhammad Rizieq Shihab and Bactiar Natsir as their favorite leaders than moderate ulemas like Quraisy Shihab, (late) Hasyim Muzadi, Maemun Zubair, Habib Lutfi bin Yahya, or even the Ministeri o Religious Affairs Lukman Hakim Syaifuddin. Rizieq Shihab and Bachtiar Natsir were both the leaders of series of mass rallies in Jakarta to demand the removal Ahok from office.
Among those whom the students rated moderately were Arifin Ilham and Abdullah Gymnatsiar, known as Aa Gym. Some students surveyed even agreed to change Pancasila as the ideological foundation of the state, to be replaced by Islamic idology.
Those are quiet new pictures of future muslim voters. They come to view politics in a more rigid transnational tone, staying away from those of traditional moderate teachings which views muslim community as a historical part of Indonesian plural entity. The question is, how such students would elaborate their views in practical terms to live at once as a muslim and as an Indonesian citizen.
Should there be one single issue that need crucially to be addressed in terms of young muslim education, then I would suggest this: what are supposed to be the fruits of Islam. I am trying to discuss this issue in the next article.
[To be continued]
