Margot Cohen, Jakarta – Fadli Zon has a vision. The former student activist imagines his countrymen cycling slowly down Jakarta's Jalan Thamrin, a central boulevard normally choked with cars. Instead of Western clothes, everyone will be wearing sarongs made of rough cloth. "If necessary, we'll go backwards 10 or 15 years," he says fervently. "The Muslim majority is ready to face any challenge, as long as there is economic justice. We can start to develop our country without them."
To Fadli, a rising young thinker and editor, "them" refers to Indonesia's tiny ethnic-Chinese minority, which he holds responsible for the country's deepening economic crisis. If "they" don't return their wealth parked overseas, he warns, it's payback time. Time for the 87%.
Muslim majority to seize the reins of an economy from a community that accounts for a mere 3% of the country's 200 million people. Time to construct a New Economic Policy that could go further than the Malaysian model in promoting the indigenous race. Time, too, for the military to help assert the rights of the nation's Muslims.
Fadli is not alone in his thinking. In fact, such ideas are gaining wider currency in Indonesia, and might worry foreign investors. A backlash against the nation's largely Catholic-and Buddhist-Chinese entrepreneurs would delay economic recovery and dent the already battered rupiah further. In addition, religion-based policies appear to clash with the deregulated, free-trade environment sought by the International Monetary Fund.
Will Muslim economic nationalism triumph? Will long-simmering anti-Chinese sentiment explode beyond the current level of scattered riots? There are no simple answers. For the moment, the Muslims have no coherent political strategy – not surprising, given President Suharto's systematic attempts to depoliticize Islam since launching his New Order in the 1960s. In fact, the grassroots distress triggered by the current economic crunch has deepened the rifts within the Muslim community, spawning new groups with shifting memberships and nebulous loyalties. Despite Muslim activism's many colours, a pattern is beginning to emerge, although still blurred. Some groups, for example, believe the economic turmoil can be used to harness Muslim discontent to bring about democratic change. That would include a reduction in the military's influence on political life and a new president – Suharto's insistence on standing for a seventh term notwithstanding.
Some Muslim activists subscribing to these views are willing to work across religious and ethnic lines to achieve this goal. Take Amien Rais, chairman of Muhammadiyah, a Muslim group that boasts 25 million largely urban members from the middle and lower-middle classes. Rais has agreed to work with Megawati Sukarnoputri, ousted chairman of the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party. Megawati may be short on answers for the nation's future, but she brings a religious rainbow of supporters to the table.
Other Muslim groups, however, prefer to side with the status quo. The gentler, wealthier 1990s have been benign for Indonesia's Muslims. They have gained greater freedom to preach and practise, as well as a new Islamic bank and the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals, whose aim is to foster Muslim social and economic interests. Known by its acronym ICMI, the organization draws its members from Indonesia's social elite, and is chaired by Research and Technology Minister B.J. Habibie, viewed as Suharto's choice for vice-president.
To be sure, ICMI has disappointed Muslims by its failure to empower Muslim entrepreneurs. But now that they have come in from the cold, certain Muslim leaders don't want to rush back outside. "There's no guarantee that under new leadership we can enjoy all of these benefits," says H. Ahmad Sumargono, vice-chairman of the Indonesia Committee for World Muslim Solidarity, known by its acronym KISDI. Fear of reprisal is also a factor. It was probably behind the decision of the Muslim-oriented United Development Party, better-known as the PPP, to support another presidential term for Suharto. A. Hafidz Ma'soem, chief of the PPP's chapter in Jombang, east Java, believes backing another candidate could have led to ostracization of party members. A Muslim youth leader in Jakarta echoes those qualms. "How can we summon the courage to struggle? If there's a discussion at noon, the authorities find out by evening. The security forces are very repressive," says Syaiful Bahri Anshori, who chairs a youth group under Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's largest Muslim organization.
While the men in olive-green remain repressive, as the youth leaders testify, over the past six months their image has been re-worked as a bulwark of Islam. The spin doctor is none other than Maj.-Gen. Prabowo Subianto, commander of the elite Kopassus force, son-in-law of President Suharto, and among the seven men who matter most in the Indonesian military.
Prabowo has sought to consolidate support from KISDI and other Muslim groups, especially those who felt marginalized in the early days of the New Order. In a high-profile ceremony that was splashed across the pages of local newspapers, he broke the Muslim Ramadan fast along with about 5,000 of the faithful, including some well-known clerics and activists, at a January 23 ceremony held at the special forces headquarters. "It has never happened before," beams Hussein Umar, secretary-general of Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia, a group that the military once suspected of extremist tendencies. At the ceremony, Prabowo urged his fellow officers and Muslim leaders to "close ranks" in facing the challenges ahead. What the challenges were remains unclear.
But copies of Lords of the Rim, a glossary of Chinese-owned Asian groups, were distributed to Muslim clerics at the event. And rumours circulate in Jakarta that prominent military officials are trying to fan anti-Chinese sentiment in an attempt to divert popular criticism from Suharto's seventh bid for power. A retired general told the REVIEW that this development had alarmed some of their elder colleagues. "We don't want this problem to escalate into racial sentiments," he said. "That would only push this country into deeper difficulties."
The general's concern stems from recent attacks on Sofjan Wanandi, a leading light of Indonesia's ethnic-Chinese business community. After the fast-breaking ceremony, Maj.-Gen. Sjafrie Syamsuddin, Jakarta's regional military commander, announced that Wanandi, chairman of the Gemala Group, was being questioned in connection with a bomb blast in a Jakarta apartment. The military claims that Wanandi gave funds to the outlawed People's Democratic Party, a tiny youth group branded as communist, to which the bomb's three makers belonged. Wanandi, among the few ethnic-Chinese businessmen openly critical of Suharto in recent weeks, has denied any involvement.
The military's willingness to target Wanandi seemingly has disrupted the cosy relationship between the armed forces and ethnic-Chinese business. Beneficial to both sides, the business ties have nonetheless been largely supported by corruption, and potentially expose Abri to criticism from Indonesian Muslims resentful of the ethnic-Chinese community's economic power. Analysts say Prabowo has been proactive in showing support for the Muslims, and thus deflecting criticism away from the military. His superior, Gen. Wiranto, army chief of staff, has been comparatively more discreet and not shown any partisan preference for Muslims.
The Wanandi affair has presented Muslim activists a chance to demonstrate their opposition to the ethnic Chinese, safe in the knowledge that a military reprisal is unlikely to follow. In late January, about 50 Muslim youths repeatedly gathered outside the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, demanding that the Jakarta think-tank, where Wanandi sits as a director, be shut down. Some protesters belonged to the Muslim Students Association, operating under a different name in order to avoid any risks for this mainstream organization. Rumours that the youngsters were on Prabowo's payroll at 50,000 rupiah a head were denied by Hasan Azhari, a protester, who told the REVIEW that no money had changed hands.
In a sense, the allegation of compensation is almost besides the point. What matters is that the activists sensed that the time was ripe to right historic wrongs. In some Muslim circles, the CSIS is responsible for fomenting the bad blood between the military and Islam in the 1970s and 1980s, through its association with Benny Murdani, a former intelligence chief who was forced into retirement in 1993. Wanandi makes a particularly vulnerable target right now, just like the ethnic-Chinese shopkeepers in Banyuwangi, Jember, Pasuruan and other Javanese towns who have been accused in recent weeks of hoarding essential goods and artificially hiking prices. The rioting and pillage spread in early February to Donggala in central Sulawesi province. Again, the victims were mainly Indonesian Chinese.
For Fadli, and many other young Muslims, there is no real difference between ethnic-Chinese conglomerates and small shopkeepers. "They will follow what the conglomerates say, both in their political and economic stance," he asserts. For their part, leaders of KISDI and Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia insist darkly that the ethnic-Chinese conglomerates are part of an international conspiracy to drag down the rupiah – never mind that the currency's decline has badly hurt those very conglomerates. They openly question the nationalism of all Indonesian Chinese, although they concede that a few, such as economist Kwik Kian Gie, have proved their loyalty to the nation. However, the Muslim leaders fight shy of taking responsibility for anti-Chinese rioting. In an eerie echo of the military line, they blame that on the "leftist" opposition, which in the words of KISDI's Ahmad Sumargono, "has a manipulative agenda that will bring suffering to the people." He says, though, that he would mobilize a rally to support Habibie if the minister were attacked by a group with a "different ideology," for example, Catholics.
Such talk makes many Indonesians nervous, especially since the felling of Abdurrahman Wahid, the influential Nahdlatul Ulama chairman and a leading voice of tolerant Islam, by a stroke in January. Although his condition has improved steadily, Abdurrahman's re-entry into politics remains uncertain. Some fear his absence will leave the NU exposed to outside forces. Others worry that even the calming presence of people like him cannot stem the racial tension that will escalate along with economic pressures.
Yet many other Indonesians believe Islam can play a positive role at this critical moment in their history. Their feelings were articulated by scholar Moeslim Abdurrahman at a recent seminar. Islam, he said, must act "as a symbol of solidarity for those who suffer, those who feel excluded, and those who feel defeated."