Hasyim Widhiarto and Rendi Akhmad Witular, Jakarta – Supported by solid constituencies, mainly comprising young and educated Muslims living in urban areas, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) has skyrocketed into one of "the rising stars" of Indonesia's political sphere.
Now the country's fourth-biggest political party, the PKS' roots can be traced back to decades ago, even before it was officially established after the fall of the Soeharto regime in 1998.
In The Justice Party Phenomenon: the 20-year Transformation of Tarbiyah Movement in Indonesia, one of the earliest academic studies that dug deep into the PKS, Ali Said Damanik wrote that the party's embryo could be traced back to the mid 1970s when Muslim activists in major local universities initiated a religious-based student movement whose members were groomed through regular meetings and small group discussions called usrah or halaqah.
It was Imaddudin Abdul Rahim, or Bang Imad, a former student activist and charismatic lecturer of the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), who first introduced the movement to student activists at his campus.
Imad, whose mentor was Muslim politician Mohammad Natsir, initially organized a training program dubbed Latihan Mujahid Dakwah (LMD), which taught participants how to understand Islam as an integrated "way of life", and how to apply it in all activities, including politics.
Imad's efforts were also partly aimed at confronting the rising "secularization" campaign led by his fellow faculty member the late Nurcholish Madjid, who promoted the idea of separating Islam from politics.
After receiving a significant number of responses, Imad, who had a vast network of local and international Muslim student activists, developed the training material and delivered it to students separated into small separate groups consisting of between five and 20 students.
Imad's success story escalated among Muslim activists across the archipelago. By the early 1980s, Imad's teaching method had been adopted by activists in many state universities, including University of Indonesia (UI) in Depok, West Java, the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) and Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University.
Following the government repression of student movements after the 1974 student riots, many activists saw such small religious discussion groups as the only way to preserve and disseminate their critical view of the Soeharto regime.
Many experts believed such methods of recruitment and membership exclusivity were similar to the Muslim Brotherhood movement, known also as the Ikhwanul Muslimin (IM) Tarbiyah (education) movement, in Egypt.
IM was founded in 1928 by hard-line Islamic scholar Hassan al-Banna, who advocated a non-violent approach through politics in order to reclaim Islam's manifest destiny; an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia.
IM is a key underground organization that contributed recently to the downfall of the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt.
In his book, Ali Said predicted that the IM had had a major influence on Indonesia's movements during the mid 1980s after many Middle East-educated clerics and scholars, including Abu Ridha and Rahman Zainuddin (both later become noted PKS figures) translated books written by Al Banna and other IM leaders such as Sa'id Hawwa and Sayyid Qutb into Indonesian.
Equipped already with a solid network of followers, it was time for the Tarbiyah activists to decide the future of their underground movement after the fall of Soeharto.
Dozens of prominent Tarbiyah activists held a discussion in Bogor, West Java, to discuss about the possibility of legalizing their movement into an organization.
"The activists were divided into two teams that discussed the possibility of transforming the movement into either a political party or a social organization," Igo Ilham, one of the PKS' founders, said. "We finally concluded that establishing a political party would be much more efficient for our movement."
In order to measure the response of other activists, a small committee organized a poll involving 5,800 listed activists living throughout the country and overseas.
About 68 percent of the respondents agreed to the establishment of a political party and 27 percent chose a social organization and the remaining 5 percent insisted that the movement remain below the radar.
On Aug. 9, 1998, the activists officially established the Justice Party (PK) as announced at the Al Azhar mosque in South Jakarta.
The party's declaration of its establishment was signed by 52 activists, including Hidayat Nur Wahid (who would later become speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly between 2004 and 2009), Ahmad Heryawan (now West Java governor), Nur Mahmudi Ismail (now Depok mayor), Suharna Surapranata (now Research and Technology Minister), Salim Segaf Al Jufri (now Social Minister), and Fahri Hamzah (now PKS lawmaker).
Rahmat Abdullah, a charismatic cleric, was appointed as the chairman of PK's Majelis Syuro (consultative body with the highest authority), while Nur Mahmudi, a young and energetic lecturer, who had earned his PhD degree in food and technology from Texas A&M University, took the helm as the party's first president.
Syamsul Balda, one of the party's founders, said the PK wanted to make young and educated Muslims the party's key figures to attract voters.
"We first offered the position [of party president] to Amien Rais as the icon of the reform movement, but he refused it, saying he would need a much bigger [political] outfit than the PK."
Nurmahmudi, then 37 years old, was considered a neutral option for the public as he had studied in a Western country.
Aside the 52 "official founders", the establishment of the party also involved other key figures, including former intelligence officer Suripto and cleric Hilmi Aminuddin, now the party's chief patron, who helped provide "strategic consultation" pertaining to the party's formation.
The year after its establishment, the PK successfully gained 1.3 percent of votes and secured seven seats in the House of Representatives. Instead of joining other smaller, Islam-based parties to form a faction coalition, the PK chose to accept an offer from the National Mandate Party (PAN), which had secured 34 seats, to form the Reform Faction.
"At that time, we didn't have much experience in politics. Cooperating with PAN would allow us to learn many things," PKS former president Hidayat Nur Wahid once said.
Having failed to pass the 2 percent electoral threshold, the PK changed its name to the Prosperous and Justice Party (PKS) before registering for the 2004 general elections.