Markus Junianto Sihaloho – A former member of the outlawed Indonesian Islamic State movement claimed on Thursday that the group had links to the co-founder of the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party.
Imam Supriyanto, previously a high-ranking member of the movement known as the NII, said the histories of both the organization and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) could be traced back as far as Hilmi Aminuddin, one of the founders of the PKS.
He said Hilmi's father, Danu Muhammad Hasan, was a military commander for Darul Islam, an ultraconservative group that gave birth to the NII and fought for its implementation in the 1950s and 1960s. Darul Islam shares an ideology and aims to build Islamic governing entities with the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt.
When the military cracked down on DI, Hilmi was sent to Egypt, where he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, Imam said.
"He then brought the Brotherhood's ideas back to Indonesia, established the Tarbiyah movement and carried out an underground campaign," he said. The Tarbiyah movement aims to spread and promote the supremacy of an Islamic state.
"The Brotherhood usually works to consolidate political power through controlling parties and legislatures," he said. "That's how they push for Islamic principles to be imposed by the state."
After the downfall of President Suharto in 1998, Hilmi and several others formed the Justice Party (PK), which in 2004 became the PKS. Hilmi currently serves as chairman of the party's advisory board.
Imam said that while it was normal for the Muslim Brotherhood to set up its own political party, the NII movement in Indonesia had tended to recruit members and supporters from within existing parties.
Yon Machmudi, a political expert from Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic University who has researched the PKS extensively, confirmed the links between Danu and DI, and between Hilmi and the Brotherhood.
Yon said the Tarbiyah movement was active in recruiting members from university campuses. Some of those recruits later went on to form the Indonesian Muslim Students Action Front (Kammi), while others would join the existing Justice Party, which later merged with the Prosperous Party to form the PKS.
However, Yon said that history was not necessarily evidence that the PKS in its current form was linked to the NII, especially since Hilmy and the PKS were known to be staunch opponents of the NII.
Fahri Hamzah, a member of the PKS's national leadership board, denied Hilmi's family ties made the party an NII sympathizer. "The PKS has long stressed that concepts of an Islamic state, a Christian state, a Hindu state and so on are completely outdated," he said.