Can an Indonesian Model Work in the Middle East?

[Indos]

Can an Indonesian Model Work in the Middle East?
by Paul J. Carnegie
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2013, pp. 59-67

Since the downfall of long reigning President Suharto in May 1998, Indonesia has successfully, if not always without difficulty, transitioned from authoritarian rule to a functioning democracy. Earlier concerns over Islamist ascendancy have proved largely unfounded, and a diversity of Islamic political expression is accommodated within the framework of democratic electoral politics.[1] How was this development possible in the world's most populous Muslim country, and can it serve as a template for the ongoing transitions in the Middle East?

Islam, Nationalism, and the Indonesian Republic
The Indonesian archipelago has a rich history of taking outside influences (especially religious ones) and adapting them to complement existing social structures, traditions, and belief systems. The first major encounters with Islam date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the religion arrived peacefully via trading merchants from Persia and India. Spreading gradually to Sumatra, Java, and beyond over the centuries, Islamic practice including Sufi traditions amalgamated with indigenous custom and became part and parcel of many of the archipelago's different cultural identities.

The largely secular-nationalist minded President Sukarno succeeded in marginalizing political Islam. His successor, Suharto (in fatigues), led an anticommunist purge, which had the unin-tended consequence of prompting the vast majority of Indonesians to identify as Muslims to escape the communist dragnet.

This gradual syncretic adoption is reflected in predominantly tolerant and diverse forms of religious expression across Indonesia. For instance, on Java there is a distinct difference, in terms of religiosity, between two major Islamic strands: Many nominal Javanese Muslims (abangan) identify with an indigenized syncretic form of practice, Agami Jawi, while other Javanese identify as Santri, practicing a stricter but still moderate form of Islam.[2] Outside Java, believers in places like Aceh in northern Sumatra, parts of the Moluccas, and in central Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes) observe a stricter practice while, on the other hand, some Sasak on the island of Lombok still adhere to an Islamic animist-ancestral amalgam known as Islam Wetu Telu. In fact, one could say that in the majority of cases, a dynamic and tolerant equilibrium exists between the archipelago's overlapping strands of national, religious, and cultural identification. Indonesians share a strong sense of national, political identity forged from a common history of anticolonial struggles, shared national language (bahasa Indonesia), and state-sponsored education. The size of Indonesia's two major socio-religious organizations also gives one an appreciation of the influence of Islam in daily life. Both organizations boast many devout followers. The traditionalist Sunni Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, Awakening of Ulama) has about 30-35 million members and formed in 1926 in reaction to the reformist Muhammadiyah (Followers of Muhammad). Its raison d'être is to spread and retain conservative Islamic teachings and practices through a large network of religious boarding schools. The reformist Muhammadiyah numbers approximately 29 million. Established in 1912, it focuses on social and educational activities through a promotion of ijtihad (individual interpretation of the Qur'an and sunna) rather than the uncritical acceptance (taqlid) of orthodox interpretations of tradition by ulama.[3]

At the same time, the modern Indonesian state has not always had an easy relationship with the polity's cultural-religious identification. Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands in August 1945, but in the months leading up to it, a lively constitutional debate took place centering in part on the emerging pancasila (five principles) ideology of Sukarno, Indonesia's first president. Enshrined in article 29, section 1 of the 1945 constitution, the five principles are belief in one God, national unity, humanitarianism, consensus democracy, and social justice. Originally, the first principle also contained the words "with an obligation for Muslims to implement Islamic law," but this was soon dropped by the largely secular-nationalist minded Sukarno. This left many stricter Muslims, particularly from outside Java, with the sense that the finalized constitution marginalized Islam.

Sukarno and his nationalist allies soon successfully weakened and splintered the Islamic political party, Masjumi (an acronym for the Council of Indonesian Muslim Associations) in an attempt to reduce its political appeal. By 1958, opposition to Sukarno's increasingly authoritarian "guided democracy" led to open rebellion under the aegis of the short-lived Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia. After the military crushed the rebellion, Sukarno jailed many of Masjumi's leaders for their involvement and eventually outlawed the party. Erstwhile Islamic militias such as Darul Islam and Tentara Islam Indonesia, which had participated in the war of independence against the Dutch, met with similar fates. Sensing the threat they posed to his nationalist project, Sukarno banned both, and by the 1960s, they had fallen into disarray after suffering sustained attack from the Indonesian armed forces.

In 1965, a failed coup ignited a bloody power struggle in which the army purged the country of President Sukarno's communist allies and installed Gen. Suharto as head of state. With the rise of Suharto, failure to profess a recognized religion meant potential persecution as a communist, a fate the majority of Indonesians were eager to avoid as it is estimated that between 500,000-1,000,000 alleged communist sympathizers died in a brutal slaughter between 1965 and 1966.[4] It thus comes as little surprise that between 85 to 90 percent of the Indonesian population carry identification cards identifying themselves as Muslim. Keen to stymie any challenges to his authority, Suharto also refused Masjumi a return to politics, and with his 1971 overhaul of the electoral system, he effectively de-Islamized Indonesia's state-level political structure. The major Islamic organizations were forced to align themselves under the banner of a regime co-opted political party, the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan).

Nevertheless, Suharto was only partially successful in subsuming society's Islamic identification to the diktats of his "New Order" ideology. In effect, his marginalization of political Islam merely precipitated a greater role on its part in fostering civil society activity. Rather than directly challenge the authorities for political power, moderate reformists such as Dawan Rahardjo, Djohan Effendi, and Nurcholish Madjid focused on building a strong and dynamic Islamic community based on education and social welfare. Their ideas on Islamic social and educational renewal emerged in close association with the Islamic Students Association (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam), which appealed to a younger generation of well-educated, urban, middle-class Indonesians who were enjoying some of the benefits of New Order economic development.

Democratic Transition and Political Islam
By the 1990s, Suharto himself began to encourage the restoration of Islamic issues onto the political agenda. Eager to court Islamic support as a counter to growing pro-democracy sentiment and rumbling military dissent, it became politically advantageous for Suharto to tolerate Islamic political activism. He promoted pro-Islamic officers in the army and supported the Association of Muslim Intellectuals (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia) made up largely of professionals, scientists, economists, educators, scholars, and regime supporters.[5]

The strategy eventually backfired in the wake of the devastating Asian financial crisis of 1997. The Indonesian rupiah went into free fall against world currencies, and the banking sector collapsed under a mountain of bad loans. The prices of oil, gas, and other commodity exports plummeted as per capita gross domestic product fell by 13 percent. The crisis was exacerbated by Indonesia's worst drought in fifty years. As inflation soared, food prices rose, and ensuing shortages led to widespread rioting. By the following year, Suharto's grip on power had loosened in the face of the economic meltdown and pressure from the reformasi movement, the broad movement to bring down Suharto's New Order.

Prominent Islamic leaders such as Abdurrahman Wahid, president in 1999-2001, Amien Rais, leader of Muhammadiyah, and Nurcholish Madjid along with their associated organizations played major populist roles in Suharto's eventual downfall and its aftermath by helping to disseminate democratic values throughout society via voter education and election monitoring.[6] Their links to Muslim activists on the frontlines of student protests and rallies against the president exemplified the compatibility of Islam with democracy, political rights, and justice. Underscoring moderation and support for Sukarno's five principles was crucially important during the turmoil and prevented calls for the creation of an Islamic state from gaining any traction. Appeals to Indonesians' sense of tolerance and national pride took precedence.

Suharto tried to deflect public anger by blaming Sino-Indonesians and global financial institutions for the crisis, but tensions within the military weakened his hold on power. Factional splits that had developed in the 1980s between "red and white" (secular nationalist) and "green" (Islamic) groups increased, and some began questioning Suharto's authority. In this turbulent economic and political climate, factions within the green military began shifting their support to the Indonesian Council for Islamic Da'wa (Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia) and the Indonesian Committee for Solidarity of the Islamic World (Komite Indonesia Untuk Solidaritas dengan Dunia Islam), both of which received substantial funding and donations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Eventually, key factions of the military simply abandoned the president. He had become too much of a liability.

Islamic Political Parties
Upon Suharto's departure, pressure mounted on Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of the NU, to run for office. Wahid was wary of NU's return to politics as potentially damaging to its social mission but was eventually persuaded to head the newly-formed National Awakening Party (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa), which combined Islam with the nationalist pancasila ideology. Notwithstanding NU's long-time championship of an Islamic-oriented Indonesia and Wahid's personal stature, neither it nor any of the welter of Islamic parties and groups that sprang up in the post-Suharto environment could achieve a parliamentary majority. By late 1998, the prospect of a single Islamic political voice emerging looked highly unlikely. Although forty out of eighty political parties were, to varying degrees, Islamic-oriented, this number decreased by election time in 1999 to twenty eligible groups.[7]

The outcome of this proliferation of parties was ultimately unsatisfying for all contenders. Megawati Sukarnoputri (Sukarno's daughter) led the secular-nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia-Perjuangan) to 37.4 percent of the vote (153 seats in parliament) while Wahid's National Awakening Party only garnered 12.6 percent of the vote for 51 seats. Despite this, behind-the-scenes jockeying for power and horse-trading maneuvers by Islamic groups produced a coalition that backed Wahid for the presidency.

Wahid, however, was simply unable to hold together a broad coalition of competing interests. Notwithstanding the increased Islamic influence that led to his elevation, the confusion that reigned during Wahid's presidency (and his eventual impeachment in mid-2001) indicated a process still very much in transition. But rather than impeachment signaling a return to authoritarian ways, it became the first big test of Indonesia's new democratic credentials. Parliament followed constitutional protocol by replacing Wahid with then-vice-president Megawati Sukarnoputri, who went on to complete the remainder of Wahid's five-year presidential term. Ironically, the Islamic groups who had pushed so hard for Wahid to serve were now left with the unpalatable option of the secularist Megawati as the next constitutionally mandated president. They duly accepted the appointment, nonetheless.

Political machinations aside, developments in the post-Suharto party system introduced political players with stricter forms of Muslim identity politics capable of appealing to major Muslim constituencies. Islamic-oriented political parties appeal to sections of more conservative-minded, urban middle classes with an interest in promoting social decency, political moderation, and piety based on Islam as an ethical reference. The moral concerns of these constituencies combined with feelings of uncertainty toward social change in the face of rapid development have no doubt helped bolster the appeal.

Yet, while the number of Islamic parties is more prevalent than at any time in Indonesia's past, most of their involvement is of a moderate kind and very far from being associated with the institution of an Islamist theocracy. Moreover, the results of the 1999 election indicated clearly that Indonesians en masse favored a democratic polity over an Islamic state, giving the secularist-nationalist parties of the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle and the Golkar party 58.3 percent of the vote while the various Islamic parties amassed less than 42 percent.[8] True, the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera or PKS), whose leaders claim it does not seek to impose Shari'a (despite links to the Muslim Brotherhood), increased its vote from 1.5 percent in 1999 to 7.45 percent in 2004.[9] But this success was largely a result of its image as a relatively new and untainted party, as well as the stagnation and subsequent unraveling of Megawati's tenure. The PKS leadership skillfully exploited the situation to cast itself as a "clean" Islamic party committed to an anti-corruption platform, rather than to the imposition of Shari'a rule. Although the public's perception of it has tarnished somewhat over the years, especially recently, it marginally increased its share in the People's Representative Council (the Indonesian version of the House of Representatives) in the 2009 elections to almost 8 percent but made less significant inroads in many of the regions.

Most significantly, the PKS and other Islamic-oriented groups represent only 169 out of 560 seats in parliament—a mere 30 percent. The stunning electoral triumph of the secular-nationalist Democratic Party (Partai Demokrat) in 2009 with 148 seats alongside the more established Golkar and Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle groups (106 and 94 seats respectively) indicates that Islam does not necessarily trump other interests or issues in Indonesia. Still, there is a growing concern that not enough is being done to combat radicalism, intolerance, and increasing intimidation of local religious minorities by hard-line Islamist vigilantes such as Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front).[10]

Lessons to Learn
The Indonesian experience shows that countries do not emerge in a straightforward transition from authoritarian rule to multiparty democracy overnight: The challenges of transition are multiple. Success depends on translating momentum for change into meaningful reform and improvements over a sustained period of time. This involves redressing past injustices, economic stabilization, popular legitimization, judicial reform, diffusion of democratic values, marginalization of anti-system actors, ensuring greater civilian rule over the military, party system development, and the routinization of politics.[11] What also needs to be recognized is that democratization is not the same as democracy; one is a process, the other a political system. Democracy can become the "only game in town" if and when change occurs incrementally on the behavioral, attitudinal, and constitutional levels.[12]

Indonesia's transformation, in common with other democratizations, has been anything but easy.[13] There continue to be corruption issues, ongoing policy ineffectiveness, judicial problems, institutional frictions, and personality politics but what is clear is that there has been substantive reform. The political system is now a functioning democracy with all its benefits and shortcomings. Reviewing the steps taken to get there may help in producing applicable measures for steering the turbulent Middle Eastern societies toward a more democratic future.

To begin with, there is the need to organize free and fair elections though elections in themselves can hardly be expected to channel contests peacefully among political rivals or accord public legitimacy. There also has to be corresponding[14] Current president Yudhoyono may be ex-military, but he is unconditionally committed to, and readily submits his interests to, the new rules of the game—something that new Middle Eastern leaders have yet to learn.

Conclusions
The recent Islamist electoral successes in Tunisia and Egypt suggest a different political dynamic than Indonesia. Yet the tenor of the uprisings, at least in their initial phases, as well as subsequent reactions to authoritarian behavior by elected Islamist officials, indicate that a substantial number of people in these countries, as in Indonesia, will expect parties to respect the rule of law and address their countries' economic and corruption problems. As evidenced by the public backlash to Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi's recent power grab and the assassination of Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaïd, attempts at a coercive institutionalization of Islamist theocracy may well be met with continued protests and uprisings.

The real issue for the Middle East is not whether it will be secular or Islamic. In many ways, this is a false dichotomy and a distraction from much greater concerns. What one is witnessing in the region is a simultaneous convergence of multiple social, economic, and political vectors bringing things into sharp relief. Looking at the conditions in these countries, there were clear indications that storms were brewing. Despite the substantial wealth that narrow self-serving elites enjoyed (some of which trickled down to the middle classes), economic stagnation was rife; combined with rising prices for basic foodstuffs and high unemployment among educated, tech-savvy but disenfranchised youth this created an extremely volatile mix. What the people of the region now have to do is find ways to strike a different social contract by translating the popular momentum for greater political freedoms, effective rule of law, and better living conditions that brought down their autocrats into representative capacity. And if the Indonesian example teaches anything, it is that moderate Islam and democratic development are not incompatible bedfellows.

Paul J. Carnegie is senior lecturer in political economy at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He is the author of The Road from Authoritarianism to Democratization in Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and taught previously in both Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

[1] See, for example, Thomas Carothers, "Egypt and Indonesia," The New Republic, Feb. 2, 2011; Jay Solomon, "In Indonesia, a model for Egypt's transition," The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12, 2011.
[2] Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1960), pp. 121-31.
[3] Fauzan Saleh, Modern Trends in Islamic Theological Discourse in 20th Century Indonesia: A Critical Survey (Leiden: Brill 2001), pp. 17-29.
[4] Robert Cribb, ed., The Indonesian Killings of 1965–1966: Studies from Java and Bali (Clayton: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990), p. 12; idem, "Genocide in Indonesia, 1965-1966," Journal of Genocide Research, June 3, 2001, pp. 219-39.
[5] Suzaina Kadir, "The Islamic factor in Indonesia's political transition," Asian Journal of Political Science, 2 (1999), pp. 21-44.
[6] Mohammad Fajrul Falaakh, "Islam and the Current Transition to Democracy in Indonesia," in Arief Budiman, Barbara Hatley, and Damien Kingsbury, eds., Reformasi: Crisis and Change in Indonesia (Clayton: Monash Asia Institute 1999), pp. 201-12; Robert Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 189-200.
[7] Ken Young, "The national picture: A victory for reform?" in Susan Blackburn, ed. Pemilu: The 1999 Indonesian Election (Melbourne: Monash Asia Institute, 1999), pp. 3-11.
[8] Komisi Pemilihan Umum, "Indonesian elections with figures and facts 1955-1999," General Elections Commission, Jakarta, 2000.
[9] Sadanand Dhume, "Indonesian Democracy's Enemy Within," Yale Global, Dec. 1, 2005.
[10] See, for example, "Indonesia: 'Christianization' and Intolerance," Asia Briefing, no. 114, International Crisis Group, Jakarta/Brussels, Nov. 24, 2010, p. 17; "Religion's Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia," Human Rights Watch, New York, 2013, pp. 60-6, 71-86.
[11] Andreas Schedler, "What Is Democratic Consolidation?" Journal of Democracy,Apr. 1998, pp. 91-107.
[12] Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-communist Europe(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 5-14.
[13] Paige Johnson Tan, "Indonesia Seven Years after Soeharto: Party System Institutionalization in a New Democracy," Contemporary Southeast Asia, 1 (2006), pp. 88-114; Douglas Webber, "A Consolidated Patrimonial Democracy? Democratization in Post-Suharto Indonesia," Democratization, 3 (2006), pp. 396-420; Marcus Mietzner and Edward Aspinall, "Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia: An Overview," in Edward Aspinall and Marcus Mietzner, eds., Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia: Elections, Institutions and Society (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2010), pp. 1-20.
[14] Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 26.

https://www.meforum.org/3570/indonesian-model

@Al Watan Al Arabi @Falcon29 @Khafee @katarabhumi @pr1v4t33r @AUz

 

[BHarwana]

I just have one question here. Is middle East really in some kind of a problem?

If middle East is in problem then what is the problem? Is it faliure of any kind of govt model? Or something else?

For example let's take UAE. The country is doing fine and is in good condition and thriving. Qatar it is also doing fine and thriving. Saudi Arabia is filthy rich. Kuwait has the words most expensive currency.

So where is the problem in middle East. If Islam is problem why are these countries successful? So the question again arises what is the problem because suggesting a solution to a problem with out identifying the problem is never fruitful. If model is the problem then why are Saudis thriving. Please don't reply me because Saudis have oil. Because Venezuela has more oil and it is in problem.

The problem is not govt model in middle East. No matter what ever model of govt you bring be it Indonesian or japanies or Chinese or Russian or European the problem of middle East cannot be solved. As govt model is not the problem of middle east.

Middle East has a different problem and to solve that problem the best model is Vietnamese model. The way Vietnam threw USA out solved their problem.
Look at Libya the most thriving country of north Africa and today it has a problem and huge problem and that problem is not the govt model of Gaddafi but that problem is France who destroyed the country.

The problem of middle east is that when a student in Europe goes to school his tution fee is being paid by a student in middle East. European countries are ripping of resources from middle East to make life of the people living in middle East hell but on the other hand providing quality life to their own citizens. This is the actual problem of middle east and them they come blaming the govt models of middle east. Now in Libya the whole country is unable to run but European comapnies are able to drill oil and take it back to Europe. Middle east cannot run lol but oil fields in middle East can run. Is this a joke? If a country is failing it's oil extraction should also fail but oil extraction under western countries contracts never fail no matter if every citizen of that country is dead.

 

[Indos]

I just have one question here. Is middle East really in some kind of a problem?

If middle East is in problem then what is the problem? Is it faliure of any kind of govt model? Or something else?

For example let's take UAE. The country is doing fine and is in good condition and thriving. Qatar it is also doing fine and thriving. Saudi Arabia is filthy rich. Kuwait has the words most expensive currency.

So where is the problem in middle East. If Islam is problem why are these countries successful? So the question again arises what is the problem because suggesting a solution to a problem with out identifying the problem is never fruitful. If model is the problem then why are Saudis thriving. Please don't reply me because Saudis have oil. Because Venezuela has more oil and it is in problem.

The problem is not govt model in middle East. No matter what ever model of govt you bring be it Indonesian or japanies or Chinese or Russian or European the problem of middle East cannot be solved. As govt model is not the problem of middle east.

Middle East has a different problem and to solve that problem the best model is Vietnamese model. The way Vietnam threw USA out solved their problem.
Look at Libya the most thriving country of north Africa and today it has a problem and huge problem and that problem is not the govt model of Gaddafi but that problem is France who destroyed the country.

The problem of middle east is that when a student in Europe goes to school his tution fee is being paid by a student in middle East. European countries are ripping of resources from middle East to make life of the people living in middle East hell but on the other hand providing quality life to their own citizens. This is the actual problem of middle east and them they come blaming the govt models of middle east. Now in Libya the whole country is unable to run but European comapnies are able to drill oil and take it back to Europe. Middle east cannot run lol but oil fields in middle East can run. Is this a joke? If a country is failing it's oil extraction should also fail but oil extraction under western countries contracts never fail no matter if every citizen of that country is dead.

The problem lies in the fact that some of the nations there are still ruled by an authoritarian regime and on the other side the people start wanting democracy and more freedom of expression. It is true when we see what happen in Syria, Libya, Yaman, Egypt, Tunisia (success), and now happening in Algeria and Sudan. On the other hand, Monarchy countries like Saudi, Qatar, Uni Emirate Arab are fine as the people there seems to be content and happy under their ruler while condition is a bit different in Bahrain maybe due to the ruler are Sunni and people in majority are Shiah.

There are many model indeed in the Muslim world like Turkish model, Iranian model, Pakistani model, Bangladeshi model, Indonesian model, Tunisian model and others but this thread want to focus on Indonesian model but you still can discuss other model here if you want to.

Actually from what I think the factor that make Arab spring is not success is the ruling elite there is still not sure with democracy. Their confident on democracy is not high, it can be seen from there are still many support given to Gaddafy and Bashar Al Assad from their ministers even though their country are about to have a civil war. On contrary, in Indonesia many ministers under Soeharto are resigned after 1998 May riots happens. The urge to change the course of the republic are felt by all ruling elite, including elite in military. Unlike in Egypt, Indonesian military generals see democracy as something that cannot be avoided and necessary to make Indonesia move forward. All elite from Nationalist and Islamist are united under democracy system and respect who ever won the election, on the other hand military obey civilian rule and go to barracks.

The urge to have their nation move forward under democracy should also be felt in Yemen and Libya where they still have chance to fix all the mistake they have made. Solving dispute and differences by military means are primitive and bad for nation building. Their ruling elite must understand this. And just like many countries in Middle East, Indonesia have experience living under strong persons for along time but is able to break up from it and now living under democracy where difference and dispute are solved by discussion and election. Economic development is also accelerating during democracy while unity among tribes and different ethnics are also strengthen.

 

[sammuel]

The problem of middle east is that when a student in Europe goes to school his tution fee is being paid by a student in middle East. European countries are ripping of resources from middle East to make life of the people living in middle East hell but on the other hand providing quality life to their own citizens.

That is the problem of the middle east ? that students that go to Europe need to pay tuition fee ?

That is the problem of the muddle east ? that European countries provide quality life to their own citizens ?

And those are the major problems you see ?

So there are no issues of : dictatorship ? Separation if state and religion ? human rights ? woman discrimination ? poverty ?

Maybe it is time to assume responsibility rather than throw the blame on others ...


~

 

[Mamadouso]

I just have one question here. Is middle East really in some kind of a problem?

If middle East is in problem then what is the problem? Is it faliure of any kind of govt model? Or something else?

For example let's take UAE. The country is doing fine and is in good condition and thriving. Qatar it is also doing fine and thriving. Saudi Arabia is filthy rich. Kuwait has the words most expensive currency.

So where is the problem in middle East. If Islam is problem why are these countries successful? So the question again arises what is the problem because suggesting a solution to a problem with out identifying the problem is never fruitful. If model is the problem then why are Saudis thriving. Please don't reply me because Saudis have oil. Because Venezuela has more oil and it is in problem.

The problem is not govt model in middle East. No matter what ever model of govt you bring be it Indonesian or japanies or Chinese or Russian or European the problem of middle East cannot be solved. As govt model is not the problem of middle east.

Middle East has a different problem and to solve that problem the best model is Vietnamese model. The way Vietnam threw USA out solved their problem.
Look at Libya the most thriving country of north Africa and today it has a problem and huge problem and that problem is not the govt model of Gaddafi but that problem is France who destroyed the country.

The problem of middle east is that when a student in Europe goes to school his tution fee is being paid by a student in middle East. European countries are ripping of resources from middle East to make life of the people living in middle East hell but on the other hand providing quality life to their own citizens. This is the actual problem of middle east and them they come blaming the govt models of middle east. Now in Libya the whole country is unable to run but European comapnies are able to drill oil and take it back to Europe. Middle east cannot run lol but oil fields in middle East can run. Is this a joke? If a country is failing it's oil extraction should also fail but oil extraction under western countries contracts never fail no matter if every citizen of that country is dead.

The issue in the Middle East I believe are the problems with original borders that were drawn by France & Britain.

‘Middle East still rocking from first world war pacts made 100 years ago’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/o...from-first-world-war-pacts-made-100-years-ago

The idea that it is a problem with Islam is something that the voices in the West have been using as an attempt to divide and rule, a united Arab world would be a disaster for them.

Can an Indonesian Model Work in the Middle East?
by Paul J. Carnegie
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2013, pp. 59-67

Since the downfall of long reigning President Suharto in May 1998, Indonesia has successfully, if not always without difficulty, transitioned from authoritarian rule to a functioning democracy. Earlier concerns over Islamist ascendancy have proved largely unfounded, and a diversity of Islamic political expression is accommodated within the framework of democratic electoral politics.[1] How was this development possible in the world's most populous Muslim country, and can it serve as a template for the ongoing transitions in the Middle East?

Islam, Nationalism, and the Indonesian Republic
The Indonesian archipelago has a rich history of taking outside influences (especially religious ones) and adapting them to complement existing social structures, traditions, and belief systems. The first major encounters with Islam date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the religion arrived peacefully via trading merchants from Persia and India. Spreading gradually to Sumatra, Java, and beyond over the centuries, Islamic practice including Sufi traditions amalgamated with indigenous custom and became part and parcel of many of the archipelago's different cultural identities.

The largely secular-nationalist minded President Sukarno succeeded in marginalizing political Islam. His successor, Suharto (in fatigues), led an anticommunist purge, which had the unin-tended consequence of prompting the vast majority of Indonesians to identify as Muslims to escape the communist dragnet.

This gradual syncretic adoption is reflected in predominantly tolerant and diverse forms of religious expression across Indonesia. For instance, on Java there is a distinct difference, in terms of religiosity, between two major Islamic strands: Many nominal Javanese Muslims (abangan) identify with an indigenized syncretic form of practice, Agami Jawi, while other Javanese identify as Santri, practicing a stricter but still moderate form of Islam.[2] Outside Java, believers in places like Aceh in northern Sumatra, parts of the Moluccas, and in central Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes) observe a stricter practice while, on the other hand, some Sasak on the island of Lombok still adhere to an Islamic animist-ancestral amalgam known as Islam Wetu Telu. In fact, one could say that in the majority of cases, a dynamic and tolerant equilibrium exists between the archipelago's overlapping strands of national, religious, and cultural identification. Indonesians share a strong sense of national, political identity forged from a common history of anticolonial struggles, shared national language (bahasa Indonesia), and state-sponsored education. The size of Indonesia's two major socio-religious organizations also gives one an appreciation of the influence of Islam in daily life. Both organizations boast many devout followers. The traditionalist Sunni Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, Awakening of Ulama) has about 30-35 million members and formed in 1926 in reaction to the reformist Muhammadiyah (Followers of Muhammad). Its raison d'être is to spread and retain conservative Islamic teachings and practices through a large network of religious boarding schools. The reformist Muhammadiyah numbers approximately 29 million. Established in 1912, it focuses on social and educational activities through a promotion of ijtihad (individual interpretation of the Qur'an and sunna) rather than the uncritical acceptance (taqlid) of orthodox interpretations of tradition by ulama.[3]

At the same time, the modern Indonesian state has not always had an easy relationship with the polity's cultural-religious identification. Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands in August 1945, but in the months leading up to it, a lively constitutional debate took place centering in part on the emerging pancasila (five principles) ideology of Sukarno, Indonesia's first president. Enshrined in article 29, section 1 of the 1945 constitution, the five principles are belief in one God, national unity, humanitarianism, consensus democracy, and social justice. Originally, the first principle also contained the words "with an obligation for Muslims to implement Islamic law," but this was soon dropped by the largely secular-nationalist minded Sukarno. This left many stricter Muslims, particularly from outside Java, with the sense that the finalized constitution marginalized Islam.

Sukarno and his nationalist allies soon successfully weakened and splintered the Islamic political party, Masjumi (an acronym for the Council of Indonesian Muslim Associations) in an attempt to reduce its political appeal. By 1958, opposition to Sukarno's increasingly authoritarian "guided democracy" led to open rebellion under the aegis of the short-lived Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia. After the military crushed the rebellion, Sukarno jailed many of Masjumi's leaders for their involvement and eventually outlawed the party. Erstwhile Islamic militias such as Darul Islam and Tentara Islam Indonesia, which had participated in the war of independence against the Dutch, met with similar fates. Sensing the threat they posed to his nationalist project, Sukarno banned both, and by the 1960s, they had fallen into disarray after suffering sustained attack from the Indonesian armed forces.

In 1965, a failed coup ignited a bloody power struggle in which the army purged the country of President Sukarno's communist allies and installed Gen. Suharto as head of state. With the rise of Suharto, failure to profess a recognized religion meant potential persecution as a communist, a fate the majority of Indonesians were eager to avoid as it is estimated that between 500,000-1,000,000 alleged communist sympathizers died in a brutal slaughter between 1965 and 1966.[4] It thus comes as little surprise that between 85 to 90 percent of the Indonesian population carry identification cards identifying themselves as Muslim. Keen to stymie any challenges to his authority, Suharto also refused Masjumi a return to politics, and with his 1971 overhaul of the electoral system, he effectively de-Islamized Indonesia's state-level political structure. The major Islamic organizations were forced to align themselves under the banner of a regime co-opted political party, the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan).

Nevertheless, Suharto was only partially successful in subsuming society's Islamic identification to the diktats of his "New Order" ideology. In effect, his marginalization of political Islam merely precipitated a greater role on its part in fostering civil society activity. Rather than directly challenge the authorities for political power, moderate reformists such as Dawan Rahardjo, Djohan Effendi, and Nurcholish Madjid focused on building a strong and dynamic Islamic community based on education and social welfare. Their ideas on Islamic social and educational renewal emerged in close association with the Islamic Students Association (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam), which appealed to a younger generation of well-educated, urban, middle-class Indonesians who were enjoying some of the benefits of New Order economic development.

Democratic Transition and Political Islam
By the 1990s, Suharto himself began to encourage the restoration of Islamic issues onto the political agenda. Eager to court Islamic support as a counter to growing pro-democracy sentiment and rumbling military dissent, it became politically advantageous for Suharto to tolerate Islamic political activism. He promoted pro-Islamic officers in the army and supported the Association of Muslim Intellectuals (Ikatan Cendekiawan Muslim Indonesia) made up largely of professionals, scientists, economists, educators, scholars, and regime supporters.[5]

The strategy eventually backfired in the wake of the devastating Asian financial crisis of 1997. The Indonesian rupiah went into free fall against world currencies, and the banking sector collapsed under a mountain of bad loans. The prices of oil, gas, and other commodity exports plummeted as per capita gross domestic product fell by 13 percent. The crisis was exacerbated by Indonesia's worst drought in fifty years. As inflation soared, food prices rose, and ensuing shortages led to widespread rioting. By the following year, Suharto's grip on power had loosened in the face of the economic meltdown and pressure from the reformasi movement, the broad movement to bring down Suharto's New Order.

Prominent Islamic leaders such as Abdurrahman Wahid, president in 1999-2001, Amien Rais, leader of Muhammadiyah, and Nurcholish Madjid along with their associated organizations played major populist roles in Suharto's eventual downfall and its aftermath by helping to disseminate democratic values throughout society via voter education and election monitoring.[6] Their links to Muslim activists on the frontlines of student protests and rallies against the president exemplified the compatibility of Islam with democracy, political rights, and justice. Underscoring moderation and support for Sukarno's five principles was crucially important during the turmoil and prevented calls for the creation of an Islamic state from gaining any traction. Appeals to Indonesians' sense of tolerance and national pride took precedence.

Suharto tried to deflect public anger by blaming Sino-Indonesians and global financial institutions for the crisis, but tensions within the military weakened his hold on power. Factional splits that had developed in the 1980s between "red and white" (secular nationalist) and "green" (Islamic) groups increased, and some began questioning Suharto's authority. In this turbulent economic and political climate, factions within the green military began shifting their support to the Indonesian Council for Islamic Da'wa (Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia) and the Indonesian Committee for Solidarity of the Islamic World (Komite Indonesia Untuk Solidaritas dengan Dunia Islam), both of which received substantial funding and donations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Eventually, key factions of the military simply abandoned the president. He had become too much of a liability.

Islamic Political Parties
Upon Suharto's departure, pressure mounted on Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of the NU, to run for office. Wahid was wary of NU's return to politics as potentially damaging to its social mission but was eventually persuaded to head the newly-formed National Awakening Party (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa), which combined Islam with the nationalist pancasila ideology. Notwithstanding NU's long-time championship of an Islamic-oriented Indonesia and Wahid's personal stature, neither it nor any of the welter of Islamic parties and groups that sprang up in the post-Suharto environment could achieve a parliamentary majority. By late 1998, the prospect of a single Islamic political voice emerging looked highly unlikely. Although forty out of eighty political parties were, to varying degrees, Islamic-oriented, this number decreased by election time in 1999 to twenty eligible groups.[7]

The outcome of this proliferation of parties was ultimately unsatisfying for all contenders. Megawati Sukarnoputri (Sukarno's daughter) led the secular-nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia-Perjuangan) to 37.4 percent of the vote (153 seats in parliament) while Wahid's National Awakening Party only garnered 12.6 percent of the vote for 51 seats. Despite this, behind-the-scenes jockeying for power and horse-trading maneuvers by Islamic groups produced a coalition that backed Wahid for the presidency.

Wahid, however, was simply unable to hold together a broad coalition of competing interests. Notwithstanding the increased Islamic influence that led to his elevation, the confusion that reigned during Wahid's presidency (and his eventual impeachment in mid-2001) indicated a process still very much in transition. But rather than impeachment signaling a return to authoritarian ways, it became the first big test of Indonesia's new democratic credentials. Parliament followed constitutional protocol by replacing Wahid with then-vice-president Megawati Sukarnoputri, who went on to complete the remainder of Wahid's five-year presidential term. Ironically, the Islamic groups who had pushed so hard for Wahid to serve were now left with the unpalatable option of the secularist Megawati as the next constitutionally mandated president. They duly accepted the appointment, nonetheless.

Political machinations aside, developments in the post-Suharto party system introduced political players with stricter forms of Muslim identity politics capable of appealing to major Muslim constituencies. Islamic-oriented political parties appeal to sections of more conservative-minded, urban middle classes with an interest in promoting social decency, political moderation, and piety based on Islam as an ethical reference. The moral concerns of these constituencies combined with feelings of uncertainty toward social change in the face of rapid development have no doubt helped bolster the appeal.

Yet, while the number of Islamic parties is more prevalent than at any time in Indonesia's past, most of their involvement is of a moderate kind and very far from being associated with the institution of an Islamist theocracy. Moreover, the results of the 1999 election indicated clearly that Indonesians en masse favored a democratic polity over an Islamic state, giving the secularist-nationalist parties of the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle and the Golkar party 58.3 percent of the vote while the various Islamic parties amassed less than 42 percent.[8] True, the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera or PKS), whose leaders claim it does not seek to impose Shari'a (despite links to the Muslim Brotherhood), increased its vote from 1.5 percent in 1999 to 7.45 percent in 2004.[9] But this success was largely a result of its image as a relatively new and untainted party, as well as the stagnation and subsequent unraveling of Megawati's tenure. The PKS leadership skillfully exploited the situation to cast itself as a "clean" Islamic party committed to an anti-corruption platform, rather than to the imposition of Shari'a rule. Although the public's perception of it has tarnished somewhat over the years, especially recently, it marginally increased its share in the People's Representative Council (the Indonesian version of the House of Representatives) in the 2009 elections to almost 8 percent but made less significant inroads in many of the regions.

Most significantly, the PKS and other Islamic-oriented groups represent only 169 out of 560 seats in parliament—a mere 30 percent. The stunning electoral triumph of the secular-nationalist Democratic Party (Partai Demokrat) in 2009 with 148 seats alongside the more established Golkar and Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle groups (106 and 94 seats respectively) indicates that Islam does not necessarily trump other interests or issues in Indonesia. Still, there is a growing concern that not enough is being done to combat radicalism, intolerance, and increasing intimidation of local religious minorities by hard-line Islamist vigilantes such as Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front).[10]

Lessons to Learn
The Indonesian experience shows that countries do not emerge in a straightforward transition from authoritarian rule to multiparty democracy overnight: The challenges of transition are multiple. Success depends on translating momentum for change into meaningful reform and improvements over a sustained period of time. This involves redressing past injustices, economic stabilization, popular legitimization, judicial reform, diffusion of democratic values, marginalization of anti-system actors, ensuring greater civilian rule over the military, party system development, and the routinization of politics.[11] What also needs to be recognized is that democratization is not the same as democracy; one is a process, the other a political system. Democracy can become the "only game in town" if and when change occurs incrementally on the behavioral, attitudinal, and constitutional levels.[12]

Indonesia's transformation, in common with other democratizations, has been anything but easy.[13] There continue to be corruption issues, ongoing policy ineffectiveness, judicial problems, institutional frictions, and personality politics but what is clear is that there has been substantive reform. The political system is now a functioning democracy with all its benefits and shortcomings. Reviewing the steps taken to get there may help in producing applicable measures for steering the turbulent Middle Eastern societies toward a more democratic future.

To begin with, there is the need to organize free and fair elections though elections in themselves can hardly be expected to channel contests peacefully among political rivals or accord public legitimacy. There also has to be corresponding[14] Current president Yudhoyono may be ex-military, but he is unconditionally committed to, and readily submits his interests to, the new rules of the game—something that new Middle Eastern leaders have yet to learn.

Conclusions
The recent Islamist electoral successes in Tunisia and Egypt suggest a different political dynamic than Indonesia. Yet the tenor of the uprisings, at least in their initial phases, as well as subsequent reactions to authoritarian behavior by elected Islamist officials, indicate that a substantial number of people in these countries, as in Indonesia, will expect parties to respect the rule of law and address their countries' economic and corruption problems. As evidenced by the public backlash to Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi's recent power grab and the assassination of Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaïd, attempts at a coercive institutionalization of Islamist theocracy may well be met with continued protests and uprisings.

The real issue for the Middle East is not whether it will be secular or Islamic. In many ways, this is a false dichotomy and a distraction from much greater concerns. What one is witnessing in the region is a simultaneous convergence of multiple social, economic, and political vectors bringing things into sharp relief. Looking at the conditions in these countries, there were clear indications that storms were brewing. Despite the substantial wealth that narrow self-serving elites enjoyed (some of which trickled down to the middle classes), economic stagnation was rife; combined with rising prices for basic foodstuffs and high unemployment among educated, tech-savvy but disenfranchised youth this created an extremely volatile mix. What the people of the region now have to do is find ways to strike a different social contract by translating the popular momentum for greater political freedoms, effective rule of law, and better living conditions that brought down their autocrats into representative capacity. And if the Indonesian example teaches anything, it is that moderate Islam and democratic development are not incompatible bedfellows.

Paul J. Carnegie is senior lecturer in political economy at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He is the author of The Road from Authoritarianism to Democratization in Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and taught previously in both Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

[1] See, for example, Thomas Carothers, "Egypt and Indonesia," The New Republic, Feb. 2, 2011; Jay Solomon, "In Indonesia, a model for Egypt's transition," The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12, 2011.
[2] Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1960), pp. 121-31.
[3] Fauzan Saleh, Modern Trends in Islamic Theological Discourse in 20th Century Indonesia: A Critical Survey (Leiden: Brill 2001), pp. 17-29.
[4] Robert Cribb, ed., The Indonesian Killings of 1965–1966: Studies from Java and Bali (Clayton: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990), p. 12; idem, "Genocide in Indonesia, 1965-1966," Journal of Genocide Research, June 3, 2001, pp. 219-39.
[5] Suzaina Kadir, "The Islamic factor in Indonesia's political transition," Asian Journal of Political Science, 2 (1999), pp. 21-44.
[6] Mohammad Fajrul Falaakh, "Islam and the Current Transition to Democracy in Indonesia," in Arief Budiman, Barbara Hatley, and Damien Kingsbury, eds., Reformasi: Crisis and Change in Indonesia (Clayton: Monash Asia Institute 1999), pp. 201-12; Robert Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 189-200.
[7] Ken Young, "The national picture: A victory for reform?" in Susan Blackburn, ed. Pemilu: The 1999 Indonesian Election (Melbourne: Monash Asia Institute, 1999), pp. 3-11.
[8] Komisi Pemilihan Umum, "Indonesian elections with figures and facts 1955-1999," General Elections Commission, Jakarta, 2000.
[9] Sadanand Dhume, "Indonesian Democracy's Enemy Within," Yale Global, Dec. 1, 2005.
[10] See, for example, "Indonesia: 'Christianization' and Intolerance," Asia Briefing, no. 114, International Crisis Group, Jakarta/Brussels, Nov. 24, 2010, p. 17; "Religion's Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia," Human Rights Watch, New York, 2013, pp. 60-6, 71-86.
[11] Andreas Schedler, "What Is Democratic Consolidation?" Journal of Democracy,Apr. 1998, pp. 91-107.
[12] Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-communist Europe(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 5-14.
[13] Paige Johnson Tan, "Indonesia Seven Years after Soeharto: Party System Institutionalization in a New Democracy," Contemporary Southeast Asia, 1 (2006), pp. 88-114; Douglas Webber, "A Consolidated Patrimonial Democracy? Democratization in Post-Suharto Indonesia," Democratization, 3 (2006), pp. 396-420; Marcus Mietzner and Edward Aspinall, "Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia: An Overview," in Edward Aspinall and Marcus Mietzner, eds., Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia: Elections, Institutions and Society (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2010), pp. 1-20.
[14] Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 26.

https://www.meforum.org/3570/indonesian-model

@Al Watan Al Arabi @Falcon29 @Khafee @katarabhumi @pr1v4t33r @AUz

The Indonesian Model is something we can all aspire to because it is also remarkable in a country as ethnically diverse as Indonesia, and its geographical spread, it is nothing short of remarkable.

I think where Indonesia has done right is that Islam is an umbrella over the Indonesian national identity, they co-exist and complement each other. It is similar in a way to Islam in Sub-Sahara Africa in Senegal, Tanzania etc - people are proud to be both pious & nationalist, each one complements each other and balances on a scale preventing one over-riding the other. Problems occur when one becomes too overbearing on each other.

 

[sammuel]

Middle east cannot run lol but oil fields in middle East can run. Is this a joke? If a country is failing it's oil extraction should also fail but oil extraction under western countries contracts never fail no matter if every citizen of that country is dead.

P.s

The truth is that china , Japan , India , the Other Asia-Pacific countries , each of them buy no less oil from the middle east than Europe. Yet for some reason you only have an issue with Europe ...

You are right about one thing though " Europeans are" providing quality life to their own citizens " as you said , they rank first in the freedom they give to their citizens and in human rights,

So maybe there is something you can learn from them ?


~


~

 

[Indos]

Indonesia and the Middle East: Exploring Connections


February 26, 2019
Various Authors

Indonesia — a vast archipelagic island country straddling the Indian and Pacific Oceans — is the world’s fourth most-populous country and the largest Muslim-majority nation.

Over the past two decades, Indonesia has experienced profound changes. With the onset of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the country had teetered on the brink of disaster. The crisis, which had begun in Thailand in July and spread quickly into Indonesia, triggered an economic meltdown that was accompanied by increasing political tension, the eruption of violence between Christians and Muslims, and the escalation of separatist insurgencies. Amidst this upheaval, President Suharto was forced (in May 1998) to resign after 32 years in power, bringing to an end the authoritarian New Order era.

Since then, under the banner of Reformasi (reform) Indonesia has evolved into a democracy based on tolerance and a moderate interpretation of Islam. Meanwhile, Indonesia, inaugurated as a member of the Group of Twenty (G-20) in 2008, has emerged as one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies and as the largest economy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Against the backdrop of these accomplishments, Indonesia has sought a more prominent role in regional and international affairs.

The expanding horizon of Indonesia’s international aspirations extends westward to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In some respects, this is not surprising. After all, Indonesia’s commercial and religio-cultural contacts and connections with the Middle East stretch back centuries. Indian Ocean routes between Southeast Asia and the Middle East formed the backbone of the most extensive maritime trade network in the world during the period 1000 to 1500. Arab merchants played a role in introducing Islam to the coastal peoples of the archipelago, and early Islam in Indonesia reflected the intellectual currents in the Middle East/West Asia.

Over the centuries, Islamic practice (including Sufism) fused with indigenous custom, producing diverse forms of religious expression across the archipelago. Meanwhile, Indonesia and the Middle East have maintained contact and have forged new links through intellectual exchange and travel, migrant labor, and hajj pilgrimage. For years, Gulf funds, particularly from Saudi Arabia, have flowed to religious institutions in Indonesia. More recently, and reflecting the global shift in the geo-economic center of gravity to Asia, Indonesia-Gulf trade has increased. Additionally, in a bid to grab a share of the Middle Eastern consumer market, the Indonesian Trade Ministry has increased promotion events and improved export services. At the same time, Gulf-based firms seeking to diversify their investments geographically have established footholds in Indonesia, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Yet, the progress in, and obstacles to more extensive, mutually beneficial relations between Indonesia and the Middle East have received scant attention. Questions abound: Through which segments of the population or transnational networks and by which means are these relations conducted? In what ways has Indonesia sought to position itself and to what extent is it regarded in the Middle East as a political “model”? How far have cooperative efforts to tackle maritime security challenges and non-traditional threats advanced? In the areas of trade and investment, which sectors have shown the greatest promise? What impact has the turmoil in the Middle East had on Indonesia? How, and how effectively, has Indonesia responded to the rise and weakening of the Islamic State (ISIS)? How has the diplomatic rift between Qatar and the bloc led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the intensification of the Saudi-Iranian strategic rivalry, and the Trump Administration’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital affected Indonesia’s interests in and approach to the Middle East?

The essays in this series are intended to shed light on these and other questions regarding the nature, scope, and implications of Indonesia's ties with the countries and peoples of the Middle East.

https://www.mei.edu/publications/indonesia-and-middle-east-exploring-connections

 

[Indos]

Indonesia and Tunisia: Democracy as a Distinctive Link


January 30, 2018
Giora Eliraz

The centuries-old bonds between the peoples of the Arab-speaking lands and the Indonesian archipelago are largely the outgrowth of an ongoing process of the transfer of Islamic knowledge and ideas from west to east. The arrival of Arab traders, Sufi preachers and ulama in the Indonesian archipelago since about the 13thcentury and the participation of pilgrims in the annual hajj forged links based in Islam between the Malay-Indonesian world and the Arabian Peninsula. Since the 19th century Egypt, home to the prestigious al-Azhar University, has increasingly become attractive for Malay-Indonesian seekers of knowledge of Islam. It is this transnational process of knowledge acquisition that nourished a sense of belonging among Indonesian Muslims to the umma, the global Islamic community.

Yet, there are no such historical connections between the Malay-Indonesian world and the more western reaches of the Maghreb. Not until the early 1950s did ties develop between newly independent Indonesia and Tunisia, then still a French protectorate. Importantly, those ties were based mainly in politics, and not in religion. At the time, the Tunisian national movement, led by Habib Bourguiba, seems to have regarded Indonesia as an inspirational model of anti-colonial struggle. Bourguiba was also attracted to the idea of “non-alignment” advanced by Indonesian President Ahmed Sukarno Indonesia, among others.[1] Today, more than six decades after having achieved independence, Tunisia again stands at a watershed in its political development — transitioning from an authoritarian to a democratic system. These circumstances have given the relationship between Indonesia and Tunisia a fresh tailwind.

Putting Democracy on Indonesia’s Foreign Policy Agenda
Indonesia’s second parliamentary elections and first direct presidential elections in 2004 mark a dividing line between the gloomy view associated with the difficult initial stages of the post-Reformasi transition to democracy and growing optimism about the country’s future. Indonesia emerged from the 2004 elections with greater national self-confidence and a more assertive foreign policy. Under the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014), democracy promotion became a hallmark of Indonesia’s foreign policy. Thus Indonesia sought to use its new democratic credentials for promoting political reforms in Asia and the Muslim world — thereby casting itself as a potential model of democracy, a role that the West has expressly encouraged.[2]

Indonesia’s early efforts to incorporate its democratic identity into foreign policy included initiating in 2008 the Bali Democracy Forum (B.D.F.), an annual intergovernmental gathering aimed at sharing experiences and best practices to advance democracy and human rights.[3] The Indonesian Foreign Ministry subsequently established The Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD), an independent, nonprofit organization based at Udayana University in Bali, to serve as the Forum’s implementing agency.

In remarks to the U.N. General Assembly (U.N.G.A.) in September 2009, then-Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, reflecting on Indonesia’s political transition, asserted that “[w]e in Indonesia are strong believers in democratic reform” … and emphasized the country’s democratic identity as being “an important asset in Indonesia’s foreign relations.[4] The next year, in his own address to the U.N.G.A., Wirajuda’s successor, Marty Natalegawa, echoed these sentiments, stating that “As the world’s third largest democracy, Indonesia is proof that Islam, democracy and modernization can go hand in hand.”[5] In its strategic implementation report, Strategic Plan 2010-14, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs assigned Indonesia’s support for the promotion of democracy and human rights equal priority with other foreign policy objectives.[6]

Indonesian Democracy: A Model for the Arab World?
Prior to the Arab Spring, Indonesia had extended invitations to Arab counterparts to attend meetings of the Bali Democracy Forum. Yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, this outreach proved infeasible given that authoritarian regimes remained entrenched in Arab countries while democratic voices were largely suppressed.

Soon after the Arab Spring uprisings, however, the prospects for democratic reform in the MENA region seemed, momentarily, to be bright. Some Western commentators, observing events in Tunisia and Egypt unfold, raised the question of whether the Indonesian experience might serve as a model suitable for the nascent democratic processes there.[7] Nevertheless, several factors would seem to have made Indonesia an unlikely candidate to play such a role: 1) the vast geographic distance and socio-cultural differences separating the country from the Arab world; 2) the very limited knowledge and sparse media coverage of Indonesia in the region; [8] the fact that historically the transnational transmission of ideas and influence had flowed one way, to rather than from Indonesia; and 4) a certain patronizing attitude among Arabs toward Indonesian Muslims regarding matters of the faith. [9]

For all of these reasons, it came as something of a surprise when, in March 2011 the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Natalegawa, stated that Egypt had requested assistance from Indonesia in organizing democratic elections and regulations related to political parties. Having acceded to the request, Natalegawa was nonetheless careful to note that “... we have to do it wisely so that it doesn’t seen seem as though we’re preaching to them.”[10] In the immediate aftermath of the protests that swept the Middle East, the IPD convened several workshops, beginning with the “Egypt-Indonesia Dialogue on Democratic Transition.”[11]

These activities notwithstanding, it was the Turkish democratic model that received much more favorable attention in the region than did the Indonesian one in the immediate aftermath of the uprisings, as reflected in the emerging new democratic discourse of the Arab World. At that time, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.) appeared committed to making Turkey a model of democracy for Muslim-majority countries. The idea that Tunisia, which had sparked the Arab Spring, might be a suitable candidate for this model[12] gained some currency, including in Tunisia itself. In fact, soon after the Jasmine Revolution, Rashid Ghannouchi, the leader of the Islamic Ennahda Party and an important figure in the post-authoritarian era who maintained close relations with the AKP,14 [13] argued that Turkey proved Islam and democracy are compatible, adding: “... this is what we see as the model for ourselves.”[14] This approach was further evident after Ennahda emerged victorious in the country’s first democratic election in October 2011.[15]

However, with the rollback of political and civil rights as well as other signs of resurgent authoritarianism in Turkey, the latter’s appeal as a model of democracy began to wane in Tunisia, as elsewhere. In fact, disenchantment with the Turkish model was evident even while Ennahda was still in power.[16] With the electoral victory of the secular Nidaa Tunis Party in 2014 and Ennahda’s subsequent political-ideological moderation — including its declaration in 2016 of separation of religious from political activities — Tunisia’s political trajectory and that of Turkey diverged even more sharply.[17]

When Indonesian Foreign Minister Natalegawa first revealed the Egyptian request for democracy support, he noted that Tunisia had also sought similar assistance. Interestingly, in September of 2011, a month before Ennahda Party prevailed in Tunisia’s first democratic elections, Ghannouchi, mentioned the Indonesian example in a favorable light.[18] In April 2012, when Ennahda was in power, several Tunisian delegates joined the third IPD Egyptian-Indonesian Dialogue on Democracy workshop.[19] Whereas the Egyptian side to this dialogue was almost exclusively represented by political activists and non-governmental experts, the Tunisian contingent included official government representatives; the latter's participation is perhaps indicative that Tunisia’s Islamic, as well as secular political actors were favorably disposed toward Indonesia’s democracy.

Since 2013 the cooperation on democracy between Indonesia and post-Arab Spring countries has been limited to Tunisia. This cooperation has involved public officials and civil society actors,21]Explicit references to “democracy” are notably missing from official statements regarding Indonesia’s relations with Middle Eastern countries — except in the case of Indonesia-Tunisia relations, where officials of the two countries speak proudly of their shared interest in advancing democracy. It also seems that this increasing cooperation on democracy, including the promotion of interfaith dialogue and religious harmony, has given a boost to the overall bilateral relationship.[22]

Certainly, one cannot ignore differences between the Indonesian and the Tunisian contexts in which the democratization process has unfolded.[23] However this cooperation seems to be built on a solid, authentic basis. Clearly, an important building block for this cooperation has been the crucial role played by civil society, which was robust in Tunisia even before the outbreak of the Arab Spring and strong in Indonesia as well. In fact, the shared consensus on, and commitment to a civic state, rather than a religious one, enabled an effective civic resistance movement, successful non-violent transition to democracy and the ability to surmount political crisis and to translate collective will into a democratic action in Tunisia.[24]Similarly, Indonesian civil society’s staunch defense of the state ideology of Pancasila has allowed for the country to make a transition into a secular oriented democracy.

Conclusion
Perhaps in absolute terms, cooperation on democracy between Indonesia and Tunisia is rather modest. However, in relative terms, taking a wider view of the region in the post-Arab Spring period and in the context of the centuries-old asymmetrical relations between Arab-speaking lands and Indonesia with respect to the transferring of ideas, such cooperation is very impressive cooperation. And there are additional interesting historical insights. Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population and a significant actor in Southeast Asia. Yet, from a certain vantage point in the Arab World — the epicenter of Islam’s holiest places and centers of learning — Indonesia lies on the Muslim World’s distant periphery. For centuries, Tunisia likewise lay on the periphery of the Muslim World — i.e., on the western rim of the Ottoman Empire until coming under French protectorate. Yet, despite the vast geographic expanse separating the two countries, Indonesia and Tunisia “discovered” each other nearly seven decades ago. At that time, Indonesia was then an inspiring example for Tunisians waging an ultimately successful anti-colonial struggle for independence. And lately, as Tunisia has embarked on a transition to democracy, it has again found Indonesia to be as inspirational example.

https://www.mei.edu/publications/indonesia-and-tunisia-democracy-distinctive-link

 

[Indos]

Indonesia’s Democratization Underpinned by Major Islamic Groups and Consensus on National Ideology

February 26, 2019
Dewi Fortuna Anwar

On April 17, 2019 Indonesia will hold its first ever simultaneous legislative and presidential elections, marking another important milestone in its Reformasi journey started over two decades ago to become a fully democratic country. As the world’s largest archipelagic state of over 17,000 islands with a highly heterogeneous population comprising more than 700 ethnic groups, Indonesia has faced numerous sociopolitical challenges and conflicts since it declared independence on August 17, 1945. Indonesia is also the world’s largest Muslim majority country, with around 87% of its 260 million population adhering to Islam, while at the same time home to people belonging to other faiths, including Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Reaching a national consensus about the place of religions, specifically Islam, in the political system was one of the intractable problems that Indonesia faced in the first two decades of its independence, and it has continued to be a contentious issue to the present day. Indonesia’s first experiment with liberal democracy in the 1950s ended in failure, ushering four decades of authoritarian rule under Sukarno’s Guided Democracy (1959-1965) and Suharto’s New Order government (1966-1998), among others over disagreements about the relations of Islam and the State.[1]Despite the many challenges that it has faced and the flaws in its implementation, however, Indonesia’s current democratic polity has proven to be quite resilient and hopefully more sustainable than the first one.

One of the most important reasons for Indonesia’s relative success is undoubtedly the existence of Pancasila, the pluralist State ideology. Equally important is the presence and role of major Islamic social and political groups, including the large Islamic mass organizations and Islamist political parties, that have supported the development of a truly inclusive, pluralistic and participatory democracy in Indonesia based on Pancasila.

Indonesia’s Reformasi and Transition to Democracy
It has been over two decades since President Suharto resigned on May 21, 1998 from the position that he had held for 32 years, amidst large-scale demonstrations triggered by the Asian Financial Crisis. Suharto’s departure ushered in the Reformasi era, which has seen the systematic dismantling of the military-dominated New Order political structure that had been in place since 1966, and Indonesia’s relatively peaceful transition to democracy. After 20 years, Indonesia’s democracy is still a work in progress, with many institutional flaws and shortcomings, including the rise in identity politics and intolerance. Throughout the New Order period political expression and participation were tightly controlled, and to enforce social harmony open discussions about ethnic, religious, racial and class differences were strictly prohibited. Among the side effects of political liberalization is that political competition, particularly around election time, has opened the way for the politicization of religions and the rise in ethnic nationalism, which can threaten Indonesian national unity as well as undermine its plural democracy, as demonstrated in the last gubernatorial election in Jakarta. The popular then incumbent governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian of ethnic Chinese descent, who was running for a second term in the 2017 gubernatorial election, was met by large-scale oppositions from conservative Islamist groups. Massive demonstrations by Islamist groups on December 2, 2016 led to Purnama being charged for blasphemy for a careless and distorted remark that he had made; and he was immediately sent to prison for two years. In other parts of the country, such as in West Kalimantan, ethno-nationalism has also reared its ugly head.[2]

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the presence of violent extremist groups that want to establish an Indonesian Islamic state or a transnational caliphate through acts of terrorism, most of the population of the world’s largest Muslim nation continues to believe that democracy is the best political system for Indonesia. A 2017 report by Pew Research Center showed that 69% of Indonesians are satisfied with the democratic system in place, and 86% are committed to supporting democracy.[3]

Indonesia has continued to consolidate its democracy and experimented with various new ways to make its democratic processes more participatory, such as by electing the president and vice president directly since 2004, as well as more effective and efficient, such as by holding simultaneous elections for the large numbers of regional leaders since 2015. On April 17, 2019 Indonesia will hold its first ever simultaneous legislative and presidential elections, among others intended to strengthen the presidential system along-side the powerful multi-party parliament. Indonesia has come to pride itself as a country where Islam, democracy, modernity, and women’s empowerment walk hand in hand.

In contrast, the optimism accompanying the so-called “Arab Spring,” which started with a single protest in Tunisia in December 2010 and quickly spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, has mostly disappeared. The Arab Spring movement, which manifested in large-scale protests against the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain, were initially expected to usher in peaceful transitions to democracy, similar to what had happened in Indonesia in 1998 and the Philippines in 1986. Instead of a new wave of democratization, however, the “people-power” movements in Libya, Yemen, and Syria have led to new rounds of repression, external intervention, and civil war, while in Bahrain to an even tighter political control by the ruling regime. In Egypt, a brief experiment with democracy ended when a counter-revolution was carried out by the military in alliance with secular forces that initially supported political reform, after the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood party that swept to power through popular votes carried out exclusionary politics to implement the sharia as the basis of the State. It is only in Tunisia that the protest movement has succeeded in transforming the political system from authoritarianism to a pluralistic democracy.

The experience of each country is clearly unique and cannot easily be replicated by another due to the differences in historical, cultural and political forces at play. Indonesia’s successful transition to democracy can be credited to many factors, including President Suharto’s willingness to step down from power peacefully, the military’s decision to support the democratization process, the willingness of the opposition groups to accept Vice President Habibie resuming the presidency in accordance with the Constitution, the commitment of the Habibie transitional government to accelerate the political reform, and the unrelenting pressure from civil society. Looking at the difficulties encountered by many Muslim-majority countries in trying to develop democratic governance, however, where proponents of secularism and Islamism are often so bitterly divided that the military appears as a better alternative, Indonesia’s relative success undoubtedly owed a great deal to the national consensus on fundamental issues. Despite major differences between the various political forces and heated debates about the future direction that Indonesia should take during the critical transition period after the fall of President Suharto, there were general agreements about the importance of upholding Pancasila as the state ideology , and the need to transform the political system from authoritarianism to truly participatory, representative and accountable democracy. Major Islamic mass organizations, and Islamic political parties that have mushroomed since the collapse of the New Order, have been important stakeholders and players in this political transformation.

Throughout the military-dominated New Order period the political space was tightly controlled, with political Islam prohibited, communism banned, while every social and political organization must adhere to a single ideology, Pancasila, known as “mono-loyalty.” The collapse of the New Order government unleashed various formerly suppressed political forces that competed for power to shape the new Indonesia. Except for the communist party and communist ideology that continue to be banned, since the onset of Reformasi political parties are free to choose their political platforms, while the number of political parties is not limited to three as it had been in the previous era. Islamic parties can now use Islam as their political platforms; and several Islamist parties have emerged since 1998. At the same time, there have also been a proliferation of secular-nationalist political parties, and parties based on other ideologies such as socialism. The first general elections after the fall of Suharto, held on June 7, 1999, saw 48 political parties contending for seats at the different levels of legislative bodies. Over the years, attempts have been made to reduce the number of political parties contesting elections through more stringent criteria and the imposition of parliamentary threshold.

Pancasila as the Unifying Ideological Foundation of Indonesia
Despite the proliferation of political parties with different ideological orientations and priorities since the onset of Reformasi, all of them agreed that Pancasila as the pluralist foundation of the state should remain inviolable. In the subsequent constitutional amendments between 1999-2004, when the body of the 1945 Constitution was amended four times to strengthen democratic institutions and human rights guarantees, there was a consensus never to amend the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution, which contains the basic values, goals, form and principles of the Indonesian nation-state. This basic national consensus and the existence of Pancasila as the State ideology made it possible for the different political forces to purse their respective goals within a clearly defined national framework, thus preventing sharp divisions about truly fundamental issues that can polarize Indonesia’s highly heterogeneous population. Within the Indonesian political system, no legitimate political forces can openly pursue the goal of establishing an Indonesian Islamic State or of trying to enforce Islam as the official religion of the State. The only exception is the province of Aceh, which enjoys special autonomous status, among others, in being able to apply the sharia within limits in its local regulations; however, Aceh must still adhere to Pancasila, the 1945 Constitution, as well as to higher national laws in matters such as the criminal justice system, gender equality as well as inclusive and participatory governance.

Pancasila or “Five Principles” is not a secular ideology. The five principles are Belief in the One True God, A Just and Civilized Humanity, Indonesian Unity, Representative Democracy and Social Justice. It is mandatory for an Indonesian to profess a religion, but religious freedom is constitutionally guaranteed. Pancasila was introduced by Sukarno shortly before Indonesia’s declaration of independence on August 17, 1945 as a compromise formula to bridge the sharp disagreements between those who wanted the newly independent Republic of Indonesia to be based on the Islamic sharia, and those who want a wholly secular state. The five principles of Pancasila are embedded in the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution. At the same time the so-called “Jakarta Charter,” which stated that Muslims must adhere to the Islamic sharia, was dropped from the Preamble as it would privilege Islam over all other religions and was, therefore, considered discriminatory.

Although about 87% of the Indonesian population are Muslims, there are also sizable followers of different streams of Christianity, Hindus, Buddhists and practitioners of local traditional faiths. Indonesia also comprises over 700 different ethnic groups with distinct languages and cultural traditions, making it one of the most heterogeneous countries in the world. Indonesia’s national unity is, therefore, anchored by the motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, or Unity in Diversity. With Pancasilaas the State ideology the government is responsible for ensuring religious freedom. Official recognition of religions in Indonesia among others take the forms of State support for religious education and celebrating the different major religious holidays as national holidays. Thus, in Indonesia, all major Islamic, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and, lately, Chinese New Year celebrations are declared as public holidays throughout the country.

There have been many challenges to Pancasila throughout modern Indonesian history by groups determined to establish an Islamic state, such as the Darul Islam movement in the 1950s and early 1960s that waged armed struggles in different parts of the country. Attempts to draft a new constitution to replace the original 1945 Constitution in the 1950s collapsed due to disagreements about the place of Islam in the state system. It was fear of reopening the Pandora’s box of ideological divisions that could again trigger open conflicts that persuaded all the political forces in Indonesia during the early period of political transition to reaffirm their joint commitment to Pancasila as the inviolable foundation of the Indonesian nation-state. The same consideration led to the decision to thoroughly amend the 1945 Constitution, without touching the Preamble, rather than drafting a wholly new constitution, to institutionalize the transformation from authoritarianism to democracy.

The Role of Major Islamic Groups in Supporting Indonesia’s Pluralism and Democracy
While it is justifiable to level criticisms against some political parties and elites in Indonesia that at times have politicized Islam for political gains, it is also important to recognize that Indonesia’s nation and state building, including its democratization, would not have been possible without the full support of all the major Islamic groups. Here, one cannot over-estimate the positive and constructive role played by the major Islamic mass organizations, particularly Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), which are important parts of Indonesia’s vibrant civil society. The modernist Muhammadiyah, established in 1912 and the traditionalist NU, founded in 1926, reportedly with over 30 million and 40 million members respectively, have been at the heart of Indonesia’s national life from the struggle for independence to the transition to democracy[4]. Political elites from different political parties, either Islamist or secular-nationalist parties, are often affiliated with either Muhammadiyah or NU. Both Muhammadiyah and NU since the beginning have supported a moderate form of Islam in Indonesia that respects the country’s rich cultural traditions and diversity. Since the onset of Reformasi leaders of Muhammadiyah and NU have at times become involved in politics by forming or joining political parties, but as organizations, both Muhammadiyah and NU have mostly stayed above the political fray and serve as important unifying forces in Indonesia’s highly competitive democratic processes.[5]

It is not a coincidence that two of the top leaders of the anti-Suharto movement and who played a central role in the early democratic transition process were Amien Rais, then chairman of Muhammadiyah, and Abdurrahman Wahid, then Chairman of NU. Both Amien Rais and Abdurrahman Wahid established political parties and initially worked closely together to ensure Indonesia’s peaceful and constitutional transition to democracy. Amien Rais became the chairman of the then still powerful People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) from 1999-2004 which elected the president and vice president and carried out the four constitutional amendments. Abdurrahman Wahid served as the new democratically elected president in October 1999 till his impeachment in July 2001 due to charges of power abuse. Notwithstanding some loss of stature that Wahid suffered after his removal from office, and Amien Rais’s loss of credibility as a champion of pluralism in recent years due to his increasingly intolerant view, both Muhammadiyah and NU have kept to their course as the guardians of Indonesia’s religious moderation and supporters of democracy.

Conclusion
Despite the difficult terrain democracy has continued to flourish in Indonesia, though critics have argued that it is still mostly procedural rather than substantive democracy. The role of moderate Islamic mass organisations and political parties have contributed to the resilience of Indonesia’s democracy, amidst contending non-democratic approaches and beliefs.

In recent years, the emergence of new more intolerant Islamic groups has challenged the predominance of the two largest Islamic mass organizations, Muhammadiyah and NU, as the primary referent points of Muslims in Indonesia. Both Muhammadiyah and NU were sidelined during the mass demonstrations in Jakarta organized by hard-lined Islamist groups determined to prevent the non-Muslim Basuki Tjahaja Purnama from winning the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election. There are also radical Islamist groups, many affiliated with transnational extremist movements such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS), that have used terrorism to advance their ideological cause to establish a caliphate in Indonesia. However, the mainstream political and social forces, including Islamic political parties and mass organizations, have also rallied and called for strengthening the national commitment to Pancasila, the 1945 Constitution, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika and the Unitary Republic of Indonesia — the four pillars of the Indonesian nation-state. Muhammadiyah and NU, in particular, have again been called upon to enhance their role in the fight against religious intolerance, radicalism and extremism as well as promote inter-faith dialogues at home and abroad.

1] See Herbert Feith, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978).


[2] “Update on local election results in West Kalimantan and Papua,” IPAC Report No. 50, Institute for Policy Analyses of Conflict, August 16, 2018.


[3] Richard Wike, Katie Simmons, Bruce Stokes and Janell Fetterolf, “Globally Broad Support for Representative Democracy. But many also endorse nondemocratic alternatives,” Pew Research Center, October 16, 2017.


[4] For a brief history of Indonesia see M.C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia since c.1200. First published in 1981 by the Macmillan Press, the book has been revised several times to bring it up to date. The Fourth Edition was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008.


[5] See Dua Menyemai Damai: Peran dan Kontribusi Muhammadiyah dan Nahdlatul Ulama dalam Perdamaian dan Demokrasi [Role and Contribution of Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama in Peace and Democracy] (Yogyakarta: UGM Centre for Security and Peace Studies, 2019).

https://www.mei.edu/publications/indonesias-democratization-underpinned

 

[vi-va]

I just have one question here. Is middle East really in some kind of a problem?

If middle East is in problem then what is the problem? Is it faliure of any kind of govt model? Or something else?

For example let's take UAE. The country is doing fine and is in good condition and thriving. Qatar it is also doing fine and thriving. Saudi Arabia is filthy rich. Kuwait has the words most expensive currency.

So where is the problem in middle East. If Islam is problem why are these countries successful? So the question again arises what is the problem because suggesting a solution to a problem with out identifying the problem is never fruitful. If model is the problem then why are Saudis thriving. Please don't reply me because Saudis have oil. Because Venezuela has more oil and it is in problem.

The problem is not govt model in middle East. No matter what ever model of govt you bring be it Indonesian or japanies or Chinese or Russian or European the problem of middle East cannot be solved. As govt model is not the problem of middle east.

Middle East has a different problem and to solve that problem the best model is Vietnamese model. The way Vietnam threw USA out solved their problem.
Look at Libya the most thriving country of north Africa and today it has a problem and huge problem and that problem is not the govt model of Gaddafi but that problem is France who destroyed the country.

The problem of middle east is that when a student in Europe goes to school his tution fee is being paid by a student in middle East. European countries are ripping of resources from middle East to make life of the people living in middle East hell but on the other hand providing quality life to their own citizens. This is the actual problem of middle east and them they come blaming the govt models of middle east. Now in Libya the whole country is unable to run but European comapnies are able to drill oil and take it back to Europe. Middle east cannot run lol but oil fields in middle East can run. Is this a joke? If a country is failing it's oil extraction should also fail but oil extraction under western countries contracts never fail no matter if every citizen of that country is dead.

Spot on. But there is no way middle east can get rid of west, otherwise they will be democratized, either by Syria model or Libya model. Feel free to choose one.

 

[Indos]

‘Invisible’ Indonesia could show path to Islamic democracy in the Middle East
BY Jean Gelman Taylor

Long regarded as peripheral to the mainstream Islamic world, Indonesia could have much to teach the Middle East about Muslim democracy, writes JEAN GELMAN TAYLOR.


Scholars and journalists often raise the conundrum: why doesn’t Indonesia have greater importance within the world community of Muslims?


Indonesia, with a population of 240 million, is the world’s largest Muslim country. Compare this figure with Saudi Arabia’s 29 million or Egypt’s 81 million. The late Malay studies scholar Amin Sweeney reminded us that Indonesian–Malay is the third language of Islamic scholarship after Arabic and Persian. Indonesia would seem to be qualified to speak for Muslims in world affairs, to be influential in theological debate and the harbinger of political reformation for the Muslim Middle East.

Consider a recent world history by the Afghan–American Tamir Ansary. Ansary structured it from a consciously Islamic perspective. He challenged conventional texts that begin in Mesopotamia, that channel the world’s history through Greece, Rome and Europe, only inserting the Islamic world at points in the grand narrative. Ansary’s world history is organised under the headings: Ancient times; Mesopotamia and Persia; Birth of Islam; the Khalifate; Quest for universal unity; Fragmentation: Age of the sultanates; Catastrophe: Crusaders and Mongols; Rebirth: the Three-empire era; Permeation of East by West; the reform movements; Triumph of the secular modernists; and the Islamic reaction. Yet Ansary’s corrective Destiny disrupted: history of the world through Islamic eyes gives Indonesia just two mentions in 410 pages.

Is the ‘invisibility’ of Indonesia to be explained in spatial and historiographical terms? Historians have made much of Indonesia’s geographic location on the periphery of the Islamic world, remote from its spiritual heartland before the late 19th century’s ‘connectives’ of steamship, telegraph and post. In the 1960s, sociologists and anthropologists were struck by the folkways of Islam in the archipelago’s villages. Indonesian Islam seemed a ‘thin flaking glaze’, a ‘veneer’, laid over a Hindu–Buddhist bedrock. It was localised, tolerant, not ‘real’ Islam when compared with Arab societies.

Western scholars date the origins of the first indigenous Islamic communities in the Indonesian archipelago to the 12th century. Indonesians were inducted into an Islam that had evolved over the six centuries since the first Muslim community was governed by Muhammad in Medina. Lacking direct transmission from Arabia, Indonesians had embraced an Islam of Sufi sects, veneration of saints’ graves, talismans and miracles.

An influential book, The religion of Java, by the late anthropologist Clifford Geertz, posited that ‘scriptural Islam’ came late to Indonesia. Recent research by scholars in Indonesia and the West has modified views that Indonesian Islam long developed in isolation from the wellsprings of Islamic theology. Textual studies have led to the conclusion that Malay-language commentaries on the Quran date from at least the 16th century. Biographies of archipelago scholars who spent 20 and more years in Mecca and Medina provide evidence of continuous connection with Islamic scholarship in Arabia since the 17th century and of those scholars insistence on observance of sharia and a Sufism regulated within the Sunni tradition.

This research does, however, suggest that Indonesia’s Muslims were connected with world Islam in a parochial way. Indonesian teachers who made long stays in Arabia attracted primarily students from their own home communities in the archipelago. In Arabia they wrote their commentaries and learned opinions in Malay. Their scholarly output was, therefore, not read beyond the Malay-speaking world, but communicated to audiences at home. Archipelago Muslims, feeding off Indonesian scholarship produced in Arabia in Malay, were a distinct community, irrelevant to the learned elites in the Islamic heartland who wrote and taught in Arabic or Persian.

Links with Islamic heartland

Direct links with the Islamic heartland became a reality with colonial technology. Dutch steamships took Indonesians to Mecca and Cairo as well as to The Hague and Amsterdam. Steam-powered transport and the telegraph ended the ‘tyranny of distance’. Printing in Arabic letters, finally sanctioned by the Ottoman sultanate, multiplied the pamphlets and books in circulation; lending library stalls brought reading within a wider reach. Students who travelled at the beginning of the 20th century from Indonesia to Cairo became caught up in the latest currents of religio-political thought in the Middle East.

Indonesian muslims congregrated during Eid ul Fitr mass prayer in Istiqlal Mosque, Central Jakarta (Gunawan Kartapranata Wikimedia Commons).

Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979 obliged Indonesians to question their distinctive religious practices and observance. Local movements multiplied to induce greater inner devotion to Islam and greater outer conformity to communal religious observances such as mosque attendance and Islamic presentation of the self in dress and manners. More Indonesians enrolled in Arabic language classes. There were more scholarships for study in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, modifications to domestic mosque architecture, and discarding of customs deemed un-Islamic. There was more drawing of boundaries between Muslims and Christians, and between Muslims and those labelled ‘deviant’ Muslims.


These changes occurred in the later period of President Suharto’s presidency when the government was making concessions to ‘political’ Islam. Suharto, for instance, sanctioned an Islamic think-tank to bring Islamic solutions to Indonesia’s social and economic problems. He allowed an Islamic press and television shows, and the introduction of Islamic banking. The Association of Indonesian Islamic Intellectuals brought Muslims into the centre of public policy making and made Islamic credentials a plus in career paths. There was an equalising in status between civil and religious courts of law. Mosque youth groups and branches of international Muslim associations on Indonesian university campuses mushroomed. There was a growth of public attendance at Islamic festivals and an upsurge in Islamic arts and popular entertainment.

Young Indonesians, who have never lived under colonial rule, have come of age in a world of the internet, university degrees, foreign travel and pilgrimage packages to Mecca. They associate being Muslim with being modern, prosperous, successful; they strive for ‘Islamic chic’ in dress, manners and cultural pursuits. They want greater personal freedoms and more political clout. They emerged from their own political and social tumult following the downfall of President Suharto in May 1998.

There were four years of fighting in Indonesia between religious and ethnic communities and regional movements demanding autonomy or even secession from the republic. In 2002, with three million internal refugees, observers were speculating whether Indonesia itself would continue to exist. But in those same years, Indonesians removed a strong military from public life. Through constitutional changes, tenure of presidential office was restricted to a maximum of two four-year terms, to be achieved through the ballot box.

The post-Suharto era is characterised by political parties with a broad mix of religious and social agendas. The media has been freed. Elections at national, regional and municipal levels have won broad acceptance of their results. There is a confidence that local cells of international Islamic groups, such as Hizbut Tahrir, are not a real force in Indonesian society. Reformists downplay the power of the Islamic Defenders Front to physically intimidate those they declare to be enemies of ‘true Islam’. Despite rulings by the Department of Religion against Ahmadis and determination that liberalism, secularism and pluralism contradict Islamic teachings, reform activists believe Indonesia offers a working model for Muslim democracy, or rather for a democracy of Muslims.

Indonesia’s Institute for Peace and Democracy has initiated dialogue with counterparts in Egypt and Tunisia on issues such as the state and politics, Islam and the state, the place of armed forces in democracy, and participation of women in public life.

Here Indonesia may assume a leadership role in international Islamic affairs. At the same time, Indonesians seem to be creating a novel variant of being Muslim that confirms their difference on the periphery.


Main photo:
Indonesian muslims reciting Al Quran after shalat (prayer). Istiqlal Mosque, Central Jakarta (Gunawan Kartapranata Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0).



About Jean Gelman Taylor
Dr Jean Gelman Taylor is honorary associate professor of History, University of New South Wales. This article is a summary of a talk she gave at Hebrew University of Jerusalem last December.

‘Invisible’ Indonesia could show path to Islamic democracy in the Middle East - Asian Studies Association of Australia

Long regarded as peripheral to the mainstream Islamic world, Indonesia could have much to teach the Middle East about Muslim democracy, writes JEAN GELMAN TAYLOR. Scholars and journalists often raise the conundrum: why doesn’t Indonesia have greater importance within the world community of...

asaa.asn.au

 

[Indos]

People's Consultative Assembly


The People's Consultative Assembly of the Republic of Indonesia (Indonesian: Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat Republik Indonesia, MPR-RI) is the legislative branch in Indonesia's political system. It is composed of the members of the People's Representative Council (DPR) and the Regional Representative Council (DPD). Before 2004, and the amendments to the 1945 Constitution, the MPR was the highest governing body in Indonesia.

Duties and power
Constitutional duties
As provided by the 1945 Constitution, the MPR is responsible for the amendment or deletion of certain articles and/or provisions of the Constitution. A two-thirds majority vote in a general session of the Assembly can approve any proposed changes to the constitution including scrapping or adding additional articles, sections and provisions, as well as in the introduction of certain amendments.

Presidential and vice-presidential inauguration
The 1945 Constitution empowers the MPR to hold a general inauguration session for the president and vice president of the Republic within weeks or months after their election.

Should the office of the presidency be vacant the MPR can be ordered to hold a general plenary for the vice president to render his/her oath taking as acting president.

On the impeachment of the president and vice-president
The Assembly, through the 2003 Rules, has the authority to impeach both the president and vice-president of Indonesia or either one of the two if probable violations of the 1945 constitution and the laws of the Republic have been committed during the performance of their mandate.

On the election of the vice president in case of a presidential vacancy
As provided by the 2003 amendments to the 1945 Constitution the MPR, should the Presidential post be vacant and the vice president assumes the office in an acting capacity, can be advised to hold a general plenary to appoint an acting vice president of the Republic to fill the vacancy created by it.

On the election of the president and vice-president in cases of vacancies of both offices
As per the 2003 Assembly rules, only in a case when both the Presidential and Vice-Presidential positions are vacant can the MPR be advised to hold a general session to elect office holders within a month after the announcement of the vacancy. Such cases are sudden resignation, impeachment, and death in office.

People's Consultative Assembly - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Every 16 August, MPR make yearly hearing with Presiden will be present. The next day is the celebration of Indonesia Independence day.

Prayer to Allah during the hearing Yesterday. Only few is present due to pandemic social distancing measure.

 

[Indos]

Independence Commemoration, 17 August 2021

 

[UKBengali]

Not at all.

Indonesians are more "moderate" Muslims while ME is more "fundamentalist".

They should be left alone to come to their own equilibrium, rather than others interfering all the time.

 

[Indos]

It played a pivotal role during the war of independence against the Dutch colonial rule. The Indonesian military continued to stamp its ascendency in Indonesia's political and economic spheres during 32 years of Suharto's presidency.

The role of the Indonesian military in politics however came to an end after the fall of former President Suharto in May 1998 in the midst of a severe economic crisis as public protests grew over rampant corruption, cronyism and nepotism within the government and the Suharto family.

Today, the Indonesian military exists as a professional fighting force which remains subservient to the civilian leadership. How is Indonesia able to thrive as the world's third largest democracy when several others fail?