islam, politics and change

34 islam, politics and change

Indonesian agenda for democratisation. By contrast, among the ‘policy

oriented’ camp there are ‘moderates’ who accept office-seeking politics

as a tolerable short-term strategy, and ‘radicals’ who perceive politics
purely as a struggle to influence policies; they staunchly insist that pks

activists are, in principle, preachers and not politicians.

Meanwhile, within the jt there are differences between ‘loyalists’ who
blindly support the pks and ‘critics’ who support the pks only when
it follows jt principles. Furthermore, inside the ‘loyalist’ camp there
are groups of people who are loyal to certain leaders – because of the
access and resources these leaders share, or for other more personal
reasons – but critical of others. It should be noted that those who are

loyal to organisations defend them vehemently from external critics. By

contrast, among the ‘critical’ activists there are those who stayed inside

the jt network and criticise the pks from this position, and those who left
the jt network and criticise the pks as outsiders. The figure on page 35

aims to capture the sub-divisions as described.

The tensions, frictions and divisions are intensely disturbing and

unsettling for jt and pks leaders, and they are desperately seeking ways

to overcome them. Two ideas are worth close attention. Firstly, some
perceive the problem to be rooted in the separation of the jt and pks
leaderships. The two organisations are basically two sides of the same
coin, adhering to the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto that the party is
thejamaah(a community of the faithful), and the jamaah is the party
(al-hizb hiya al-jamaah, wa al-jamaah hiya al-hizb). However, the two
have different rules and patterns of behaviour: the jt follows Islamic
principles under the guidance of the supreme leader (muraqibʿamm),

while the pks follows the Indonesian political system and competitions

led by the party’s president. Therefore, the jt and pks tend to go their
different ways. To overcome the problem, it has been suggested that
the leaderships should be united and the supreme leader of the jt
should assume the position of the party president of the pks. In this
way, there would be a single line of command across both the jt and
pks networks of organisations and this would minimise tensions and

frictions.¹⁶

Secondly, another argument, starting from the same observation,
is that the root of the tensions and frictions among the jt and pks is
the incompatibility between the two organisations: jt members are
informal and follow their own internally set rules, while the pks is
a political party that must comply with state rules and the political

 Interview with Yusuf Supendi, Jakarta.