internal dynamics of the prosperous justice party and jamaah tarbiyah 47
Many of the top activists of these clandestine Islam-based organizations
subsequently joined the jt and later on the pks, including Mutamimul
Ula (former pii national chairman), Tamsil Linrung and Nur Sanita
Nasution (hmi-mpo).
The fifth institutional setting was the sour relations between Suharto
and the military, which pushed the former president to form an alliance
with Islam-based politics. This setting created a new and complicated
platform of political constellations, in which every camp suffered internal
fractures: the regime was split between pro- and anti-democratisation;
Islam-based politics was split in two directions, i.e. between pro- and
anti-Suharto, and between pro- and anti-democracy; the military was
also split in two directions, i.e. between the Islam-leaning camp (green
soldiers) and the secular-leaning and Christian (the red soldiers) factions,
and between those who were anti- and pro-democratisation. It was this
complicated political constellation that gave pks politicians first-hand
experience that politics was never simple and black-and-white, as
was understood by jt members. It was from this moment on that
pks politicians – and in fact many other Islam-based politicians –
learned about strategic alliances based on similar political interests,
set aside political ideology, and went on to form a faction known as the
pragmatists.⁴⁰
3 Ideology, Organisation, Factionalism
This section explores the internal structures of the jt and pks, as well as
the relationships between the two, in terms of both organisation and
leadership. In principle, these organisations constitute two sides of the
same coin, following the mb’s principle, ‘the community is the party,
and the party is the community’. However, since the two organisations
operate in different arenas, the one political and the other social, and are
governed under different regulations, they have inevitably developed
different sets of rules and procedures that sometimes are not compatible
with each other: the jt is a social religious organisation that operates
under the principles of personal ethics and piety, while the pks engages
in political power struggles and mostly operates under the principles of
programmatic achievements and accountability. Consequently, the two
often clash with each other.
R. William Liddle, ‘The Islamic Turn in Indonesia: A Political Explanation’,The
Journal of Asian Studies55, no. 3 (1996), 613–634.