internal dynamics of the prosperous justice party and jamaah tarbiyah 75
attracted vast scholarly and popular attention, debates and controversies –
both in terms of its ideological profile as an offshoot of the Egyptian
Muslim Brothers, and with its amazing political achievements; moving
from a small party that failed to pass the electoral threshold into the
largest Islam-based party in the Parliament and part of the government.
Its ideological orientation drew suspicions of pursuing a radical Islamist
agenda in order to replace democracy with an Islamic political system,
while its rocketing success raised questions about the prospect of
Indonesian democratisation that enabled an apparently radical party to
become prominent.
This chapter started with tracking the historical development of the
jt and pks. It is true that the jt was founded following the ideological
formula and organisational structure of the Egyptian Muslim Broth-
erhood model by a group of young graduates of institutions of higher
education in the Middle East in the early 1980s. However, further inquiry
reveals that the organisation has developed through already existing
networks of activists and leadership, nurtured by Islam-based politicians
and activists from a previous era, especially young academics in secular
universities. The jt evolved into a movement characterised by a mixed
political agenda. On the one hand it has adopted the political aims and
strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood and wants to create a comprehen-
sive Islamic way of life through a gradual process of dakwah, political
democratisation against the background of an authoritarian regime and
a politically involved military. On the other hand it is caught up in the
realities of Indonesian politics and of the intra-Muslim competitions
with other Islam-based political and social organisations.
Such a developmental trajectory and institutional setting created
certain internal dynamics inside the jt and pks. Amid progressive
democratic consolidation – especially the consolidation of the party
system that made political parties work more professionally – the pks
witnessed an increasingly pragmatic tendency, in both its organisational
structures and political behaviour. Organisationally, it experienced a
process of oligarchy, in which, initially, the highest authority was in the
hands of its members, exercised through the national congress. Later,
it was handed over to its elites in the Deliberation Assembly – on the
grounds of organisational effectiveness. Behaviourally, it experienced a
change in perception and behaviour regarding politics, from perceiving
politics as part of Islamic propagation (dakwah) to being conducted
following Islamic principles and as an instrument of propagation that
needed to be pursued in its own way. These changes led to polarisation,
divisions and factionalism both between and inside the jt and the