Transnational Islamic Actors and Indonesia's Foreign Policy

Transcending the State

Delphine Alles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317655923
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The past fifteen years have seen Indonesia move away from authoritarianism to a thriving yet imperfect democracy. During this time, the archipelago attracted international attention as the most-populated Muslim-majority country in the world. As religious issues and actors have been increasingly taken into account in the analysis and conduct of international relations, particularly since the 9/11 events, Indonesia's leaders have adapted to this new context.

Taking a socio-historical perspective, this book examines the growing role of transnational Islamic Non-State Actors (NSAs) in post-authoritarian Indonesia and how it has affected the making of Indonesia's foreign policy since the country embarked on the democratization process in 1998. It returns to the origins of the relationship between Islamic organisations and the Indonesian institutions in order to explain the current interactions between transnational Islamic actors and the country's official foreign policies. The book considers for the first time the interactions between the "parallel diplomacy" undertaken by Indonesia's Islamic NSAs and the country's official foreign policy narrative and actions. It explains the adaptation of the state's responses, and investigates the outcomes of those responses on the country's international identity. Combining field-collected data and a theoretical reflexion, it offers a distanced analysis which deepens theoretical approaches on transnational religious actors.

Providing original research in Asian Studies, while filling an empirical gap in international relations theory, this book will be of interest to scholars of Indonesian Studies, Islamic Studies, International Relations and Asian Politics.

1 Historical detour

The long interplay between transnational Islamic actors and the archipelago’s foreign relations

A historic leap is necessary to understand the interactions between Indonesia’s transnational Islamic actors and its contemporary foreign policies. Movements of non-state actors and ideologies across the straits and seas have been present in Southeast Asia long before the apparition of modern states in the region. The projection of actors beyond the borders of modern Indonesia has not awaited its institutional and political emergence as a nation-state. The situation where international relations are addressed as a state monopoly and where individual or collective actions that challenge this monopoly are considered disruptive intrusions¹ appears as a historical exception. This chapter addresses the establishment of transnational networks in the region, before the institutionalization of Indonesia as a state, from the perspective of non-state actors’ movements.

It goes back to the different stages of Islam’s importation to Southeast Asia, both before and during colonial times. Such a detour emphasizes that the subsequent interactions between foreign policies and actors founding their legitimacy on a religious narrative directly proceeds from the construction of the relationship between a relatively recent state and a religion which has existed long before its emergence. It is all the more so since Islam, as mentioned in the introduction, is, by nature disenfranchised from the states-based international system. Having been present in Southeast Asia long before the institutionalization of nation-states in the region, Islamic actors were navigating across the archipelago before the apparition of the very notion of an Indonesian foreign policy. The historical events and sociological continuities introduced in this chapter will be selective and partial to a historian’s eyes; however, they provide a key to enlighten the arguments which will be discussed throughout the rest of the book.

Islam’s implantation in Indonesia: a transcontinental tale

No history of Southeast Asia’s peoples can ignore the importance of their global outlook, first at the regional level and then at the world level. As early as the first centuries before our era, Malay merchants were already able to move as far as the East African coast and China, and Indian and Arab commercial ships were cruising in the archipelago’s straits, covering the Indian Ocean which then was perceived as a place for exchanges rather than a barrier.² The first great empires of the region had far different features from the contemporary nations’ borders. Their territories were deploying in concentric circles around the heart of a city-state located in Sumatra from the eighth to the twelfth century for the Srivijaya thalassocratic empire and then in the centre of Java for the Majapahit empire, which shone over the archipelago during the fourteenth century. The kingdom was expanding its influence over a network of tributary regions, akin to commercial counters whose activities were supervised by Majapahit.³

The history of the relationship between the peoples who currently form Indonesia’s population and the rest of the Muslim world is tied to the establishment of bilateral exchanges in several areas. The arrival of Islam in the territories which form contemporary Indonesia was indeed a corollary to their opening towards farther and farther lands: initially a “religious legacy of the race for spices,”⁴ Islam then became a projection factor. Trade was the initial impulse, and it led to the conclusion of political alliances. Intellectual and religious exchanges quickly followed merchants’ convoys, with pilgrim movements towards the Arabic peninsula, students’ sojourns in the great intellectual centres of the Middle East and the arrival of clerics and religious intellectuals of Arabic or South Asian descent in the archipelago. Peter G. Riddell has underlined the influence of Arab thinkers in Southeast Asia. He thus highlighted the integration of the entire region in the framework of a global Umma, while emphasizing the diversity of the theological influences now present in Southeast Asia.⁵

The spread of Islam in Southeast Asia

Sources differ concerning the exact conditions and dates of the emergence and implantation of Islam in the archipelago.⁶ They tend to converge, however, around the idea of a gradual and relatively peaceful spread. Islam arrived in Southeast Asia along with commercial ships, which had long been cruising from the Arabic Peninsula, Persia, the Indian sub-continent and China. It was not until the religion became institutionalized and politicized following the conversion of expansionist kings that its spread in the region gave rise to conflicts opposing Islamic sultanates and Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms, or sultanates led by different rulers.⁷

The existence of Islamic kingdoms has been acknowledged in the archipelago from the end of the thirteenth century. It has been described, for instance, by Marco Polo, whose writings mention the Samudera Pasai sultanate in the north of Sumatra.⁸ The existence of this sultanate was confirmed during the fourteenth century by Ibn Battûta, known as the “Berber Marco Polo,” from Tangiers.⁹ The authenticity of the two travellers’ accounts is disputed; nevertheless, the fact that they both mention the existence of a Sumatran sultanate remains enlightening.¹⁰ Ibn Battûta’s story also illustrates the journey of these early travellers, who took advantage of the expansion of trade to embark on Muslim traders’ vessels and follow their path. It is indeed thanks to the expansion of commercial exchanges, stimulated by the European demand for Chinese products, that contacts intensified between the peoples of Southeast Asia and Muslim individuals. The latter arrived from the Indian sub-continent, then from the Arabic Peninsula and North Africa, initially without displaying political ambitions or a willingness to establish diplomatic relationships. Bengali merchants, who were the most numerous, but also Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Gujarati traders, created a junction between Southeast Asia, the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East.¹¹

The historiography originating from the (contemporary) Indonesian and Malaysian territories accounts for a relatively consensual spread of Islam in the region. The technological superiority of the newly arrived Muslim merchants and sailors, their awareness of economic principles and their ability to calculate economic, physical and political risks are said to have conferred on them an aura of success. Their accomplishments were initially attributed by their Southeast Asian counterparts to the superiority of their knowledge and the benevolence of their god. Considering the sultan as a representative of Allah on earth and the protector of religion, the Islamic political tradition also appeared to be compatible with local beliefs and practices. It is said to have come in support of the traditional Malay cosmology, according to which the king derived his legitimacy from a mystical power, the daulat. In addition, it was possible to merge elements of the imported faith with traditional beliefs, such as the existence of tuyul (spirits), assimilated to the djins mentioned by the Quran.¹² The collective imaginary thus maintains the idea that local sovereigns willingly and peacefully converted to Islam, which was not considered a rupture from local myths.

It is under the impulse of charismatic leaders that the Islamic religion is said to have spread further in the archipelago. According to semi-legendary royal chronicles, several conversions of kings led to the adoption of Islam by large groups of people during the fourteenth century. The king of Samudera Pasai (north of Sumatra), Merah Silau, is said to have woken up circumcised and capable of reciting the Quran in Arabic after a dream during which Prophet Mohammad spit in his mouth while conferring on him the title of Sultan Malik al-Salih. The chronicle recalls that he then recited the Shahada (“the Testimony,” declaring belief in the oneness of God and the recognition of Muhammad as his prophet) in front of a wise Arab man who had arrived from Mecca by the sea. He then converted his people in order to found the region’s first sultanate.¹³ During the sixteenth century, the Portuguese traveller Tome Pires¹⁴ also recounted the history of Prince Parameswara, who founded the port city of Melaka in 1402. When he married a Muslim princess from Pasai, Parameswara became Iskandar Shah, Sultan of Melaka. For Melaka, as well as in the case of Samudera Pasai, it is the expansion of trade with the Indian Ocean which favoured the development of small kingdoms, established as international trade centres.¹⁵ The conversion of Iskandar Shah further accelerated the expansion of Islam in the region, which was facilitated by the advantageous conditions reserved for Muslim merchants who were going through the Strait of Melaka.¹⁶ Despite their obviously romanticized nature, it is interesting to observe that both examples manifest the presence of several external influences: Arabic names and titles, but also Indian traditions, which were observed at the Pasai court.¹⁷ Other legendary accounts have accompanied the conversion of entire populations across the rest of the archipelago. It is especially the case in Java, where the spread of Islam is attributed to nine saints, the Wali Songo, whose adventures are recounted in the Babad Tanah Jawi (“Chronicle of Java”). The Wali Songo remain present in Indonesia’s popular imaginary.¹⁸ Their graves, located in East Java, are still revered by tenants of the Javanese Islamic tradition.

Until the fifteenth century, the Islamic presence in the archipelago remained mostly located on the coast, confined to the merchant areas which had been the first exposed to this influence. The development of a political logic contributed to the institutional unification of the region and reinforced the ties between Southeast Asia and the “centres” of the Muslim world. In 1527, the defeat of the thalassocratic empire of Majapahit to the Demak Sultanate, which conquered the northern coast and the west of Java (especially Banten, not far from contemporary Jakarta), marked a turn towards the conversion of Java’s internal lands to Islam. Over time, through conversions, weddings and conquests, Java’s Indianized courts evolved into sultanates, the most prominent of which was the kingdom of Mataram, which progressively overshadowed the others. However, Islam did not fully replace the previously existing religious practices. Just as Hinduism and Buddhism had been juxtaposed with the local beliefs that had preceded the installation of the great empires, Islam became increasingly incorporated into pre-existing religious systems, giving birth to the Javanese form of religious syncretism. Different cults and religious traditions subsist across the archipelago, reflecting the various contexts within which people converted to Islam, whether these conversions took place pacifically or coercively. The diversity of practices is also linked to the influence of local Sufi fraternities. A relative unity is, however, ensured by the dominant influence of the Shafi’i school of law (madhhab) and the widespread use of the Malay language in the region.¹⁹ Shi’a elements were also present, but their impact remained limited until the turn of the twentieth century. They attest to the influence of a Persian network whose traces are found in the traditional Malay literature, such as the legendary Hikayat Nur Muhammad (“History of Muhammad’s mystical light”), adapted from Persian as early as 1630.²⁰ In the territories that were colonized by the Dutch empire and became Indonesia in the twentieth century, hints of early contacts with the Shi’a world have also been found. Muharram, the first month of the Muslim calendar, is, for instance, called Sura (derived from Ashura) in Javanese, Sundanese and Makassarese. According to Edwin Wieringa, however, it is only possible to mention “traces” of Shi’ism, whose influence became increasingly marginal after the nineteenth century. The intensification of contacts with the Arab world confirmed the domination of Shafi’i Sunnism, especially through the influence of the Sayyid (who are said to be the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) and Hadrami (Arabs of Yemeni descent) communities, as well as the progressive elimination of Shi’a traces from Persian or Indian descent.²¹

Along these numerous exchanges, which could not be recounted in length in the context of this historical summary, the peoples of the archipelago were provided with referents. These acted as models or counter-models for the development of Islam in the archipelago. The Indonesian practice of Islam, far from being an ersatz of the original religion, progressively...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Spelling and transliterations
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Historical detour: the long interplay between transnational Islamic actors and the archipelago’s foreign relations
• 2 Sociological continuities, institutional evolutions: a foreign policy tradition avoiding religious references
• 3 Islamic non-state actors and post-Reformasi foreign relations: outlooks, interests and agendas
• 4 Preserving Indonesia’s image and identity: foreign policy responses to Islamic actors’ transnational activities
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index