16 - The Politics of Religious and Cultural Authority: Contestation and Co-existence of Sultanate and Islamic Movements in the Post-Suharto Yogyakarta and Ternate

Summary

Introduction

This chapter attempts to delineate the politicization of religious and cultural authority in Ternate and Yogyakarta. It narrates the contestation and co-existence of two religious and cultural authorities in these cities, namely the Islamic Sultanate on the one hand, and Islamic movements on the other. The sultanate institution in both Ternate and Yogyakarta dated back to the pre-colonial era. Meanwhile, the rise of Islamism has been a key feature in both cities after the fall of the New Order in 1998. The two royal institutions have played a crucial role during the democratic transition in 1998 and beyond. The Keraton of Yogyakarta played a pivotal role in promoting the reformasi movement while at the same time preventing violence and riots during the critical power transition period. On the other hand, the Keraton of Ternate had been one of the warring parties during the communal conflict in North Moluccas in 1999–2001.

Within the existing scholarly debates, the re-emergence of the Sultanate and Islamism is widely portrayed as a representation of identity politics that emerged from the democratization process in post-authoritarian Indonesia (Assyaukanie 2009; Hilmy 2010; Klinken 2007b; Machmudi 2008; Mujani 2007; Platzdasch 2009; Salim 2008). This is reflected in the studies of the Sultanate both in Ternate and Yogyakarta. In Ternate, major studies explain how the decentralization process brought the resurgence of “tradition” in the political arena of Ternate and North Moluccas (Bubandt 2004; Klinken 2007a; Duncan 2009; Smith 2009).

In this wave of “politics of tradition”, the Sultanate and Islamism are located as conflicting forces. This conclusion was drawn based on the rivalry between the Sultanate of Ternate and Islamist forces during the communal conflict, as well as during the power struggle for resources in the early years after the country underwent decentralization (Duncan 2005, p. 68; Klinken 2007a, pp. 109–23). Meanwhile, the Keraton of Yogyakarta is associated with cultural authority that represents Javanese high culture—“Javanese Islam”—and the symbol of pluralism (Woodward 2010). Gerry van Klinken (2007b) rightly pointed out that the re-emergence of Sultanate across the country after the collapse of Suharto's New Order regime in 1998 has become a model of neotraditionalist leadership and a symbol of cultural pluralism.