Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T19:26:28.021Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Islamic Defenders Front Militia (Front Pembela Islam) and its Impact on Growing Religious Intolerance in Indonesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2019

Gabriel Facal
Gabriel Facal*
Affiliation:
Centre Asie du Sud-Est - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The processes of democratisation and liberalisation initiated during the course of the Indonesian Reformasi era (1998-) generated a stronger porosity in the State's frontiers and led to the formation of certain semi-institutionalised organisations. The approaching 2019 presidential elections have enabled these organisations to position themselves as political and moral brokers. The Islamic Defenders Front militia (FPI) appears to be one of the main actors in this process. It has succeeded in imposing itself in the public sphere, channelling political support and utilising extensive media coverage.

While avoiding providing direct opposition to the ruling government and the Constitution, this organisation promotes the social morals followed by a large part of the population and encourages radicalism and violent actions in the name of Islam. The organisation collaborates with a section of the regional and national political elites, some sections of the army and police, several groups that are—more or less—criminal in nature, a number of local communities in different areas, and a variety of violent Islamist groups. Thus, it is at the crossroads of multiple political, economic, social, and religious interests.

At the same time, the organisation's leaders maintain their own political objectives. They manipulate the dynamics of the electoral decentralised system to their advantage by obtaining political concessions that serve their personal goals. The capacity of the organisation to impose its discourse on the public stage has led to an urgent need to interrogate both the institutional and ideological transformations initiated by the Indonesian decentralisation since 1999.

Keywords

IslamismIslamic Defenders Front MilitiaRadicalisationPoliticsIndonesiaFront Pembela Islam
Type
Article
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 2020 , pp. 7 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Since the original publication of this article, TraNS: Trans –Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia has moved to a new design layout. This article has been republished in the new design, and no changes have been made to the article content.

References

References

Allès, Delphine. 2015a. Transnational Islamic Actors and Indonesia's Foreign Policy: Transcending the State. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Allès, Delphine. 2015b. Interfaith Dialogue in Indonesia: From the Revival of Tradition to its International Projection. Paris: Paris Papers.Google Scholar
Barker, Joshua. 1999. “Surveillance and territoriality in Bandung.” In Figures of criminality in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Colonial Vietnam, edited by Rafael, Vicente, 95–127. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.Google Scholar
Beittinger-Lee, Verena. 2010. (Un) Civil Society and Political Change in Indonesia: A Contested Arena. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bertrand, Romain. 2008. “Les ‘guerres du vice’ du gouverneur Sutiyoso (1997–2007). Entreprises criminelles, milices Islamistes et pouvoir politique à Djakarta.” In Milieux criminels et pouvoirs politiques. Les ressorts illicites de l'Etat, edited by Briquet, Jean-Louis and Favarel-Garrigues, Gilles, 84–103. Paris: Editions Karthala.Google Scholar
CNN Indonesia. 2017. “Novel FPI Klaim Tak Tahu soal Dana untuk Aksi 411 dan 212” (“Novel, from the FPI, claims that he does not anything about the funds for the actions 411 and 212”). 13 February.Google Scholar
Cribb, Robert, ed. 1991. Gangsters and Revolutionaries: The Jakarta People's Militia and the Indonesian Revolution 1945–1949. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Feener, Michael. 2007. Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Front, Pembela Islam. 1999. Struktur Laskar FPI (“The strcture of the FPI's troop”). Jakarta: Sekretariat FPI.Google Scholar
Hasan, Noorhaidi. 2009. “Transnational Islam in Indonesia.” In Transnational Islam in South and Southeast Asia; Movements, networks, and conflict dynamics, edited by Mandaville, Peteret al. Washington: NBR report.Google Scholar
Hefner, Robert. 2000. Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hoesterey, James Bourk. 2015. Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict. 2018. After Ahok: The Islamist Agenda in Indonesia. Report No. 44 April 6.Google Scholar
Khalidi, Tarif. 2008. The Qur'an: A New Translation. United Kingdom: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Madinier, Rémy. 2011. “L’État indonésien face à l'extrémisme religieux: gestion de la violence et de l'intolérance” (“The Indonesian State against religious extremism: the management of violence and intolerance”).Report for the Délégation aux Affaires stratégiques. Paris: Ministère de la Défense.Google Scholar
Madinier, Rémy and Andrée, Feillard. 2006. La fin de l'innocence? L'islam indonésien face à la tentation radicale de 1967 à nos jours (The End of Innocence? Indonesian Islam and the Temptations of Radicalism from 1967 until today). Paris-Bangkok: Les Indes Savantes-Institut de Recherche sur l'Asie contemporaine.Google Scholar
Madinier, Rémy. 2002. “Du temps des chameaux à celui du béton radioactif, les nouveaux usages islamistes du passé” (“From the camels times to the radioactive concrete period, the new usages of the Islamic past”). Archipel No. 64 October, 145–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mietzner, Marcus. 2009. Military Politics, Islam, and the State in Indonesia: From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation. Singapore: ISEAS.Google Scholar
Ngatawi, Al-Zastrouw. 2006. Gerakan Islam simbolik: Politik kepentingan FPI (Symbolic movements of Islam: the essential politics of the FPI). Yogyakarta: LKiS.Google Scholar
Njoto-Feillard, Gwenaël. 2013. Radicalisation et résilience: l'islam indonésien, un exemple à suivre dans le monde musulman? December, posted by GIS-Réseau-Asie. Available at: http://www.gis-reseau-asie.org/les-articles-du-mois/radicalisation-resilience-islam-indonesien-gwenael-njoto-feillard (accessed 15 January 2017).Google Scholar
Rudnyckyj, Daromir. 2010. Spiritual Economies: Islam, Globalization and the Afterlife of Development. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Saragih, Bagus. 2011. Wikileaks: National police funded FPI hard-liners. The Jakarta Post, 5 September.Google Scholar
Van Bruinessen, Martin. 2006. “Divergent paths from Gontor: Muslim educational reform and the travails of pluralism in Indonesia.” In On the Edge of Many Worlds [Festschrift Karel A. Steenbrink], edited by Bakker, Freek L. and Aritonang, Jan S., 152–162. Zoetermeer: Meinema.Google Scholar
Wilson, Ian Douglas. 2014. Resisting Democracy: Front Pembela Islam and Indonesia's 2014 Elections. Singapore: ISEAS perspective 10.Google Scholar
Wilson, Ian Douglas. 2015. The Politics of Protection Rackets in Post-New Order Indonesia: Coercive Capital, Authority and Street Politics. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Unpublished interviews

Anonymous interviews with several FPI members, sympathisers and opponents, November–December 2016, July–August 2017, April 2018, Serang (Banten) and Jakarta.Google Scholar
Anonymous interviews with the coordinator of Pamswakarsa for Banten region, February 2007, November 2014, July 2017, Serang (Banten).Google Scholar