[Kabar-indonesia] 1 of 3: The Rise of the Liberal Islam Network (JIL) in Contemporary Indonesia

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The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences
Volume 20 Number I / Winter 2005
[available online Sept. 2006]

The Rise of the Liberal Islam Network (JIL) in
Contemporary Indonesia 

Muhamad Ali [Muhamad Ali is a lecturer at the Syarif
Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta,
Indonesia. He obtained his M.Sc. in Islamic history
and politics from the University of
Edinburgh, Scotland, and is now pursuing his Ph.D. in
history at the University of Hawaii
at Manoa as a fellow at the East-West Center,
Honolulu, Hawaii.]

Abstract 

This paper seeks to shed some light on liberal Islamic
movements in Indonesia, with specific reference to the
Liberal Islam Network (Jaringan Islam Liberal [JIL]).
It examines the network's political, organizational,
and intellectual origins, and also addresses an
important alternative topic at a time when most
scholarly research on contemporary Islam is focused on
the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism.1 The
article's importance lies in its examination of the
network's rise in light of oversimplified views
regarding contemporary Islam's supposed homogeneity.

JIL can be regarded as a social movement that is
primarily intellectual in origin and orientation, but
one that also has to face continued dialogues with
political, social, and cultural circumstances.

This paper will argue that JIL's rise is a product of
dynamic local, national, and international
circumstances that lead to intellectual dynamism among
the younger generation of Indonesian Muslims.

Introduction 

Social movements do not emerge in a vacuum, but rather
are shaped by a wide range of environmental factors
that condition the objective possibilities for
successful movements.2 

The Liberal Islam Network (JIL) was founded in March
2001, partly as a counter-movement to the rise of
Islamic fundamentalism within the more open political
circumstances made possible by President Soeharto's
fall in 1998. Within the context of the modern
nation-state, Islamic reformism evolved in Indonesia
partly as a response to immediate political processes.

After the attempted communist coup of September 1965
and subsequent massacre of communist members by the
military, General Soeharto took over the government
from President Soekarno (ruled 1945-66, called the
"Old Order" by the later regime). The Soeharto era, or
the "New Order" era (1966-98) was predominantly marked
by the depolitization of Islam.

The number of political parties was restricted, and
organizations could not use Islam as an ideology.
During the latter part of the "New Order," Golongan
Karya (the Functional Group Party), Partai Demokrasi
Indonesia (the Indonesian Democratic Party [PDI]), and
Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (the Party of Unity and
Development [PPP]) were the only three officially
recognized parties. Although not using Islam as its
ideology, the PPP claimed to be a representative of
the Muslim community.

Instead of Islam, the ideology of all parties and
organizations had to adhere to the state ideology of
Pancasila (Five Principles): the oneness of God,
humanism, national unity, representative democracy,
and social justice.

The core beliefs of the "New Order" were that popular
participation in politics must be strictly limited;
that the country must accede to the realities of world
power and economic relationships; and that what really
mattered was the material accomplishment of
"development," rather than the realization of a
national essence or an international ideal. Political
stability and economic development were seen as two
sides as the same coin, and, accordingly, diversity
was discouraged and even repressed.3 Consequently,
sociopolitical movements did not flourish, despite the
increased number of Indonesians (some 200 million). If
there were political activities, they tended to work
underground and their number was very limited. Thus,
most of the Islamic movements were purely cultural or
religious, rather than political. It is in this
context that Nurcholish Madjid promoted the so-called
"cultural Islam." His catchwords were "Islam yes,
Islamic party no," "desacralization," "and
"secularization." According to Madjid, secularization
is a natural effect of modernization. For him,
secularization means making secular what is supposed
to be secular in Islam. Thus, for example, political
and economic affairs should not be part of the
sacred.4 His contemporaries, such as Abdurrahman
Wahid, advocated the "localization" of Islam, or
bringing "universal" Islam into accord with local
conditions.5 Ahmad Wahib, who published a journal in
the 1970s, also promoted this kind of freedom of
thought. However, he died at a young age and therefore
did not elaborate upon it more systematically. During
this period, these Muslim intellectuals, although
controversial within the Islamic community, were not
repressed by the "New Order" government because their
ideas were primarily cultural (rather than political)
and they did not pose a political threat to the
political establishment.

Following the Asian economic crisis of 1997-98, which
also affected Indonesia, and the still unresolved
domestic political conflicts, the Soeharto era ended
in March 1998. Students played a significant role in
toppling the military-backed Soeharto government. As a
consequence, new political parties and social
movements, either religious or secular, were
established.

The people saw the collapse of the Soeharto regime as
a great opportunity to express their discontent and
their expectations, which until then they had kept to
themselves or had met with official disinterest or
repression, more overtly.

This era of political openness became a political
opportunity for Muslim radicalism. Islamic hard-liners
or radicals, some of whom had been oppressed and
jailed by Soeharto, came to the surface and became
active. In fact, they became so vocal that they caused
the new government, as well as the moderate majority
of Muslims, to become worried.

In some local areas, this political openness was
followed by the eruption of ethno-religious conflicts,
such as in Maluku and Kalimantan. Muslims and
Christians in Maluku clashed on January 19, 1999, and
did not reconcile until the end of 2001. Seen by
observers as evidence of Jakarta's failure to build a
tolerant society, these conflicts stimulated the rise
of radicalism.

Some of the radical movements that emerged after
Soeharto's fall were the Laskar Jihad (the Holy War
Fighters), which was led by Jafar Umar Thalib and
eventually became involved in Maluku's ethno-religious
conflicts6; the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (the
Indonesian Muslim Fighters Council), led by Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir; and other paramilitary groups, such as the
Front Pembela Islam (the Islamic Defenders' Front
[FPI]), led by Habib Muhammad Rizieq Syihab. Apart
from such paramilitary groups, other people who wished
to follow more formally democratic ways emerged and
created parties that used Islam as their ideology.

The most important of these parties seemed to be the
Party of Justice (Partai Keadilan [PK], which later
changed its name to the Just and Ali: The Rise of the
Liberal Islam Network (JIL) 3 Prosperous Party [PKS]).
The latter became particularly popular in Muslim youth
circles and on campuses, and represented the political
vehicle for many Islamic revivalists.7 The Islamic
revivalism seen in Indonesia was part of a global
movement of Islamic revivalism that began in the 1970s
and continues until this day. The revivalist Islamic
movements also emerged in response to current
international events, such as the Iranian revolution
of 1978-79 and other events that affected the rise of
Islamic revivalism in Southeast Asia. Islamic
revivalism has taken different ways, one of them being
the use of force.

Thus, for example, some of the paramilitary groups
became involved in "sweeping" actions against
foreigners, particularly Americans, since they opposed
Washington's invasion of Afghanistan and its foreign
policies in the Middle East.8 

Thus, JIL emerged in the context of feeling a greater
need to respond to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism,
which its members viewed as a threat to the peaceful
and tolerant lifestyle of Indonesian society. Six
young people, namely, Ulil Abshar-Abdalla,9 Luthfi
Assyaukani, Hamid Basyaib, Ihsan Ali Fauzi, Nong Darol
Mahmada, and Ahmad Sahal, met a senior journalist,
Goenawan Mohammad, in January 2001. In this meeting,
they discussed the possibility of establishing a
network that would link different intellectuals and
activists concerned with liberal interpretations of
Islamic teachings to counter the fundamentalist
discourse and movement. Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, who
became JIL's chief coordinator, said: "We've seen
radical Islam grow militant, systematic, and
organized, while 'liberal Islam' has been unorganized,
weak, not militant, not resistant, and unassertive in
giving voice to its perspective. The Liberal Islamic
Network was in fact motivated by the appearance of
these radical Islamic movements."10 Thus, the
network's rise in 2001 was a critique of this Islamic
revivalism. Later, Ulil reasserted: "Their vision is,
in my view, not correct; it must be countered."11 

Ulil's explanation was then supported by Goenawan.12
In his public lecture at the University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA), on November 19, 2001, Goenawan
considered JIL's rise to be a response to Islamic
fundamentalists who, although small in number but
great in influence, had adopted an increasingly
threatening attitude toward democratic values. As
mentioned previously, the Islamic radicals did not
grow until Soeharto fell in 1998. While they sometimes
used violent or hard means to overcome their
grievances against the government, which they
perceived as "impotent," and against those symbols and
practices that they perceived as "un-Islamic," the
young Muslim liberals of JIL pledged themselves to a
publicly declared policy of anti-violence. Thus, since
JIL used a counter-discourse, it can be regarded as a
counter-movement, since it represents a set of
opinions and beliefs in a population opposed to
another social movement.13 

Intellectual Origins 

The rise of JIL cannot be explained in terms of its
resistance against Islamic fundamentalism alone, for
it came into being as part of the various Islamic
reform movements that have taken place over the last
two or so centuries in the Muslim world. In Southeast
Asia, the tradition of Islamic reformism has existed
since the seventeenth century and has primarily been
engaged in theological debates on orthodoxy and
heresy, or legalism and mysticism.14 However, the
Egyptian Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) and his
contemporaries affected later Islamic reformist
movements in Indonesia.15 The first reformist movement
in Indonesia, the Muhammadiyah, was founded in 1912 in
Yogyakarta, Central Java.16 Subsequent reformist
movements in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, led by
those ulama (Islamic scholars) who were seeking to
interpret Islamic teachings according to the spirit of
their time and place, were originally adopted and
adapted by Indonesian reformists from such Middle
Eastern reformists as Abduh, Rashid Rida (1865-1935),
and Ali Abd al-Raziq (1888-1966).

In the late twentieth century, more reformists emerged
in the Middle East and elsewhere, including the West.
Such reformist thinkers as Nasr Abu Zaid (Egyptian,
now in Leiden, the Netherlands), Abdulkarim Soroush
(Iranian), Fatima Mernissi (a Moroccan feminist),
Muhammad Shahrour (Syrian), Fazlur Rahman (Pakistani),
Mohamed Arkoun (Algerian), and Ashgar Ali Engineer
(Indian), despite their different intellectual
inclinations, have contributed to the intellectual
underpinnings of JIL's intellectualism. Liberal
Islamic organizations in the Muslim world (e.g.,
Al-Qalam [South Africa], An-Nahdha [Tunisia], the
International Institute for Islamic Thought [the
United States and Malaysia], the Liberation Movement
[Iran], Liberty for Muslim World [England],
Progressive Dawoodi Bohras [India], Sisters in Islam
[Malaysia], and Progressive Muslims [the United
States]) all coincided with JIL's rise.

Thanks to the Internet, they all have websites that
can be accessed.17 As Charles Kurzman argued in his
book, Liberal Islam: A Source Book (1998), liberal
Islamic movements emerged independently throughout the
Islamic world. But in terms of discourse, JIL is tied
to liberal Islamic movements that take place
elsewhere.

Thus, JIL emerged within a national and international
political context.

Indonesia's regime change in 1998, the subsequent rise
of Islamic radicalism, and the intellectual influence
of global Islamic reform movements were all necessary
factors that contributed to its rise.

Organizational Origins 

The network was formally established on March 8, 2001,
in Jakarta.

Originally a discussion forum through a mailing list
(islamliberal at yahoo groups.com) that had existed since
1999 (following Soeharto's fall), its six young Muslim
activists, who had met Goenawan Muhammad on January 4,
2001, started to recruit students and intellectuals to
join the mailing list.

They decided to use network, rather than organization,
association, or political party. For example, Hamid
Basyaib argued that JIL is a cultural and intellectual
movement, for it is not a political party, an
organization, or a religious sect that has strict
rituals with sanctions and punishments. Its focus,
therefore, should be on countering fundamentalism.
Eventually, JIL chose to create itself in the form of
a network, rather than as a strict organization or to
get involved with party politics. As a result of this
deliberate decision, JIL is a loose alliance open to
anyone who is willing to subscribe to liberal Islamic
ideas.

The founders considered their alliance to be a
network, so that individuals could have multiple
memberships as well as temporary and limited
involvement. In addition, the creation of a collective
identity occurs in the midst of tensions created by
the inadequacy of those means currently available to
achieve personal and collective goals. From these
tensions, as well as from close face-to-face
interaction, a heavy emotional investment develops and
encourages individuals to share in the collective
identity, as Mueller (1994) has argued.

>From the outset, there was a debate about the
network's nature. Saiful Muzani, another JIL activist,
offered a formulation of three different but related
attitudes of JIL activists: theological/philosophical,
sociological/ social, and political. From the
"submerged network" perspective, the reason for
choosing a network may be explained in the following
way: More members are expected to be recruited without
their new JIL membership causing them to leave their
original organizational affiliation, for, as Melucci
(1980) argued, people tend to have multiple
memberships.

Muslims and non-Muslims who are concerned about
Islamic liberalism are welcome to join the ranks of
JIL's activists, members, contributors, or supporters.

A strict organization would limit the range of
movement of its activists, who have emerged from among
those young intellectuals, students, professionals,
and others whose access to the Internet enables them
to be in constant communication without leaving their
own offices. To put it another way, a network makes it
possible for activists to be involved in the
discourses and activities regardless of time and place
constraints.

JIL needs resources (e.g., legitimacy, money,
facilities, and labor) to succeed. The political
processes and intellectual origins, as elaborated
above, are important factors in its rise, but they are
no more than opportunities.

Although political opportunities are necessary, they
are not sufficient in themselves for a movement to
arise and develop. If there is discontent, it should
be defined, created, and manipulated by issue
entrepreneurs and organizations so that a movement may
emerge. Such social movements as JIL depend on some
combination of formal and informal groups for their
persistence and success. JIL has some human resources
(viz., the educated youth as the elite) with adequate
access to modern as well as traditional Islamic
sciences (e.g., Arabic, theology, and others). In
addition, JIL has capital resources (financial support
from foreign agencies),18 technology (mass media and
the Internet),19 and other facilities, such as a
permanent office.20 JIL also has wide communication
networks with national, regional, and international
Islamic and non-Islamic organizations. This phenomenon
resembles quite nicely the creation of a "new public"
in eighteenth-century France by Frenchmen who wanted a
forum in which they could discuss liberal or
Enlightenment ideas.21 In terms of a support base, JIL
has not emerged simply out of its beneficiaries'
grievances.22 Committed constituents provide sources
of support.

Strategy and tactics include mobilizing supporters,
transforming mass and elite publics into sympathizers
or even members/constituents, and achieving specific
goals. Indonesian society provides the infrastructure
that JIL utilizes, including its communication media,
its degree of access to institutions and individuals
(e.g., religious thinkers), and such pre-existing
religious organizations as the Muhammadiyah (founded
in 1912), the Nahdlatul Ulama (founded in 1926), a
number of the State Institutes for Islamic Studies,
and others.

The emerging young members of the educated elite, who
emerged prior to Soeharto's fall in 1998, constitute
its primary human resources. These young people are
more likely to participate in protest activity than
their seniors.23 JIL also involves women activists such as
Nong Darol Mahmadah, a graduate of Jakarta's State
Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN). Women have also
been playing an increasingly prominent role in
contentious politics.

The emergence of JIL's young elite is also attributed
to young people's increased access to education;
universal access to media; and welleducated people who
travel widely, read newspapers and magazines quite
regularly, and have increasing contacts with people
outside their local areas.

The widespread nature of modern higher education has,
in many respects, broken the traditional religious
institutions' monopoly on religious scholarship and
religious authority. But, one can ask, what kind of
education has contributed to JIL's rise? The young
intellectuals, many of whom were not yet in their 40s,
who decided to call themselves representatives of
"liberal Islam" began their studies of religion at
Indonesian-style Islamic boarding schools
(pesantren).24 However, the educational background of
JIL activists varies. Some graduated from pesantren,
while others acquired a secular education but
auto-didactically learned Islam. This diversity
creates strength, because they can exchange views in
different ways. In addition, as Goenawan observes,
most JIL activists came from provinces that are quite
far way from Jakarta. At first, only very few of the
group's leading members had been to any school in the
United States or Europe. Later on, some of them went
abroad to further their studies, but still remained in
constant contact with those back home.25 

Formulating a Liberal Discourse 

How did JIL come up with its liberal discourse? Its
predominant frame, one that emerged right before and
in the early period of its establishment, was pacifism
(anti-violence), for the founders regarded violence as
antithetical to Islam, a religion of peaceful
humanity. These ideas of peace and moderation were
also present during their early discussions.
Separately, both before and after Soeharto's fall,
other young Muslim students, fresh graduates, and
activists were involved in the rethinking of Islamic
teachings.

Many remained within their individual organizations or
affiliations, while others had no affiliation at all.
Some were connected with student organizations or
study clubs, such as the Islamic Student Association
(HMI), the Indonesian Islamic Student Union (PMII),
the Muhammadiyah's Student Association (IMM), the
Forum of Ciputat's Students (Formaci), and the
Paramida Circle, among others. These young activists
had been exposed to modern ideas and theories as well
as to Islam's traditional sciences, and were familiar
with such liberal ideas as freedom of thought,
moderation, human rights, democracy, and so forth. At
the early stage of building bridges between the
founders and other young intellectuals or activists,
anti-violence became a congruent frame.

Some congruency in discourse can also be discerned
between the Muslim majority and some of the non-Muslim
minorities. Historically and sociologically,
Indonesian Muslims and non-Muslims have been
religiously and politically moderate. Fundamentalists
constitute a very tiny minority.

Religions in Indonesia (viz., Islam, Christianity,
Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and others) have
been localized in such a way that compromises and
accommodations between the universal and the local, as
well as between the authentic and the modern, became
the norm rather than the exception. The anti-violence
that JIL attempted to promote was not an unfamiliar
frame within Indonesia's religious and political
circumstances. Thus, when Islamic fundamentalists
engaged in violence against their perceived enemies,
whether Muslim or non-Muslim, partly out of their
disillusionment with the government's perceived
failure and the silent majority, JIL's anti-violence
policy corresponded with that of the majority.

Such values as moderation and liberation became JIL's
modes of conduct to be promoted within the context of
the perceived threats posed by the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism.26 JIL positioned itself as an
anti-fundamentalist movement and decided to choose
moderation, non-literalism, and liberalism as its
preferred values or frames to which its efforts will
be devoted. As it developed, however, its activists
did not confine its discourse and frames to
anti-violence, but began to develop discourses that
are still relevant to what they view as liberal
values.27 There was a lively internal debate over the
meaning of "liberal Islam," particularly regarding
what liberal should imply. JIL activists interpreted
liberal in different ways, although they eventually
seemed to agree on the spirit of freedom of thought
and expression, while the application depends upon the
context. They read Kurzman's definition of liberal
Islam, in which he uses liberal to refer to basic
themes in the history of liberalism, such as
democracy, freedom of thought, social equality, and
human progress.

Despite the variety of this term's meanings, those
Muslims who share parallel concerns with western
liberalism (e.g., separation of church and state,
democracy, the rights of women and minorities, freedom
of thought, and human progress) can also be considered
liberal.28 Previously, Leonard Binder outlined in his
Islamic Liberalism (1988) the archeology of liberal
knowledge in the Middle East. Binder viewed liberalism
as a critique of development ideologies.29 But JIL
activists were inspired more by Kurzman than by Binder
while defining and formulating liberal Islam.

They discussed the term via conversations and mailing
discussions,30 and eventually reached some common
understanding about what liberal Islam should mean for
JIL: a liberal and liberating form of Islam that
emphasizes ethics rather than formalism, stresses
relativism and inclusivism rather than absolutism,
promotes the interests of the minority and of the
oppressed, and supports religious freedom and the
separation of religion and politics. These liberal
themes developed as JIL activists increased their
discussions.

Thus, JIL activists sought to broaden their discourse
from merely antiviolence to various kinds of
discourses, including freedom of expression, promotion
of a secular Indonesian state, monogamy, social
liberation, and even anti-war campaigns, as new
situations allow. For example, Goenawan Mohammad
contended that JIL's rise can be put into the context
of those pro-democracy movements in Indonesia that
evolved prior to Soeharto's fall in 1998. In other
words, since JIL also struggled for human rights, it
can be considered a "rights" movement, like the
women's liberation movement and civil rights movements
in the United States.31 The value of secularism, as
well as the separation of state and religious affairs,
were repeatedly emphasized. For JIL, Islam is not
incompatible with secularism if it does not mean total
rejection of religious faith … The doctrine that
religion and politics should be integrated in Islam is
merely a later historical construct rather than the
Qur'anic doctrine.32 Denny JA (Denny Januar Ali),
another JIL activist, sought to formulate a theology
of a secular state, using the secular American state
as his reference, although his suggestion led to
debates.

JIL also developed issues and discourses that included
interfaith marriage, interfaith dialogue, pluralist
and multicultural education, freedom of artistic
expression, gender equality, anti-polygamy, and so
forth.33 In this process, it attempted to formulate a
liberal Islamic discourse in different ways. For
example, Ulil once discussed Islamic liberalism in
terms of authenticity and modernity. Thus, for him,
JIL is an attempt to reconcile the tensions between
authenticity and modernity. 34 Denny JA viewed liberal
Islam as an interpretation of Islam that sustains
civic culture (e.g., propluralism, equal opportunity,
moderation, trust, tolerance, and a national sense of
community). Luthfi Assyaukani stressed a liberating
element of liberal Islam, a kind of liberation
theology. 35 

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