Fundamentalists and democracy: The political culture of Indonesian Islamist students

This dissertation is an anthropological investigation of the political culture of Indonesian Islamist students. There has been a tendency among Western analysts and particularly policy makers to assume that religious activism and democratic principles are incompatible, that without the advance of secularism fundamental principles of liberal politics will founder. For many there is something inherently anti-democratic in Islam as a belief system. Accordingly, some policy makers have advocated excluding Muslim fundamentalists from participation in political forums and democratic contests. This dissertation shows, however, that Islamic fundamentalism is a contested arena. The term covers a wide range of discourses and activist programs. The research indicates that the objectives and practices of some fundamentalist organizations and movements are compatible with democratic functioning. The author argues further that participation in the democratic process is itself democratizing. She suggests, therefore, that western human rights and democracy advocates need to adopt a more inclusive policy toward fundamentalist groups. Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation. It is therefore an important arena for investigating the compatibility of Islamic fundamentalism and democracy. The research was conducted in the late nineties, in the years immediately preceding and during the student reform movement that brought about the end of the New Order regime of President Suharto---a movement in which Islamist students played a leading role. The research was conducted in mosques and student organizations in Yogyakarta and Jakarta, Indonesia. The approach is framed by research in what has been termed "new social movements." It thus foregrounds questions of identity, combining structural and phenomenological approaches. In the approach to the Islamic student movement the author argues argue that the student movement cannot be faithfully tracked by standard social movement theories that downplay the role of organizations and their leaders' organizing skill and experience or sideline the role of religious motivation.