Darul Islam [DI]
A small minority of Indonesians can be characterized in terms of radical Islam, although even mainstream Muslims sympathize with some aspects of their teachings, if not their practices. Among these radical groups in Indonesia are Darul Islam (House of Islam), Jemaah Islamiyah (internationally regarded as a terrorist organization), Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (Indonesian Islamic Warriors’ Council), and Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders’ Front). These groups share a sense that the West (that is, Christians and Jews) has used economic and military power to enfeeble Islam; their solution is to call for a return to the pure Islam of the righteous ancestors (assalaf as-salih), or Salafism.
Muslim political forces had felt betrayed since signing the June 1945 Jakarta Charter, under which they accepted a pluralist republic in return for agreement that the state would be based upon belief in one God “with Muslims obligated to follow the sharia.” The decision two months later to remove this seven-word phrase from the preamble of the 1945 constitution, to keep predominantly Christian areas of eastern Indonesia from breaking away from the nationalist movement and declaring their own independence, set the agenda for future Islamic politics. At the extreme were the Darul Islam rebellions of the 1950s, which sought to establish a Muslim theocracy.
Religious extremism has disturbed Indonesia’s domestic security as far back as the 1950s and 1960s, when organizations such as Darul Islam and Bangsa Islam Indonesia fought for the establishment of an Islamic state. The political struggle from 1945 to 1959 over the constitutional framework of the state stemmed not from the ambiguities of the 1945 document nor its heavy weighting of executive power, but over deep disagreements about the nature of the state itself, particularly the issues of federalism and the role of Islam. Once the common battle against Dutch imperialism had been won, the passionate differences dividing various nationalist groups about the future of Indonesia surfaced. The possibility of a federation of loosely knit regions was denied by the use of force, first in crushing the Republic of South Maluku (RMS) in 1950, then in suppressing the Darul Islam insurgencies in Jawa Barat, Aceh, and Sulawesi Selatan between 1949 and 1962.
The Special Region of Aceh (called Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, meaning the State of Aceh, Abode of Peace, from 1999 to 2009), in northwestern Sumatra, is the area of Indonesia where the Islamic character of the population is the most pronounced. Aceh found it necessary to fight for its autonomy after independence, in a movement led by the Muslim political figure Muhammad Daud Beureueh (1899–1987) and affiliated with Darul Islam. The Acehnese demand for autonomy, expressed in support for the 1950s Darul Islam rebellion, was partially met by the central government’s acceptance of Aceh as a separate province in 1957. The Govenment granted a “special-region” status for the province in 1959, allowing a higher-than-usual official Indonesian respect for Islamic law and custom.
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