School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses

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Muslim models of polity: Islamic arguments for political change in Indonesia, 1945-2005

Assyaukanie, Ahmad Luthfi ( 2006)

This study is about Islamic arguments for political change in Indonesia. It argues that there has been significant development in Islamic political discourse over the past fifty years. Comparing three Muslim generations, the study found that there are three models of polity developed by Muslim intellectuals throughout the history of modern Indonesia. The first model is the Islamic Democratic State (IDS), which dominated Islamic political discourse during the first two decades of Indonesian independence (1945-65). The second model is the Religious Democratic State (RDS), which emerged and played a significant role in the New Order era (1967-98). The third model is the Liberal Democratic State (LDS), which also emerged in the New Order era and is increasingly accepted by the younger Muslim generation in the post-Suharto era (1998 and beyond). This finding, furthermore, reveals that Indonesian Muslims made important progress in accepting modern political concepts coming from the West. Instead of embracing rejectionism as exhibited by various groups of Islamic radicalism, liberal Muslims use and strengthen their Islamic arguments to justify the compatibility between Islam and modern ideas such as democracy, freedom, and secularism.