Abstract
Indonesia’s Shia community recently emerged from privacy to become a public Islamic community. In 2000, the first Shia civil society organisation was officially registered under the law of Indonesia, a country with a massive Sunni majority. Since then, members of this minority Muslim community no longer hide their rituals and practices in the way they were compelled to previously. The chapter analyses the legal-political dynamics of Shiism’s emergence into Indonesia’s public sphere. It also analyses the anti-Shia movement that it provoked. A critical background to this is the Indonesian state’s legal framework for legalising and banning civil society organisations. After describing this, two strands of the emergence are identified. The first is formal recognition by the state. After IJABI was officially registered in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Shia communities were allowed legally to practice their religion in public. In contrast to this bureaucratic approval many Sunni Muslims have perceived Shiism’s public emergence as a threat to public welfare. Activists have campaigned against it. This chapter describes and critically analyses these two contrasting paths of the Shia struggle for public acceptance against the background of a state accustomed to using its bureaucratic powers to manage public identities, and of the public orthodoxy shaped by this management.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Official census figures record Muslims as an undifferentiated category, so they provide no detail about the internal diversity of the Muslim population. In an interview, the Shia leader Jalaluddin Rakhmat estimated that the Shia community was around 2.5 million, equating to around 1.2% of Indonesia’s Muslim community. I am not suggesting this figure is correct, but it has the merit of being an informed estimate by a qualified observer. See ‘Kang Jalal on Shia in Indonesia’, Tempo News (4 Sep 2012), http://www.tempo.co/read/ news/2012/09/04/055427522, accessed 23 Aug 2017.
- 2.
The articles of association can be viewed at the IJABI website: http://www.majulah-ijabi.org/visi-dan-misi.html, accessed July, 2016.
- 3.
The building’s inauguration attracted wide attention in the Bandung media: https://www.pikiran-rakyat.com/bandung-raya/pr-015394174/kemenag-sesalkan-peresmian-gedung-dakwah-annas-di-bandung-dinilai-menebar-kebencian-beragama.
References
Ariel, H., & Sumit, K. M. (2003). Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia: Comparing Indonesia and Malaysia. Routledge Curzon.
Bamualim, C. S. (2015). Islamisasi, Politik dan Aliran Kebatinan di Pedesaan Jawa Barat. In J. Millie & Syarif (Eds.), Islam dan Regionalisme (pp. 45–62). Pustaka Jaya.
Buehler, M. (2016). The Politics of Shari’a law: Islamist Activists and the State in Democratizing Indonesia. Cambridge University Press.
Burhani, A. N. (2014). Treating Minorities with Fatwas: A Study of the Ahmadiyya Community in Indonesia. Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life, 8(3), 285–301.
Farida, A. (2014). Respon Organisasi Massa Islam terhadap Syiah di Bandung Jawa Barat. Jurnal Penelitian Keagamaan Dan Kemasyarakatan, 27(2), 159–176.
Formichi, C. (2014). Violence, Sectarianism, and the Politics of Religion: Articulations of Anti-Shia Discourse. Indonesia, 98, 1–27.
Formichi, C., & Feener, R. M. (Eds.). (2015). Shia in Southeast Asia: Alid Piety and Sectarian Constructions. Oxford University Press.
Hasan, N. (2006). Laskar Jihad: Islam, Militancy, and the Quest for Identity in Post-new Order Indonesia. Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications.
Hefner, R. W. (2000). Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia. Princeton University Press.
Hilmy, M. (2010). Islamism and Democracy in Indonesia: Piety and Pragmatism. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Latief, H. (2008). The Identity of Shia Sympathizers in Contemporary Indonesia. Journal of Indonesian Islam, 2(2), 300–335.
Lestari, Arif. (2022, August 30). Kemenag Sesalkan Peresmian Gedung Dakwah ANNAS di Bandung, Dinilai Menebar Kebencian Beragama, Pikiran Rakyat. https://www.pikiran-rakyat.com/bandung-raya/pr-015394174/kemenag-sesalkan-peresmian-gedung-dakwah-annas-di-bandung-dinilai-menebar-kebencian-beragama
Makin, Al. (2017). Homogenizing Indonesian Islam: Persecution of The Shia Group in Yogyakarta. Studia Islamika, Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies, 24(1), 1–32.
Malik, D. D., & Ibrahim, I. S. (1998). Zaman Baru Islam Indonesia: Pemikiran dan Aksi Politik Abdurrahman Wahid, M. Amien Rais, Nurcholish Madjid, dan Jalaluddin Rakhmat. Zaman Wacan Mulia.
Marcinkowski, C. (2009). Selected Historical Facets of the Presence of Shi’ism in Southeast Asia. The Muslim World, 99(2), 381–416.
Menchik, J. (2016). Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism. Cambridge University Press.
Mietzner, M. (2009). Military Politics: Islam and the State in Indonesia—From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Millie, J., Barton, G., Hindasah, L., & Moriyama, M. (2014). Post-Authoritarian Diversity in Indonesia’s State-owned Mosques: A Manakiban Case Study. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 45(2), 194–213.
Panggabean, R., & Fauzi, Ihsan A. F. (2014). Pemolisian Konflik Keagamaan di Indonesia. Jakarta: Pusat Studi Agama & Demokrasi (PUSAD) Paramadina Magister Perdamaian dan Resolusi Konflik (MPRK), UGM dan The Asia Foundation.
Rakhmat, J. (2002). Dahulukan Akhlaq di atas Fiqh. Muthahhari Press.
Safwan, A. M. (2001, February 21). “Ikatan Jamaah Ahlul Bait Indonesia (IJABI) Sebagai Gerakan Sosial Keagamaan.” [Paper presented to Muslim Student Association of Agricultural Technology Department, Gajahmada University of Yogyakarta]. http://raushanfikr.tripod.com/makatul/sosio-agama.htm. Accessed 27 Jan 2016.
Sofjan, Dicky. (2016). Minoritization & Criminalization of Shia Islam in Indonesia. Journal of South East Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, XXXIX(2), 29–44.
Takwin, Bagus. (2016). Studi tentang Toleransi dan Radikalisme di Indonesia: Pembelajaran Dari 4 Daerah, Tasikmalaya, Yogyakarta, Bojonegoro dan Kupang. Infid.
Zulkifli. (2004). Being a Shia among the Sunni Majority in Indonesia: A Preliminary Study of Ustadz Husein Al-Habsyi (1921–1994). Studia Islamika: Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies, 11(2), 275–308.
Zulkifli. (2013). The Struggle of the Shi‘is in Indonesia. ANU E Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Syarif, D. (2023). Minority Islam in Indonesia’s Public Square: The Shia Emergence and Its Effects. In: Millie, J. (eds) The ‘Crossed-Out God’ in the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3354-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3354-9_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-99-3353-2
Online ISBN: 978-981-99-3354-9
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)