These trends may be discerned in the three dimensions of the political predicament: the rise of conservative political Islam, the candidates’ human rights approach and the kind of democracy they rely on.

Political Islam has entered the mainstream and become even more pronounced with massive religious rallies in three consecutive years since late 2016. The sheer magnitude of the masses mobilized at the National Monument in the heart of the capital shocked the establishment, prompting both camps — populist as they are — Prabowo’s allies since 2014 and later Jokowi’s allies as well, to manipulate religious identity. For the first time since the founding fathers of the republic, at its very birth in 1945, domesticated sharia aspirations through consensus, the republic now faces a similar, but greater challenge — albeit by a different configuration of actors and forces.

While the vanguard was held by the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) under popular ulema Rizieq Shihab, the masses are of a great mix of supporters of Islam-based political parties, mass organizations and common urbanites from across the archipelago, provoked by religious and ethnic sentiment, but also by mass evictions in Jakarta. Given their intrinsic contradictions — among the FPI, the banned Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) with its grassroots support and other Islamic groupings — it would be hard to unite them into a formidable political force.

For them, at this stage, democracy is simply an instrument to gain a majority in the legislative bodies and state institutions. They have thus transformed themselves from — to use Dutch sociologist WF Wertheim’s term — “a majority with minority mentality” into something like a big minority with majority-complex.

Long suppressed by Soeharto’s New Order, political Islam emerged from its shadows in the late 1990s when it gained momentum, only to continue gathering strength under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s decade of presidency. However, just as Jokowi’s administration succeeded in isolating Rizieq in Saudi Arabia and enforcing the Constitutional paradigm of “unity in diversity”, leading to political Islamists modifying or hiding their caliphate rhetoric, it has to face their continuing fierce campaign accusing the state of “criminalizing religious leaders”.

A series of reunions and ijtima (consultation) gatherings to organize campaigns for the Prabowo-led coalition and to choose its vice-presidential candidate were held in Jeddah and Jakarta late last year. The events revealed that the Islamic groups, now called “PA212” (brotherhood of 212 alumni), in a desperate attempt to cement some unity, not only lacked leadership but apparently plunged into disarray.

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