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FPI faces uphill battle to get permit extension
The Islam Defenders Front (FPI), a hard-line group notorious for using violent measures, faces an uphill battle to obtain an extension of its permit after top government officials have expressed doubt over the organization’s loyalty to the state ideology of Pancasila
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span>The Islam Defenders Front (FPI), a hard-line group notorious for using violent measures, faces an uphill battle to obtain an extension of its permit after top government officials have expressed doubt over the organization’s loyalty to the state ideology of Pancasila.
Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko, for example, said the FPI should clearly express its loyalty to Pancasila and, therefore, it should remove the terms caliphate and Islamic state from its organizational principles.
Article 6 of the organization’s principles states that the FPI’s vision and mission is to “uphold Islamic sharia” under a khilafah ‘ala minhajin nubuwwah (prophetic caliphate).
FPI executives have rejected opinions that the phrase means the organization is against the concept of the Republic of Indonesia, saying instead that the phrase refers to strengthening cooperation among other Muslim nations.
However, the government seems unconvinced, with Home Affairs Ministry secretary-general Hadi Prabowo saying the ministry would form a team to evaluate the article.
“We will look at the mass organization’s track record,” he said recently, as quoted by Antara news agency. “Whether it is useful for society, or whether it contravenes [regulations].”
The hostile stance of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration toward the FPI is in contrast to the previous government’s tacit and sometimes explicit approval of the organization’s activities.
The FPI itself first came to prominence in the early 2000s when it conducted “sweepings” against businesses that were seen as promoting vice, such as bars and night clubs. It has also been involved in violence against minority religious groups and those it considers to be procommunist.
Then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s home affairs minister Gamawan Fauzi even called the FPI “an asset to the nation” and the government took no action when, in 2011, the FPI threatened to start a revolution if the state did not ban the Ahmadiyah, a Muslim sect the organization considered to be heretical.
Jakarta State University (UNJ) sociologist Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir, who has researched Islamic vigilantism, said the difference in treatment between the Yudhoyono and Jokowi eras stemmed from Jokowi’s campaign to become Jakarta governor in 2012, when the FPI supported his then-rival Fauzi Bowo and continually protested against Jokowi’s Christian, ethnic-Chinese deputy, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama.
The tension continued into Jokowi’s first term as President and came to culmination when FPI leader Rizieq Shihab and leaders of other conservative Muslim groups staged massive rallies calling for Basuki’s prosecution and imprisonment for blasphemy in 2016.
“The rallies triggered an inflow of support for FPI from conservative Muslims and turned them into real political players with more bargaining power,” Abdil told The Jakarta Post. “But at the same time, it also gained them more criticisms.”
A recent survey conducted by a Jakarta-based pollster, the Cyrus Network, found that 4.8 percent of 1,230 respondents across 34 provinces considered the FPI among the anti-Pancasila organizations that were still operating in Indonesia, lumping it together with banned groups such as Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), the Islamic State (IS) movement and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
About 58 percent of respondents wanted the government to disband organizations opposing Pancasila through legal mechanisms.
However, while some in the government and the public put the FPI in the same bucket as the now-banned HTI and even with violent jihadist groups, Abdil said the organization was very different.
“It’s true the FPI wants to uphold sharia and that Rizieq has made some statements in opposition to democracy,” he said. “But it has shown that it is willing to work within the framework of the NKRI [Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia] and does not oppose it in principle.”
He said that the HTI, in contrast, was openly opposed to democracy and was looking to turn Indonesia into part of a transnational caliphate.
Abdil added that the government should not be seeking to regulate ideas at all, but should focus rather on the organization’s violent actions.
Despite the tough rhetoric, however, he said that he doubted that the FPI would be banned in the end, precisely because of its use of violence, rather than despite it.
“In the end, the FPI’s nature as a vigilante organization means that it is needed by politicians at the local and national level,” he said.
Ghina Ghaliya contributed to this story
