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View all search resultsFight ideology with ideology
Police are trying to put Khilafatul Muslimin leaders in jail and eventually outlaw the organization, in the name of protecting Pancasila.
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P
olice will have to do a better job in explaining why they have arrested 23 people these last two weeks in connection with the Khilafatul Muslimin, a hitherto a little-known group that the authorities say aspires to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state.
So far, the main grounds for their arrests, including its founding leader 81-year Abdul Qadir Hasan Baraka, is that the group follows a brand of Islam that police say run counter to the state ideology Pancasila, in violation of the law on mass organizations.
Other details police provided are claims that may not stand in a court of law. For example, police say they arrested the group’s leaders for holding a motorcycle convoy to spread their message, that the teachings are giving a lie to Pancasila and that the group has produced a school curriculum that is already taught in nearly 30 schools in the country.
One problem as police are building their case, at least from what we hear so far, is that Khilafatul Muslimin does not have a history of violence to be considered a danger to national security. Founder Abdul Qadir may have committed a series of violence, including the bombing of the Borobudur temple in Central Java in 1985, but he has done his time in prison. You cannot hold his past against him unless he commits a new violent crime.
The real issue here is clearly the ideology the group follows. Police are trying to put the leaders in jail and eventually outlaw the organization, in the name of protecting Pancasila.
Two dangers emerge from this. One is that the police and the government are monopolizing the interpretation of Pancasila, and theirs is a narrow version of the otherwise open ideology. The second is that they, rather than the Khilafatul Muslimin, are the ones setting Pancasila against Islam, putting the nation on a dangerous course.
We have seen it all before. For over three decades, Soeharto used Pancasila as a weapon to kill and jail his critics. One of his early victims was his predecessor Sukarno, who came up with Pancasila in 1945. With the help of the military, Soeharto remained in power for a long time by invoking his narrow interpretation of Pancasila against all other ideologies.
