bo o k re vie w s 391

together a harmonious body of papers, and to clarify their common themes or

objectives, has been neglected. Even so, the book sheds light on the quality of
Syed Hussein Alatas as a Southeast Asian scholar of universal significance.
Furthermore, its different contributions are pertinent to important questions such
as universality and particularity in the social sciences, and the role of knowledge
and intellectuals in social transformation.
Johan Meuleman
Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies
E-mail: johan.meuleman@history.ox.ac.uk
doi:10.1093/jis/etl038
Published online 21 July 2006

Power Politics and the Indonesian Military

By Damien Kingsbury. (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003). 247 pp.
Price HB 55.00. ISBN 041529729X.

This recent volume on the Indonesian military is of some relevance to the

study of Islam in at least three ways. First and most obviously, Indonesia is
the most populous Muslim country in the world as well as the largest
Muslim democracy, and the role of the Armed Forces in the countrys politics
since independence has been considerable and worthy of close scrutiny.
Indeed, the late 1950s saw the rise to political prominence of the Indonesian
military with the suppression of regional rebellions in various parts of the
country, and with then president Soekarnos proclamation of martial law and
disbanding of parliament. As martial law administrators in the provinces, as
managers of former Dutch (and later British) plantations and other businesses
nationalized by Soekarno, the military emerged as a key pillar of Soekarnos
Guided Democracy regime. In the early 1960s, moreover, in the Konfrontasi
against British and Malaysian troops on Borneo, and in the mobilization of
forces to liberate the residual Dutch-held territory on West Papua, the
Indonesian Armed Forces were on the front lines of Soekarnos nationalist
and anti-imperialist struggles.
Against this backdrop, the emergence of a full-blown military regime under
Major General Suharto in the mid-late 1960s represented the culmination of a
broader trend. Suharto had seized power in the aftermath of a supposed coup
attempt launched in late September 1965 by lower-ranking officers (many of
whom had previously served under Suharto) and blamed on the Indonesian
Communist Party (PKI), and his consolidation of power was only achieved
through great bloodshed and manipulation. Indeed, the final months of 1965 and
the first months of 1966 witnessed an anti-communist pogrom that claimed the
lives of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians and, through imprisonment and
intimidation, the effective removal of the PKI from the Indonesian public sphere,
after years of above-ground, legal parliamentary activity and influence in the
countrys political life. With Soekarnos March 1966 transfer of executive powers
392 bo o k re vi ews
to Suharto, the consolidation of military rule in Indonesia unfolded in short
order, heavily bankrolled by the United States and its allies, in one of the most
significant and dramatic political shifts in the Muslim world in the course of the
Cold War.
From this time until Suhartos forced resignation in May 1998, the Armed
Forcesin particular, the Armyremained a major force in Indonesian politics,
through the assumption of civilian office by active and retired officers, a territorial
command structure encompassing the entire archipelago, violent suppression of
dissent and opposition, and the 1975 invasion and subsequent occupation of the
former Portuguese territory of East Timor. Nearly a full decade after Suhartos
downfall, the Indonesian Armed Forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia or TNI)
today retain significant influence in the countrys politics, as signalled by the
ascension of (Ret.) Lt. Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to the presidency in
2004. Thus scholars working on contemporary politics in the Muslim world
might well be interested in reading a book on the Indonesian military.
A second reason for scholars of the Muslim world to consider the role of the
military in politics in Indonesia lies in the pattern of conflict between the TNI and
forces identified with the promotion of Islam. Among the armed guerrilla groups
which contributed to the Revolution (Revolusi) against the restoration of Dutch
colonial rule in the late 1940s were many drawn from Islamic schools and led by
Islamic scholars, but with independence the TNI was created by professional
officers, among whom Christians and secular educated Muslims predominated.
The 1950s saw the embryonic TNI emerge in tandem with the suppression of
what was known in Indonesian as the Darul Islam (Abode of Islam) movement in
West Java, Aceh, South Sulawesi, and South Kalimantan, and the regional
rebellions associated with the modernist Islamic party Masyumi in other parts of
Sulawesi and Sumatra. Thus the very formation of the Indonesian Armed Forces
was bound up in a pattern of antagonism between the TNI on the one hand, and
Islam on the other.
This pattern persisted and deepened over the first two decades of the Suharto
era, with the entrenchment of the military in power and the establishment of
patterns of military education and socialization that were profoundly secular in
orientation. Despite early cooperation by Islamic groups in the anti-communist
pogroms of 1965-66, Suharto adopted a decidedly anti-Islamist stance in
subsequent years, promoting the expansion of secular education and civil law
and favouring non-Muslims in terms of business cronies and political
subordinates. Indeed, the early Suharto era saw the rise of the Catholic-run
think tank CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) as a key node of
political influence in Jakarta and the entrenchment of the Catholic-owned
Kompas as the national newspaper of record. Throughout much of the 1980s, the
military establishmentin which Christians had long been over-represented
was led and dominated by the security and intelligence czar General Benny
Murdani, a Catholic, and key economic portfolios during this period were
likewise in Christian hands.
Against this backdrop, the antagonism between the Armed Forces and those
claiming to speak in the name of Islam came to the fore in the 1970s and 1980s.
 bo o k re vie w s 393
An Islamic opposition party mounted popular campaigns in Jakarta and
elsewhere in the country in 1977 and 1982, only to be neutralized in subsequent
years. A broader Islamist movement in schools, university campuses, and urban
neighbourhoods likewise experienced a phase of heightened mobilization and
forced demobilization, with 19845 witnessing a harsh crackdown by the
military and a rear-guard bombing campaign by Islamist militants (or agents
provocateurs among them).
A third and final reason for scholars of the Muslim world to examine the
Indonesian military lies in the subsequent pattern of briefand arguably
superficialIslamist influence within the TNI in the 1990s, followed by a return
to the preceding pattern described above. In the early 1990s, Suhartos removal
of Benny Murdani and purge of Murdani proteges within the military
establishment prefigured his promotion of Islam in both the public sphere and
in patronage politics within the state. This period saw the encouragement of
Islamic piety in public life by the Suharto regime as well as the emergence of the
All-Indonesian Association of Islamic Intellectuals, known by its Indonesian
acronym as ICMI, headed by long-time Suharto protege and cabinet minister
B. J. Habibie. ICMI soon came to serve as an important patronage network for
Islamic scholars, preachers, and publishers, as well as for ambitious, upwardly
mobile Muslim bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, and military officers, who
used their affiliation with the organization and with Habibie to gain advantages
in the political and business struggles of the day. By the mid-1990s, the
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was an ICMI member and close ally of
Habibie, and many other hijau (green) officers were likewise affiliated with the
organization and this broader trend towards the promotion of Islam. Thus the
ascension of Habibie to the presidency in May 1998 signalled the rise of Islamist
forces from marginalized opposition to insider status, within both civilian and
military pillars of the regime.
Yet with the poor performance of Islamist parties in the mid-1999 elections
and Habibies failure to win reelection to the presidency later that year, a period
of disappointment, decline, and disentanglement from state power began for
those forces championing Islam in Indonesian politics and society. Abdurrahman
Wahid, long-time chairman of the traditionalist Islamic association Nahdlatul
Ulama, established enemy of ICMI and champion of inter-faith cooperation and
dialogue, assumed the presidency in late 1999 and served until his forced
resignation in mid-2001. His successor, Megawati Soekarnoputri, was an heir to
the secular nationalist tradition of Soekarno (her father) and the leader of the
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), whose parliamentary repre-
sentatives included many (over one-third) non-Muslims, mostly Protestants, and
few Muslims with any serious Islamic educational or associational credentials.
With this transition in civilian leadership to anti-Islamist hands came a
concomitant shift within the TNI, and a reversion to the precedingand
predominantpattern described above. This shift was not achieved without
bloodshed or manipulation, however. Many hijau officers had been drawn into
semi-clandestine support for armed Muslim groups in areas of inter-religious
violence like Maluku and Central Sulawesi, much as their Christian counterparts
394 bo o k re vi ews
aided and abetted networks of Protestant gangsters and politicians in these
localities. With the ascension of the PDIPs Megawati to the presidency in mid-
2001 came a harsh crackdown on Muslim paramilitary groups and other
Islamist forces, the forced disbandment of the notorious Laskar Jihad,
and the forced de-escalation of the conflict in Maluku and Central Sulawesi.
These developments formed the backdrop to the mobilization of the shadowy
Jemaah Islamiyah in a series of terrorist bombings in subsequent years, with
retired hijau Army and intelligence officers joining the ranks of the Majelis
Mujahidin Indonesia to condemn the Indonesian government as a tool of the
United States (and Israel) in its prosecution of the so-called Global War on
Terror.
The Islamic angle is not one pursued by Damien Kingsbury in his recent book
on the Indonesian military, which is perhaps unfortunate, but understandable
given his avowed concern to expose the TNIs persistent pattern of political
aggression and aggrandizement, abuse of human rights, and extortionate,
predatory role in the Indonesian economy. Kingsburys book joins a well-stocked
shelf of English-language scholarship on the Indonesian military dating back to
the 1960s, when Benedict Anderson and Ruth McVey undertook a detailed
analysis disputing the official account of the 1965 coup, and the annual
Current Data on the Indonesian Military Elite published by the journal
Indonesia. Alongside recent books by Jun Honna, Douglas Kammen and
Siddharth Chandra, and Sukardi Rinakit, Kingsburys book is notable for its
breadth of coverage, its provision of a broad overview rather than clear thematic
focus or line of argumentation, and its abundance of spelling and factual errors.
Readers interested in the Indonesian military might well wish to consult
Kingsburys book as a useful, up-to-date introduction to the topic, but more
rigorous and specialized scholarship on various aspects of the TNIs involvement
in politics is also available for those interested in a deeper understanding of such
issues.
John Sidel
London School of Economics
E-mail: j.t.sidel@lse.ac.uk
doi:10.1093/jis/etl039
Published online 16 July 2006

Muslims in Prison: Challenge and Change in Britain and France

By J. Beckford, D. Joly and F. Khosrokhavar. (Hampshire:
Palgrave, 2005), 305 pp. Price HB 55.00 ISBN 1403998310.

This is a comprehensive, well written and thorough account of wide-ranging

issues in relation to Muslims in British and French jails. A particular strength is
that it situates debates arising from the relevant policy and practice issues within
the broader conceptual framework of an examination of the differences between
France and England and Wales in terms of how each country seeks to integrate