Traditional Authority, Islam, and Rebellion: A Study of Indonesian Political Behavior

By Karl D. Jackson

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520318212

Karl D. Jackson

Karl D. Jackson is President and Director, US Thailand Business Council. Lucian W. Pye was Professor of Political Science at M.I.T.

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Traditional Authority,

Islam, and Rebellion

This volume is sponsored by the

CENTER FOR SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA STUDIES

University of California, Berkeley

The Center for South and Southeast Asia Studies of the University of California is the coordinating center for research, teaching programs, and special projects relating to the South and Southeast Asia areas on the nine campuses of the University. The Center is the largest such research and teaching organization in the United States, with more than 150 related faculty representing all disciplines within the social sciences, languages, and humanities.

The Center publishes a Monograph series, an Occasional Papers series, and sponsors a series published by the University of California Press. Manuscripts for these publications have been selected with the highest standards of academic excellence, with emphasis on those studies and literary works that are pioneers in their fields, and that provide fresh insights into the life and culture of the great civilizations of South and Southeast Asia.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS OF THE

CENTER FOR SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA STUDIES

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KAREN ISAKSEN LEONARD

Social History of an Indian Caste: The Kayasths of Hyderabad

THOMAS R. METCALF

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KARL D. JACKSON

Traditional Authority,

Islam, and Rebellion

A Study of Indonesian

Political Behavior

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 1980 by

The Regents of the University of California

ISBN O-52O-O3769-3

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-62853

Printed in the United States of America

123456789

To my father

Walter T. Jackson

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

MAPS AND FIGURES

TABLES

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

1. The Ideology and Chronology of the Dar’ul Islam Rebellion

2. Methods: The Story of the Study

3. The Sundanese Village Setting and the Influence of Structural Variables

4. Introducing the Three Primary Villages

5. Religion, Politics, and Rebellion among the Sundanese

6. Economie Deprivation, Education, and Rebellion

7. Mass Media Exposure, National Symbols, and Political Behavior

8. Patterns of Traditional Authority in Sundanese Villages

9. The Sources of Traditional Authority

10. Traditional Authority, Politics, and Rebellion

11. Political Integration and Modernization

APPENDIX A Documents of the Negara Islam Indonesia

APPENDIX B Scale Validation

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

MAPS AND FIGURES

Maps

1. Location of Dar’ul Islam Base Areas, May 1954 14

2. Areas of Dar’ul Islam Predominance in 1954 116

3. Islamic versus Nationalist Political Party Affiliations in

1963 117

4. Subdistrict Political Party Affiliations in 1963 119

Figures

5.1 Religious Variants among the Javanese 80

5.2 Political Party Affiliation and Religious Variants 82

5.3 Items in the Scale of Religious Beliefs 90

8.1 Leadership Pyramid for the Dar’ul Islam Village 206

10.1 Leadership Pyramid for Tanggerang 248

10.2 Leadership Pyramid for Cikujang 248

10.3 Leadership Pyramid for Rancabentang 249

TABLES

2.1 Results of Content Analysis of News Clippings on the Dar’ul Islam for 1954 and 1955 30

2.2 Location and Political Classification of the Villages Selected for the Preliminary Survey 34

2.3 Sampling Information for Tanggerang, Rancabentang,

and Cikujang 43

3.1 Land Distribution in West Java 47

3.2 Percentage of Total Village Production Traded Outside the Village 54

3.3 Proportion of Village Production Traded Outside the

Subdistrict 55

3.4 Frequency with Which Newspapers Reach the Villages 56

3.5 Access to Social and Economic Services: Ranked from Most to Least Accessible 58

3.6 Index of Frequency of Visits by Officials Residing Outside the Village 60

5.1 Questions Comprising the Scale of Religious Beliefs and Practices 89

5.2 Classification of Individuals on the Basis of Total Scores on the Scale of Religious Beliefs 90

5.3 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by Type of Respondent (Three Primary Villages Only) 92

5.4 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by Individual Daily Expenditures (Three Primary Villages Only) 94

5.5 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by Occupation (Three Primary Villages Only) 95

5.6 Education, by Occupation (Three Primary Villages Only) 95

5.7 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by Occupation, by Education (Three Primary Villages Only) 96

5.8 Education, by Occupation, by Scale of Religious Beliefs (Three Primary Villages Only) 97

5.9 Scale of Religious Beliefs (Three Primary Villages Only) 100

5.10 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by Three Primary Villages (after Weighting) 103

5.11 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by the Dar’ul Islam and Pro-government Villages (after Weighting) 104

5.12 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by the Dar’ul Islam and Swing Villages (after Weighting) 105

5.13 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by the Swing and Progovernment Villages (after Weighting) 106

5.14 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by Attitude toward Establishing a State Religion (Three Primary Villages Only, after Weighting) 108

5.15 Religious Beliefs, by Attitude toward Establishing a State Religion, by Village of Residence 110

5.16 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by Fanaticism (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 112

5.17 Fanaticism, by Attitude toward an Established State Religion (Three Primary Villages Only) 113

5.18 Fanaticism, by Attitude toward an Established State Religion, by Scale of Religious Beliefs 114

5.19 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by Reported Level of Participation in the Rebellion (DI Village Only) 115

6.1 Daily Expenses for the Three Primary Villages (Unweighted) 131

6.2 Daily Expenses, by Types of Respondents for the Three Villages (Unweighted) 131

6.3 Daily Expenses, by Village Political Behavior (Primary Villages, Elites Only) 133

6.4 Daily Expenses, by Attitudes toward Establishing a State Religion (Three Primary Villages, Elites Only, after Weighting) 134

6.5 Daily Expenses, by Reputed Level of Participation in Rebellion (Dar’ul Islam Village Only) 135

6.6 Daily Expenses, by Religious Fanaticism (Three Primary Villages, Elites Only, Weighted) 135

6.7 Formal Education, by Type of Respondent (Unweighted) 137

6.8 Formal Education, by Village Political Behavior (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 139

6.9 Education, by Attitude toward Establishing a State

Religion (Three Primary Villages, after Weighting) 140

6.10 Primary Villages, by Attitude toward Establishing a

State Religion, by Formal Education (after Weighting) 142 6.11 Formal Education, by Reputed Level of Participation

in Rebellion (Dar’ul Islam Village Only) 143

6.12 Formal Education, by Religious Fanaticism (Primary

Villages, after Weighting) 143

7.1 Frequency of Exposure, by Mass Media (Primary

Villages Only) 148

7.2 Mass Media Exposure Scale 149

7.3 Mass Media Exposure Scale, by Respondent Types

(Primary Villages, Unweighted) 150

7.4 Number of Provincial Subdivisions Named for Each

Geographic Entity (Primary Villages, Unweighted) 152

7.5 Contours of the Nation Scale, by Types of Respon

dents (Primary Villages, Unweighted) 154

7.6 Knowledge of the Pancasila, by Types of Respondents

(Primary Villages, Unweighted) 155

7.7 Knowledge of National Leaders, by Types of Respon

dents (Primary Villages, Unweighted) 156

7.8 Meaning and Aims of Repelita (Primary Villages,

Unweighted) 158

7.9 Knowledge of Repelita, by Types of Respondents

(Primary Villages, Unweighted) 159

7.10 Correlation between Sources of Nationalist Informa

tion and Knowledge of National Symbols (Gamma) 161

7.11 Scale of Mass Media Exposure, by Village Political

Behavior (Primary Villages after Weighting) 163

7.12 Scale of Mass Media Exposure, by Attitudes toward

Establishing a State Religion (Three Primary Villages, 165

after Weighting)

7.13 Scale of Mass Media Exposure, by Religious Fanat

icism (Three Primary Villages, after Weighting) 166

7.14 Contours of the Nation, by Village Political Behavior

(after Weighting) 168

7.15 Contours of the Nation, by Attitude toward Estab

lishing a State Religion (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 169 7.16 Knowledge of National Contours, by Religious Fanat

icism (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 170

7.17 Knowledge of the Pancasila, by Village Political Behavior (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 172

7.18 Knowledge of the Pancasila, by Village Political

Behavior (Primary Villages, Elites Only, after Weighting) 173

7.19 Knowledge of the Pancasila, by Attitude toward Establishing a State Religion (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 174

7.20 Knowledge of the Pancasila, by Religious Fanaticism (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 175

7.21 Knowledge of National Leaders, by Village Political

Behavior (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 176

7.22 Knowledge of National Leaders, by Attitude toward Establishing a State Religion (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 177

7.23 Knowledge of National Leaders, by Reputed Level of

Participation in Rebellion (Dar’ul Islam Village Only) 178

7.24 Knowledge of National Leaders, by Religious Fanaticism (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 179

7.25 Knowledge of Repelita, by Village Efficiency in Utilizing Repelita Funds (Primary Villages, Combined Elites, after Weighting) 180

7.26 Knowledge of Repelita, by Village Efficiency in Utilizing Repelita Funds (Primary Villages, after Weighting) 182

8.1 Perception of Self as Advisor, by Strata in Response to Question: Do People Come to You for Advice or Help? 197

8.2 Number of Persons Coming for Advice or Help 198

8.3 Responses to Question: How Often Do You (the Advisor) Meet with Them? 199

8.4 Responses to Question: Do These People Come for Financial Advice Only, for Personal Advice, Political Advice, Religious Advice, or for All Kinds? 199

8.5 Consultation with at Least One Advisor 200

8.6 Overlap between Role of Advisor and of Advisee 202

8.7 Duration of Relationships with Advisors 203

8.8 Responses to Question: How Often Do You See This Chief Advisor? 204

8.9 Single, Mixed, or Multiple Advisors 205

9.1 The Advisor’s Perception of Why People Have Chosen Him to Be Their Advisor 210

9.2 Traits of Chief Advisor Leading You to Seek His Advice 214

9.3 Context in Which Relationship with Advisor Began 215

9.4 What Is Special about Your Relationship? 216

9.5 The Interrelationship between Having Many Advisees and Being Able to Raise Many Men during Time of Danger 217

9.6 Index of Bapakism 218

9.7 Age by Index of Bapakism 220

9.8 Formal Education by Index of Bapakism 221

9.9 Mass Media Exposure Scale by Index of Bapakism 222

9.10 Knowledge of Pancasila by Index of Bapakism 223

9.11 Occupation by Index of Bapakism 224

9.12 Daily Expenses, by Index of Bapakism 225

9.13 Bivariate Relations with the Index of Bapakism (Gamma) 226

9.14 Wealth, by Bapakism, by Mass Media Exposure 226

9.15 Mass Media Exposure, by Bapakism, by Wealth 227

9.16 Motivations for Staying with the Old Party 233

10.1 Feelings of Moral Obligation toward a Financial

Benefactor 239

10.2 Number of Persons That Can Be Raised in Time of

Danger 241

10.3 Alternative Actions Selected for Pa Dadap 242

10.4 Village of Residence, by Attitude toward Establishing a State Religion (Three Primary Villages, after Weighting) 252

10.5 Village of Residence, by Attitude toward Establishing a State Religion, by Top Leaders vs. Followers 254

10.6 Top Leaders vs. Followers, by Attitude toward Establishing a State Religion, by Village of Residence 255

10.7 Scale of Religious Beliefs, by Attitude toward Establishing a State Religion, by Village of Residence (Top Leaders Only) 256

10.8 Village of Residence, by Religious Fanaticism (Three Primary Villages, after Weighting) 257

10.9 Village of Residence, by Religious Fanaticism, by Top Leaders vs. Followers 258

10.26 Top Leaders vs. Followers, by Religious Fanaticism, by

Village of Residence 259

10.27 Age, by Village of Residence (Top Leaders Only) 262 10.12 Main Occupation, by Dar’ul Islam vs. Pro-government

Villages (Top Leaders Only) 263

11.1 Characteristics of Institutions Linking Center and

Periphery 281

11.2 Differences in Patterns of Power 289

11.3 Traditional Authority 311

11.4 Physical Force 312

11.5 Changing Basic Values 313

11.6 Persuasion 314

11.7 Reward /Deprivation 315

8.1 Karamat Places 341

8.2 Breaking a Taboo and Punishment 344

8.3 On Being Entered by Spirits 345

8.4 Determinism 345

8.5 Monotheism 346

8.6 Keeping the Selamatans 347

8.7 Inter-item Correlations for the Scale of Religious

Beliefs and Practices (Gamma) 348

8.8 Critical Ratios for Each Item, by the Low and High

Quartiles of the Scale of Religious Beliefs 348

8.9 Factor Matrix for the Scale of Religious Beliefs 349

8.10 10 Weightings and Marginals for Mass Media Exposure 351

8.1 1 Inter-item Correlations for the Scale of Mass Media

Exposure (Gamma) 352

8.12 Critical Ratios for the Mass Media Scale 352

8.13 Factor Matrix for the Mass Media Scale 352

8.14 Inter-item Correlations for the Contours of the Nation

Scale (Gamma) 353

8.15 Critical Ratios for the Contours of the Nation Scale 353

8.16 16 F actor Matrix for the Contours of Indonesia Scale 353

8.17 Marginals and Weightings for the Knowledge of

National Leaders Scale 354

8.18 Inter-item Correlations for the Knowledge of National

Leaders Scale (Gamma) 355

8.19 Critical Ratios for the Knowledge of National Leaders

Scale 355

8.20 Factor Matrix for the Knowledge of National Leaders

Scale 355

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

The crux of the problem of state-building and subsequently nationbuilding is the process of political integration. This process by which unconnected and semiconnected elements of a territorial entity are transformed into a functioning state and eventually into a nation has been at the heart of the problem of political development during the postwar era in both the developed and the developing world.

In Western Europe, a great deal of practical and scholarly attention has been focused on the prospects for the creation of a supranational government between existing and established nations. In the developing areas, while regional integration between states has received attention, the more pressing problem has been the preservation of the state structures and boundaries passed down by a departing colonialism. In Asia and Africa, and especially in Southeast Asia, history is replete with revolts by groups either attempting to opt out of the state to form a new independent entity or seeking to oust the postcolonial elite in order to change the underlying bases of the state.

However, rebellions are merely the most dramatic examples of low political integration. More important to the everyday dealings of the population and more salient for the considerations of the economic planner are the situations in which the majority of the population are members of communities that are effectively independent of the national government. The majority of the population, usually residing in villages, are seldom touched by the government whose apparatus does not extend with regularity and vigor to the local level. From the economic planner’s viewpoint, growth seems beyond grasp because the government’s regulations either do not reach the villagers or are ignored by them. Rather than being met with enthusiasm and voluntary compliance, the planner’s instructions are ignored or defied.

The noncommunist political parties, fragmenting at every turn with little or no relationship to programs, policies, or ideologies, supply a final instance of low political integration. Even among the elite, surrounded by the panoply of modern organizational instruments, there appears a disquieting unwillingness or inability to organize and mobilize the polity in order to bring action on pressing problems. Moreover, from the view of the party rank and file, there appears to be no method for disciplining the oft capricious leadership, which seldom seems to represent the interests of the followers.

In all of these cases of low political integration, one is confronted by the spectre of organizational breakdown and the concomitant failure to achieve compliance. Structural networks and power relationships both seem out of hand. In some cases, it is the networks of communication between the political structures and the people that are incomplete. In other cases, the failure of society to become attached to the structures of polity stems from a failure of the elite to understand the types of power relationships that are most meaningful to their followers in the society at large.

It is often assumed that defunct rebellions, like dead men, can tell us little about political life among the living. This volume concerns the relatively unknown and quite dead Dar’ul Islam rebellion that raged in West Java between 1948 and 1962. What differentiates this study from other treatises on rebellion and national integration is that it is only secondarily concerned with the rebellion itself. Instead, it takes the rebellion as a laboratory for analyzing frequently propounded but almost never tested theories of current Indonesian political behavior; it takes degree of loyalty to the modern nationstate (national integration, if you will) as the behavior to be explained and tests the relative power of explanatory variables, such as religious beliefs, economic deprivation, education, knowledge of national symbols, and adherence to local traditional authority figures.

A second way in which the present study differs from most discourses on rebellion is that it recognizes that armed rebellion is almost always the behavior of a minority within a given society. Most of the people, most of the time, prefer suffering in silence to assuming the life and death risks of armed rebellion. Most studies of rebellion concentrate solely on those who rebel, and explain rebellion by selecting out an exceptionally prominent characteristic of the rebels. What is almost always neglected is checking to determine whether the same characteristic is not just as prominent among those who did not rebel. For instance, problems of tenancy and land scarcity may be growing in a particular province, but what is striking is that some villages react to this social strain with rebellion while other villages remain loyal to the central government. The central problem for the political scientist is not only to deduce the underlying, long-term roots of social conflict but to understand why equally distressing conditions often lead to remarkably different, sometimes diametrically opposite, political outcomes. Thus, students of rebellion must discover not only why men rebel but also why others do not—not only why polities disintegrate but why equally likely candidates for disintegration endure.

The major finding of this volume is that political integration among the Sundanese depends on a system of traditional authority relations animating village social life and connecting each village with the world of regional and national politics existing beyond the village gate. Virtually all Sundanese villagers are organized into networks of dyadic, personal, diffuse, affect-laden, and enduring superiorsubordinate relationships. Although these relations are social and economic in genesis, they can have profound political implications when a particular traditional authority figure, or the village elders as a group, become involved in extravillage politics. Out of a binding sense of moral obligation the followers of a traditional authority figure will do his bidding even if the actions required might seem, at least to the outside observer, to contradict the economic interests, religious beliefs, or ideological values of the followers. The personal allegiances ordering the village internally, and the equally personal links of the chief man (or men) of the village with the structures of the national system, provide the vital factors determining the position of the village in peace and war, in election and development plan. These top leaders of the village, who may or may not be the formal governors of the village, are able to commit villages or large segments of villages to political courses having very considerable consequences for each villager in spite of the fact that the villagers themselves know little if anything about the political, social, or religious values which outside observers perceive as the heart of the conflict.

The importance of these traditional authority relations is established by the study of village-level participation in the Dar’ul Islam rebellion. Whether a village became a part of this religious rebellion, remained neutral, or fought strenuously on the side of the national government was not related to differences in religious beliefs or to the relative levels of economic deprivation found in each village. Instead, the historic decisions taken by the villages in this study were the product of the personal relationships established prior to the Indonesian revolution between the chief elders of each village and the political figures in nearby towns who came to represent competing factions of the Indonesian independence movement.

The essence of my contention is that the Sundanese villager will partake of national politics according to the dictates of his bapak (literally, father) with little regard for the ideological or economic issues involved. This is because the bond between superior and subordinate is one of traditional authority. The subordinate obeys the superior, either without questions about morals, religion, values, or ideology or in spite of initial reservations on these matters. The bapak is obeyed simply because he is the leader in a relationship that may have endured for decades. Once the relationship has been established, the reaction of the subordinate to the desires of the superior involves a nearly automatic, almost reflex action, rather than a detailed examination of how the decision will affect the follower’s immediate material interests. In this sense, traditional authority relations are distinct from the more opportunistic and materialistic patron-client relations with which they are sometimes confused.

Chapter 1 and Appendix A concern themselves with the history of the Dar’ul Islam rebellion in West Java, its formal ideology, and its founding father, the dynamic S. M. Kartosoewirjo.

Chapter 2 elucidates the methods and assumptions which guided the study from the data collection stage in 1968-1969, through its initial presentation in dissertation form at MIT in 1971, to the substantially revised and reanalyzed version presented here. All that needs to be said at this point is that the research design began not from a random sample of villages but from villages that provided especially clear examples of high national integration (fighting against the rebellion), low national integration (fighting for the rebellion), and middle-level national integration (vacillation or neutrality). The basic thrust of the study is the comparison of attitudes, leadership structures, and physical characteristics of the villages in order to understand why some villages fought for the nation-state and others participated in fourteen years of bloody rebellion.

Chapter 3 describes the Sundanese village setting and uses the data on structural variables to compare the six Dar’ul Islam, six swing, and seven pro-government villages. The concern is whether the DI villages differ from the pro-government villages in economic structure, access to services supplied by the central government, and extent of physical isolation from urban areas as well as from the national road and rail networks.

Chapter 4 introduces the three villages, selected from among the original nineteen because they most clearly represented the respective groups of Dar’ul Islam, swing, and pro-government villages. These three primary villages became the main focus of the research. Most of the formal interviews were clustered in them, and they were the site of our most detailed micro-historical research on the rebellion.

In Chapters 5-7 the most commonly offered explanations of the attempt to establish an Islamic state are tested and found wanting. Although the constellations of religious belief posited by Geertz (1960a) are indeed present, religious differences do not distinguish supporters from opponents of the concept of an Islamic state. Similarly, variations in wealth and education fail to have a formidable impact on political attitudes and behaviors regarding the rebellion. Differences in exposure to the mass media and knowledge of a whole array of national symbols do not correlate significantly with political behavior. These findings challenge the tendency to depict village politics in West J ava as dominated by either religious or secular ideological considerations. In addition, it is obvious that political divisions among Sundanese peasants are not those predicted by conventional class analysis; political competition instead is fought between opposing, economically hetereogeneous coalitions in which the relatively more wealthy and more knowledgeable lead the poor and the ignorant.

Chapters 8-10 deal with traditional authority in Sundanese villages. Throughout, a major goal is to add blocks of hard data to confirm or deny propositions from the burgeoning literature on traditional authority and patron-client relations. Chapter 8 describes the concept of traditional authority and differentiates it from the more material, opportunistic, and short-term interpersonal bonds called patron-client relations. Chapter 9 questions why particular men are selected as major traditional authority figures. It shows that, although superior wealth is a characteristic of traditional authority figures, other variables play an equal and perhaps more important role, indicating that leadership among the Sundanese is the product of more than mere material exchange. Chapter 10 concentrates on the political implications of traditional authority relationships, showing that the respondents perceive these relationships as crucial to political decision-making, that the decision taken by whole villages toward the rebellion can be more readily predicted from the attitudes of a few top leaders than from the attitudes of entire villages, and that, according to historical data, traditional loyalty bonds actually played a critical role in determining the stances of the three primary villages toward the Dar’ul Islam rebellion.

Chapter 11 extrapolates the findings of the present study by formulating a typology of political integration, which emphasizes differences in the process of political integration between traditional and modern societies. The final chapter thus attempts to place the present study in a wider theoretical context, thereby indicating why political integration among the rural Sundanese is so different from the kind of political integration that is sometimes achieved in more modern societies. The central contention is that, although all types of societies utilize all means of generating political power, in traditional society physical coercion and traditional authority are the types of power most frequently and effectively used. In contrast, transitional and modern societies resort more frequently to economic rewards, changing basic values, and persuasion as types of power.

Many institutions and individuals contributed to this study. First, the Center of International Studies and the Department of Political Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology generously supported the research from fieldwork through the dissertation stage. Several Indonesian institutions provided invaluable assistance: The UNPAD (Universitas Padjadjaran) made students available as interviewers and contributed mimeograph facilities. The UNPAS (Universitas Pasundan) provided a valuable group of student interviewers, and the UNPAR (Universitas Parahiangan) supplied facilities for interviewer training as well as a team of student interviewers. The Siliwangi Division of the Indonesian army helped by supplying free and unfettered access to officers who had fought against the rebellion and to the military archives in Bandung.

The Communication Institute and the Population Institute of the East-West Center in Honolulu provided support that facilitated the extensive reanalysis of the data begun in 1971. Finally, the Department of Political Science, the Committee on Research, the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, the Mass Communications Project, and the Institute of International Studies of the University of California, Berkeley, all contributed the bits and pieces of support that were required to complete the final analysis and rewriting. Obviously, none of the institutions mentioned can in any way be held responsible for the conclusions reached by this research.

The list of individuals who contributed is too long to be addressed in full. First among these is Lucian W. Pye, who supported this venture from start to finish with both encouragement and an everpresent insistence that I get on with the job. Second, Dr. Johannes Moeliono’s energetic and imaginative contributions to the fieldwork and preliminary analysis cannot be overstated. While he cannot be held responsible for errors of analysis or interpretation, his intellectual and organizational talents, and his indefatigable zest for social research contributed greatly to the entire research project. There is no doubt in my mind that this volume would have benefited greatly if we could have collaborated on the analysis and writing as we did on the field research, but, alas, constraints of time and distance prevented this. Third, I must thank the team of Indonesian university students who shared, for only marginal monetary compensation, all of the trials and tribulations of data collection. Ajatrochaedi, Machuddin Adam, Sjam Hutomie, Abdurachman, Edi Ekadjati, Sudirman, Kuraesin, Karmini, Ade Budi Permana, Jugosariun, and Teddy Suherman delivered high quality interviews, and their good fellowship and team spirit sustained me through the long months of field research. Fourth, I should like to express my gratitude to the many village leaders and common people who contributed approximately a thousand hours of time as respondents in formal and informal interviews. Finally, there is a special group of individuals who made unique personal contributions: Kolonel Abas and Lt. Kolonel Soemantri of the Siliwangi Division supplied information as well as practical assistance; R. Djuchro Sumitradilaga, Koesna Puradiradja, and W. M. F. Hofsteede assisted greatly in the early planning; Frank and Linda Weinstein shared the fieldwork experience and had the courtesy to refrain from yawning when compelled by friendship to discuss the subject for the better part of a decade; Robert Arseneau, Mary Dietz, and Gladys Castor skillfully performed countless tasks in preparing the manuscript for publication; and my colleagues Robert Axelrod, Chris Achen, Robert Scalapino, and Leo Rose encouraged me and offered sound criticism of an earlier version of the manuscript.

Last and most important, Virginia H. Jackson shared all of the toil from grant application, through typing questionnaires, to endless hours of coding and manuscript editing, to the years of waiting for the project to be finished at long last.

1. The Ideology and Chronology

of the Dar’ul Islam Rebellion

In September 1962, S. M. Kartosoewirjo was executed for treason against the Republic of Indonesia. This man, a radical nationalist who otherwise would have been hailed as a hero of the revolution, initiated a rebellion against the Indonesian Republic, rejected all attempts at compromise, and inspired fifteen years of brutal conflict that cost forty thousand Indonesians their lives. What were the aims of Kartosoewirjo’s Dar’ul Islam? What are the historical outlines of the rise and demise of the most sustained violent challenge to central authority in the history of independent Indonesia? In short, what were the ideals and events that led to the nationalist leader Kartosoe- wirjo’s execution by an Indonesian firing squad?

The Ideology of the Indonesian Islamic State

The ideology of the Indonesian Islamic state is steeped in paradox. On the one hand the Negara Islam Indonesia was the Gift of God, a divinely revealed and hence immutable order predetermined by the Islamic law as vouchsafed by the Prophet himself in the Koran and the Hadiths. In this religiously preordained political order, all sovereignty rested with God, and government legislated only on matters not specifically dealt with in the time of Muhammad. Even down to the details of penalties to be extracted for common crimes, the Penal Code of the Islamic state relied on the revealed wisdom of the Koran rather than on the judgments of men confronting the social circumstances of the twentieth century.

In contrast with these preordained elements, the Constitution and the Penal Code of the Negara Islam Indonesia also contain markedly modern provisions. For example, the Constitution proclaimed that the form of the state would be a Republic; ultimate legislative power would reside in an elected Parliament; the head of state, the Imam, would be elected by Parliament and could not make laws without it; the Imam could be dismissed for violating the law; there would be equality before the law, freedom of worship, speech, and assembly for all citizens; all citizens had a right to work and to a standard of living befitting man, and the state would administer all important branches of production. Taken together, the Constitution and the Penal Code of the Islamic state present a mixture of Islamic fundamentalism derived directly from the Koran and a blueprint for a somewhat modern, although nonetheless Islamic, state. Applying labels such as right or left, absolutist or republican, theocratic or libertarian does not greatly illuminate the concept of the Negara Islam. These distinctions have scant explanatory power because the Indonesian Islamic state was all of these. It was both absolutist and republican, both anticommunist and anticapitalist; it both guaranteed freedom of worship for non-Muslims and decreed death for a variety of degrees of apostasy and religious backsliding by Muslims.

The apparent contradictions can only be resolved by taking a wider view of the Islamic state, by consulting Islamic political theory beyond the Indonesian context, and by understanding the corpora- tist view of rights on which the Constitution and Penal Code are based. Although the Koran is specific in its injunctions concerning personal religious and ethical obligations, it remains silent regarding the political structure of the state. Islamic doctrine in general obligates the state to preserve religious values, respect religious ordinances, and insure that personal religious conduct coincides with the Koranic ideal. Regarding these obligations the Islamic law is indeed immutable, an absolute source directly revealed by the will of God representing the final word on the subject, and the documents of the Indonesian Islamic state are direct and unequivocal in adherence to Koranic precedent (see Appendix A). Penalties for theft, homicide, use of alcoholic beverages, adultery, failure to pray or to pay the Islamic alms-tax, and above all, penalties for religious apostasy devolve directly from the Koran. The number of limbs to be severed for stealing, and the use of the death penalty against all who profess but do not practice Islam, are rationalized by direct reference to the Koran; Koranic precedent is sufficient in itself and the only legitimate authority for decision in such matters. Further, as is revealed in the following commentary on the concept of the Islamic state by a prominent Islamic political leader, prohibitions and penalties specifically included in the Islamic law are not subject to present-day interpretation or modification by majority rule.

Islam is democratic in the sense that Islam is against absolutism, arbitrariness. But this does not mean that in the government of the free Islamic State all affairs are left to the decisions of parliament. In a parliament of a free Islamic state it is not necessary to discuss beforehand the basis of the government, and we ought not wait for approval of parliament before [deciding] whether it is necessary to combat the evils of alcohol, eradicate gambling and vice, and counter paganism and polytheism, and whether or not to use Islamic laws of inheritance, etc.

No, not at all. All of this is outside of the jurisdiction of parliament. What possibly may happen is that they should have to discuss the methods for executing all of these laws, [but] only the technicalities of implementation.

Because the principles are fixed in Islam, it should not and must not be interfered with; it should not be surrendered to the lottery system of 50 percent plus 1 voting. It is not possible and must not be given over to the results of the political appetite of state politics. Democracy is all right but the state system of Islam does not delegate all affairs to the mercy of democratic institutions. (Anshary 1951; 274-275)

The appearance in the Constitution of the Indonesian Islamic state of parliamentary republicanism, freedom of speech, assembly, and worship, state control of major enterprises, and a guaranteed right to work might seem to contradict the traditional and theocratic bent of Koranic precedent. However, the more modern and liberal aspects pose no contradiction because the Koran and the Hadiths are silent regarding the political theory of the state. While Islamic law theoretically infuses every sphere of life, the basic documents of Islamic civilization go no farther than defining the moral duties of the governors toward the governed. As Gibb has stated, in theory and historic practice government was expected to protect the territories and religious institutions of the community and to respect the general principles of Muslim conduct, but beyond this there is no ‘political theory’ in Islam—that is to say, no discussion of the means by which these ideal ends were to be safeguarded (Gibb 1965; 9). Thus while Islamic precedent spoke precisely regarding moral duties and obligations, the institutional contours of the state remained undetermined, thereby allowing Kartosoewirjo to devise a republican constitution while remaining true to the Koran. The relative silence of the Koran on political matters allowed a parliamentary structure and legislative solutions for all matters not specifically revealed in the Islamic law, thus legitimately fusing parliamentarism with Islamic fundamentalism.

The second perspective underpinning the Indonesian Islamic state was a corporate vision of society in which different groups had justly unequal rights and responsibilities and were subject to drastically different legal obligations. Islamic society from the Prophet to the present has held to the principle of freedom of worship for nonMuslims. Rather than automatically putting all nonbelievers to the sword, as Christian myth would have us believe, Islamic societies, at least in peacetime, have guaranteed Jews and Christians the right to free worship. In contrast, those born of Muslim parents remain responsible to a different and most severe set of religious strictures. According to the Penal Code of the Indonesian Islamic state, religious backsliding by Muslims must be severely punished. Freedom of religion did not mean that Muslims could change religions; with direct reference to Koranic precedent, the Penal Code stipulated that those whose parents pronounced the Confession of Faith and were married according to Islam were forbidden to change their religion. If they disavowed Islam, they were to be labeled as apostates, given three days to repent, and in the event of noncompliance they were to be slain. Thus, in a limited sense, subject infidels as a corporate group were to have greater freedom of religion than Muslims within the Islamic state. The same severe logic applies to any failure by Muslims to practice daily prayer; noncompliance, in this instance, made deviants subject to the death penalty. Of course, decreeing death for religious deviance by Muslims inevitably restricted the religious freedom of non-Muslims because, while they might practice their own religions, the regulations regarding apostasy clearly precluded proselytizing among Muslims.

A corporate theory of society also limits equality before the law and freedom of speech. While the Constitution of the Indonesian Islamic state formally guarantees these, the principle of equality is repeatedly violated through the provision of separate penalties and prerogatives for Muslims and non-Muslims. According to the Penal Code, killing a subject infidel is a less serious offense than killing a Muslim. With similar logic, the penalties levied against abid (infidels enslaved in wartime) are less severe than those applied to a freeman.

Further, one provision of the Constitution reserves all offices and positions of importance and responsibility in the civil and military administration to Muslims. In the event of a Dar’ul Islam victory, this blatantly corporatist provision would have required radical redistribution of the economic and social fruits of the anticolonial revolution. Any less than orthodox Muslim would have been barred access to the largest source of nonagricultural employment in the postwar era, the Indonesian government. The office of head of state, the Imamate, would, of course, have been reserved for a pious orthodox Muslim, and the practical effect would have been to exclude secular nationalists such as Soekarno. This prohibition against a nonMuslim or a less than