Indonesia: Hizbut Tahrir Members Play Up Positive Roles

Ismira Lutfia Tisnadibrata
2017.05.12
Jakarta
170512_ID_HTI_1000.jpg Members of Hizbut Tahrir protest against then-Jakarta Gov. Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama in Surabaya, Nov. 4, 2016.
AFP

A female member of conservative Muslim group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, who was handing out news releases at a press conference Tuesday at HTI headquarters in South Jakarta, refused to give one to a male reporter.

She told him to get a copy from an ikhwan, referring to male HTI members who were handing out the release at the other end of the room.

The segregation between men and women also was apparent at the entrance to the conference room even though members of both sexes eventually assembled in the same room without a partition between them.

It has become common for some Muslim communities in Indonesia to use Arabic words such as ikhwan, which means “brother,” and akhwat, which means “sister,” in everyday conversation.

Iffah Ainur Rochmah, the spokeswoman for Muslimah HTI, the women’s division in the HTI organizational structure, said such segregation was common within the Muslim communities. She said it was part of efforts to uphold Islamic values and integrate them into daily activities.

Still, she said this did not rule out that women and men would be involved in the same activity even as seating would remain segregated.

“This is also part of our efforts to promote Islamic Shariah law, that we uphold women’s honor without discriminating against one or the other, men or women,” Iffah told BenarNews.

HTI aims to introduce Shariah law at the individual and community levels across Muslim-majority Indonesia, but also calls for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate that unites Muslims around the world.

Such efforts have made HTI a target for the government to disband it over claims that the civil society organization undermines Indonesia’s 1945 Constitution as well as the state’s ideology of Pancasila.

Wiranto, the coordinating minister of Political, Legal, and Security Affairs, said that even though HTI’s activities were mainly proselytization, as the group claims, its efforts were political and could undermine Indonesia’s sovereignty.

Wiranto said HTI is a political movement that aims to eradicate Indonesia’s nation-state concept built on Pancasila, a philosophy emphasizing national unity and pluralism.

“The public has to really understand that a caliphate system aims to eradicate nation-states, that is why Hizbut Tahrir has been banned in 20 countries,” Wiranto told reporters on Friday.

He added that reports from police in many parts of Indonesia show that locals have refused HTI’s presence in their areas, which could trigger conflict between adherents and opponents.

Court action

On Wednesday, Home Affairs Minister Tjahjo Kumolo said the Attorney General’s office was preparing to begin court proceedings necessary to disband HTI.

Tjahjo said that the government collected evidence to back claims that HTI is against the state ideology.  Some of the evidence shows HTI leaders delivering sermons about the contradiction between Pancasila and a unitary state.

“Their deed said they are based on Pancasila, but that doesn’t show in their activities,” Tjahjo said, adding he was convinced that a court would grant the government’s request to disband HTI.

Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia spokesman Ismail Yusanto (center), discusses his group’s efforts to improve Indonesia during a press conference in Jakarta, May 9, 2017. (Ismira Lutfia Tisnadibrata/BenarNews)

HTI spokesman Ismail Yusanto rejected the government’s claim that an Islamic caliphate goes against Pancasila.

“Caliphate is part of Islamic values. According to article 59 in the 2013 Mass Organization Law, Islamic values don’t contradict with Pancasila,” he said during the Tuesday press conference.

Ismail said HTI had contributed to the country’s development through its proselytization and by criticizing laws and regulations deemed too liberal for Indonesia. Other activities include campaigning against drugs, opposing separatist movements and any efforts of disintegration, and volunteering humanitarian aid to disaster victims.

“Therefore, accusing HTI of not having a positive role for Indonesia is not true,” he said.

Ismail acknowledged that HTI strongly criticizes democracies for placing people as the ultimate source of authority to make laws and to govern themselves.

“This completely contradicts with Islamic teaching that says rules and laws were written by God. We humans are not lawmakers. We abide God’s laws. In Islam, a leader is elected to lead us in implementing Shariah law,” Ismail said.

History of HTI

According to a report published by the International Crisis Group 14 years ago, HTI first appeared in Indonesia in 1983, brought in by an Australian of Jordanian-Lebanese origin named Abdurrahman al-Baghdadi.

For the next 15 years, HTI was mostly an underground movement on college campuses in Java, but took off when political controls eased in the aftermath of the fall of President Suharto’s government in May 1998, the report said.

Ismail said HTI’s presence in Indonesia never encountered any obstacles, “until now.”

“We don’t draw specific comparisons between regimes, but why now? This move could justify some members of the public’s perception that this regime is repressive and anti-Islam,” Iffah said.

The ICG report also said that HTI had a particularly strong presence on the campuses of the Bogor Agricultural Institute. But a lecturer at the institute’s School of Fisheries and Maritime Science, Akhmad Solihin, said religious-based student organizations had been waning in the last five years or so.

“Only a few students would attend meetings. It is not like how it used to be in the 1990s when student organizations would challenge each other to gain influence in campus,” he told BenarNews.

Sahat Sinurat, chairman of the Indonesian Christian Students Movement (GMKI) and a graduate of the Bandung Institute of Technology, said GMKI maintained good relations with Muslim student organizations, regardless of their views. GMKI rejects calls to turn Indonesia into an Islamic caliphate, Sahat said.

“We debated and argued about that. We have different views, but we interact well with each other,” Sahat said.

More recently, HTI participated in mass-Muslim rallies during the past eight months that called for Jakarta Gov. Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, a member of Indonesia's ethnic Chinese and Christian minority, to be prosecuted for anti-Islamic blasphemy. On Tuesday, a court sentenced Ahok to two years in jail.

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