Jurnal Internasional Contemporary Southeast Asia Myth of Pluralism

Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 42, No. 1 (2020), pp.
58–84 DOI: 10.1355/cs42-1c

© 2020 ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute ISSN 0129-797X print / ISSN 1793-284X electronic
The Myth of Pluralism:

Nahdlatul Ulama and the
Politics of Religious Tolerance
in Indonesia
MARCUS MIETZNER and
BURHANUDDIN MUHTADI
In much of the scholarly literature, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest

Muslim organization in Indonesia, is recognized as a defender of
religious tolerance and pluralism. This is to no small extent the result
of how NU has portrayed itself and its actions—including during the
2019 presidential elections, when it professed to have aligned with
incumbent president Joko Widodo in order to keep Islamist groups
from power. In this article, we analyse the attitudes of NU followers
towards religious tolerance and pluralism, and find a significant
mismatch between the self-perception of the NU leadership and the
actual views held by the NU grassroots. Based on original survey data,
Marcus Mietzner is Associate Professor at the Department of Political

and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian
National University, Canberra. Postal address: Hedley Bull Building,
Australian National University, 2601 ACT Acton, Australia; email:
marcus.mietzner@anu.edu.au.
Burhanuddin Muhtadi is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Social and

Political Sciences, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta,
Executive Director of the Indonesian Political Indicator (Indikator
Politik Indonesia) and Director of Public Affairs at the Indonesian
Survey Institute (Lembaga Survei Indonesia, LSI); email: burhanuddin.
muhtadi@uinjkt.ac.id.
58
Reproduced from Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs Vol. 42, No. 1 (April
2020) (Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, 2020). This version was obtained electronically direct from the
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03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 58 26/3/20 3:43 pm

NU and the Politics of Religious Tolerance in Indonesia 59
we show that NU followers are generally as intolerant of religious

minorities as the rest of the Indonesian Muslim population, and in
some cases, even more intolerant. We argue that this is the result of
NU’s long-standing prioritization of battling rival Muslim organizations
(which it views as threats to its interests) over advancing substantive
tolerance campaigns that could change the religio-political attitudes of
its constituency.
Keywords: Indonesia, Islam, tolerance, democracy, pluralism, elections.
In the scholarship on Indonesian Islam, much of the analytical

focus has been directed on Nahdlatul Ulama (Revival of Religious
Scholars, or NU). This is because NU is Indonesia’s largest Muslim
organization, and, by some estimates, possibly the largest in the
world. It has also received much attention because of its political
influence. A political party in the 1950s, NU later played a significant
role under the autocratic regimes of presidents Sukarno and Suharto,
and has left its mark on the post-1998 democratization process too.
Abdurrahman Wahid, NU’s long-time chairman in the 1980s and
1990s, was Indonesia’s fourth president from 1999 to 2001. Most
recently, NU’s supreme leader, Ma’ruf Amin, was selected as the
running mate of incumbent President Joko Widodo (or “Jokowi”) in
the 2019 presidential elections. The pair emerged victorious, and
Ma’ruf was inaugurated as Indonesia’s vice-president in October
2019. For many within NU, his rise to the second-most important
political position in Indonesia underlined the centrality of NU not
only to the country’s Muslim majority, but to the nation as a whole.
Indeed, NU had portrayed the 2019 elections as a decisive
watershed in Indonesian politics. Its campaigners told the NU
community that the election was a fight between pluralist Muslims
and radical Islamists. According to this narrative, NU stood with
Jokowi to defend pluralism, while Prabowo Subianto—Jokowi’s only
challenger—represented the threat of Islamism. Edward Aspinall, who
observed the election campaign in NU’s strongholds of Central and
East Java, wrote that NU officials were claiming to be “mobilising for
Jokowi in order to defend NU’s vision of pluralism and moderation,
its traditional religious practices, and to oppose the forces—which
they variously described as the ‘Islamic right’ (Islam kanan), ‘Islamic
hardliners’ (Islam garis keras) and supporters of a universal caliphate
(khilafah)—they saw as mobilising behind Prabowo”.1 NU’s all-out
campaign, it appears, paid off handsomely: Jokowi gained 77 per cent

60 Marcus Mietzner and Burhanuddin Muhtadi
of the vote in Central Java (up by 10 points from 2014) and 66 per
cent in East Java (up by 13 points from 2014). Overall, the NU commu
nity voted 56 per cent to 44 per cent in favour of Jokowi, overturning
the slight advantage Prabowo had held in the 2014 elections when
he had the support of the then-chairman of NU, Said Agil Siradj.2
In the eyes of NU leaders, then, not only had Jokowi and NU won,
but religious pluralism had too.
Importantly, NU’s self-perception as the defender of pluralism has
been echoed by much of the domestic and international academic
discourse about the organization. While some authors, such as Greg
Fealy3 and Robin Bush,4 have critically characterized NU as a political
organization with a host of vested and material interests, the notion
of NU as the protector of democracy, moderation and tolerance in
Indonesia is a constant refrain in the literature. Sympathetic scholars
of the organization such as Greg Barton5 and Robert Hefner6 have
written extensively on NU’s role in supporting the development
of a pluralist, tolerant and “civil” Islam. The eminent political
comparativist Alfred Stepan had even praised NU as “the backbone
of a tolerant civil society”.7 In 2018, Indonesian and international
scholars supported a campaign to bestow the Nobel Peace Prize
on NU and Muhammadiyah, the second largest Muslim group in
Indonesia. Blaming NU’s failure to secure the prestigious prize on
the lack of knowledge about NU in the international community, the
Jakarta Post noted again that “moderation and tolerance are among
the distinguishing traits of […] NU”.8
But how tolerant are NU supporters in reality? In the last few
years, we have run large-scale surveys of religious and political
attitudes among the Indonesian Muslim population.9 Using these
surveys, we showed in previous publications that religio-political
intolerance (measured in terms of objections to non-Muslims holding
political office) rose sharply after the 2016 mass demonstrations
against the Christian-Chinese governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja
Purnama (or “Ahok”), while religio-cultural intolerance (measured
in terms of objections to non-Muslim events being held or non-
Muslim houses of worship being built in one’s proximity) fluctuated
over time. In our most recent survey, taken in September 2019 and
analysed for this article, we took a specific look at the attitudes of
NU supporters. We found that NU supporters are generally not more
tolerant than other Muslims. We also established that NU’s 2019
campaign against Islamist hardline groups significantly reduced the
support within NU for these groups, but had no material impact

on the existing intolerant attitudes among NU supporters. We argue,

based on the survey findings, that NU’s pursuit of pluralism and
opposition to hardline Islamist groups must be primarily understood
as a campaign to eliminate religious competitors that could threaten
NU’s dominance. This character of NU’s campaign, we propose, is
reflected in the fact that NU’s efforts have borne little perceptible
benefits for the consolidation and enhancement of pluralist values
in Indonesia.
We develop these arguments in three main sections. First, we
outline the history of NU’s claim of being an advocate of religious
tolerance and moderation, as expressed in the concept of Islam
Nusantara (Archipelagic Islam). Second, we provide an overview
of how we conceptualize religious intolerance and its various
manifestations, and how the latest survey of 2019 maps out these
instances of intolerance among the general Muslim population. Third,
we show that religious intolerance among NU supporters is as high
and pronounced as in the rest of the Indonesian Muslim community,
raising questions about NU’s effectiveness in disseminating pluralist
values even in its own community. Overall, then, the claim made by
Mirjam Kuenkler and Alfred Stepan, namely that NU’s democratic
values are “well disseminated among its followers and even reach
a broader public”,10 does not seem to hold. The conclusion, finally,
reflects on what these survey findings mean for the interpretation
of NU’s political manoeuvres in the 2019 campaign and beyond.
Our data is primarily drawn from a survey conducted by the
Indonesian Survey Institute (Lembaga Survei Indonesia, LSI) from
8 to 17 September 2019. The survey included 1,520 respondents
selected through multistage random sampling, with a margin of error
of plus/minus 2.6 per cent. We also had access to similar surveys
undertaken by LSI between 2016 and 2018, and some prior surveys
going back to 2010. The data presented in the second section is
mostly focused on Muslim respondents, while the third section
primarily analyses answers by respondents affiliated with NU. If other
respondent groups are assessed, this is stated explicitly in the text.
NU, Tolerance and Islam Nusantara

NU’s self-styled reputation as a force of tolerance and pluralism
dates back to its founding in 1926.11 At that time, traditionalist
Muslim scholars on Java (or kiai) became concerned about the
increasing influence of puritan interpretations of the Qur’an imported

by “modernists” trained in the Middle East.12 In contrast to these

modernists, the traditionalist scholars had for centuries mixed
Islamic teachings with locally based norms. As a result, a distinct
religio-cultural ecosystem of traditionalist values and ceremonies
based on Islam but enriched by local beliefs had emerged, with its
centre in Central and East Java. The modernists, however, viewed
this traditionalist belief system as near-heretical, and they organized
themselves by founding Muhammadiyah in 1912. The establishment
of NU in 1926 was a direct traditionalist response to this rising level
of organizational capacity shown by their modernist counterparts.
Subsequently, NU developed as the main body of representation
for traditionalists on the island of Java, and its ideas took roots in
some parts of the Outer Islands as well—especially in areas with
high levels of Javanese migration.
For NU, the idea that Islam had to be open to influences beyond
Middle Eastern interpretations of Islamic scripture was crucial for
maintaining and defending the legitimacy of its community, practices
and material interests. In other words, its ideological stance was
inseparably intertwined with its political economic interests: for
NU leaders, a threat to their doctrinal convictions was equivalent
to a threat to the material existence of the NU community. In
line with the strategic promotion of its own syncretistic outlook,
the NU in post-independent Indonesia often sought alliances with
nationalist groups rather than fellow Islamic organizations—many
of whom were hostile to NU’s religious eclecticism. In 1952, NU
split from Masyumi, a party that had unsuccessfully tried to bring
traditionalist and modernist Muslims together into one umbrella
organization.13 Afterwards, NU operated as its own party, forging
coalitions with non-Masyumi parties in order to keep its modernist
rivals out of power. For NU, gaining the ministry of religious affairs
in coalition governments was one of its main political goals, as this
ensured access to patronage resources that could be distributed to
the NU community.14 Accordingly, political pluralism emerged as a
strategic ideological tool for NU to exclude intra-Islamic rivals from
state resources and to disburse such resources to the traditionalist
community.
That “pluralism” and “tolerance” were merely rhetorical instru
ments to defend key organizational interests rather than deeply
embedded norms of NU became clear during three key junctures
of Indonesian politics in the 1950s and 1960s. First, NU was one
of the forces that called for the creation of an Islamic state in the

constitutional assembly between 1956 and 1959.15 In this effort, NU

temporarily worked with Islamist rather than pluralist-nationalist
groups because it believed, at the time, that the question of an Islamic
state was a non-negotiable doctrine. The deadlock arising from this
campaign was one of the main drivers of Indonesia’s democratic
decline in the late 1950s. Second, when Sukarno intervened in that
debate in 1959 and established Indonesia’s first post-independence
autocratic regime, NU supported him in exchange for cabinet
representation and legislative seats. Significantly, it did so while
tolerating the ban of Masyumi, its modernist rival. Third, and most
seriously, NU participated in the mass killings of alleged communists
and sympathizers in 1965 and 1966, eliminating an opponent that
had challenged the power of the kiai in rural Java, including their
control over land. In many cases, NU paramilitary forces acted as
executioners for suspects rounded up by the military.16 To this day,
NU as an organization has not effectively dealt with this dark side
of its history. Indeed, many elderly kiai who were involved in the
killings as NU youth leaders still express pride about their roles
in the massacres.17
The modern image of NU as a principled advocate for pluralism,
tolerance and democracy (which contrasts sharply with the actions
outlined above) is mainly the result of Abdurrahman Wahid’s leader
ship of NU between 1984 and 1999, as well as the friendly reviews
it received by international scholars. Wahid, who was out of the
country during the communist massacres, expressed regret for them—
one of the few NU figures to do so. He also steered NU to abandon
the pursuit of an Islamic state and assisted in the development of
NU-affiliated NGOs supporting liberal ideas—such as the Institute for
the Study and Development of Human Resources (Lembaga Kajian
dan Pengembangan Sumberdaya Manusia, Lakpesdam) and the
Institute for Islamic and Social Studies (Lembaga Kajian Islam dan
Sosial, LKiS). NU’s doctrinal shift away from the ideal of an Islamic
state was partly due to Wahid’s commitment to a multi-religious
society, but also the result of a deal he made with the authoritarian
Suharto regime to secure continued access to state resources for NU.18
In 1984, Suharto demanded that all organizations, including Islamic
ones, accept the pluralist state ideology Pancasila as their ideational
guideline; refusing to do so would have attracted criminalization
by the regime and exclusion from patronage resources. Hence,
NU’s doctrinal abandonment of an Islamic state and subsequent
endorsement of Indonesia’s religious diversity was jointly engineered

by Wahid, his liberal NU allies and Suharto. Put differently, it was

not the result of a long-term, sustained evolution of values at the
NU grassroots. In NU’s boarding schools, or pesantren, many of the
organization’s followers continued to endorse some of the Islamist
ideas of the 1950s and the anti-communist radicalism of the 1960s.
Despite this background, many scholars celebrated Wahid’s
reformist leadership as a fundamental reorientation of Indonesian
Islam. NU was now heralded as a vehicle of “civil Islam”,19 and
after Suharto’s fall, the organization was also feted—by Stepan and
others—as a protector of democracy. Such characterizations quietly
overlooked Wahid’s continued support for Suharto against the
student demonstrations demanding the latter’s resignation as well
as the flaws of Wahid’s own stint as president. Wahid had gained
the presidency by claiming that Indonesia’s Muslim community
was not ready for a female president20—thus ending the hopes of
Megawati Sukarnoputri, who had led the PDI-P to a large plurality
of seats in the 1999 legislative elections. Once president, Wahid
balanced some progressive policies (such as issuing an informal,
personal apology in regards to the 1965 massacre and removing
discriminatory regulations against the ethnic Chinese) with a clear
authoritarian streak: he wanted to “freeze” the democratically elected
parliament, ban a major political party and appoint his own loyalists
in the police and military without parliamentary consent.21 None
of this was allowed under the constitution, leading to Wahid’s
impeachment in 2001. After his fall, Wahid was relegated to the
political margins, where his—and NU’s—reputation as an icon of
pluralism and tolerance rapidly recovered.
After Wahid’s death in 2009, his successors in the NU leadership
took steps to further cement NU’s pluralist image. At its 2015
congress, NU officially adopted the concept of Islam Nusantara,
which highlighted the existence of a specifically Indonesian version
of Islam.22 The notion of Islam Nusantara was not new, having
been advanced in various manifestations by intellectuals close to
Wahid in the 1980s and 1990s. Following Suharto’s resignation,
international foundations and embassies also supported (and funded)
the development of the concept. 23 But as in the case of NU’s
founding in 1926, the 2015 adoption of Islam Nusantara by NU
was a statement primarily directed against its modernist rivals—this
time not so much Muhammadiyah, but smaller scriptualist groups
such as the Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam, or FPI)
and the Indonesian chapter of Hizbut Tahrir (HTI). These groups

had grown in influence under the presidency of Susilo Bambang

Yudhoyono (2004–14), and had begun to infiltrate schools, campuses
and the bureaucracy. At the same time, the puritan Prosperous
Justice Party (PKS) attracted support among NU voters, with NU
branches reporting back to their headquarters that some mosques
previously dominated by NU had been taken over by PKS-affiliated
preachers.24
Hence, NU’s 2015 adoption of Islam Nusantara was chiefly a
measure to prevent the loss of its religio-cultural hegemony. To be
sure, many NU leaders were—and continue to be—concerned about
the threat of rising radicalism to Indonesia’s social fabric. But it
would be naive to ignore the political-economic dimensions informing
this stance. As Ahmad Syarif Syechbubakr pointed out, “mainstream
Muslim organisations [such as] NU […] have enthusiastically taken
up the anti-intolerance cause, in part to access state resources and
to gain ground over their conservative rivals, such as HTI and
Salafist groups”.25 State resources for anti-intolerance campaigns
became available in abundance after the Islamist mobilization against
Ahok in 2016. With both Jokowi and NU feeling threatened by
this unprecedented Islamist movement, tens of millions of dollars
were disbursed to NU under the umbrella of a de-radicalization
programme and more vaguely labelled initiatives such as “pesantren
empowerment”.26 These programmes not only included money for an
NU credit scheme for its constituency, but also for the dissemination
of the Islam Nusantara discourse.27 Crucially, Jokowi too adopted this
term to describe his own version of Indonesia’s “moderate Islam”.
In many ways, Jokowi’s joint presidential candidacy with NU’s
supreme leader Ma’ruf Amin symbolized the convergence of the
regime’s and NU’s interests in countering the groups on the far
end of the modernist Islamic spectrum. Previously, Ma’ruf had not
been known for his pluralist or tolerant views towards religious
minorities. On the contrary, as head of the Indonesian Ulama Council
(MUI), he had issued the fatwa against Ahok that triggered the 2016
mobilization. But the anti-Ahok protests facilitated the rise of groups
that Ma’ruf viewed as a threat to both NU and himself. He thus
quickly sought to distance himself from the movement in early 2017,28
before pursuing an alliance with the Jokowi administration as the
next logical step. The ban of HTI in July 2017 was the first major
political product of this contemporary alliance between government
leaders and NU—echoing the Sukarno-NU agreement of the early
1960s and the Suharto-NU compromise of the early 1980s. In banning

HTI, the state removed a disruptive and increasingly influential NU

opponent—while at the same time using NU’s support for the ban as
political cover against accusations that it simply wanted to eliminate
a group of anti-government dissidents. Most importantly, the state’s
alliance with NU enabled both actors to frame the ban, as well as
other repressive measures against FPI and similar groups, as actions
to defend pluralism and tolerance in Indonesia.29
There are several ways to substantiate our contention that pluralism
is deployed by NU as a strategic rhetorical instrument rather than
as an ideational principle to guide the daily lives of NU followers.
One approach to testing this hypothesis is to demonstrate how NU
has benefitted materially and politically from its self-portrayals of
being pluralist and tolerant. Fealy’s ground-breaking work on NU’s
material interests in the 1950s and 1960s laid the conceptual basis
for this school of thought, and he has built on this by explaining
NU’s current stance in terms of its continued struggle for power,
religio-political dominance and the marginalization of its rivals.30
Fachrudin also used this approach, showing in some detail how
NU has drawn material rewards from supporting the government’s
pluralism campaign.31 In this article, however, we use an alternative
method. We test NU’s claim of being a principled advocate of
pluralism and tolerance in the Indonesian Muslim community against
the real attitudes held by members of that community. Following
Kuenkler and Stepan, one should expect NU’s campaign for pluralism
to have a perceptible effect on attitudes held in the wider Muslim
society; even more importantly, one should expect these attitudes
to be more pronounced in the NU community. As we indicated
above, neither is borne out in the survey data that we will discuss
in the following sections.
Religious Intolerance in Indonesia

The term “religious tolerance” is a controversial, subjective and
normatively loaded term.32 Nevertheless, it is possible to arrive at a
definition that is both workable and appropriate for the Indonesian
context. In developing such a definition of religious tolerance, it
is important to take into account the claims that Indonesian actors
themselves make about its scope and substance—in our case, these
actors are the state and NU. The Indonesian state ideology Pancasila
establishes that Indonesian citizens endorsing monotheistic religions
all enjoy the same rights, and NU has adopted this position. In

announcing an official NU stance to abandon the use of the term

“infidel” (kafir), NU chairman Said Agil Siraj stated in March 2019
that “in the eyes of the constitution, all citizens have the same
position and rights”.33 He reminded NU members that even during
the era of prophetic rule in Medina, non-Muslim subjects were
respected and not branded as infidels.
Against this background, we propose to define religious tolerance
as an attitude that accepts the free expression of beliefs and conduct
of practices by citizens endorsing a faith different from one’s own,
and that views the constitutional rights of such citizens as equal to
those held by the followers of one’s own faith. “Religious intolerance”
then, is an attitude that rejects, and tries to ban or limit, the
expression of beliefs and/or the practices of citizens endorsing a faith
different from one’s own, and that views the constitutional rights of
followers of one’s own faith as superior to those held by followers
of a different faith. By using the parameters set and recognized by
the Indonesian state and NU itself, our definition thus avoids the
trap of applying Western standards to a non-Western context.
Accordingly, in measuring religious intolerance among Indonesia’s
Muslim population, we focus on two main categories: religio-cultural
intolerance (i.e. intolerance towards the norms and practices of
followers of a different faith), and religio-political intolerance (i.e.
the rejection of equal constitutional rights for followers of a different
faith). To test the levels of religio-cultural intolerance in Indonesia
in 2019, the survey posed two questions. The first asked Muslim
respondents whether they would object to non-Muslim houses of
worship being built in their neighbourhood: 53 per cent of respondents
indicated that they would object, while 37 per cent stated that they
would not. In short, a majority of Indonesian Muslims reject the
presence of a key feature of religious practice in their neighbour
hood if it is associated with a non-Muslim faith. In recent years,
this trend has been increasing, after being on the decline between
2010 and 2017. In 2017, the number of respondents who objected
to having non-Muslim houses of worship in their proximity was
48 per cent. Although this figure suggested a considerable degree
of religio-cultural intolerance, it was the lowest on record. But it
subsequently increased again to 52 per cent in 2018 and to 53 per
cent a year later. We have argued elsewhere that the pre-2017
softening of religio-cultural intolerance was halted—and eventually
reversed—as a result of the anti-Ahok mobilization that hardened
Islamist attitudes in society.34

In our second measure, which asked Muslim respondents

whether they would object to religious events by non-Muslims being
held in their neighbourhood, the level of objection has been lower
but still significant. In 2019, 36 per cent of respondents objected
to such events, while 54 per cent did not. Similar to the trend
outlined above, intolerant attitudes towards non-Muslim religious
events were softening prior to 2016, but this trend was stopped by
the 2016 Islamist mobilization. From 40 per cent in 2016, the rate
of Muslim respondents who objected to non-Muslim religious events
dropped to 36 per cent in 2017, before rising again to 38 per cent
in 2018. Taken together, the two measures suggest that there was
a consolidation of religio-cultural intolerance among Indonesian
Muslims in the post-Ahok period, without any sign of decline or
softening. This runs contrary to the expectations of some observers
who had pointed to the “unusual and extreme circumstances” of the
Ahok affair and warned that concerns over the long-term decline of
religious tolerance could be overdrawn.35
This consolidation of religious intolerance is considerably
stronger in the political dimension. Religio-political intolerance rose
significantly after 2016, and has remained at high levels since. Prior
to the Ahok case, in 2016, 40 per cent of Muslims objected to non-
Muslims becoming governor. Thereafter, the rate of objection shot
up to 48 per cent in 2017 and to 52 per cent in both 2018 and
2019. In our view, rejecting the right of followers of a different faith
to hold political office affects the core of the constitutional rights
dimension of our definition of religious intolerance. Denying a non-
Muslim the opportunity to seek political office means fundamentally
questioning his or her right as a citizen of the Indonesian state.
For many Muslim leaders, however, the issue is more complex. A
conservative reading of the Qur’anic verse Al-Maidah 51 seemingly
suggests that non-Muslims should not be trusted as friends and leaders.
While this interpretation is controversial,36 it was widely held among
anti-Ahok protesters (and not coincidentally, the blasphemy charge
against Ahok was related to a remark he made about Al-Maidah
51). Thus, there is a tension between constitutionally guaranteed
citizen rights and the perceived political exclusion of non-Muslims
by the Qur’an—and more than half of Indonesian Muslims resolve
that tension by backing the latter.
In order to gain an aggregated score in regards to the number
of Muslims holding intolerant views in Indonesia, we consolidated
all questions on the religio-cultural and political dimensions of reli
gious intolerance into one overarching index. This index contained

six questions in total: in addition to the three measures mentioned

above, it also included questions on possible objections to non-Muslims
serving as regent or mayor, as vice-president, and as president. In
the index developed from the answers to these questions, a score
between 75 and 100 (that is, if a respondent answered all or almost
all questions in the affirmative) led to the classification of “very
intolerant”; a score between 50 and 75 (meaning the respondent
answered more than half of the questions positively) was denoted as
“intolerant”; a score of 25 to 50 indicated the categorization “tolerant”;
and 0 to 25 was seen as “very tolerant”. Based on this classification
scheme, 30 per cent of Muslim Indonesians in 2019 were very
intolerant, 17 per cent intolerant, 21 per cent tolerant and 32 per
cent very tolerant. Thus, a total of 47 per cent of Muslim respondents
held intolerant or very intolerant views. In 2016 and 2017, this
number had “only” been 42 per cent. In other publications, we
have explained this hardening of intolerant views with the specific
messaging of the leaders of the anti-Ahok mobilization, and with the
consolidation of these views even after the protest wave was over.37
With nearly half of Indonesian Muslims holding intolerant or very
intolerant views of non-Muslims, it is essential to put these numbers
in an international perspective. While the levels of intolerance in
Indonesia are high and have recently been rising, they remain in line
with other survey findings on religious intolerance in Muslim and non-
Muslim countries around the world.38 Surveys measuring prejudices
against Muslims in European countries have identified patterns com
parable to those in our survey. For example, a Pew Research Center
poll in 2017 found that 69 per cent of Italians, 66 per cent of Greeks
and Poles, 72 per cent of Hungarians and 50 per cent of Spaniards
held negative views of Muslims. In Western Europe, the numbers
were lower but still significant, with 35 per cent of Swedes, 29 per
cent of Germans and 28 per cent of Britons admitting to anti-Muslim
views.39 Thus, the results of our Indonesian survey do not indicate
a narrative of Indonesian exceptionalism; rather, they establish that
Indonesia is part of a global trend of sharpening identity divisions.
Our survey results also deliver first hints of the reality surrounding
the widespread claim of NU’s importance in protecting and deepening
pluralism and tolerance in Indonesian Islam. Kuenkler and Stepan’s
assertion that NU’s pluralism has a significant influence on the
“broader public” does not seem to be reflected by the survey data. This
is particularly notable as the increase in politico-religious intolerance
occurred after and during NU’s aggressive Islam Nusantara campaign.
Officially launched in 2015, the campaign coincided with the post-2016

rise in Muslims’ objection to non-Muslims in political positions, and

with the end and eventual reversal of the originally softening trends
in religio-cultural intolerance. Even if we were to assume that NU
played a part in the earlier softening of religio-cultural intolerance
between 2010 and 2016, it was clearly unable to translate its Islam
Nusantara discourse into gains for religious pluralism and tolerance
at a time when such values came under attack. Developments in
Indonesian Islam, it seems, are not shaped by NU to the extent
that its leaders claim and many foreign scholars hope. This is, of
course, not the sole fault of NU, but it is important to recognize
the limitations of the organization when analysing the current and
future trajectory of religious intolerance in Indonesia, as well as
possible remedies to it.
That said, the overall level of religious tolerance among Indonesian
Muslims is a rather blunt instrument to measure NU’s effectiveness
as a pluralist force in society. A more effective way of analysing the
latter is to measure the appetite for tolerance and pluralism among
NU followers. While the limited influence of NU’s self-proclaimed
pluralist campaign on the Muslim community at large became clear
in the patterns of societal intolerance demonstrated above, we should
expect a much more pronounced tendency towards pluralism and
tolerance in the NU community itself. This is because of the close
relationship between NU kiai and their students, or santri, and,
more generally, between NU leaders and citizens who are affiliated
with them through familial, educational, communal or organizational
ties. As the next section shows, however, there is little evidence
that NU followers are in any way more tolerant than the average
Indonesian Muslim.
Intolerance in NU
It is important to begin this section on intolerance within NU by
recognizing that it complements earlier survey work done by Jeremy
Menchik.40 However, in contrast to Menchik’s 2010 survey of branch
leaders, we focus on lay-citizens who, to varying degrees, are part
of NU’s vast religio-cultural networks. Examining the views of NU
followers, rather than their leaders, is necessary if one aims to assess
the effectiveness of the NU leaders’ discursive agenda among their
followers. Furthermore, while Menchik concluded that many NU
leaders are “tolerant” but not liberal, we found that NU followers
have significant tendencies towards intolerance, even if it is treated
as a less strict concept than liberalism. Having said that, our work

follows in Menchik’s stead of identifying illiberal and intolerant

streams within NU.
Surveying NU attitudes through a nationwide representative
survey of Muslim respondents is made possible by the fact that NU
is by far the largest Muslim organization in Indonesia. In our 2019
survey, 45 per cent of Muslim respondents said that they identify
themselves as being “part of NU” [merasa sebagai bagian dari
NU]. These respondents are not necessarily formal members of the
organization, but persons who feel that they belong to NU’s wider
religio-cultural network, whether as former students of NU kiai, as
relatives of NU activists or as villagers living in close proximity to
an NU pesantren. In our survey, no other religious organization came
close to commanding such a high level of self-identification from
their followers, with Muhammadiyah being a distant second at 5
per cent. In methodological terms, the large number of NU-affiliated
respondents allows us to make reliable judgements on the religio-
ideological profile of NU followers, and to specifically explore trends
of intolerant and anti-pluralist thought within the NU community.
As indicated in the introduction, we find that while NU’s
religio-political messaging has impacted the attitude of NU followers
towards certain Islamist groups, it has not solidified and expanded
tolerant and pluralist values in this community. This shows, in our
view, that NU’s advocacy of pluralism is primarily run as a campaign
against its organizational rivals at the far end of the modernist
spectrum, while its efforts to change grassroots attitudes on religious
toleration have either been poorly designed or ineffective (or both).
We substantiate these arguments in our explanation of the survey
results below.
Let us start with the area in which NU’s campaigning did have
an impact. During the 2019 elections, NU stepped up its campaign
against groups such as HTI and FPI, telling followers to vote for
Jokowi as Prabowo would allow these organizations to undermine
Indonesia’s pluralist constitution and society. Even prior to this,
the NU-affiliated militia Banser had attacked FPI gatherings and
suspected followers of HTI in some parts of Java.41 We find strong
indications in our survey data that this campaign to denigrate the
reputation of rival organizations such as FPI and HTI worked. In
2018, 37 per cent of NU followers who knew of FPI also supported
what the group was fighting for [apa yang diperjuangkan]. However,
in the post-election period of 2019, this figure dropped by 10 points
to 27 per cent (see Figure 1). With such a substantial shift in the

Figure 1
Awareness of and Support for FPI among NU Followers*
NU Followers (2018) NU Followers (2019)
55.2 55.9
44.8 44.1
37.0 39.0
31.5
26.8 27.2 26.0
8.2
4.3
Know Don’t Know Approve No Opinion Disapprove DK/NA
* Question: “Do you know (have heard, seen or read) about Islamic Defender Front
(FPI)? If you know, do you approve what these organizations or groups are fighting for?”
Results in %, Base: NU followers.
attitudes of the NU grassroots towards FPI, support for the latter

among all Indonesian Muslims experienced its sharpest decline in
more than a decade. Thus, the overall support for FPI was effectively
reduced back to the level it had recorded prior to the anti-Ahok
mobilization—the event which was mainly responsible for the post-
2016 spike in FPI’s popularity. The same pattern applies to HTI,
which the government banned in 2017. Between 2018 and 2019, the
percentage of HTI supporters among NU followers who knew the
group was halved from 14 per cent to 7 per cent. Evidently, NU’s
intensified campaign against the two groups in the 2019 elections
convinced many NU followers to abandon them.
This receptiveness of NU followers towards NU’s campaign
against Islamist groups was further confirmed by additional measures
introduced in our 2019 survey. In one of these questions, we asked
NU-affiliated respondents whether they agreed with the statement
that “as a person who feels close to NU, it is my duty and NU’s
duty as an organization to limit the influence of hardline Islamic
groups such as HTI and FPI”. 67 per cent of NU respondents agreed
with this statement, while only 16 per cent disagreed. Further, we

asked respondents whether they agreed with the assessment that “if
Prabowo Subianto had won the presidential elections, he would have
given an excessive role and influence to hardline Islamic groups”.
28 per cent of NU-affiliated respondents agreed—7 per cent more
than the Muslim average (among NU followers, 26 per cent did not
answer the question).
But this pattern of organizational opposition to Islamist
groups and candidates was not replicated when we investigated
ideational attitudes among NU followers towards intolerance and
pluralism. For instance, 54 per cent of NU-affiliated respondents
objected in 2019 to non-Muslim houses of worship being built in
their neighbourhood. This figure was the same as in 2018, suggesting
that while many NU followers did turn their back on Islamist groups
in 2019, they did not become more pluralist in their attitude. The
objection rate was also one percentage point higher than in the
average Muslim population, and a full 15 per cent higher than
among Muhammadiyah-affiliated respondents.42 In the political
dimension of religious intolerance, anti-pluralist views within the NU
community even increased between 2018 and 2019. In 2019, 53 per
cent of NU followers objected to non-Muslims becoming governor,
up from 49 per cent in 2018. The 2019 level was also one percent
age point higher than the Muslim average, and 11 per cent higher
than among Muhammadiyah followers (whose objection towards non-
Muslim governors dropped by 12 per cent in 2019). Among Muslims
not affiliated with any organization, the rate was 53 per cent—the
same as among NU followers. Thus, the religious intolerance of NU
followers was in line with or slightly above the Muslim average, and
on par with that of non-affiliated Muslims. Importantly, the high-
profile campaign of NU for pluralism in the 2019 elections made
no difference to these attitudes at the NU grassroots.43
In broader and more longitudinal terms, the attitudes of NU
followers also developed in line with the Muslim average in
Indonesia. As we stated earlier, religious prejudices had softened
between 2010 and 2016–17, increased after the anti-Ahok mobiliza
tion and (as our data above shows) consolidated in its aftermath.
Among NU followers, the same trend was observed. This means that
similar to the overall Muslim community, NU followers hardened
their views precisely at a time in which the NU leadership had
officially taken up the Islam Nusantara campaign that, nominally at
least, had the ambition to steer them—and the rest of the Muslim
population—in the opposite direction.

In our surveys, we also assessed the extent of racial sentiments

against Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese. This is because Chinese Indone
sians, as non-Muslims and ethnic minority citizens with significant
economic dominance in the private sector, are often a major target
of Islamist campaigns. Between 2017 (when the questions on
anti-Chinese sentiments were first asked)44 and 2019, the number
of Muslim respondents who openly endorsed such anti-Chinese
sentiments declined somewhat. For instance, 43 per cent of Muslim
respondents agreed in 2017 that “ethnic Chinese are too greedy
and ambitious”. This dropped to 30 per cent in 2019. Interestingly,
however, the percentage of respondents who disagreed with this
statement remained stable at just about 17 per cent—instead, the
number of respondents who were “neutral” or declined to answer
increased from 40 per cent in 2017 to 53 per cent in 2019. This
suggests that what declined after 2017 (i.e. Ahok’s departure from
the political stage) was not so much anti-Chinese sentiment per se,
but rather the readiness to express such racist sentiments openly
and aggressively. Importantly for our focus on NU, the anti-Chinese
sentiments among NU-affiliated respondents were just as strong as
in the rest of the Muslim population. In 2019, 31 per cent of them
believed ethnic Chinese were too greedy and ambitious, which is
one per cent above the Muslim average.
Furthermore, we found that NU followers are particularly strong
in their support for the political supremacy of ethnic Javanese. In
our 2019 survey, we asked ethnic Javanese respondents whether they
agreed that “as ethnic Javanese, we should ideally vote for an ethnic
Javanese president”: 50 per cent of all ethnic Javanese respondents
agreed, but this number was 59 per cent among NU-affiliated Javanese.
In the NU heartland of Central and East Java, these numbers were
even higher, suggesting that ethnic Javanese living outside of these
areas are less concerned with having a Javanese president than
those residing in the epicenter of Javanese and NU culture. Among
Muhammadiyah-affiliated respondents of ethnic Javanese origin, the
commitment to vote for a Javanese president stood at only 37 per
cent—the same as among Javanese Muslims not affiliated with any
Islamic group. Accordingly, NU followers not only harbour intolerant
sentiments against non-Muslims and ethnic Chinese that are in line
with or slightly stronger than the Muslim average, but Javanese NU
supporters, compared to other Javanese Muslims, also have a more
robust inclination to vote for a member of their own ethnicity.
As NU itself and many observers have claimed that the organization
is crucial to sustaining democracy in Indonesia, we analysed support

for democracy among NU supporters. Nominal support for democracy

remains high in Indonesia, both among NU and non-NU Muslims.
But the question asked to gauge this support (“Is democracy the
best form of government?”) is increasingly unusable as a reliable
attitudinal measure of democratic stability. This is because many
non-democratic actors, ranging from Islamists to populists and the
military, have hijacked the term “democracy” for their own agendas.
Thus, we developed a more specific measure to gauge the depth of
democratic commitment in respondents. We asked whether it is, “in
certain circumstances, better to have a state with a strong leader
without intervention of the legislature and judicial bodies, than to
have a state with a democratic system that requires legislative and
judicial intervention”. Among NU followers, 38 per cent stated
that they agreed with this statement—three points more than the
rate among the general Muslim population and the entire citizenry
(regardless of religion), and five points more than among Muslims
not affiliated with an organization. Among Muhammadiyah-affiliated
respondents, the level of agreement with potentially non-democratic
forms of strongman leadership stood at 29 per cent (see Table 1).
If NU’s campaign was meant to foster support for democracy, it is
difficult to explain why the commitment to democracy is lower in
NU than in any other constituency.
There are two caveats to the overall pattern of intolerance of
NU followers described above (as summarized in Table 1). First,
if we analyse the attitudes of respondents who state that they are
“members” of NU (as opposed to the group that “feels as part
of NU” we explored above), the levels of intolerance are slightly
lower and more closely aligned with Menchik’s findings. Overall,
22 per cent of Muslim respondents in our 2019 survey claimed
to be members of NU (9 per cent said they were active members,
and 13 per cent identified as non-active members). Within this
cluster of NU members, 34 per cent objected to non-Muslim events
being held in their neighbourhood, whereas that rate was 36 per
cent among NU followers and in the overall Muslim population.
Further, 50 per cent of NU members objected to non-Muslim places
of worship being built in their neighbourhood, compared to 54 per
cent among NU followers and 53 per cent in the general Muslim
community. Similarly, 51 per cent of NU members rejected non-
Muslim governors, while 53 per cent of NU followers and 52 per
cent of all Muslim respondents raised the same objection. Generally,
these differences are statistically weak, but as they occur across all
measures, we can conclude that the levels of intolerance among

Table 1
Responses to Various Measures of Attitudes on Pluralism and Intolerance
(%)
Overall NU Muhammadiyah
Variable Muslims followers followers
1. Objection to
non-Muslim
53 54 39
houses of
worship
2. Objection to
non-Muslim
52 52 41
district head/
mayor
3. Objection to
non-Muslims
52 53 42
becoming
governor
4. Agreement
that as ethnic
Javanese, we
should ideally 50 59 37
vote for an
ethnic Javanese
president*
5. Agreement
with a strong
leader without
intervention of 35 38 29
the legislature
and judicial
bodies
*Respondents were ethnic Javanese Muslims.
NU members are marginally lower than among NU followers. This

is in line with other research that showed that politicians of the
NU-affiliated National Awakening Party (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa,
PKB) are somewhat more liberal than their voters.45 Nevertheless,
our numbers still point to the absence of a solid pluralist value
system among NU members.

Second, it is important to recognize regional differences in the

attitudes of NU followers. NU followers in Central and East Java
are typically less intolerant than their counterparts in West Java,
Banten and much of the Outer Islands. For instance, while the
number of NU followers objecting to non-Muslim ceremonies in their
neighbourhood in 2019 stood at 34 and 33 per cent in Central and
East Java respectively, it reached 52 per cent in West Java and 49 per
cent in Banten (average for NU followers: 36 per cent). The contrast
was even starker in the measure assessing objections to non-Muslim
places of worship being built in the neighbourhood: 49 per cent of
NU followers objected in Central and East Java, while a massive
72 per cent did in West Java and 62 per cent in Banten (average
for NU followers: 54 per cent). In terms of rejecting non-Muslims
in political office, 38 per cent of NU followers in Central Java and
55 per cent in East Java objected to non-Muslim governors, while
67 per cent in West Java and 73 per cent in Banten did (average
for NU followers: 53 per cent). Thus, NU followers in Central Java
were consistently less intolerant than the NU average in both the
religio-cultural and religio-political dimensions; NU followers in
East Java were less intolerant in the religio-cultural sphere only,
while their religio-political intolerance was above average; and NU
followers in West Java and Banten were significantly more intolerant
in all aspects of anti-pluralist attitudes.
In a persuasive study on these regional differences, Alexandre
Pelletier has attributed the higher level of intolerance in NU pesantren
in West Java to their smaller size and weaker integration into the
local economy.46 Unlike many Central and East Javanese kiai, whose
pesantren have thousands of santri and are supported by strong
economic (mostly agricultural) support networks, West Javanese kiai
have typically much smaller institutions below them and thus have
to compete for santri by attracting attention with more aggressive
religious rhetoric. The resource limitations of West Javanese kiai, in
turn, were the result of region-specific colonial policies towards them
in the areas of crop cultivation, land ownership, labour mobilization
and taxation. Many of these patterns were also in place for the Outer
Islands. In another version of this argument, Alexander Arifianto
has explained the regional diversity in NU tolerance levels with
the decentralized character of NU as an organization, which gives
the kiai a high degree of autonomy in determining their theological
and material priorities.47

Despite these caveats, it is evident that the religio-cultural and

political attitudes of NU followers (and members) towards non-
Muslims are not significantly different from those held by the rest
of the Muslim population. There is also no evidence that they are
more inclined to support democracy than Muslims affiliated with
other organizations, or those with no affiliations at all. This should
come as a sobering reminder to NU, as well as to those who have
viewed it as a key promoter of tolerance and democracy in Indonesia.
Our data shows that while NU can be effective in rallying against
particular groups associated with intolerance, its campaigns have
done little to ameliorate the levels of intolerance per se. NU’s
ineffectiveness in this regard is visible in the broader Muslim
community, but even more importantly, in its own constituency too.
In highlighting the intolerant tendencies among NU followers, our
survey findings provide quantitative confirmation of an increasing
body of ethnographic literature on NU’s role in the persecution of
minorities, such as the Ahmadis and Shiites, throughout the 2010s.48
Involving many local NU leaders and followers, this persecution has
flown in the face of NU’s public advocacy of tolerance, pluralism
and Islam Nusantara. Such ideas, it seems, have found little traction
among the NU grassroots, with NU’s mostly rhetorical initiatives to
change this unreceptiveness of its own traditionalist constituency
thus far proving futile.
Conclusion
Our discussion above allows us now to connect NU’s current campaign
for pluralism and tolerance to the broader structural trends marking
its history as Indonesia’s most important Islamic organization. Recall
that NU was founded in response to threats to its practices, beliefs
and material standing launched from modernist Muslim groups that
viewed NU’s syncretism as heretic. This defensive attitude within
NU remains at the core of its self-perception today. It is largely
directed against organizations that question NU’s hegemony over its
community, rather than at anti-pluralist thinking as such. As we have
shown above, NU followers reacted strongly against HTI, FPI and
Prabowo when these actors were seen as threatening NU’s interests.
But many NU-affiliated respondents did not acquire the pluralist
and tolerant ideological persona that would fit their belligerent
stance against such groups at the far right of the modernist Islamic
spectrum. There is, then, an obvious mismatch between NU’s claim

to being the guardian of pluralism, tolerance and democracy, and

the reality of NU acting against organizational rivals while failing
to spread pluralist thought in its community.
This pattern also sheds new light on NU’s strong involvement
in the 2019 election campaign, which it portrayed as a fight between
pluralism and intolerant Islamism. The campaign, as our data
highlights, did nothing to solidify or expand pluralist values in the
NU community or the wider Muslim society; rather, it helped NU
to prevent its old (and some new) rivals from coming to power and
undermining NU interests in the process. Pluralism, therefore, was
more of an electoral mobilization tool for NU’s quest for power than
an ideational instrument to defend pluralist norms.
This is not to say that NU does not have a special affinity
to religious and ethnic minorities. Since the 1950s, NU has built
alliances with such minorities, which it views as useful allies against
modernist Islamic groups. Just like NU, religio-ethnic minorities feel
threatened by modernist actors who push for scripturalist interpreta
tions of Islam to become guidelines of state policy. However, our
data suggests that such alliances are mostly functional and expedient
in nature, and do not represent a deep and genuine commitment to
pluralist values. Although they may embrace Christians and other
non-Muslims as strategic political allies, many NU followers do not
wish to have non-Muslim houses of worship in their neighbourhood,
or a non-Muslim governor, any more or less than other Muslim
citizens do. The same is true for the attitude of NU followers towards
ethnic Chinese: they are seen as important friends (and sponsors)
for NU in the fight against the modernist Islamist groups, but NU-
affiliated citizens harbour anti-Chinese sentiments that are just as
strong as those held by other Muslims. Thus, the protection offered
by the NU community to minorities is tactical and porous, rather
than principled and sustained.
While this finding may come as a surprise to those who have
placed NU at the centre of Indonesia’s democratization struggle, it
is entirely consistent with NU’s post-independence history. NU’s
pluralist alliance-building in the 1950s was followed by its deep
involvement in the anti-communist massacres of the 1960s, and
Wahid’s strong stance on pluralism and democracy in the 1980s
gave way to his support for Suharto in the dying days of the New
Order regime—as well as to a gender-based campaign against Megawati
and a scandal-filled presidency of his own. What guided NU in
these endeavours was the defence of its institutional interests, not

a catalogue of democratic and pluralist ideals. The 2019 election

campaign was another chapter in this narrative, and it is unlikely
to be the last. Thus, misreading NU’s actions and its contemporary
promotion of Islam Nusantara as part of a principled defence of
democracy carries not only the risk of misinterpreting the past,
but also the possibility of producing false predictions of its future
manoeuvers.
NU, therefore, needs to be seen as what it is: Indonesia’s largest
Muslim organization with a host of vested interests and much diversity
in its religio-ideological views. While there are indeed tolerant
streams within NU, this is not more so than in most other Muslim
mainstream organizations or among non-affiliated Muslims. Rather
than spreading pluralist ideas, the promotion of Islam Nusantara
has masked the doctrinal heterogeneity and intolerant views inherent
in NU for almost a century. The Islam Nusantara campaign, and
the ensuing domestic and international coverage, has also wrongly
situated NU as a solution to, rather than as being a part of, the trend
of consolidating religious intolerance in Indonesia. Like in every
other religio-political organization (including in non-Muslim ones),
there are patterns of intolerance and illiberalism in NU that threaten
Indonesia’s long-term sustainability as a democracy. To recognize
this is more important than assigning a value dissemination role to
NU that it cannot live up to—and possibly does not even aspire to.
NOTES
1
Edward Aspinall, “Indonesia’s Election and the Return of Ideological Competition”,
New Mandala, 22 April 2019, https://www.newmandala.org/indonesias-election-
and-the-return-of-ideological-competition/.
2
Indikator Politik Indonesia, “Exit Poll Pemilu 2019” (Jakarta: Indikator Politik
Indonesia, 2019), p. 41.
3
Greg Fealy, “Ulama and Politics in Indonesia: A History of Nahdlatul Ulama,
1952–1967” (PhD thesis, Monash University, 1998).
4
Robin Bush, Nahdlatul Ulama and the Struggle for Power within Islam and
Politics in Indonesia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009).
5
Greg Barton, Abdurrahman Wahid: Muslim Democrat, Indonesian President: A
View from the Inside (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002).
6
Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000).
7
Alfred Stepan and Jeremy Menchik, “Islam in Indonesia: Democratisation From
Below”, Qantara, 18 November 2010, https://en.qantara.de/content/islam-in-
indonesia-democratisation-from-below.

8
“Better Luck Next Time for Nobel Hopefuls NU, Muhammadiyah”, Jakarta Post,
21 October 2019.
9
Marcus Mietzner and Burhanuddin Muhtadi, “Explaining the 2016 Islamist
Mobilisation in Indonesia: Religious Intolerance, Militant Groups and the Politics
of Accommodation”, Asian Studies Review 42, no. 3 (July 2018): 479–97;
Marcus Mietzner, Burhanuddin Muhtadi and Rizka Halida, “Entrepreneurs of
Grievance: Drivers and Effects of Indonesia’s Islamist Mobilization”, Bijdragen
tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 174, nos. 2–3 (August 2018): 159–87; and
Marcus Mietzner and Burhanuddin Muhtadi, “The Mobilisation of Intolerance
and its Trajectories: Indonesian Muslims’ View of Religious Minorities and
Ethnic Chinese”, in Contentious Belonging: The Place of Minorities in Indonesia,
edited by Greg Fealy and Ronit Ricci (Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute,
2019), pp. 155–74.
10
Mirjam Kuenkler and Alfred Stepan, “Indonesian Democratization in Theoretical
Perspective”, in Democracy and Islam in Indonesia, edited by Mirjam Kuenkler
and Alfred Stepan (New York City, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013),
pp. 3–23.
11
For excellent works on NU history and its politics, see Andree Feillard, NU
vis-à-vis Negara: Pencarian Isi, Bentuk, dan Makna [NU vis-à-vis the State:
Investigating the Content, Form and Meaning] (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: LKiS
Publishers, 1999); and Martin van Bruinessen, NU: Tradisi, Relasi-Relasi Kuasa,
Pencarian Wacana Baru [NU: Tradition, Power Relations, and the Search for a
New Paradigm] (Yogyakarta, Indonesia: LKiS Publishers, 2014).
12
Merle Ricklefs, Polarising Javanese Society: Islamic and Other Visions, c. 1830–
1930 (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2007).
13
Rémy Madinier, Islam and Politics in Indonesia: The Masyumi Party between
Democracy and Integralism (Singapore: NUS Press, 2015).
14
Fealy, “Ulama and Politics”.
15
Adnan Buyung Nasution, The Aspiration for Constitutional Government in
Indonesia: A Socio-Legal Study of the Indonesian Konstituante, 1956–1959
(Jakarta, Indonesia: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 1993).
16
Robert Cribb, ed., The Indonesian Killings, 1965–1966: Studies from Java and
Bali (Clayton, Victoria: Monash University, 1990).
17
“KH M Yusuf Hasyim, Sosok Kiai, Pejuang dan Politisi Asal Tebuireng” [Kiai
Haji Muhammad Yusuf Hasyim, the Kiai, Fighter and Politician from Tebuireng],
Jawa Pos, 7 March 2019.
18
John Bresnan, Managing Indonesia: The Modern Political Economy (New York
City, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 240.
19
Hefner, Civil Islam.
20
Bernhard Platzdasch, “Islamic Reaction to a Female President”, in Indonesia in
Transition: Social Aspects of Reformasi and Crisis, edited by Chris Manning
and Peter van Diermen (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000),
p. 344.
21
For an account of how NU leaders were dragged into defending Wahid and thus
tarnished their own reputation, see Andrée Feillard, “Indonesian Traditionalist

Islam’s Troubled Experience with Democracy (1999–2001)”, Archipel 64 (July

2002): 117–44.
22
Ahmad Rifki, “Sepuluh Alasan Kita Perlu Kembangkan Islam Nusantara” [Ten
Reasons We Need to Develop Archipelagic Islam], Dunia Islam, 3 July 2015.
23
One of the foundations that received foreign funding and helped promote the
“Islam Nusantara” idea and related concepts was the Wahid Foundation. See The
Wahid Foundation, “Internationalisation of Moderate Islam: From Islam Nusantara
for the Global Culture”, June 2016, http://wahidfoundation.org/eng/index.php/
news/detail/Internationalisation-of-Moderate-IslamFrom-Islam-Nusantara-for-the-
Global-Culture; another externally funded group that helped introduce Islam
Nusantara on the international stage was LibforAll, founded by an American
businessman C. Holland Taylor. Abdurrahman Wahid was a co-founder of the
group.
24
“PBNU Minta PKS Hentikan Perebutan Masjid” [NU Headquarters Asks PKS to
Stop the Fight Over Mosques], Republika, 21 September 2011.
25
Ahmad Syarif Syechbubakr, “The Politics of Fighting Intolerance”, Indonesia at
Melbourne, 12 March 2019, https://indonesiaatmelbourne.unimelb.edu.au/the-
politics-of-fighting-intolerance/.
26
Azis Anwar Fachrudin, “Jokowi and NU: The View from the Pesantren”, New
Mandala, 11 April 2019, https://www.newmandala.org/jokowi-and-nu-the-view-
from-the-pesantren/.
27
One of these programmes was the construction of an Islam Nusantara museum
in the heartland of NU in Jombang, East Java. See “Melihat Museum Islam
Nusantara di Tebuireng yang Diresmikan Presiden Jokowi” [Looking at the
Archipelagic Islam Museum Inaugurated by President Jokowi], Okezone,
18 December 2018. The museum eventually changed its name to “Indonesian
Islam” museum, but it is still popularly referred to as Islam Nusantara museum.
28
For instance, by March 2017 Ma’ruf made public calls to stop the demonstrations
against Ahok, when the leaders of the movement wanted to continue them. See
“Ketua MUI Maruf Amin: Tidak Perlu Lagi Demo-demo, Sudah Cukup” [MUI
Chair Maruf Amin: No More Need to Demomstrate, It’s Enough], Tribun Jabar,
30 March 2017.
29
Marcus Mietzner, “Fighting Illiberalism with Illiberalism: Islamist Populism
and Democratic Deconsolidation in Indonesia”, Pacific Affairs 91, no. 2 (March
2018): 261–82.
30
Greg Fealy, “Trading Blows: NU vs PKS”, Indonesia at Melbourne, 10 July 2018,
https://indonesiaatmelbourne.unimelb.edu.au/trading-blows-nu-versus-pks/; and
Greg Fealy, “Nahdlatul Ulama and the Politics Trap”, New Mandala, 11 July
2018, https://www.newmandala.org/nahdlatul-ulama-politics-trap/.
31
Fachrudin, “Jokowi and NU”.
32
Emanuel de Kadt, Assertive Religion: Religious Intolerance in a Multicultural
World (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017); Chang-Yau Hoon, “Putting Religion
into Multiculturalism: Conceptualising Religious Multiculturalism in Indonesia”,
Asian Studies Review 41, no. 3 (July 2017): 476–93.

33
“Ketum PBNU: Tidak Boleh Warga Negara Indonesia Tak Beragama” [NU General
Chairman: Indonesian Citizens Are Not Allowed to Not Have a Religion], Metro
Batam, 1 March 2019.
34
Mietzner and Muhtadi, “Explaining the 2016 Islamist Mobilisation”.
35
Edward Aspinall, “Interpreting the Jakarta Election”, New Mandala, 16 February
2017, https://www.newmandala.org/interpreting-jakarta-election/.
36
Jeremy Menchik, “‘Do Not take Nonbelievers as your Leaders’: The Politics of
Translation in Indonesia”, Mizan, 31 March 2016.
37
Mietzner, Muhtadi and Halida, “Entrepreneurs of Grievance”.
38
Jeremy Menchik and Katrina Trost, “A ‘Tolerant’ Indonesia? Indonesian Muslims
in Comparative Perspective”, in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Indonesia,
edited by Robert W. Hefner (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018), pp. 390–405.
39
Pew Research Center, “Muslims and Islam: Key Findings in the U.S. and Around
the World”, 9 August 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/
muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/.
40
Jeremy Menchik, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism
(New York City, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
41
“Jejak Aksi-Aksi Tolak FPI di Berbagai Daerah” [The Traces of Actions Rejecting
FPI in Some Areas], Tirto, 24 January 2018.
42
As only 5 per cent of respondents self-identified as being part of Muhammadiyah,
the margin of error for this group is significantly larger. Nevertheless, the findings
above point to a consistent trend across several indicators.
43
We have run statistical significance tests for all the measures discussed in this
article (that is, we tested whether differences between respondent groups or
temporal changes over time can be described as statistically significant). All
the described differences or changes emerged as statistically significant.
44
Diego Fossati, Hui Yew Fung and Siwage Negara, The Indonesia National
Survey Project: Economy, Society and Politics (Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak
Institute, 2017).
45
Edward Aspinall, Diego Fossati, Burhanuddin Muhtadi and Eve Warburton,
“Elites, Masses, and Democratic Decline in Indonesia”, Democratization, published
online, 28 October 2019.
46
Alexandre Pelletier, “The Colonial Origins of Islamic Militancy in Indonesia”,
paper presented at the SEAREG Workshop in Washington, D.C., 2 June 2018.
47
Alexander Arifianto, “Practicing What It Preaches? Understanding the
Contradictions Between Pluralist Theology and Religious Intolerance within
Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama”, Al Jami’ah: Journal of Islamic Studies 55, no.
2 (July 2017): 241–64.
48
See Yuka Kayane, “Understanding Sunni-Shi’a Sectarianism in Indonesia: A
Different Voice from Nahdlatul Ulama under Pluralist Leadership”, Indonesia
and the Malay World, published online, January 2020, https://www.tandfonline.
com/doi/abs/10.1080/13639811.2020.1675277; Ratno Lukito, “Islamization as
Legal Intolerance: The Case of GARIS in Cianjur, West Java”, Al Jami’ah:

Journal of Islamic Studies 54, no. 2 (July 2016): 393–425; Ken Miichi and
Yuka Kayane, “The Political Aspirations of the Shi’ites in Indonesia: Response
to the Sampang Incidents in 2011–12”, TRaNS: Trans-National and –Regional
Studies of Southeast Asia, 10 September 2019, https://www.cambridge.org/
core/journals/trans-trans-regional-and-national-studies-of-southeast-asia/article/
rising-islamism-and-the-struggle-for-islamic-authority-in-postreformasi-indonesia/
233273E8CD730E147E7B517EC702948A; Jessica Soedirgo, “Informal Networks
and Religious Intolerance: How Clientelism Incentivizes the Discrimination
of the Ahmadiyah in Indonesia”, Citizenship Studies 22, no. 2 (March 2018):
191–207; and A’an Suryana, “State Officials’ Entanglement with Vigilante Groups
in Violence against Ahmadiyah and Shi’a Communities in Indonesia”, Asian
Studies Review, published online, 4 July 2019, https://www.tandfonline.com/
doi/abs/10.1080/10357823.2019.1633273?journalCode=casr20.

Jurnal Internasional Contemporary Southeast Asia Myth of Pluralism

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Jurnal Internasional Contemporary Southeast Asia Myth of Pluralism

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Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 42, No. 1 (2020), pp.

58–84 DOI: 10.1355/cs42-1c

The Myth of Pluralism:

In much of the scholarly literature, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest

Marcus Mietzner is Associate Professor at the Department of Political

Burhanuddin Muhtadi is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Social and

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 58 26/3/20 3:43 pm

we show that NU followers are generally as intolerant of religious

Keywords: Indonesia, Islam, tolerance, democracy, pluralism, elections.

In the scholarship on Indonesian Islam, much of the analytical

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 59 26/3/20 3:43 pm

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 60 26/3/20 3:43 pm

on the existing intolerant attitudes among NU supporters. We argue,

NU, Tolerance and Islam Nusantara

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 61 26/3/20 3:43 pm

by “modernists” trained in the Middle East.12 In contrast to these

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 62 26/3/20 3:43 pm

constitutional assembly between 1956 and 1959.15 In this effort, NU

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 63 26/3/20 3:43 pm

by Wahid, his liberal NU allies and Suharto. Put differently, it was

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 64 26/3/20 3:43 pm

had grown in influence under the presidency of Susilo Bambang

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 65 26/3/20 3:43 pm

HTI, the state removed a disruptive and increasingly influential NU

Religious Intolerance in Indonesia

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 66 26/3/20 3:43 pm

announcing an official NU stance to abandon the use of the term

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 67 26/3/20 3:43 pm

In our second measure, which asked Muslim respondents

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 68 26/3/20 3:43 pm

six questions in total: in addition to the three measures mentioned

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 69 26/3/20 3:43 pm

rise in Muslims’ objection to non-Muslims in political positions, and

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 70 26/3/20 3:43 pm

follows in Menchik’s stead of identifying illiberal and intolerant

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 71 26/3/20 3:43 pm

NU Followers (2018) NU Followers (2019)

Know Don’t Know Approve No Opinion Disapprove DK/NA

attitudes of the NU grassroots towards FPI, support for the latter

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 72 26/3/20 3:43 pm

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 73 26/3/20 3:43 pm

In our surveys, we also assessed the extent of racial sentiments

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 74 26/3/20 3:43 pm

for democracy among NU supporters. Nominal support for democracy

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 75 26/3/20 3:43 pm

NU members are marginally lower than among NU followers. This

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 76 26/3/20 3:43 pm

Second, it is important to recognize regional differences in the

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 77 26/3/20 3:43 pm

Despite these caveats, it is evident that the religio-cultural and

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 78 26/3/20 3:43 pm

to being the guardian of pluralism, tolerance and democracy, and

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 79 26/3/20 3:43 pm

a catalogue of democratic and pluralist ideals. The 2019 election

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 80 26/3/20 3:43 pm

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 81 26/3/20 3:43 pm

Islam’s Troubled Experience with Democracy (1999–2001)”, Archipel 64 (July

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03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 83 26/3/20 3:43 pm

03 MarcusIT_3P_26Mar20.indd 84 26/3/20 3:43 pm

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