Islam and Politics in Indonesia: The Masyumi Party between Democracy and Integralism By Rémy Madinier, translated by Jeremy Desmond

Abstract

Rémy Madinier, a French researcher on Islam in Indonesia, has here produced the most authoritative study on the largest Islamic party in the world in the 1950s. The French original (2011) had previously been published in Indonesian (2013) and is now very capably translated into English by Jeremy Desmond. The Islamic party Masyumi (sometimes found in the literature in its original spelling, Masjumi) was one of Indonesia’s four major parties in the period of parliamentary democracy immediately after independence, and it was undisputedly the biggest of these before the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama split to form its own party in 1952. Understanding Masyumi thus has major implications for understanding Islam in Indonesia and the failure of Indonesia’s early democracy, but also for understanding Islamic political parties in democratic systems more generally. To understand and unpack Masyumi’s history, Madinier has provided three thematic chapters and three chapters that march through chronological history, framed by an introduction, conclusion, and epilogue. On the thematic side, ch. 1 looks at historical precedents for the party and at the background of its major leaders; ch. 5 looks at Masyumi’s shifting ideas about an ‘Islamic state’; and ch. 6 looks at the structure and governance of the party. The three chronological chapters in the middle are split into the periods of the Indonesian revolution (ch. 2), parliamentary democracy leading up to the 1955 elections (ch. 3), and the party’s decline leading to its forced dissolution in 1960 (ch. 4).