Regimented Islamophobia : Islam, State, and Governmentality in Indonesia

Syaifudin Zuhri

doi:10.21043/qijis.v9i2.8249

Abstract

<p>This article discusses the arts of governing Islam in Indonesia, a majority Muslim country, which is neither secular nor Islamic. It tries to explain how the premise of governmentality is modelled into the state structure and politics. Rather than seeing Islamophobia as a cultural practice, the article argues that Islamophobia develops partly because of power relations between the ruler and the ruled, or as I call it “regimented Islamophobia”. It is the fear of “Islamic threats” – whether real or imagined – that is deemed as a potent challenge to regimes’ power and authority. While the notion of majority-minority relation remains essential to analyse the forms of Islamophobia, this article offers a new insight of how political regimes exercise “governmentality practices” or the arts of governing Islam and controlling Muslim aspirations. This practice of governmentality is a key strategy to pacify Islam during the colonial and post-colonial Indonesia. As far as Indonesian political history is concerned, this governmentality practice is old wine in a new bottle; it is the technique Dutch colonial government and the regimes following the Indonesian independence have exercised for subjugating Islam and controlling aspirations of its believers.</p>

Highlights

Islamophobia is a rapidly growing sentiment in the West and manifests through attitudes and behaviours of individuals as well as policies and practices of organisations and institutions
It is a feeling of fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims resulting in bias, discrimination, marginalisation towards and exclusion of Muslims from the social, political, and civic lives
Islamophobia is a global phenomenon (Morgan & Poynting, 2010), which flourishes in different contexts and collides with various forms of ideological practices

Summary

Introduction

Islamophobia is a rapidly growing sentiment in the West and manifests through attitudes and behaviours of individuals as well as policies and practices of organisations and institutions. Islamophobia has not supplanted its racist predecessors, but energised them in a context where nation states seem unable to display political mastery against non-state forces, whether environmental, economic or civilizational (Devji, 2020) It is a long-durée form of Western cultural racism rooted in the expansion of Western capitalism and colonialism (Ramón Grosfoguel & Mielants, 2006). This article further argues that Islamophobia in a Muslim-majority society, i.e., in Indonesia, develops because of constant negotiations among competing ideologies—between the secular state ideology and Islamic aspiration, the need to protect political stability and to deepen statehood loyalty and, at the same time, the centrality of Islam in the state-making in order to ensure and justify governability of Muslims. Political regimes exercise the so-called governmentality practices or the acts of governing Islam by promoting the ‘correct’ Islamic interpretations following certain procedures and conforming Muslims’ aspirations to the officially legitimate standard

Governing Islam

Finding the Path