Two Failed Attempts to Islamize the Indonesian Constitution

Abstract

��� In 1945 Indonesian politicians endeavouring to create a constitution for their hoped-for Indonesian state engaged in heated debate about the place of Islam in that state. However, the compromise at which they arrived, the famous “seven words” of the Jakarta Charter, was abruptly erased on 18 August, the day after the independence proclamation, by the committee charged with finalizing and validating the Constitution. Subsequently, there have been two further formal efforts to Islamize the Indonesian Constitution, the first in the late 1950s in the Konstituante (Constituent Assembly) and the second during the constitutional amendment process at the turn of the twenty-first century. Both failed. A comparative analysis of these latter efforts — with a particular focus on the nature and changing content of Islamist thinking on the Constitution and its relation to Islam — and on the differing contexts on which the debates took place, informs explanation of the dismal failure of both.