INDONESIA: 80,000 attend Hizb ut Thahrir rally
Updated
In Indonesia, at least 80,000 people have attended a mass rally organised by the hardline Muslim group, Hizb ut-Thahrir. The rally heard calls for the setting up of a caliphate, or a single Islamic state for the world's Muslims. Hizb ut-Thahrir said a caliphate would follow the laws of God as set out in the Koran, and not man-made ones.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Indonesia specialist, Dr Greg Fealy at the Australian National University
FEALY: I think that's significant in the sense that it's by far the biggest single event that Hizb ut-Tahrir in Indonesia has organised. In the past, they've organised rallies that might have had several tens of thousands of people, but I think quite a few observers were surprised that they could fill a stadium of this size. The question is whether many of the people there were there because they were curious, they may have been sympathetic rather than they were members of this organisation. The only other thing to say about this, Sen, is that we need to keep a broader context about just how large the Islamic community is in Indonesia. The big Muslim organisations in Indonesia have tens of millions of members, so Hizb ut-Tahrir is still small by comparison. But still this is a significant turnout of support.
LAM: Indeed, as you say, Indonesia is the world's largest Islamic country. The meeting I understand was also attended by the Chair of Muhamadiyah, Indonesia's second largest Islamic movement. So the rally really included mainstream elements as well, not just attended by radicals?
FEALY: Hizb ut-Tahrir, the attendance of Din Syamsuddin is no surprise. He has one might say played both sides of the fence, both the more Islamist side of the Islamic community and also the more moderate side of the Islamic community. So he's long had links to Hizb ut-Tahrir, he has helped to recruit Hizb ut-Tahrir members to several semi-government organisations. So it's not a surprise that he would attend and give a speech. The contents of his speech were rather bland, I don't know that too many people might have thought they would join Hizb ut-Tahrir on the basis of what he said. But I think it was more a show of intra-community support.
LAM: But Greg one of the key things that was picked up by the media is this idea of a caliphate, a suggestion that a caliphate be formed to rule Muslims the world over. This idea's not a new one but what are the chances of a caliphate being formed again?
FEALY: Most of us, including me, most observers would say almost zero. The possibility of establishing a transnational Islamic state, which is what Hizb ut-Tahrir has campaigned for from the very start. We now live in a system of nation states, Hizb ut-Tahrir itself says that the age of globalisation in fact favours the caliphate and the caliphate in the first instance can be a little like papal rule, it can be something that the religious authorities recognise by various Muslim countries, even though those countries remain sovereign states. But in its pure form it's very hard to see this being implemented any time within 100 years.
LAM: And also even within Indonesia itself Muslims are divided over the question of Sharia laws, the Islamic legal code, so the idea of the caliphate may also prove just as divisive?
FEALY: Yes I think the important thing here is the symbolism of campaigning for a caliphate. It's a very utopian agenda that Hizb ut-Tahrir has, and this is one of the sources of appeal. I think most Muslims would realise that this has very little prospect of ever being realised, but the fact that it's utopian is a very strong identity marker for them as Muslims because they can say we are following the most pure of Islamic teachings. So that's why at these sorts of events we hear lots of fine sounding statements but there's really nowhere in the world the Hizb ut-Tahrir can point to in the last 80 years where they can say that there's been any prospect of a caliphate being launched even locally.
