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The Islamic FundamentalistAos Politics of Dissents and the Emergence of Urban Citizenship in Yogyakarta1 Dana Hasibuan Rizky Alif Alvian Abstract This study seeks to add to the ongoing debate regarding the state of multiculturalism within Indonesia political landscape.
Using Yogyakarta as an exemplary case, this study suggests that the so called radical groupsAo political practices should be situated within the spatial formation of urban politics.
This will shed new horizon on the political myth which has been redressing violence as values or belief-driven reproduced by certain groups and gradually expanding it as mode of political engagement.
Representing space as a political register which is discursively constituted by three dominant discourses.
local identities, multiculturalism, and lastly global terrorism.
This study argues that Yogyakarta citizens are subjected to the interplay between these three forces which composed the urban space of Yogyakarta as a local, national and global entity.
Within this context, the expression of radical groups should be viewed as politics of dissent which target to alter and appropriate the three spatial conjunctures which characterized Yogyakarta.
This shows that the articulation of dissent and discontent are effective political forms to engage with the notion of urban citizenship.
Keywords: urban citizenship.
multi-scalar politics.
Islam politics.
Introduction The tension brought forward by the political practices, ideas, and sentiments of muslim fundamentalist groups continue to characterize the urban political landscape in Indonesia.
Recent The data used by this essay is previously collected for the following research: AuDoes Intolerance Always Matter: Dynamics Coexistence of Pluralism and Islamist Radicalism in JavaAy, by Hakimul Ikhwan.
Muhammad Najib Azca.
Rohdi Mohan Nazala.
Syahrul Hidayat.
Zaki Arrobi.
Fachry Adulsyah, and Rizky Alif Alvian (FISIPOL UGM-The Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies.
University of Exeter, 2.
and AuFenomena Sektarianisme di IndonesiaAy, funded by Maarif Institute for Culture and Humanity .
The authors thank the above mentioned names and institutions for their permission to use the collected data for this essay.
58 The Primacy of Civil Society trends have been illustrative to demonstrate such political events ranging from massive campaigns against Ahmadiyya.
Shia, and sexual minorities.
demonstrations against academic discussions pertaining to communism and pluralism.
conflicts concerning churchesAo development and other houses of worship.
as well as opposition against non-muslim leaders in electoral politics.
Within the academic and policy debates, dominant approaches tend to portray such political events as the failure to integrate and conform with multiculturalism, tolerance, and liberal democratic values.
Citizens that are associated with fundamentalist ideas in Indonesian politics are conceived as defected citizens as they are unable to think and act according to hegemonic societal standards which regulate the borders of being good and bad citizens.
Their inability to perform in adherence to hegemonic Indonesian principlesAito avoid political confrontation, respecting religious and ethnic differences among citizens, and to maintain harmonious inter-faith relationshipsAiare easily categorized within the political spectrum as deviations and illiberal subjects.
Furthermore, this Aodeviation and illiberal representationAo is frequently utilized both by NGOs and bodies of government to legitimate moral education and inter-faith trainings which aim to correct deviation behavioursAi occasionally coupled with religious preaching to fix citizensAo interpretations of religious doctrines.
This essay sets out to offer a different perspective as well as narrative on religio- political issues.
Through redressing the violence rendered by fundamentalist groups, this essay argues that the socalled politics of dissent should be situated within the broader set of urban political settings constituted by multiple political engagements, power contestation, and appropriation of hegemonic In other words, this essay proposes that the dissent/ radical practices of fundamentalist groups should be considered at the onset as forms of urban citizenship.
Through a re-reading of political narratives based on interviews with Islamic groups in Yogyakarta, this essay attempts to demonstrate that radical PCD Journal Vol.
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practices constitutively expose the limit of current urban societal formation underpinned by neoliberal principles and struggle to reshape urban power configurations.
Central to this possibility of transforming urban structure is the interplay of exclusion-inclusion in rendering subject positions.
Therefore, taking account of the power relationships and unequal effect is pivotal to understand the narrative of fundamentalist groups.
Attention to the importance of space plays a determinant role to comprehend the articulation of citizenship performed through political intervention and disruption.
Besides space and place being heavily implicated by the reconfiguration of the global economy structuring the flow of capital and labour, they also regulate citizensAo bodies and social conducts.
Precisely at this point where space becomes a technology of power we argue that political subjectivity may emerge as citizensAo bodies are conditioned by multiple and multilayered spaces which regulate normative behaviour (Sassen, 1991.
Foucault, 1.
Pertaining to the spatial politics of Yogyakarta are three important discourses: space of AomulticulturalismAo.
space of Aonational unityAo.
and the space of AolocalityAo.
This essay argues that fundamentalist groupsAo spatial practices can be read as contestation and resistance to these different spatial frameworks which impose discursive and material exclusion and marginalization.
In return, all of their endeavours are directed to challenge the exclusion boundaries characterized by the dominance of liberal democratic values and mechanisms.
This essay will be divided into several sections.
First, this essay will discuss the concept of AuspaceAy and AucitizenshipAy and how these two concepts relate to each other.
Second, the dominant approach to identity politics, in this context, the liberal approach will be discussed as well as the outlining of their limitations.
Third, this essay will identify various practices of fundamentalist groups in Yogyakarta and show that these practices can be considered as practices of citizenship.
Fourth, this essay will attempt to identify multiple spaces that underlie those practices and how fundamentalist 60 The Primacy of Civil Society groupsAo practices of citizenship relate to these multiple spaces.
Space and Citizenship There has been a Aospatial turnAo in conceptualizing the notion of citizenship.
This spatial turn nevertheless does not propose a new conception of citizenship.
The spatial turn rather invigorates the spatial and temporal dimensions of citizenship that are often set aside in citizenship studies.
The spatial turn rises into prominence particularly when the factory or industrial base is no longer perceived as the only means of production that can divide society into two competing groups (Lefebvre, 1.
As capitalism as an economic system is transformed into a more sophisticated machine commodifying and reifying every aspect of daily lives, the notion of space becomes one of the central commodities for contemporary capitalism.
LefebvreAos .
conceptualization of the triad moments of social space is fruitful to elaborate the concept of this spatial turn.
He argues that there is a dialectic between the notions of Aospatial practiceAo.
Aorepresentation of spaceAo, and Aorepresentational spaceAo which characterize our society today.
The notion of Aorepresentation of spaceAo is the space conceptualized by city planners, urbanists, and technocrats, which entails places where our daily lives are performed (Lefebvre, 1991.
In other words, this is the space constructed by social actors who have the formal authority to govern which simultaneously is the space where our day to day social practices are occurring.
Arguably, this law of Aorepresentations of spaceAo is conceived by the municipal and provincial governments seeking to produce order in the city settings (Lefebvre, 1991, p.
Aside from the formal conceptualization of space there is the notion of Aorepresentational spaceAo attentive to everyday spatial practices and the production of Aospace of representationAo.
This notion of Aorepresentational spaceAo or Aospace of representationAo encompasses the day to day practices of urban citizens and the living space, where the latter is associated with images and symbols.
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revealing how a particular place is felt to be important for a certain group.
AuSpace as directly lived through its associated images and symbols A It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objectsAy (Lefebvre, 1991, p.
In other words.
Aorepresentational spaceAo is the space which is constituted not only through tangible materials but also meanings, memories, utopias, dreams, and so on (Sack, 1.
Arguably, the triadic relationship between spatial practices, representational space, and space of representation will lead to a comprehensive investigation on what people actually do in that space, and how they conceptualise their own relationships to that space (Anjaria, 2006, p.
The triadic moments of space constitution described above while on the one side arguably bring back spatial and temporal dimensions into citizenship debates thereby opening up theoretical gaps regarding the political influence of space within power contestation, on the other side, it needs to be complemented with the nature of space.
The nature or formation of space enables us to identify the deployment of power, both strategies and methods, in regulating subject positions.
Harvey .
proposed triple layers of spatial configuration which enrich the notion of this spatial Similar to how Lefebvre distinguishes between the notion of Aorepresentational spaceAo.
Aospatial practicesAo, and the Aospace of representationAo.
Harvey argues that there are the notions of Aoabsolute spaceAo.
Aorelative spaceAo, and Aorelational spaceAo .
The first two notions, absolute space and relative space.
Harvey describes as the dominant perspectives which imagine every social process can be quantified and thereby banishing all uncertainties and ambiguities .
This is problematic because as he explains: AuProcesses do not occur in space but define their own spatial frameAy (Harvey.
Through our daily practices, our actions do not only occur in a space, but also construct its own perceptions of space and place.
In turn, this spatial framing influences or alters our daily practices.
Harvey calls this notion as Aorelational spaceAo.
Combining LefebvreAos .
conception of triadic moments 62 The Primacy of Civil Society of space with HarveyAos .
notions on space, particularly spatial relationality, excites the horizon of discussion of urban politics for two following reasons.
First, space can no longer be conceived of as given and fixed.
Instead, space is an object of transformation:
its limits can be redrawn, its rules reformulated, its power structure altered, and its members rearranged.
This transformation, moreover, is inherently political.
The dominant discourse in a space attempts to regulate and normalize peopleAos daily conduct while people organize daily resistance, invest new meanings and imaginations to their space, or even appropriate dominating rules and discourses for their own purposes .
e Carteau, 1.
Second, space functions not only as a container of spatial practices.
Space determines the form of spatial practices that emerge within it.
Its scaleAiits limit and scopeAishape peopleAos practices, memberships, institutions, and SpaceAos regime of representations also determines what is considered to be proper conduct inside a certain space (Elden, 2001.
Foucault, 1.
However, since space itself is always an object of politicsAithus, reinventions, redrawings, and reformulationsAi different spaces are possible to exist at the same moment (Marston.
This condition brings interesting implications: urban citizens are living in different spaces with their different regimes of representations simultaneously.
A body is thus being regulated by different logics of appropriateness and required to responseAi or resistAiall these normalizing powers at the same time (Harvey.
To begin with an illustration, the politics of informal traders in Jakarta embodies this tension of multiple spatial forms and relationships producing vulnerabilities as well as allowing the possibility for negotiation and even mass protests to erupt (Hasibuan, 2.
Situated within urban settings that facilitate and restrict urban poor spatial practices and movements.
Hasibuan finds that political subjectivity is articulated both through Aosmall-p politicsAo and Aobig-P politicsAo (Amin & Thrift, 2.
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Auis the space where power struggles are not specifically territorial or locally fixedAy.
This distinction between two political expressions are important because politics of space sometimes occur in day to day agreementsAiAuordinary space of negotiationAyAiwhich entails extralegal negotiations with various actors that retain power over a space (Anjaria, 2.
Primarily in urban areas like Jakarta this form of political engagement is directly linked with the long absence of representation within the big-P politics.
In other words, these extralegal activities can be discerned as Auunwritten rules of engagement that operate outside of conventionally defined spaces of Aocivil societyAo and the formal legal institutions of the stateAy (Robins et al.
2008, p.
This essay therefore makes several claims on the relation between space and citizenship.
First, the practice of citizenship is inherently spatial.
This means that citizenship always assumes a certain spatial framework that, in turn, shapes the practice of citizenship itself.
Different spatial frameworks arrange people in different ways and thus indirectly shape citizensAo strategies in organizing resistance, making demands, and determining who are their fellows and enemies.
Or to put it in another phrase, the practice of citizenship is determined by multiple spaces within which the body of citizens is living.
As previously discussed, this condition makes the practice of citizenship complicated since it internalizes various conflicting rules and requires it to give different responses to those rulesAiranging from compliance to resistance.
Second, the spatial framework which is assumed by citizenship practice is characterized by its relationality.
This relationality results from the political process which produces, contests, and reproduces space This implies that the politics of space will necessarily alter the practice of citizenship: members of a political community can be expelled or the rules of community can be reformulated.
The power of this perspective in illuminating fundamentalist groupsAo practices of citizenship will be salient if we try to scrutinize dominant approaches to religious fundamentalism and the politics 64 The Primacy of Civil Society of citizenship in Indonesia.
The subsequent section will attempt to do this task and reveal the gap which this approach aims to fill in.
Space and Liberal Citizenship Numerous studies have been made to understand the practice of citizenshipAiespecially in its relation to the issue of multiculturalismAiin contemporary Indonesia.
Syaiful .
Qodir .
Latief .
, and Robert and Tobi .
are among the Indonesian scholars that have investigated the ongoing exclusions and discrimination practices targeted towards minority Furthermore, adding to this group of Indonesian scholars are international academics and NGOs that refer to identity politics and the rights-based approach as the underpinning conceptual framework to extrapolate multiculturalism issues in Indonesia (Wahid Institute.
Komnas HAM.
Setara Institute.
Telle, 2013.
Sidel.
Fealy.
Assyaukanie, 2009.
Hasan, 2002.
Abuza, 2.
Within this cluster of multicultural studies significant contributions have been made expanding our understanding of IndonesiaAos current socio-political situation where, for instance, minority groups are left vulnerable and with little protections of citizensAo rights by the state.
On the other hand, this study identifies that within this area of knowledge production the notions of space are still underrepresented and undertheorized.
Those aforementioned studies are largely conducted under the light of the liberal approach to the problem of citizenship.
this regard, liberal citizenship posits that citizens are members of a homogeneous polity possessing some form of rights which have to be guaranteed by the state (Isin, 2002.
Held, 2.
In developing this stream of argument, the liberal approach implicitly assumes that all citizens have similar conceptions of what it means to be a citizen, that is to have similar rightsAiwith similar understandings on the content of those rights.
to have their rights protected by the state.
and not to intervene with the rights of the others (Wolfe & Hittinger.
Mouffe, 1991 and 1.
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while providing rights discourse as the political marker at the same time renders it impossible to be deployed as a form of political engagement as it presupposes rights as inherently given by the sovereign body.
In this context, rights become a marker that reified space as being a fixed material with salient boundaries and citizens are only subjects who identify and constitute themselves according to this set of rights discourses.
It is from this presupposition that various citizenship literatures in Indonesia denigrate fundamentalist groupsAo practices as illiberal subjects .
Brown, 2006 & Toscano.
The idea of citizen itself is a constant object of political struggle (Isin, 2.
As space is reimagined as a neutral zone with clear borders, nevertheless, fundamentalist groupsAo practices are consequently represented as outsidersAo practices unable to comply with the normal standards regarding what it means to be an Indonesian citizen.
From the liberal point of view, religious fundamentalism appears as a reflection of an inability to understand and implement the essence of the so-called Indonesian citizenship instead of rethinking existing confrontations as a manifestation of political struggle, with its specific aspirations, rationality, and ideas to transform the society.
This negative portrayal directly shows that far from being innocent the production of space is vested with power It is this shortcoming of identifying the nature of space which precisely exhibits that space is a form of technology of power.
Otherwise, how could fundamentalists use religious rhetoricAi which, according to that perspective, is not compatible with Indonesian citizenshipAito justify their manoeuvres in elections? How could fundamentalists conduct a campaign which says that Shia is threatening Indonesia and Pancasila? In short, how can we explain the rise of various movements which, on the one hand, carry ideas which cannot sit easily with the ideas of how Indonesian citizens should behave and think, while on the other hand, bring very strong political aspirations on how Indonesia should be managed 66 The Primacy of Civil Society and directed in the future? How can these groups go against the basic principle of political community while, at the same time, devote their efforts to advance and protect the political community? This difficulty is possible to resolve if the problem of citizenship is approached through a perspective which is sensitive to the plurality of forms of citizenship.
Instead of measuring citizensAo practices through an idealized form of citizenship and deriving the notions of normal and deviant citizens, this study suggests a more nuanced approach which treats citizenship as an outcome of political struggles of various subjectsAo positions.
in other words, there are various ways to interpret what it means to be a citizen of a political community (Mouffe, 1991, 1.
Although all citizens share the same belonging to a political community, they have different dreams, imaginations, and ideals regarding how that political community should be arranged and managed.
Accordingly, people also have different expressions of citizenship: while some citizens are campaigning for human rights, others perhaps are campaigning for the exclusion of minority groups.
Interestingly, all of these expressions are justified by the spirit to advance the wellbeing of society.
The difficulty faced by the dominant approach to citizenship in Indonesia can be resolved through this solution:
fundamentalist groups hold a legitimate subject position amidst the plurality of forms of citizenship in Indonesia.
It is against this background that this essay proposes spatial analysis as the theoretical framework.
This essay argues that this form of citizenship can be better understood by analysing spatial frameworks that underlie it.
Three primary spatial frameworks are influential in shaping fundamentalist groupsAo citizenship practices.
First, the space of AumulticulturalismAy governs fundamentalist groups in such a way that requires them to be tolerant, peaceful, and able to acknowledge differences among people.
Second, the space of AuunityAy requires them to preserve Indonesian unity and adhere to the Indonesian constitution and principles of Pancasila.
In the context of Yogyakarta, the third space which is AulocalityAy is PCD Journal Vol.
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also influential as it requires them to act according to traditional practices of toleration.
Fundamentalist groupsAo practice of citizenship attempts to resist these imperatives without entirely dismissing the representations of these spaces since such dismissal will result in their total exclusion from the political life of the community.
Their attempt to resolve this contradiction is interesting.
As will be discussed further below, there is a change of political engagement where they try to reappropriate the language of dominant representations of space and bend it over to serve their purposes.
By affirming the dominant grammar of conduct this mode of engagement allows them to redraw and reformulate the boundaries of spaces from within.
For instance, by affirming the primacy of tolerance, fundamentalist groups are able to legitimately participate in public discussions on the future of the political By framing their political aspirations in multiculturalist language, fundamentalist groups attempt to demonstrate their belonging to a community which adopts multiculturalism as one of its main organizing principles.
Yet, it does not necessarily mean that fundamentalist groups will entirely dismiss their previous political Instead, previous aspirationsAibigger power-share for muslims in politics, for instanceAiare reframed using multiculturalist Hence, we are witnessing an interesting condition where political aspirationsAiusually portrayed as unacceptableAiintrude into the communityAos political space as legitimate aspirations that need to be heard.
However, by making this manoeuvre, fundamentalist groups will inevitably subsume themselves under the rules, norms, and principles of multiculturalism.
In order to retain their status as legitimate players in the communityAos politics, they need to constantly conform their moves according to the principles of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism simultaneously also limits fundamentalist groupsAo possible moves.
This pattern of explanation therefore rejects the dominant liberal approach which denigrates fundamentalistsAo citizenship practices to the realm of abnormality, deviance, madness, and 68 The Primacy of Civil Society Instead, their practices reflect an affirmation of dominant principles of society as they try to participate and shape the future of the community according to a certain ideal they believe.
Their struggle targets the production of space which has constitutively excluded various social groups from the political landscape by rearranging the code of spatial conduct through localism, multiculturalism, and national unity discourses.
Citizenship is the fundamentalistsAo struggle to resist being the subject of localism, multiculturalism and unity as spatial power while at the same time it forges the possibility of re-appropriating/reclaiming these overlapping spatial configurations and turning them into one more compatible with the fundamentalistsAo own ideal of a free and prosperous society.
Politics of Dissents in Yogyakarta This section attempts to identify various forms of struggle in response to various spatial configurations which regulate and manage politics of differences in Yogyakarta.
This section will show that these various forms of struggle can be denoted as signs of citizenship practices characterized by political engagement, contestation, and confrontation which do not easily sit well with liberal citizenship.
Numerous reports have stated that Yogyakarta nowadays is facing one of the most serious challenges to its claimed tolerance values and practices.
The Wahid Institute reports that intolerance in Yogyakarta is growing rapidly from 2014Aithe number of intolerant practices in Yogyakarta was almost zero from 2009 to 2013Aiwhile Setara Institute stated that the conditions of religious freedom in 2014 Yogyakarta is Auslightly grimAy.
From 2013 to 2015 two issues were dominant: anti-Shia and anti-Christian However, further development in late 2015 and 2016 shows that anti-Communism, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-Ahok issues also gained their momentum and supporters in Yogyakarta (The Wahid Institute, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014.
Setara Institute, 2013, 2.
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Anti-Shia campaigns in Yogyakarta became increasingly dominant in 2013.
Mass demonstrations and recitations were organized to increase peopleAos awareness regarding the threat posed by Shia to Islam and Indonesia.
Several attacks on the Shia community in Yogyakarta also followed these activities in 2013 and Further, public declaration to oppose Shia was held in the UGM University Mosque in 2013.
Sri PurnomoAicurrently the regent of Sleman, a regency in DI YogyakartaAiwas in attendance at the declaration.
All of these activities were also coupled with the spread of banners, posters, and leaflets that constantly framed Shia as a serious threat both to Islam and Indonesia (The Wahid Institute.
Setara Institute, 2.
Anti-Christian campaigns have always been the most prominent issue addressed by these practices.
In 1997, a church in Bantul was closed while several churches in Kotagede were burnt.
Other records on church-related conflicts were also found in 1998, 2000, 2004, and 2006 (Subkhan, 2.
In 2014, the Pangukan church in Sleman was attacked and sealed by several fundamentalist groups due to, according to these groups, its illegality.
This event attracted local and national attention since the church was eventually closed by the Sleman government.
The Indonesian Police Chief further informed that houses should not be used to conduct worship without the formal permission from authorities (The Wahid Institute.
This statement and the SultanAos unclear position on this issue triggered various protests from human rights based groups in Yogyakarta.
In the same year, anti-Christian sentiment encouraged the government to forbid Paskah AdiyuswaAiEaster celebrationAi in Gunungkidul despite protests and lobbies from human rights based groups (BS, interview, 15 June 2.
The fear of conversion encourages fundamentalist groups to strengthen their advocacy capacity, organize recitations in areas considered vulnerable, and provide social and financial assistance to muslims in those areas (FA, interview, 9 December 2.
Anti-LGBTQ demonstrations gained its momentum in 70 The Primacy of Civil Society Yogyakarta in early 2016.
Following the national debate on LGBTQ, several fundamentalist groups attempted to close an Islamic boarding school for transgender in Kotagede.
To contest this attack, several pro-democracy movements organized themselves and planned to arrange a demonstration.
However, this plan was responded to by fundamentalist groups with mass mobilization to TuguAithe place where the demonstrations would be heldAiwhich aimed to bring down the demonstration with, if necessary, violence.
Death threats were issued by the mass to the demonstrators who dared to come to the place.
Facing this condition, the police finally prevented the demonstrators to move from their assembly location to Tugu by force since the demonstrators insisted to march to Tugu.
The fear of the re-emergence of the Indonesia Communist Party (PKI) was also salient among fundamentalist groups in Yogyakarta.
Attacks and threats to 1965-related discussion and film screening frequently happened in Yogyakarta.
The screenings of Senyap in various institutions were cancelled due to organizersAo inability to guarantee the safety of the screenings.
Anti-communism discourse also appeared in several recitations and demonstrations.
An Anti-Ahok rally was conducted in Yogyakarta in the end of October 2016 in order to support the approaching demonstrations on November 4th in Jakarta.
Besides the usual rhetoric of AhokAos blasphemy against Al-Maidah 51, the anti-Ahok rally in Yogyakarta was interesting because the demonstrators also emphasized the importance of helping the Jakarta or Betawi muslim-pribumi.
The brief and sketchy discussions above provide us with a rough picture on the practice of fundamentalist groups in Yogyakarta.
However, at this moment, further questions arise: How did those groups understand and give meaning to their practices? How did they narrate and justify their actions? These discursive aspects of their practices are important to be understood in order to reveal the underlying complexities of these practices which tend to be neglected in previous studies and prevent us from dismissing these practices simply as a reflection of irrationality, misguided PCD Journal Vol.
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interpretation of religion, or intolerant thinking.
For those purposes, the anti-Shia and anti-communism campaigns in Yogyakarta can illustrate the complexities.
The importance of opposing Shia is motivated not only by understandings that Shia is a deviation from Islam, but also by the perception that Shia is threatening Indonesia.
This argument presupposes that Indonesia and Islam is inherently compatible.
A muslim who obeys the law of Islam will automatically act in accordance with Pancasila and the Indonesian constitution.
On the contrary, those who defy IslamAieither they are non-muslim or pervertedAiwill necessarily contradict Pancasila and UUD 1945.
Shia is an example of how the act of misguiding Islam necessarily results in incompatibility with the fundamental value of Indonesian society.
The practice of mutAoah marriage is understood as a humiliation to a womanAos dignity while the celebration of Assyura does not reflect the imperative to protect and develop oneself and humanity.
Further, fundamentalist groups are also suspicious of Shia activities in Indonesia.
Although it is true that Shia activities do not seem to pose a serious threat to Indonesia today, they believeAiby reflecting on the history of Iran or SyriaAi that, in the long term.
Shia will trigger fragmentations among Indonesian citizens and threaten Indonesian unity.
The importance of fighting against Shia is emphasized because it was Indonesian muslims who contributed significantly to the independence of the Republic of IndonesiaAiincluding by sacrificing seven words from the Jakarta Charter (SA.
AK.
BN, and AB, speeches, 11 October H, interview, 4 December 2.
The similar pattern of argument can be found in fundamentalist groupsAo rejection of communism.
Communism is renounced by these groups due to its stance toward Islam.
Communism is considered as atheisticAithus it contradicts the Indonesian belief in GodAiand hostile toward Islam, indicated by how communists in the past assaulted muslims and their leaders before 1965.
These groups therefore consider that Tauhid and Pancasila are inseparable.
Embracing Tauhid will result in the reinforcement of Pancasila 72 The Primacy of Civil Society and vice versa.
An imperative to protect Pancasila presupposes an imperative to protect Tauhid.
Moreover, these two different issues are intertwined in Yogyakarta.
In Parade TauhidAia mass rally in October 2015 in order to show the strength of Islam in YogyakartaAi numerous ustadz stated that Shia and communist are muslimsAo common enemy.
Both of them are threatening Islam and Indonesia and should be defeated in order to preserve muslims and the country (BN and SF, speeches, 11 October 2015.
H, interview, 9 December What is interesting in these discourses is how fundamentalist groups relate AoIslamAo and AoIndonesiaAo.
In these discourses, the idea of Islam and Indonesia are intertwined and overlapping to the point that it is very difficult to separate them.
The notion of Islam-Indonesia compatibility is taken to the point where a threat to Islam becomes a threat to Indonesia and vice versa.
Further, this implies that Islamist groupsAo efforts to protect Islam is not only motivated by a willingness to defend the religion per se, but also the political community to which they belong.
Their efforts to mainstream several political agendasAiforbidding religious minority beliefs, discriminating against sexual minorities, or implementing the shariaAican also be read in a similar way: as a willingness to participate in the debate over the political communityAos future.
transform the political community according to certain ideals.
to protect the political community from approaching threats.
These practices therefore need to be conceived as a practice of citizenship.
The same patterns can be found in other issues.
In early 2016, these groups organized various public protests and recitations to oppose LGBTQ.
In opposing LGBTQ, these groups argue that LGBTQ is forbidden by Islam.
However, this religious argument is complemented by arguments stating that LGBTQ threatens the future of society by demoralizing family and youth.
In the end of October 2016, these groups arranged public protests in order to encourage the government to sanction Ahok for his blasphemy.
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that Ahok is disrespecting Islam.
The protesters also argue that AhokAos blasphemy puts Indonesian unity in jeopardy.
Further, opposition to Ahok is considered necessary not only because Ahok is disrespectful to Islam and Indonesia unity, but also because Ahok is repressing Betawi-muslims in Jakarta.
In this case, the protesters therefore perceive themselves as muslim.
Indonesian, and pribumi which have the obligation to protect their religion and country while providing solidarity for their fellow muslims and pribumi in Jakarta.
This section has discussed how various practices of fundamentalist groupsAiwhich usually are misrecognized simply as a deviationAicould be understood as practices of citizenship.
However, further questions arise: How did these specific forms of citizenship emerge? How, different to the hegemonic liberal discourses on citizenship, could these forms of citizenship assume a compatibility between the idea of Indonesian unity and overt opposition to religious minorities.
Why speak of tolerance and try to ban different sexual orientations.
Why proclaim a religion of peace and attack other churches and the Shia community? The subsequent section will attempt to provide answers to these questions.
The Emergence of Urban Citizenship in Yogyakarta Yogyakarta is widely recognized as a city of tolerance.
While this imagined representation currently appears to hold a certain AotruthAo, in practice it is actually highly contingent.
Based on the historical course, the image of Yogyakarta continues to be contested and redefined throughout different periods in relation to the broader national and global political landscapes.
For example, for almost 4 decades since the independence in 1945.
Yogyakarta was more known as a city of education rather than a city of tolerance.
In the last two decades, however the discourse of Yogyakarta as a city of tolerance has supplanted the past image of the city.
This transformation of urban identity is fundamental because it signifies a radical rupture of urban development and the constitution of space.
Rural activities are slowly displaced by mass-based consumption economy 74 The Primacy of Civil Society incorporating flows of information and capital and inscribing urban The saturation of images and signs into the everyday life of the city, as they call it, brings to the fore the primacy of .
hardly as something with essential and substantive contents and nothing less than AusignifierAy in a sea of symbolisms whose meanings are produced and adopted through a play of differences, through negation of, and identification with, other signs and/or This intervention of late-capitalism arguably flourishes the expansion of tolerance and liberal values as they go hand in hand with the spectacle of consumerism.
This sudden emerging and accentuating of .
identity of those who reside in the city leads to the interrogation of the meaning of the .
political Coupled with a number of communal conflicts across the Archipelago, at the centre of this whole discursive process is the classic notion of Auunity and diversity,Ay as the ideal Indonesia long being dreamed about, which now seems to be under serious threat by spatially saturating diverse .
As such, from the nodal point of liberal tolerance discourse there are three intertwining discourses that discursively regulate the spatial formation of Yogyakarta and simultaneously are challenged by fundamentalist groupsAo articulations.
The first which is implicated with the emergence of Islamic radical practices is the space of AumulticulturalismAy.
This mode of spatial formation intervenes directly on how to acknowledge cultural differences and preserve tolerance among heterogonous members of society.
This space is thus characterized by, on the one hand, an imperative to think about oneself and society in terms of cultural identityAi ranging from religion to ethnic identityAiand to tolerate those differences on the other hand.
In other words, this space targets on dividing people based on cultural identities, accentuates differences and subsequently disciplines the citizen body to recognize diversity without inscribing a sense of commonality.
The toleration itself is made possible since this logic depoliticizes or privatizes the identity (Zizek, 2.
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cultural identities can live harmoniously with each other since the political aspect of those identities that puts each identity in antagonistic stance against its others has been removed.
Moreover, this space splits the society into two opposing camps: those who are able to tolerate and those who are not able to tolerate.
While the first camp is considered as civilized and ideal, the second camp is believed to be uncivilized, mad, and irrational.
Through such hierarchy, this space distinguishes those who are recognized as legitimate political subjects and those who are excluded (Brown, 2006.
Forst.
Recent political events demonstrate this trace and spatial effect of depoliticization.
The promotion of multiculturalism has reinforced ethno-based representations as well as majority-minority social group categories as a hegemonic approach to everyday social Instead of enriching social peace, multiculturalism has led to the rise of adversaries based on native and non-native settlersAo identification.
In this context, local inhabitants feel they are being dispossessed by the urban development while new settlers are anxious about discrimination and exclusion.
Multiculturalism would clinically remove injustice related issues associated with developments and treat cultural tensions simply as a matter of tolerance/intolerance.
Those who cling on hatred against opposing identity, without taking the political dimension behind this stance, would be treated as a threat to the very liberal notion of a good Brown demonstrates that the dismantling of the social fabric through the rearrangement of spatial boundaries and practices is a worldwide phenomenon and not particularly unique to postcolonial nations .
Furthermore, although the representation of multicultural space inherits the Lockean and Millian liberal tradition of toleration (Sahin, 2.
, the deployment of multiculturalism rose into prominence particularly after US declared the war on terrorism It was part of a global strategy to contain cultural identities primarily religion as they are perceived as innately hostile and therefore prone to escalate into conflicts.
This shows that instead of 76 The Primacy of Civil Society being a universal value, multiculturalism casts the securitization of space and reproduces disciplined bodies of political subjects.
Second, the space of Aunational unityAy plays a significant role as power control mechanisms.
It requires people to maintain national unity, adhere to national ideology and constitutions, and protect the country from all approaching threats.
This space grants people the status of citizenAiin its traditional senseAiand separates them from those who are considered as defective citizens, indicated by their inability to preserve unity, believe in national ideology, and defend the country.
In other words, this discourse functions to delegitimate all attempts that potentially threaten the country while compelling people to follow the ideal form of citizens.
In relation to the space of multiculturalism however the space of national unity acquires a nuanced political flavour.
The prism of national unity operates as a set of methods and mechanisms to bind the division of societal relationships constituted by multiculturalism values.
other words, national unity serves to legitimate the fragmentation of society and regulates the forms of engagement of sub-ethno This notion of formal unity confirmed as solidarity and unity is usually associated with liberal terms such as social capital, trusts, and respect in relation to managing differences.
Adding to the constitutive relationships between multicultural and national unity spaces is the space of AulocalityAy which locates the notion of good ethics such as tolerance or social trusts within the Javanese cultural traditions.
In this context, it is argued that the long historical embodiment of cosmopolitan values dates back to the precolonial era as Yogyakarta has been the epicentrum of early modern civilization in Java.
Differences based on horizontal and vertical relationships have been capable to maintain social cohesion and adapt with broader political changes provisioned by local As a result, the notion of good ethics is not only derived from universal principles but it is also located within the Javanese cultural traditions.
It is noteworthy that such historical roots are significant inventions to deal in specific ways with the saturating PCD Journal Vol.
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cultural identities in the city recently.
Historical roots in divine cultural values and norms seems to encapsulate tolerance with a sacred image, something obliged to be preserved, otherwise being sanctioned for committing cultural sin.
These three different spaces are distinctive analytically but deeply intertwined in regulating citizensAo bodies and everyday The space of multiculturalism in relation to the space of unity at the national level produces narratives which claim that citizens have to perform with tolerance in order to preserve nation Conversely, to be intolerant is to be defective and illegitimate citizens who pose serious threats to the country.
Those who are unable to meet this requirement therefore are risking themselves for double exclusions.
They are not only considered as mentally incapable to be recognized as a political subject but also facing stigmas that accuse their positions as threatening Indonesian unity.
The overlapping between the space of multiculturalism and Indonesian unity is further combined with local narrations on sacred tradition.
In this layer, peopleAos inability to conform with representations of local space result in further exclusion.
They will be considered not only as people who are detaching themselves from local tradition but also choosing foreign cultures instead of local traditionsAithus, renouncing the very spirit of nationalism.
Fundamentalist groupsAo political dissents are primarily resistance against these multiple neoliberal spaces.
Their so called intolerant attitudes sketched above should be understood as, and is produced within, this spatial resistance.
However, this study suggests that their resistances are not conducted by simply dismissing the intervention of these disciplining spaces.
Instead, they attempt to appropriate those regimes of representation for purposes not intended by the hegemonic regimes.
This is shown by the local experience where the fundamentalist groups contest the cultural claims of tolerance as the expression of Javanese local traditions.
This is conducted by questioning the religious legitimacy of the Sultanate which has predated as far back as Javanese local cosmology beliefs.
78 The Primacy of Civil Society Reassessing the cultural claim, fundamentalist groups extrapolate the legitimacy of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta which is characterized by its adherence to Islam.
In their articulations.
Islam is being sidelined instead of being placed as the centre value of the political The inability of the Sultanate to perform with fidelity to Islamic practices indicates that the Sultanate falls short in fully recognizing the historical configuration of YogyakartaAos values.
Against this background, the groups claim that their fidelity to Islamic practices is expressing the true spirit of Yogyakarta.
Interestingly, the notion of tolerance is not entirely dismissed.
various interviews, the so called radical groups actually believe that tolerance is already inherent in everyday spatial practices in Yogyakarta.
People with different beliefs live side by side without interfering with each otherAos faiths.
The problem of tolerance in Yogyakarta, they argue, is the development of churches which are not compatible with the laws that regulate the development of houses of worship or is not involving societyAiespecially people living around the development siteAiin the process of development.
When these formal-legal and cultural mechanisms are neglected, the groups suggest that the problem of intolerance will arise immediately.
Through these narrations, the groups are actually reappropriating the meaning of Yogyakarta and its image as a model of a tolerant The groups enter the political sphere as a citizen since they are able to show that they are committed to restoring Yogyakarta and protecting its long tradition of tolerance from intolerant practices.
At the level of spatial practice, this act of appropriation manifests in various raids toward the so-called AuillegalAy development of houses of worship and protestsAimainly through posters and bannersAiwhich condemn the Sultanate for their inability to preserve YogyakartaAos Islamic tradition.
As previously discussed, fundamentalist groups justify this action by appropriating existing norms and rules which were intended to exclude them from the political arena.
By framing their actions as endeavours to protect the existing practice of toleration in Yogyakarta and to preserve PCD Journal Vol.
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YogyakartaAos traditions, the groups legitimate their actions as an appropriate form of political participation in the public realm.
Fundamentalist groupsAo actions hence are able to intrude into the political space which usually works to exclude and limit their Similar phenomena can be seen at the national level.
In order to be recognized as good citizens, these groups try to show their adherence to national ideology and the idea of Indonesian unity.
This condition results in a very interesting phenomenon where the opposition to certain religious or sexual minorities and ideologies are always related to the importance of preserving national unity.
In the case of the anti-Shia campaign, the opposition against Shia is conducted to prevent it from triggering fragmentations amidst the community members and occupying the local government.
The Anti-Ahok campaign is also seen as an effort to preserve national unity since AhokAos religious blasphemy poses an enormous threat to IndonesiaAos religious diversity.
All of these phenomena are presupposed by the notion of Islam-Indonesia compatibility.
All reinforcement of Islamic values in politics will be necessary in order to preserve the unity of the nation.
This manoeuvre is interesting since Islam-Indonesia compatibility is a notion usually promoted by the establishments that try to exclude fundamentalist groups from the political arena.
In response to these establishmentsAo claims, fundamentalist groups instead argue that the former groups are actually threatening the unity of Indonesia.
Islam Nusantara, for example, is misguided since it is unable to see the potential threat posed by Shia to Indonesia.
Another form of political contestation and appropriating disciplining space works through the discourse of tolerance and The hegemonic deployment of this discourse has encouraged its supporters to denigrate fundamentalists groups due to their inability to refrain from using violence and believe in tolerance.
Nevertheless, fundamentalist groups have responded to this mode of exclusion by destabilizing the border of the multicultural space.
80 The Primacy of Civil Society Despite the demands of fundamentalist groups hardly changing, the means adopted to promote those demands are designed to conform and adjust with the rule of law.
At the present, violent practices are considered unnecessary in order to promote a more peaceful image of Islam.
The spirit of tolerance is also affirmed while these groups try to convey the message that muslims are actually the victims of intolerance practiced by other religious believers.
could easily find a resonance with the resistance of these groups against the discourse of global terrorism at the international level.
They endeavour to avoid the stigma as an intolerant group while using the language of tolerance to challenge the powerful.
The fundamentalist groups are again appropriating the representations of space and bending them over and turning them to their own use.
As previously mentioned, fundamentalist groupsAo decisions to organize anti-Shia and anti-LGBTQ rallies in Yogyakarta could be read against this context.
Their endeavour to ban Shia and LGBTQ groups were justified using nationalist arguments.
They argue that Shia and LGBTQ are threatening the unity of Indonesian society, both through the potential of the Shia communityAos insurgency and LGBTQ groupsAo ability to damage Indonesian values and morality.
These discursive moves actually reflect this groupsAo intention to join the communityAos political space by affirming, yet twisting, the meaning of unity.
Similar moves could also be found in these groupsAo endeavours to conduct peaceful ralliesAiculminating in Aksi Bela Islam rallies in JakartaAiinstead of relying on violent raids as Based on interviews, this decision was consciously made in order to avoid the attribution of a violent image toward the groups.
Despite their fundamentalist political aspirations, they attempt to develop a more peaceful image which could conform to public imagery on how muslims and Indonesian citizens should behave.
Further, the groupsAo rhetoric that they attempt to resist intolerance acts conducted by other religious groups also signal their intention to intrude into the communityAos political space by affirming the importance of tolerance in public life.
These spatial practices capture PCD Journal Vol.
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the ambiguous nature of fundamentalist groupsAo political moves.
On the one hand, they retain their conservative political aspirations.
Yet, on the other hand, they frame their moves and aspirations using hegemonic languages, norms, and rules.
This ambiguity captures not only the groupsAo intention to advance their political aspirations, but also their desire to be recognized as a legitimate member of the political community.
However, the space of multiculturalism also brings important implications toward the practice of fundamentalist groups.
First and foremost, the space of multiculturalism essentializes peopleAos It encourages people to think that they possess a fixed and given identity and compels them to interact with each other peacefully while acknowledging different identities among them.
The emergence of fundamentalist groups can be read as a response to this logic.
The idea of a true, original, and unchanging IslamAi which gives fundamentalism a foundation for its existenceAiis made possible by this logic.
The space of multiculturalism therefore generates subjects who attempt to promote fundamentalist sentiments based on an invented, true, original unity and substantive identities and perspectives while, at the same moment, excluding them from the political landscape.
The consequences of this condition are remarkable: fundamentalist groups endeavour to avoid exclusion, enter the communityAos political landscape, and uphold fundamentalist perspectives in the communityAos life at the same time.
Fundamentalist groupsAo inability to think beyond the framework indicates that the groupsAo citizenship practices can not fully detach themselves from the logics imposed by the space of multiculturalism .
Zizek, 2.
Secondly, fundamentalist groupsAo opposition to several cultural identities arise because those opposed identities are actually political proxy to support the hegemonic logic of neoliberal space.
Those identities are used in order to show how the relations among people with different identities should be conducted.
In other words, the opposition toward these identities does not simply signify the groupsAo 82 The Primacy of Civil Society hatred toward them.
Instead, the opposition signifies the opposition of the groups toward the very logic of spatial fragmentation and potential exclusions.
This explanationAiarguablyAican help us to illuminate the phenomenon where the groups change their imagined enemy rapidly, from Ahmadiyya and Shia to LGBTQ and Chinese ethnic.
What matters in these oppositions are not simply the shifting identity per se, but the very logics that animate the use of these identities.
Those minorities groups are different names of multicultural space that excludes the fundamentalists.
These two implications demonstrate a dialectical relation between subject and space.
While the subjects are able to transform the space, the subjectAos spatial practice is also heavily determined by the nature of the space.
These discussions also show that the notions of unity and multiculturalism are considered as highly problematic by fundamentalist groups.
Unity and multiculturalism are believed more as exclusionary instead of inclusive and encompassing all of the members of society.
For unity and multiculturalism are defined in specific ways while excluding and neutralisingAias well as demonisingAiother ways of perceiving the same discursive practices.
It is this sense of exclusion which motivates them to intrude into the political space through the act of appropriation.
The practice of fundamentalist groups is actually a response to various dimensions of space that attempt to forbid them from entering such space.
They attempt to avoid such exclusions by appropriating dominant rules and imperatives.
While dominant rules are affirmed, these groups interpret the rules in a certain way which makes them acknowledged as a political subject and helps them to retain their political aspirations.
On the one hand, this condition leads to less In order to be recognized as a political subject, the groups have to dismiss violence from their repertoire of actions and channel their aspirations through a commonly recognized mechanism.
The language of democracy, multiculturalism, unity, and locality are On the other hand, this condition also leads to increasing PCD Journal Vol.
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influence of fundamentalist groups in the so-called democratic public space.
The dismissal of violence and conformity to dominant rules and languages are the costs that have to be paid by the groups in order to participate in the communityAos political life.
However, the groups still retain their fundamentalist aspirations since, as discussed previously, the space of multiculturalism with its emphasis on cultural identity has reinforced fundamentalist groupsAo sense of uniqueness, distinctiveness, and originality.
These two paradoxical processes, eventually, engender a AodemocraticAo political landscape in which fundamentalist aspirations have enormous influences.
All these politics of dissents result in a production of space which is characterized by both strong democratic and radical tones.
Furthermore, the discussion in this section also shows that local, national and global spaces are considered to be the most important spaces in this groupsAo perspectives.
Various manoeuvres and adjustments are made to allow them to mould these three spaces The impacts of such political strategies for fundamentalist groupsAo power in national political landscapes, however, remain The groupsAo initiatives to permeate hegemonic political spaces are inevitably marked by strong tensions between their willingness to affirm existing political grammars or to subvert them.
Hence, the groups are taking various and, sometimes, contradictory stances against different issues.
While they affirm the importance of democratic norms in one occasion, they take a contrary stance in other circumstances: they emphasize the importance of non-violent action in advancing their political aspirations, yet they also forbid LGBTQ groups to voice out their interests in public space.
The last question that this essay has to answer is: What sort of dreams, imaginations, or utopias are invested by the groups in their resistances? Following LefebvreAos triadic schema, representational space is always invested in peopleAos lived experience.
Although the representations of space order people in certain ways, the people always find a way to escape and invest new meanings and images 84 The Primacy of Civil Society different from the hegemonic interpretations.
Despite its strong fundamentalist tone, a closer reading of the groupsAo narration also shows that the need to be acknowledged as equal, to be included, and to be recognized as subject are also dominant in the groupsAo As previously discussed, this opposition to exclusion encourages the groups to find a way to enter the political life of the Rejecting the minorities aside, inherent in this political stance is an aspiration to a specific ideal of political community called Indonesia.
The rejection is very often not as much as the quest for being treated fairly in terms of having, and contributing to, the ideal Indonesia.
However, the groups do not simply want to enter the politics.
Instead, they also attempt to redefine, redraw, and reformulate the space of the community.
Through their political articulation, the groups attempt to develop new norms, impose new forms of inclusion-exclusion, and make the space more accessible for them.
Conclusion This essay suggests that the practice of fundamentalist groups can be considered as a practice of citizenship.
This practice emerges as the groups attempt to resist various spaces that try to exclude By appropriating the representations of these spaces, the groups endeavour to enter the political landscape of society while retaining their political aspirations.
This movement itself emerges as the groups expect to avoid exclusions and be recognized as legitimate political subjects.
This results in a form of citizenship which is characterized by, on the one hand, a strong fundamentalist tone and, on the other hand, an affirmation of several rules of society as a well as a political space that is compatible with such practices of citizenship.
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References