ABSTRACT
The fall of Indonesian President Suharto in 1998, after over 30 years of totalitarian rule, opened up political space for civil society groups, including Muslim civil society organizations, to express their political, social, and educational ideals more openly within the public arena. The relaxation of authoritarian controls gave Muslim scholars, religious leaders, and educators the opportunity to participate in determining the direction of Indonesia’s process of democratization. In the formal political sphere, the formation of Muslim political parties representing various groups within the Muslim population is evidence of the new freedom for political expression of Islam. Robust public debate on issues such as the place of sharia in Indonesia, women’s rights and the rights of minorities, and religious pluralism indicate the open exchange of alternative ideas that is characteristic of healthy democracies. Other developments have been less positive. These include the terrorist bombings in Bali in October 2002 which were carried out in the name of Islam, inter-religious conflict in various regions of the archipelago, threats against those advocating liberal, pluralist interpretations of Islam, and attacks on members of the Ahmadiyah sect and the forced closure of Christian churches (Bush, 2007; Hefner, 2008; van Bruinessen, 2013).
