364 JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN ISLAM

364 JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN ISLAM

Volume 03, Number 02, December 2009

Socio-political Construction of anti-Democracy Discourse

beings, not only to Muslims. By means of transnational system of governance better-known as Khila fah Isla > mi > yah > (Islamic Caliphate system) they believe that the shortcomings of man-made ideologies can be solved. It is only such a political system that is able to ensure the harmony among civilizations and secure the rights of non-Muslim community even though it is not clear whether the non-Muslims will have the equal rights as Muslims do.

All entities outside of Islam such as democracy are perceived as something derived from the enemies of God who are presumed to threaten and subjugate Muslims all over the world. Democracy is a part of human’s revolt against God. Under the system of democracy, sovereignty lies at the hands of the people where people can produce laws that contradict Islamic law. It is within this reason that the Islamists will not let all man-made entities rule over humankind. Along with this, Indonesian Islamists are constructing the concept of enemy based on the concept of binary opposition between the “authentic” selves and the “corrupted” ones. They describe themselves as pious, authentic and unadulterated whose responsibility is to assist the rest with heavenly guidance and salvation. By doing so, the rest is defined as whatever they themselves are not.

Warriors need enemies, without which the self will mean nothing. The entity of the enemy is not something constructed in a vacuum, socially and politically. This means that the concept of enemy is ontologically constructed for the purpose of self-fulfilling prophecy. To the Islamists, the word enemy can take different forms from time to time, contingent upon the context of when and where Islam is present. The process of socio-political construction of the enemy follows what Berger and Luckmann have itemized: naming,

legitimation, mythmaking, sedimentation, and ritual.

For Islamists in general and HTI activists in particular, language plays a crucial role in producing and reproducing discourses and counter-discourses. Discourses on democracy developed by Islamists are of course political, as can be detected in the lexicons and semantics of any other language. Language in this context is deployed not only as

a matter of maintaining a certain cultural identity or simply as ideas exchange, but also as a conduit of maintaining and preserving the purity of Islamic culture. This means that for Islamists culture does really matter for their “inner” identity through which the soul of Islam can be transmitted without corruption and innovation. It is not

JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN ISLAM

Volume 03, Number 02, December 2009

Masdar Hilmy surprising that in order to keep their Muslimhood preserved Islamists

are concerned with the use of idioms and words that are derived directly from the sacred texts which are in Arabic. In line with this, maintaining normative Islam as it is in Arabic is a part of power aggregation. Likewise, anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism are among the most exploited symbols in the Islamists’ discourses in their rejection of democracy, especially by depicting democracy as an un- Islamic, corrupted and “unholy” system of governance. []

Bibliography

Books and Articles

Adhi, M. Ramdhan. “Strategi AS di Dunia Islam Pasca 11/9.” Al-

Wa’ie , No. 61 (September 2005), available at: http://hizbut- tahrir.or.id/main.php?page=alwaie&id=81, accessed on 14 December 2005.

Aho, James A. This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy. Seattle

and London: University of Washington Press, 1994. Al-Jawi, M. Shiddiq. “Kelompok Liberal itu Agen Penjajah.” al-Wa’ie,

edition 58, available at: http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/main.php?- page=alwaie&id=34, accessed on 16 December 2005.

----------. “Ushul Fiqh Palsu Kaum Liberal.” Al-Wa’ie, edition 56, http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/main.php?page=alwaie&id=7, accessed on 16 December 2005.

Al-Nabhani, Taqiyuddin. Pembentukan Partai Politik Islam. Bogor:

Thariqul Izzah, 2002. Arbib, Michael and Mary Hesse. The Construction of Reality. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1986. Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality.

Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday-Anchor, 1967. Berger, Peter L. The Sacred Canopy. New York & London: Anchor

Books, 1990. Chomsky, Noam. Maling Teriak Maling: Amerika Sang Teroris?. Bandung:

Bandung, 2001 .

Dhume, Sadanand. “Hizbut Tahrir Using War in Iraq to Seek

Converts.” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 3, 2003.