Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies

This paper explores the role of Muslim organisations in the slow overthrow of President Sukarno between 30 September 1965 and 12 March 1967. It argues that their role in the process was far more important than is usually appreciated in the literature. But the primary focus here is on the surprisingly slow and hesitant evolution of the stances taken by Muslim organisations in this period on the question of Sukarno’s presidency, as well as on the one hundred and eighty degree turn that they eventually executed. From almost unqualified support for Sukarno in 1965 Indonesia’s Muslim organisations shifted, at markedly different speeds, to vehement opposition by early 1967. This paper traces the shift and seeks to explain the complex motivations and calculations that produced it and were also responsible for its varying pace. It thereby provides revealing insights into the political thinking and practices of Indonesia’s Muslim organisations in this period of political transformation and flux.
                  
Steven Drakeley PhD (University of Sydney) is a Senior Lecturer in Asian and Islamic Studies and a member of the Centre for Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies at the University of Western Sydney. He is the author of The History of Indonesia, Greenwood Press, 2005, “Bung Karno and the Bintang Muhammadiyah: A Political Affair”, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 11, 1 (June 2009): 199-212, and “Lubang Buaya: Myth, Misogyny and Massacre”, Nebula 4.4, December 2007. His principal area of research is the role of Islam in Indonesia’s post-independence political history.