ISLAM AND POLITICS IN ACEH: A STUDY OF CENTER-PERIPHERY RELATIONS IN INDONESIA

This history of Acehnese leadership groups attempts to explain the shifting bases for conflict and cooperation between center and periphery in Indonesia. Political scientists have traditionally analyzed center-periphery relations from the perspctive of the center, viewing the periphery as recalcitrant and unchanging. It is the premise of this dissertation, however, that attention should be focused on the changing nature of both center and periphery and on leadership groups who formulate the identity symbols of the periphery. In the case of Aceh, reformist Islamic leaders emerged in the 1930s to provide the suasive symbols of Acehnese identity. Reformism held out hope that the faithful would overcome the particularisms of self-interest, kinship and locality to act in harmony and unity as true Muslims. Other leadership groups, however, have put forward contrasting images of Aceh. During the colonial period, the position of hereditary territorial chieftains was based on a different set of symbols; namely, the chieftains represented the continuity of indigenous customary law. During the transition to Independence, the contending visions of Islamic leaders and hereditary chieftains came into violent conflict. A new Acehnese leadership group emerging during the 1960s sought to redefine the Acehnese as a disadvantaged ethnic minority in need of capital and expertise. The center's interest has been to encourage the emergence of leadership groups which formulate a different set of identity symbols. Because Acehnese Islamic leaders have not been content to limit their vision to Aceh, the problem that Aceh has represented for central authority is not simply regional. Acehnese Islamic leaders claimed that they had a right to participate in the debate on the ideological foundation of Indonesia. They have pointed to the failure of the center to adhere to the dictates of Islam as a betrayal of the Indonesian revolutionary legacy. The prospects for complete accommodation between center and periphery remained problematical, since Islamic identity symbols of the Acehnese could be granted legitimacy only if central authority itself were transformed.