A comparative analysis of the strategies the New Order and UMNO regimes in Indonesia and Malaysia adopted to deal with Islam in 1965 - 1998

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject Politics - Political systems in general and in comparison grade: 65 University of Leeds course: International Studies language: English abstract: This dissertation provides a comparative analysis of the strategies the New Order and UMNO regimes in Indonesia and Malaysia adopted to deal with Islam from 1965 to 1998. During these three decades the two regimes were similar in viewing Islam as a big challenge. However the strategies they employed to deal with it were different. President Suharto followed a two-pronged strategy of promoting cultural Islam and at the same time emasculating political Islam. Meanwhile the UMNO leadership embarked on their comprehensive Islamization project. As a result Islam as a social and cultural force grew tremendously in Indonesia and Malaysia. Yet in national politics Suharto pushed Islam from center to periphery then since mid-1980s he courted Islam and pulled it out of the periphery again. In Malaysia the Islamization race between UMNO and PAS moved Islam from the fringe to the center of mainstream politics. The work concludes that Islam was systematically manipulated by both regimes in the period of 1965-1998 and the two strategies led to the emergence of two different models of Islamization in two countries: a think-tank focused project in Malaysia and a bottom-up process in Indonesia.