Notes
The Influence of Former Masyumi Leaders on the Early Stage of Dakwah Movement in Indonesian Universities
2011 Volume 2011 Issue 40 Pages 100-125
Details
2011 Volume 2011 Issue 40 Pages 100-125
The focus of this paper is on the influence of Masyumi leaders on the student dakwah movement in Indonesia. Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia （DDII）, which was an organization established by the former Masyumi leaders, led the early stage of the student dakwah movement and built a base of the movement which consequently expanded throughout the country.
The early stage of the movement in this paper is set from the late 1960s up to the mid 1980s, when Suharto regime was built and its dictatorship was installed.
The student dakwah movement has developed mostly among the secular-educated young elites in the urban national universities.
Masyumi was an Islamic party which exerted a strong power in the parliament in the 1950s, however, it was banned in 1960 by Sukarno over the charge of the revolt in Sumatra in the late 1950s. Masyumi was not allowed the reinstatement under the new Suharto regime. Natsir, a chairman of Masyumi, and his colleagues gave up their political activities and set up DDII in 1967 to carry out the Islamic dakwah.
One of the main concerns of DDII was university, along with mosque and pesantren. Under the Suharto regime that put a strong pressure on Islam, DDII supported to build mosques in universities all over the country by using the aid money from the Middle East, and published the Islamic books that were translated from Arabic to Indonesian in order to introduce the thoughts and the activities in other Islamic countries to Indonesia. At the same time, DDII provided scholarships for students to study Islam in the Middle East and carried out the training for them to be Dakwah activists. Through the young dakwah activists, who were trained by DDII, the dakwah movement could expand widely.
This paper is mainly based on the results of the interviews to the concerned people and the internal documents or memoirs of DDII. It is often discussed that the student Dakwah movement in Indonesia is influenced by the thoughts of Islamic reformism in the Middle East, and is less connected with Indonesian domestic organizations on the other hand. However, the paper shows that the former Masyumi leaders and DDII made great contribution to establish the basis of the movement at least in the early stage of the movement.
