Islamic Populism in the Context of Rural Agrarian Change

A massive demonstration called "Aksi Bela Islam" (Action to Defend Islam) marks a continuity of the Islamic movement in post-New Order Indonesia. Many observers called it "Islamic populism", a populist response, from the cross-class alliance on behalf of "ummah", towards capitalist development that has been conceived to marginalize Muslim people in the struggle for access to economic and political resources. Despite this proposition, however, many studies still concentrated on the state (instead of capital itself) and the inner urban areas in explaining the development of Islamic populism. On the other hand, empirical facts show that the mass of Action to Defend Islam involves a lot of social segments from the countryside. Agrarian changes in the countryside played an important role in this development. The important role of agrarian change has even given Islamic populism in rural areas its own "characteristic" which therefore must be investigated specifically. This article tries to draw out the study of Islamic populism from the urban "frenzy" for a moment to look at developments at another important locus, namely the countryside.