POLI7012 Chap.3 Indonesia: The 1965 Coup, Sharia Politics and Militias
Indonesia: The 1965 Coup, Sharia Politics and Militias
What this chapter covers
The Indonesia week pairs a work of history with two studies of the democratic period. John Roosa reconstructs the September 30th Movement of 1 October 1965 and the army campaign that followed it. Michael Buehler asks why local Islamic bylaws multiplied after 1998. Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir explains why Islamic militias became a fixture of street politics after Suharto fell.
The chapter treats them as one case: how an authoritarian state organised coercion and legitimacy, and what happened to those arrangements once elections and decentralisation arrived.
The 1965 movement as a pretext
Roosa does not claim to solve the question of who masterminded the abduction and killing of six army generals. He argues that the question matters less than the use made of it.
The movement was small, collapsed within days and, on his count, killed twelve people. Suharto nonetheless presented it as the opening move of a nationwide communist revolt, blamed the whole Communist Party, and used the resulting emergency to displace Sukarno step by step. Roosa calls this a creeping coup.
His strongest evidence is chronological: the mass killings in Central Java and Bali began only after army Special Forces arrived, not when the movement was active, which tells against the idea of spontaneous popular rage.
Sharia regulations without Islamist parties
Buehler's puzzle is that hundreds of sharia bylaws were adopted after 1998 even though Islamist parties kept losing votes.
His answer moves attention from society to the state. Local executives, mostly bureaucrats with New Order careers, suddenly had to win competitive and later direct elections. Networks tracing back to the old Darul Islam rebellion could supply voters, money and a pious image, so elites traded policy for that support. Islamist parties, weak outside the cities, could not.
The key analytical step is to keep apart the conditions that let activists mobilise and the circumstances in which they actually change law.
Militias and predatory capitalism
Mudhoffir disputes the view that militias grow where the state is weak or fragmented.
The New Order was powerful and centralised, yet it sponsored militias, from the anticommunist mobilisation of 1965 to the youth organisations that ran rackets in return for loyalty. After 1998 the demand for hired muscle multiplied because rival politico-business alliances now competed locally.
Islamic dress, in his account, raises a group's bargaining power more than it reflects doctrine, as his Surakarta fieldwork on land disputes and protests shows.
The link back to Roosa is direct: the army that trained and armed civilian killers in 1965 established the habit of delegating violence while keeping deniability.
How to use the case in a term paper
The three readings reward a paper that traces mechanisms across regime change.
A strong project on current Indonesian politics can ask who benefits from a religious controversy, which elite is buying which resource, and whether the violence involved is organised from above. Treat casualty figures for 1965 with care, since the authors report different estimates, and cite each number to its source.
When the three authors seem to disagree, check whether they are describing different periods or different actors before you declare a contradiction. Seminar discussion goes further when you arrive with one concrete question, for instance whether Buehler's resource bargain also explains the militias Mudhoffir studied.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The September 30th Movement and its collapse within days
- 02
Why the mastermind question remains unresolved
- 03
Roosa's pretext argument and the creeping coup
- 04
Army Special Forces as the trigger of the killings
- 05
Contested death tolls and how to cite them
- 06
Sharia bylaws adopted under secular-party governments
- 07
Buehler's distinction between mobilisation and influence
- 08
Social, economic and cultural capital in local elections
- 09
Mudhoffir on militias, coercion and predatory capitalism
Worked example · free
Explaining where sharia bylaws appear
- 2State the puzzle: many bylaws after 1998 while Islamist party votes fell and secular parties controlled the councils that passed them.
- 2Name the mechanism: competing state elites trade policy for resources, so the state mediates which activists gain influence.
- 2Explain the geography: clusters sit where Darul Islam era movements left dense networks of schools, mosques and prayer circles.
- 2Explain the level: district electorates are more homogeneous, while provincial heads must court minorities who oppose Islamic law.
- 1Add the timing evidence: adoption accelerated after direct local elections began in 2005.
Key terms
- September 30th Movement
- The group of officers and party operatives that abducted and killed six army generals in Jakarta on 1 October 1965. It collapsed within days, but its name became the regime's label for the whole communist threat.
- Creeping Coup
- Roosa's name for Suharto's gradual seizure of power between October 1965 and March 1967. It was framed as the prevention of a communist coup while Sukarno was kept on as a figurehead.
- Gestapu
- An acronym coined by army propagandists for the September 30th Movement. It was chosen to recall the Nazi secret police and helped cast every communist sympathiser as a murderer.
- Political Opportunity Structures
- A social movement concept for the features of a political system that help or hinder activists. Buehler argues that the structures that let Islamists mobilise differ from those that let them influence policy.
- Political Gangsterism
- Mudhoffir's term for militias and gangs selling intimidation and protection to elites. He links it to unemployed youth and to capital accumulation that still relies on coercion.
Indonesia: The 1965 Coup, Sharia Politics and Militias FAQ
Did the Communist Party of Indonesia plan the 1965 coup attempt?
Roosa treats the planning as only partly knowable. The Suharto regime's claim that the party organised everything is weakly supported, yet he notes that Aidit, who led the party, was present at the Halim base that day, which rules out a full acquittal. His real point is that limited involvement could never justify the destruction of the party's entire membership.
How many people were killed in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966?
No single figure is agreed. Roosa speaks of a death toll in the hundreds of thousands and cites contemporary estimates ranging from Sukarno's official eighty-seven thousand to journalists' figures of more than half a million. Mudhoffir refers to a million civilians. In a paper, attribute each figure to its author.
Why do secular politicians in Indonesia pass sharia bylaws?
Buehler argues that competitive and direct local elections pushed district heads to seek resources from organised groups. Islamist movements with deep local roots could provide networks, funds and a reputation for piety, so executives rewarded them with regulations, some of which also created revenue and leverage over businesses.
Are Indonesia's Islamic militias a sign of rising radicalism?
Mudhoffir says mostly not. His Surakarta interviews suggest that groups adopt Islamic rhetoric because it makes their threats more credible when bargaining with politicians and businesses. Rival militias fight each other over land disputes and patronage, which points to material interests rather than a shared ideological project.
Assessment move
Build a one-page chain for this week. Put Roosa's sequence of 1965 events on the left, with each date and the actor who moved. Put Buehler's local executive in the middle and list the three resources he buys. Put Mudhoffir's militia on the right and name its patron. Then write two sentences linking the chain: who organises coercion in each period, and who pays for it.
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