Understanding Politicized Religion: A Case study of Establishing Khilafa-Sharia in Indonesia
Tutut Chusniyah
Universitas Negeri Malang
tututchusniah@yahoo.com
Abstract: The Islamist groups want Indonesia to be governed based on Islamic system to establish khilafa-sharia. They also are known for their violent actions, be it in the form of terrorism or armed struggle and largerly they get new support from moslem mainstraim. As critic to system justification theory and based on motivation social-cognition theory, this paper proposes to understand how psychological need (i.e. need of uncertainty avoidance and need of threat management), Islamic ideology (i.e. salafi and daula Islam ideology) and group attachment affect political attitude (contest the status quo and change democracy to khilafa). By using mix-method to understand this politicized religion movement; study 1 aim to test the model of the followers represents an initial attempt to describe and evaluate the effects of various dimensions of psychological need and Islamic ideology; study 2 aim to understand the content and dinamic of ideological Islamist groups leader. Analysis of data from 384 members of three Islamist groups who participated in the study confirms the fit of the proposed model to the data. Dept interview with the Islamist group leader of JAT (Jamaa Anshoru Tauhid), MMI (Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia) and HTI (Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia) describe the content and how Islamic ideology support their political atitude. Following the result, we explained the finding and its implication using recent advances in political psychology.
Keyword: need of uncertainty avoidance, need of threat management, salafi ideology, daula Islam ideology, group attachment and political attitude
Presented; International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), Held from July 6-9, 2012 in Chicago, IL, USA