Has Indonesia Gone Too Far With Its Hizbut Tahrir Ban?

When Indonesia's top security minister Wiranto announced that the central government was banning the radical Islamist group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, his reasoning was simple: the group's aims were in direct opposition to those of the state.

"The president instructed us to review all mass organizations to identify those with values that contradict the Pancasila or the unity of the state," Wiranto told reporters after stepping out of a meeting where the country's national security apparatus was doing just that—examining the goals and ideologies of the nation's mass organizations, or ormas.

"As a legally operating organization, the HTI has no positive role in achieving the nation's goals," Wiranto continued. "HTI has also promoted values that contradict the Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution. The activities of the group have also collided with the public, thus poses a threat to the unity of the republic. For this reason, the government has decided to ban the HTI."

But why now? HTI has been active in Indonesia for more than three decades as one of the country's most vocal proponents of the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia.

The organization has been a constant presence on the streets of the Indonesia, where its members have opposed everything from Valentine's Day to the renovation of the US Embassy in Central Jakarta. It's held massive rallies at South Jakarta's Senayan complex for years, where hundreds of thousands of supporters gathered in support of a theoretical Islamic caliphate a stone's throw from the House of Representatives .

It's an active presence on college campuses—fertile ground for recruitment by conservative Islamist groups—and at the recent rallies opposing Jakarta's now-jailed governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama.

But while other hardline groups, like the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), have repeatedly been implicated in acts of violence, HTI's members argue that their movement is a peaceful one, even if it's calling for the eventual dissolution of the Indonesian state.

It's a tense time to be calling for such things in Indonesia. A series of large-scale protests by the country's fringe Islamist have successfully shifted their views closer to the center of public discourse. President Joko Widodo was quick to dismiss the protests as the work of political actors— an accusation that set off conspiracy theories and talk of a coup plot.

Then came the treason arrests, which some saw as support for Jokowi's claims that shadowy figures were trying to overthrow the government. Earlier this year, Jokowi publicly questioned whether the country's democracy had gone too far.

"We can have democracy, but there's no place for liberalism, radicalism, fundamentalism, sectarianism, terrorism or other ideologies which are against Pancasila," the president said. "Democracy has gone over the top recently. We need to have stronger law enforcement."

Some are now seeing this ban as a pushback against the country's hardline Islamist groups, many of which enjoyed the support of opposition parties during the Jakarta gubernatorial election. HTI was one of the groups at the center of the fight to jail Ahok, a close ally of the president.

"They've resulted in a close colleague of the president being thrown out of office and charged with blasphemy," Tim Lindsey, an expert on Indonesian law, told Australia's ABC News.

One HTI member told VICE Indonesia that the organization thought the ban was a violation of Indonesian law. The government can ban the organization under its Ormas Law, a controversial bill that NGOs likened to a return of New Order-style authoritarianism when it was first up for debate in the House of Representatives.

The law affords the central government wide latitude to crack down on groups it deems are in direct conflict with the Pancasila—the country's founding document and guiding principle. But the law requires the government to first issue offending groups a public warning, something that HTI says never happened.

"What Wiranto did was not in accordance with the prevailing mechanisms and rules based on the Ormas Law," said Rikza Saifullah, an active HTI member. "HTI is a registered and official legal entity that has been run by the book. So the ban should've been done according to the rules."

Rikza joined HTI in 2004 when he was a student studying food science at the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB). He first met the group after joining the Lembaga da'wah Kampus—an Islamic missionary group. The da'wah group was full of HTI members, who quickly won Rikza over with their beliefs.

"I joined because HTI voices Islam's agendas and I myself am a Muslim," he explained.

Soon, Rikza was joining his fellow HTI members at events on campus, where they held Islamic study sessions and rallies opposing what they saw as the government's growing support of liberal ideals.

His university campus was full of Islamic groups, including those affiliated with political parties like the Prosperous Justice Party's (PKS) Tarbiya. They all had the same end goal, the establishment of nationwide Sharia Law in Indonesia, Rikza claimed. But only HTI was vocal in its ambitions, he explained.

"All Muslim ormas complement each other," he said. "It just so happened that I joined HTI."

Rizka said he never promoted intolerance or thought of the group as a threat to the state.

"There's an impression that Muslim ormas are anti-diversity," Rizka said. "They should really elaborate on how, exactly, we are against diversity."

Others applauded the government's ban. The Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest Muslim organization, has long opposed Islamist ormas like HTI, arguing that their embrace of stricter foreign versions of their faith stood in direct opposition to the country's homegrown moderate strain of Islam.

"We can say that the government was a bit late in banning HTI," Imam Aziz, the head of NU's tolerance committee, told the local news site Tirto.id.

But as opposition lawmakers accused President Jokowi's administration of over-stepping the authority of the courts, the issue pulled NGOs like the SETARA Institute, which typically monitors religious radicalism with a critical eye, into the fray.

Free speech issues make strange bedfellows. This is how you end up with the head of the SETARA Institute questioning whether the Jokowi administration was operating within the law when it announced the ban.

"They have to give three warnings, then a temporary suspension, and then with the National Police they have to build an argument based on facts that favor the ban," Hendardi, the head of the SETARA Institute, told VICE Indonesia.

Some HTI members have advocated the Indonesian military (TNI) staging a coup to seize power, but, it's doubtful those statements were indicative of an organization-wide belief, said Andreas Harsono, an Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"The government has to undergo a legal proceeding—through prosecutors and the courts—if they want to ban Hizbut Tahrir," Harsono told VICE Indonesia. "The problem is, the Ormas Law is not a quality law. I haven't seen the prosecutor's document on HTI, but, generally speaking, I have time and time again asked the government to respect the right and freedom to organize."

At least one prominent politician said that the central government just should've left HTI alone. Deputy House Speaker Fahri Hamzah told the local media that HTI were nothing more than a delusional group fighting for something that will never happen.

"HTI are just dreaming," he said. "There's nothing to be alarmed about. They're no different from those who are worried that Indonesia is going to become a communist country. I think they're delusional."