February 7, 2025
JAKARTA – Carrying their signature black-and-white flags and chanting slogans for an Islamic caliphate, thousands of supporters of a banned, ultra-conservative Muslim organisation marched through cities and towns in 22 Indonesian provinces on Feb 2, alarming security officials and observers.
During the march, more than 17,000 former members of the defunct Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) waved banners and chanted in Bahasa Indonesia: “Long live the caliphate! Support the caliphate!” Riding on public anger over the Gaza war, they also waved Palestinian flags.
Analysts suspect that the simultaneous Feb 2 rallies were a show of strength and that HTI may be attempting a comeback, now that President Prabowo Subianto, who had worked with Islamist groups for the 2019 elections, is in power.
HTI was abolished by then President Joko Widodo in 2017, as it stepped up its campaign for the establishment of an Islamic state.
Observers – including Ms Rida Hesti Ratnasari, a senior researcher at Indonesia’s Ulema Council, and Dr Muhammad Najih Arromadloni, an executive board member of the Nahdlatul Ulama’s international network development agency – said they were perplexed by the authorities’ negligence in not doing anything about the Feb 2 marches.
Both argued that the authorities should have taken action and charged the perpetrators with promoting an ideology other than what the nation adopts, which is punishable by a jail term.
“What the former HTI demonstrators did over the weekend was to test the waters. If they received public sympathy, they would later come in bigger crowds,” Dr A’an Suryana, a visiting fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, told The Straits Times.
In a March 2023 report, Ms Raneeta Mutiara of NTU’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies wrote that, at the political level, the public discussion on HTI revolved around its engagement with then presidential candidate Prabowo, who was campaigning ahead of the 2024 election.
“It was regarded as an effort by the banned group to pursue re-empowerment,” Ms Raneeta said in the report.
During the 2019 presidential election campaign, former HTI members were seen at Mr Prabowo’s rallies, according to local media reports.
There was no indication that Mr Prabowo or his ministers were aware of the plan for the rallies, which took place in major cities such as Surabaya, Yogyakarta and Palembang, with each gathering consisting of between 100 and 2,500 people.
The police estimated that the rallies, covering more than half of Indonesia’s 38 provinces, attracted a total of 17,160 people. An aide to Mr Prabowo declined to comment on the gatherings, which have attracted media attention.
A senior security official told journalists earlier this week: “The street rallies over the weekend in that many places simultaneously are concerning. We are keeping tabs on this.”
The official, who spoke anonymously as he was not authorised to speak to the media, pointed out that scores of domestic terrorists arrested over the years were former HTI members.
One of them was an armed woman who attempted to trespass into the presidential palace in October 2022. She was arrested and later sentenced to four years’ jail. Indonesian police identified her as an HTI supporter espousing radical and anti-government ideology.
HTI is the Indonesian chapter of the Hizbut Tahrir global Islamist organisation, which is banned in several Arab and Central Asian countries for advocating the establishment of its version of a strict caliphate based on Islamic law.
Founded in 1953 in then Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem by Palestinian Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, Hizbut Tahrir has advocated for the dissolution of national borders to make way for a unified global Islamic caliphate.
Ms Rida said: “Former HTI members today have regrouped and reached out to the grassroots using grouping or movement names in Indonesian language, rather than the usual Arabic language. This is a more effective way to recruit followers.”
Protesting against the rallies, Banser – the youth wing of Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama – posted on X on Feb 5: “The HTI is throwing a party today in several cities… as if they were just being released from a cage.
“Clearly the government is being negligent. Banser is ready to step forward and disperse the crowd if the government is incapable of doing so.”
Noting that the groups advocating for a caliphate have been increasingly visible recently, radicalism and terrorism researcher Khoirul Anam told ST that decisive government action is needed.
He also noted that a similar campaign by supporters of the banned group has been intensifying since the transition from Mr Widodo to Mr Prabowo.
Mr Anam, a PhD candidate at Indonesian International Islamic University, said: “The dissolution of the organisation was not accompanied by strict monitoring of its former members and key figures, allowing them to continue spreading their ideology unchecked.”
Dr Najih said HTI’s ability to maintain relevance shows the complexity of combating such transnational movements.
The group’s resilience lies in its ideological appeal to a pan-Islamic identity, positioning itself as the bulwark against Western imperialism and corrupt local governments, he added.
“In Indonesia, this narrative finds fertile ground among segments of the population disillusioned by political corruption, economic disparity and perceived moral decline.”
- Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja has been the Indonesia correspondent for The Straits Times since 2008, and is based in Jakarta.