Islamic Soft Power in the Age of Trump: Public Diplomacy and Indonesian Mosque Communities in America

ABSTRACT

This article examines how Indonesia’s governmental and civil society Islamic organizations are trying to rebrand the world’s largest Muslim-majority country through combined efforts of bilateral, multi-lateral, and Track II diplomacy. This research explores the multiple sites, discourses, and actors involved in the constitution – and contestation – of the claim that Indonesia is the exemplar of ‘moderate Islam’. In doing so, the article contributes to a burgeoning academic literature about religion, diplomacy, and soft power. Understanding such soft power strategies – originating both within and beyond the state – can shed light on the cleavages, conflicts, and coalitions of religious authority, community, and identity both in Indonesia and on the global stage. Grand projects of diplomacy inevitably have unintended consequences, and the afterlives of public diplomacy are always played out in local, on-the-ground contexts. The article suggests that an ethnographic approach to the study of religion and diplomacy affords a unique understanding of Track II public diplomacy on the ground, providing understandings from the elite meeting rooms of foreign ministries to the basement gatherings of Indonesian Muslims near Washington DC.

KEYWORDS:

• Islam
• public diplomacy
• interfaith
• soft power

Acknowledgements

Most of the research for this article was made possible by generous funding from the Contending Modernities project sponsored by the University of Notre Dame. Additional funding for related fieldwork in Indonesia was provided through a Fulbright Senior Scholar fellowship in 2016. I am especially grateful to Mun’im Sirry, Ebrahim Moosa, Scott Appleby, and Atalia Omar for their leadership on the Contending Modernities initiative and for their sharp intellectual engagement during workshops in South Bend, Rome, and Jakarta. I am also indebted to colleagues in the Contending Modernities Indonesia Research Group, especially Robert Hefner, Zainal Abidin Bagir, and Nelly van Doorn-Harder. I am particularly grateful to two anonymous peer reviewers for their careful reading, engagement, and critique. I dedicate this article to my late friend and scholar of Indonesia, Dr Jeffrey Hadler, whose groundbreaking personal and scholarly inquiry into Muslim imaginaries of Judaism in Indonesia provided inspiration during the writing of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Several people close to the purchase offered similar amounts, though estimates went as high as $USD3.4 million, perhaps including subsequent renovations as well as the more recent purchase of the house and lot next door.

2 Interview with Dr Nasaruddin Umar, May 15, 2016.

3 Modul bimbingan teknis metode pembelajaran pendidikanaAgama Islam dan budi pekerti berbasis Islam rahmatan lil ‘Alamin (Training Module for Teaching Methods of Islamic Education and Character Education based on the concept of Islam as a blessing for all creation). Director General, Islamic Education, Ministry of Religious Affairs, 2015. This is the first of a three-part training module. With the permission of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the author has conducted participant observation at several regional training workshops during 2016.

4 The original remarks were made during a television program on Indosiar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZVEj3qhSZA (accessed May 11, 2020). After some backlash, however, Mama Dedeh apologized to NU members for what she later framed as her misunderstanding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJtRc7on73w (accessed May 11, 2020).

5 Anonymous interview, February 28, 2016, Cirebon, West Java.

6 The research for this section was conducted during five separate trips to Washington DC between February 2012 and April 2017. During this time, I conducted formal and informal interviews with diplomats, religious leaders, and local Indonesians. Some of the data related to the Interfaith Mission for Peace has been considered briefly elsewhere (Hoesterey 2014b).

7 Two anonymous interviews. March 14, 2017.

8 ‘A Common Word’ was an open letter by Muslim scholars and clerics about the commonalities between Islam and Christianity, addressed to Pope Benedict XVI following the latter’s disparaging remarks about Islam during the Regensberg Address on September 13, 2006. See https://www.acommonword.com/the-acw-document/ (accessed May 17, 2020).

9 Interview conducted April 25, 2017, New York City.

10 Geographical diversity notwithstanding, I would also note that there was no visibility or inclusion of the Muslim LGBTQ community in New York or elsewhere. In addition, the parade reflected racial fault lines within American Islam, especially the marginalization of African American Muslims (Khabeer 2016).

11 See https://www.1000circles.com/project (accessed May 11, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Contending Modernities, Fulbright Senior Scholar Award.