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Ary Hermawan

It has been 25 years since Indonesia’s Liberal Islam Network (Jaringan Islam Liberal or JIL) was established in March 2001, just three years after Reformasi.
The intellectual network has been in disarray for much of the past decade, reflecting the current state of Indonesia’s broader liberal and progressive Islamic movement. The old guard, represented by the establishments within Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, faces elite co-option as they seek access to state resources while also grappling with ideological challenges from younger members aligned with progressive, leftist and environmentalist Islamic groups such as Islam Bergerak and Muhammadiyah’s Green Cadres (Kader Hijau Muhammadiyah).
This ideological split has made it difficult for former JIL figures – and Indonesia’s progressive Islamic movement overall – to not only advance the interests of the ummah (Muslim community), but also to effectively turn the tide against Islamic conservatism.
Scholars have attributed JIL’s decline to its “boundary-testing strategies”, its elitism and Indonesia’s broader “conservative turn”. Ideologically, while all JIL thinkers claim to support civil liberties in matters of religion, they share little else. Some are staunch libertarians and free-market advocates; others lean towards democratic socialism and could even be described as “liberal left”.

Though JIL no longer projects a coherent “liberal” identity, its individual members continue to shape Islamic discourse through their activism and respective platforms. Some former JIL figures host the liberal YouTube channel Cokro TV; others hold leadership or membership roles in organisations such as NU or the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). Their prominence, however, has done little to revive institutional coherence. If anything, these ideological differences have hastened JIL’s slide into irrelevance within Indonesia’s liberal movement.
Differing stance
On many defining issues, JIL figures stand on opposite sides. Regarding Gaza, Luthfi Assyaukanie and Saidiman Ahmad have been critical of Hamas as an extremist organisation and supportive of Israel’s “right to defend itself”. This is in stark contrast to the views of other JIL figures such as Ihsan Ali Fauzi and Ulil Abshar Abdalla, both of whom have been critical of Israel. Ulil, now a senior NU leader, has even expressed confusion at why defenders of minority groups within Indonesia would also defend Israel, in a clear reference to his colleagues within JIL.
Gaza is not the only fault line. Ulil was also at loggerheads with other JIL members over the blasphemy prosecution of then Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama in 2017 and the passage of the Jobs Creation Law in 2020.
These public disagreements indicate two key points of divergence within JIL’s membership and ideology. First, its figures hold different – often conflicting – interpretations of what liberal Islam actually means. Second, there is no shared understanding of what liberal Islamic ideology looks like in practice, nor of what compromise means. The absence of a clear ideological stance has made it impossible for liberal Muslims to effectively organise or rally popular support vis-a-vis the relatively more cohesive conservative groups.

The largest break among liberal Muslims occurred in 2024, when liberal supporters of former president Joko Widodo were split over his decision to back Gerindra Party leader Prabowo Subianto in the presidential election. Prominent JIL figure Nong Darol resigned as CEO of Cokro TV after media owner Jeffri Geovanie, chief patron of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), opted to back Prabowo over then Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo. She left alongside other pro-Ganjar hosts including Guntur Romli, Denny Siregar and Eko Kuntadhi.
Nong was replaced by fellow JIL figure Akhmad Sahal. Her departure also cleared the way for the return of Ade Armando, another JIL figure and PSI politician, who claimed he had originally left Cokro TV after Nong told him not to criticise PDI-P, the party that backed Ganjar.
The PSI-Cokro TV split is emblematic of JIL’s wider state of disarray. PSI is arguably Indonesia’s most liberal party, having run its election campaign on a platform of religious freedom and other civil liberties. Its decision to back Prabowo in 2024 disappointed JIL co-founder Saiful Mujani, who has been outspoken in his opposition to the former general – a stance that contrasts with Sahal’s apparent neutrality and PSI’s outright support.
In recent interviews with this writer, three former JIL activists played down these differences of opinion, emphasising that JIL was always only a forum rather than a movement and that political disagreement is inevitable. That said, they also accused fellow JIL thinkers of compromising their liberal principles under pressure from institutional obligations and political-economic affiliations.
Ulil’s criticism of Ahok, for example, could be seen as a result of his political bias, given his former membership of the Democratic Party, which backed Ahok’s rival Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono in the 2017 Jakarta election. Similar charges can be levelled at others: Guntur was affiliated with Ganjar’s campaign and PDI-P; Ade with PSI; Luthfi, who backed former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan in 2024, was reportedly close to the National Democratic Party.
Political entanglement, in other words, may have repeatedly forced JIL thinkers to compromise their liberal principles – though in some cases, genuine ideological disagreements also contributed to JIL’s state of disarray.
Once a formidable force in Indonesia’s liberal movement, JIL’s wave of intellectual schisms – whether due to ideological fragmentation or the political pragmatism of its prominent figures – has eroded its relevance as a leading voice of liberal Islam in the country.
As political conversations gradually shift from the issue of religious tolerance towards more pressing concerns such as inequality and climate change, proponents of liberal or progressive Islam would do well to redirect their personal influence towards issues that resonate more with young Indonesian Muslims.
Dr Ary Hermawan is a Visiting Fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and Associate Director of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society. This article was first published by the institute’s commentary website fulcrum.sg.


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Political entanglements and ideological schisms have left the pioneering Liberal Islam Network in disarray


Political entanglements and ideological schisms have left the pioneering Liberal Islam Network in disarray.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Political entanglements and ideological schisms have left the pioneering Liberal Islam Network in disarray

Political entanglements and ideological schisms have left the pioneering Liberal Islam Network in disarray