The establishment of NU came about as a direct result of the local and international struggles between modernist and traditionalist Islam. The narratives of NU's birth written by post-Khittah ’26 scholars sought to cast the organization's origins in a ‘pure’ religious light in order to consolidate the Khittah ’26 movement. This chapter examines these dynamics. It then looks at the relationship between NU and Masyumi during the Soekarno era, with attention to the factors contributing to the ultimate rivalry between the two Muslim groups.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ISLAM IN INDONESIA

The gradual, relatively peaceful spread of Islam throughout the archipelago now known as Indonesia, and the fairly harmonious way in which Muslim beliefs were folded into pre-existing cultures and practices, has meant that for much of Indonesia's history Islam has occupied a rather understated position. Often ignored both by scholars of Islam, who consider Indonesia to exist on the margins of the ‘Muslim world’, and by the general public, who are unaware that Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation in the world, Islam in Indonesia (at least prior to 11 September 2001) has often been regarded as unimportant by both academics and non-academics. However, Islam was a crucial factor not only in the anti-colonial struggle for independence, but also in the process of state formation, in the struggle over the nature of the state and subsequently in the political history of Indonesia.

The prevailing narrative of the origins of Islam in Indonesia is that it was introduced by Arab traders via India during the eighth century, but that it was not until around the thirteenth century that large-scale conversions took place, firstly on the island of Sumatra. The variant of Islam exported from India was suffused with elements of mysticism and Sufism and thus did not effect much discontinuity with the Hindu–Buddhist tradition existent on Sumatra and Java. With the conversion to Islam of the Majapahit Kingdom — the last Hindu–Buddhist dynasty on Java — in the sixteenth century, Islam was well on its way to becoming the dominant religion throughout most of the archipelago.