Islam and Politics in Indonesia with Verena Meyer, Zainal Abidin, Saskia Schäfer, and Taufiq Hanafi

This episode features a conversation about contemporary Indonesian politics, with a special focus on the role of Islam. In October 2024, Prabowo Subianto was sworn in as the president of Indonesia. In the Presidential election back in February 2024, he had quite handily defeated his two competitors, Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo, with 59% of the popular vote. This 2024 election was the third time that Prabowo tried to become president, after he lost in 2014 and 2019 against Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. The political competitions between Jokowi and Prabowo on occasion turned quite ugly. Not infrequently, it was accusations that the other was the "wrong kind" of Muslim that made it ugly – with the effect that the two candidates always appeared like irreconcilable opponents. But when Jokowi could no longer compete in the 2024 elections after his second term was up, he surprised many spectators by endorsing none other than Prabowo as his successor as president. Prabowo, in turn, selected Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming, as his running mate. 

This episode is hosted by Dr. Verena Meyer, an Assistant Professor of Islam in South and Southeast Asia at Leiden University. She is joined by three colleagues with expertise in Islam and politics in contemporary Indonesia: (1) Dr. Zainal Abidin, who teaches at at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and also serves as Director of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies; (2) Dr. Saskia Schäfer, Head of a Research Group about Secularity, Islam, and Democracy in Indonesia and Turkey at Humboldt University in Berlin; and (3) Dr. Taufiq Hanafi, postdoctoral researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden.