Radicalized nationalists? Ideological contestation, the state, and populist Muslim belonging in Indonesia

Indonesians have witnessed the emergence of multiple populist narratives within their mainstream political discourse. This includes the rise of a majoritarianism, whose advocates aim to ascribe privileged rights to sections of the country's Sunni Muslim majority based on ideas of nostalgic cultural loss and of economic and political disenfranchisement. Unsurprisingly, majoritarianism is deeply polarizing, and the previous government interpreted the rise of Islamic populist sentiment as both a direct threat to its legitimacy and as an existential challenge from religious “radicals.” My ethnography of male majoritarian activists in Eastern Indonesia offers a counterpoint to the specter of radicalized Muslims driven by an Islamic ontology. I argue that the interpretative framework through which majoritarianism has gained political currency depends on a rearticulation of Indonesian nationalism within the situated experiences of socio-conservative Muslims. They promote moral panic and offer a populist solution to perceived social breakdown. This provides a broader conceptual point to the anthropological study of populism. Populism does not rely on a singular political party or proven grievances. Rather, the ability to rearticulate the ethical boundaries of national belonging derives from an ability to capture the performative strategies through which the state renders itself visible in everyday life.