Indonesia is facing worsening environmental degradation, marked by recurring floods, landslides, and other ecological crises. Some of these disasters are directly linked to state policies that promote excessive mining and large-scale deforestation. In this context, Islamic organizations have become increasingly visible in public life, yet their responses to government policies that drive environmental harm often remain limited. Although many prominent Islamic organizations, such as Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah continue to address moral and social issues, their positions on state projects that frequently damage the environment are often cautious, selective, or aligned with the government.
This widening gap between moral authority and political restraint raises a deeper question: are Islamic organizations in Indonesia still functioning as autonomous civil society actors capable of exercising control over state power, or have they become absorbed into the nation’s pragmatic development agenda?
In recent years, Robert W. Hefner’s civil Islam thesis—particularly its account of relation between the state and Islamic organizations—has been subject to renewed scholarly scrutiny. Nearly two decades after the book’s publication, Hefner’s argument continues to shape both academic and public debate: that Islamic organizations such as NU and Muhammadiyah function as central pillars of supporting democratization and serve as a counterweight to authoritarian tendencies. In this view, Islamic organizations play a crucial role in restraining the consolidation of despotic and anti-democratic power.
However, political developments over the past decade have shown the emergence of a new configuration of relations among religion, clerical authority, and the state that potentially contradicts the independent model of civil Islam envisioned by Hefner. This shift underscores the need to revisit the civil Islam framework, as Islamic organizations once positioned as democratic safeguards are increasingly embedded in state-centered political arrangements that risk eroding normative foundations of civil Islam from within. These evolving relationships have not only reshaped the political orientation of major Islamic organizations such as NU and Muhammadiyah, but have also influenced their priorities and strategic responses to key public concerns, including environmental governance.
One of the most significant critiques of the civil Islam thesis has been advanced by Afrianto in his article in the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia. Afrianto argues that the civil Islam framework requires reassessment in light of several development: the declining influence of the Muslim intellectual elite, the rise of new religious authorities outside established Islamic organisation, the growing dominance of conservative Islamism in the public sphere, and the increasingly pragmatic relationship between the Islamic Organisation and the state that lead to instrumentalization of religious organisation.
While many of these factors remain the subject of ongoing debate, what most fundamentally unsettles Hefner’s civil Islam, in my view, is the issue of state instrumentalization. The relationship between Islamic organizations and the state is not always deliberative and critical, as the civil Islam model assumes, but is often pragmatic and transactional. This is hardly a novel observation. It reflects the long-standing reality in Indonesian politics, where successive regimes have consistently sought to manage, co-opt, or neutralize civilian forces perceived as potential sources of opposition, including Islamic organizations.
This instrumentalization of Islamic organizations intensified during President Jokowi’s administration. Under Jokowi, Islamic organizations such as NU and Muhammadiyah were drawn beyond their traditional role as source of moral. They are increasingly incorporated into state’s development agenda. They are expected to endorse major development project and policy initiatives, even when these initiatives raised legal, ethical and environmental concern.
In this context, Eve Warburton’s concept of New Developmentalism offers useful lens for understanding why the growing involvement of Islamic organizations in the state agenda has led to gradual erosion of their autonomy. Warburton argues that Jokowi’s development model is characterized by strong state intervention in the economy while remains formally embedded within an electoral democracy framework. This configuration demands political stability and broad-based social support. Therefore, it incentivizes the state to engage Islamic organizations not as independent overseers of development, but as active partners within the development project itself.
As a consequence, NU and Muhammadiyah have become increasingly embedded within the logic of state-led development, gradually shifting their position from their earlier role as critical actors operating outside formal power structures to becoming part of the architecture of development policymaking itself. Their growing proximity to the state has also drawn them into state-driven patronage network, further constraining their capacity for independent critique. Whereas Hefner’s conception of civil Islam rests on the assumption of a strong and autonomous associational sphere capable of challenging state power, Warburton’s account of New Developmentalism reveals how Islamic organizations have been structurally repositioned as functional components of the state’s development agenda rather than as external watchdogs over it.
One mechanism through which Jokowi exercised control over Islamic Organisation was the granting of mining concessions, a policy that has since been continued under the administration of President Prabowo. Unfortunately, several major Islamic organizations in Indonesia accepted these mining concessions. As a result, public concern has grown, particularly regarding their commitment to the communities that are often most affected by environmental degradation and their consistency in upholding environmental protection.
Their acceptance of the mining concession carries clear implications, particularly regarding their environmental stance. Once Islamic organizations become mine operators, their capacity to issue firm criticism of the environmental consequences of extractive industries is inevitably constrained. While such Islamic organizations may continue to participate in environmental initiatives, these efforts are likely to become depoliticized. Environmental engagement may be redirected toward humanitarian activities—such as disaster relief, community resilience, or tree planting programs—while avoiding structural critiques of environmental degradation.
Their involvement in extractive industries further constrains their ability to speak out, especially on ecological degradation. What appears as a decline of civil Islam, therefore, is not merely an ideological shift but a deeper structural transformation in which religious institutions are absorbed into the machinery of New Developmentalism.
