Sarekat Islam or Syarikat Islam ( 'Islamic Association' or 'Islamic Union'; SI) was an Indonesian socio-political organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century during the Dutch colonial era. Initially, SI served as a cooperative of Muslim Javanese batik traders to compete with the Chinese-Indonesian big traders. From there, SI rapidly evolved into a nationalist political organization that demanded self-governance against the Dutch colonial regime and gained wide popular support. SI was especially active during the 1910s and the early 1920s. By 1916, it claimed 80 branches with a total membership of around 350,000.
SI was eventually embroiled in an internal conflict between the Islamic moderates and the radical communist members who urged firmer anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist actions. In 1921, the organization was split and communist members founded a separate entity known as the Sarekat Islam Merah (Red Islamic Association) which was absorbed into the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). The split led to the decline of the organization, and the original SI later turned into a political party, the (PSII). PSII was fused into the United Development Party (PPP) in 1973.
Today, SI is credited as the first large-scale Indonesian nationalist organization (or mass organization, ormas) and the largest Muslim political organization in the pre-independence era.
History
Formation
The predecessor of Sarekat Islam was Sarekat Dagang Islam (Islamic Trade Association, SDI) which was based on a movement in 1909 in Batavia (today's Jakarta) and 1910 in Buitenzorg (today's Bogor), West Java. This movement was formed by a journalist Tirto Adhi Soerjo who was a member of priyayi (Javanese noble class). Tirto aimed the movement to bring together small-scale pribumi (indigenous) traders and Arab traders unified by the common Islamic religion to advance their economic interests and compete with the Chinese-Indonesian big traders. The movement was also a reaction to the intensified activities of the foreign Christian missionary in Indonesia, which strengthened the position of Islam as a rallying point of native Indonesians' struggle against the foreign encroachment. The movement sparked the interest of Samanhudi, a successful batik trader based in Surakarta. In 1911, Samanhudi founded SDI in the city of Surakarta with the help of Tirto.
Expansion
On August 12, 1912, SDI was briefly suspended by the colonial government after some conflicts between and Chinese and the occurrence of anti-Chinese riots. After the restriction was lifted, SDI renamed itself to Sarekat Islam on September 19, 1912, in Surabaya. On January 26, 1913, the first party congress was held in Surabaya which gathered tens of thousands of participants. The congress was marked by the rise of Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto as the new leader of SI. Under the charismatic leadership of Tjokroaminoto, who was hailed as a messianic figure or Ratu Adil, the organization rapidly expanded the network throughout Java and later spread to the outer islands. SI also began publishing periodicals in the Surabaya, Semarang, Bandung, and Batavia branches. Membership of SI rapidly grew from 4,500 in April 1912 to 150,000 in April 1913 and eventually 350,000 in 1916. Other report estimated the membership to be 800,000. SI itself claimed 2 million members in 1919.
The rapid increase of SI membership led to the expansion of the supporter base to a wide array of social classes. Although SI leaders generally espoused Modernist Islam, it became heterogeneous in terms of demographics and ideology of its grassroots members. While the initial supporter base was a petty bourgeoisie of religiously devout aliran (societal stream) of santri, the expansion had led to the inclusion of peasantry of abangan whose Islamic faith was mixed with mysticism and pre-Islamic animist beliefs, as well as members of priyayi nobility class who had secular outlooks. The leadership of the organization gradually moved from small-scale merchants of the SDI era to the intelligentsia of priyayi origin with Dutch-language education.