During the opening rounds of this year's parliamentary elections in Indonesia, the Indonesian public voted decisively and sent out a clear message to the Islamist parties of the country: Reform and revise your tactics and discourse or we'll vote you out.

Almost none of the major mainstream Islamist parties in the country made the first hurdle. The PKB (National Awakening Party) of Abdurrahman Wahid's Nahdatul Ulama, the PPP (Development and Unity Party) of Hamzah Has and the dozen or so Islamist parties that fell back on the old cliche of 'Islam in danger' and Islamist symbols and rhetoric were left by the wayside and fell out of the race in the most graceless manner.

Only one Islamist party - the PKS (Justice and Welfare Party) - of Hidayat Nurwahid managed to scrape through with some credible results, thanks to its anti-corruption and pro-reform agenda. The question is how and why?

The PKS is a relatively new phenomenon on the terrain of Indonesian politics. Moreover its arrival on the already overcrowded theatre of Indonesian politics came shortly after the fall of Suharto's regime, which was well known for its anti-Muslim politics and fear of anything with a 'made in Islam' label attached to it. After Suharto fell in 1998, nearly 50 Islamist parties suddenly mushroomed all over the country, a symptom of long-held anxieties and grievances finally coming out into the open.

During the three decades that he was in power, Suharto, a close American ally whose regime was staffed by the so-called 'Berkeley mafia' technocrats (like B J Habibie) trained in the USA and was backed up by the US and other western allies, was keen to keep political Islam at bay. The remnants of the Darul Islam movement of the 1950s and 60s were unceremoniously wiped out, liquidated or domesticated. Political parties were forced to merge together into large unwieldy coalitions, and the army was firmly embedded in the seat of power. Western aid into the country was channelled towards arms contracts and arms purchases, a massive state security apparatus was set up and political Islamists were co-opted by the regime into bodies like ICMI (Indonesian Islamic Intellectuals Organisation).

Anger not contained

Yet none of these measures could contain the frustration and anger of the 220 million Indonesians - an overwhelming majority of whom were poor, alienated and disenfranchised - who felt that Islam was the one discourse that could be used to articulate and communicate the feelings of the downtrodden and subaltern. The more organised movements like the Muhamadiyyah and Nahdatul Ulama played the game of compromise and co-operation, working with the regime on and off to get whatever benefits they could while empowering themselves in the process.

But in the cities and on the campuses of the country a new wave of Islamist intellectuals and activists emerged, who began to develop a new subaltern discourse of resistance that was focused on concrete issues such as poverty, globalisation and uneven power differentials in the country.

Among them were Indonesian activists deeply influenced by the ideas and teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan'ul Muslimin) movement and it was they who first began to merge together traditional Islamic orthodoxy with genuine issues and concerns relation to political economy. This became the nucleus of the PKS.

The most important feature of the PKS is its leadership structure. Made up and led by intellectuals and academics unimpressed by overt displays of piety and fake religiosity, activist-intellectuals like Hidayat Nurwahid have not resorted to the boring old rhetoric of Islamist movements of the past. While claiming that they still want to have an Islamic state, the PKS have made the crucial ideological leap beyond empty religious symbolism to real concerns like unemployment, homelessness and globalisation. It is for this reason that the party does not even look like an Islamic party in the traditional sense. One would be hard pressed to find instances of Islamic garb or rituals among the leaders and members of the PKS.

While attending a Friday khutbah session during jamaah prayers, I was impressed by the title of the khutbah and its seriousness in dealing with painful realities. The PKS ideologue did not waste his time and that of the congregation with the usual boring homilies to virtue and piety, but rather spoke about globalisation, the IMF and the impact of multinationals on the Indonesian economy. But my jaw dropped to the floor when he mentioned the unmentionable: 'class struggle and hegelian dialectics'!

Model for Islamic progressivisim

Indonesia is and remains the biggest Muslim country in the world today. For decades the Indonesians have been struggling to define a normative Islam on their own terms, that is moulded by the Indonesian historical experience and local cultural variables that are unique to the people of the region.

Unimpressed by the ideas and practices of the Wahabis from Saudi Arabia and thus far immune to the currents of Islamic thought elsewhere (Maudoodi is unheard of here, unlike in Malaysia where the man has been bestowed almost a semi-divine status), Indonesians have tried to develop an Islamic tradition that they can call their own.

So the entry and rise of the Justice and Welfare party in Indonesian politics should not come as a surprise to anyone. More importantly, it shows that the spirit of rational enquiry and innovation (ijtihad) is alive and well in a country that has experienced more than three decades of US-backed right-wing military rule.

If Indonesia can do it, then why not the rest of the Muslim world? The Indonesian case shows that a locally-rooted authentic Islamism that is progressive, open and tolerant can be achieved, provided Muslims get their act together and use their God-given brains once in a while. For this, and a host of other reasons, Indonesia is and should be seen as a model for Islamic progressivism the world over.

Despite the breakdown of its economy and the long history of undemocratic rule, the PKS and the progressive Islamic current on the rise in Indonesia shows that Islamism can mean more than empty boasts of Muslim supremacy and a false belief in miracle cures. For the PKS and the Indonesian people whose votes they hope to win, Islam can only be a solution if they manage to turn it into an activist discourse directed towards democracy and reform.