Prabowo keeps his distance from Indonesia's top clerical council

The Indonesian Ulema Council, better known as MUI, was set up by Suharto in 1975 to gather the country's Islamic scholars, including those from Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, under one roof. It issues fatwas, religious rulings on what Muslims should and should not do, and for years it ran the system that decided which products could be sold as halal. Ary Hermawan and Norshahril Saat of Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute write in Fulcrum that President Prabowo Subianto is now keeping it at arm's length.

Much of their evidence is about who turns up where. Prabowo skipped the opening of the 8th Indonesian Muslim Community Congress in late July, having attended the anniversary of the political party PKB the day before. He also missed MUI's 2025 national congress, the meeting that picks its leadership. Presidents used to make a point of attending: Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono opened the 2005 and 2010 congresses, Joko Widodo closed the 2015 one, and Ma'ruf Amin opened the 2020 meeting as vice-president. Prabowo did go to the inauguration of MUI's new executive council in February.

Attendance is the signal; the rest is structural. No MUI figure sits in Prabowo's cabinet, while people tied to NU and Muhammadiyah do. MUI has also lost the profitable part of halal certification, after the government confirmed that the licensing and regulation belong to the state. The council has not been quiet in return. It criticised Prabowo's offer to bring wounded people from Gaza to Indonesia and his part in the international board set up for Gaza, saying the arrangement mainly serves American and Israeli interests. Its own congress this year sent the government 12 recommendations, among them a sharia version of Danantara, the state investment fund.

The authors do not expect a clean break. With his approval down from 81 per cent in November to 51 per cent in July, Prabowo may want the council's blessing again later. But they expect MUI to sit below NU and Muhammadiyah, whose tens of millions of members can be turned into votes.

Why it matters

MUI still reaches ordinary life through halal labels, guidance that Islamic banks follow, and its opinions on new laws, so how close it sits to the president decides how much those opinions weigh in Jakarta. If you run a food or cosmetics business, the practical point is that the paperwork now sits with the state agency and not the council. Watch whether Prabowo starts showing up at MUI events again, because that would mean he needs conservative Muslim backing more than he did this year.