This paper examines how Islamic organizations influence policy making in Indonesia. Since the female body has often become a key battleground for Islamic values, state boundaries, and morality in Indonesia, I intend to examine the recent debates on the elimination of sexual violence in order to understand how Islam influences policy-making. Islamic civil society has been divided over this bill. Both conservative and progressive movements have mobilized their followers in favor of or against the bill in the name of Islam. Islamic conservatives have framed their issues to be pro-family values while Muslim progressives have emphasized the imoor tan ever of women’s rights. I examine how Islamic teachings are used by these organizations to support both fundamentalist Islamic values that promote patriarchy and gender inequality and progressive Islamic ideas that support gender equality. Many scholars argue that Muslim women with the lack of economic opportunity are likely to support fundamentalist ideas that are in line with gender inequality. Based on my fieldwork in Indonesia, I argue that such pollical economy-based explanations do not explain why some Muslims support fundamentalist ideas while others not. In fact, both movements are mainly driven by middle class professionals. In this paper, I seek an answer by examining what shapes their approaches to Islam.
