THE CONTESTATION BETWEEN CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE GROUP IN GAINING SYMPHATY FROM ISLAMIC COMMUNITY

Abstract

The recent development of conservative ideology shows the response of society to the surrounding social, cultural, and political conditions. This is a new model of showing the enthusiasm of the community in carrying out their religious teachings. Yet, it can also be understood as a form of religious communities’ failure in understanding their religious teachings. Apart from that, this is also about how the actions and group movements carried out by conservative and progressive groups respond to the social conditions mentioned earlier. The new Islamic mass organizations that have emerged recently generally reinforce the ideology of religious radicalism and extremism. They tend to dominate changes in social, religious, and political life in Indonesia, such as the expansion of aspirations for the formalization of Islamic law, rejecting Western ideology with its modernism, cleansing society’s behavioral issues: drinking, immoral acts, and purifying Islamic teachings which are considered to have mixed with culture outside of Islam, as well as undermining Islamic tradition.