Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation picks a chairman this month

Nahdlatul Ulama, or NU, has tens of millions of members and runs religious schools, clinics and charities across the country. Late this month it holds its 35th congress in East Java to choose a new executive chairman. A'an Suryana of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore argues that the vote is really a choice between two kinds of NU: one comfortable close to power in Jakarta, and one that answers to the villages and boarding schools where its members live.

On the establishment side sits Yahya Cholil Staquf, the current chairman, who wants a second five-year term. Beside him is Nasaruddin Umar, the Minister of Religious Affairs and a man close to President Prabowo Subianto, who has stayed quiet in public while turning up at NU events, including a leadership programme from 22 to 26 July. Against them stand candidates rooted in the branches, among them Muhammad Yusuf Chudlori and Abdussalam Shohib, who run pesantren, and the current deputy chairman Zulfa Mustofa. The rules make the branches decisive: a candidate needs nominations from at least 99 of NU's roughly 400 to 500 branches just to stand, and Chudlori has 23 so far.

Suryana says support for Yahya has thinned for two reasons. Members complain he spent his term selling a moderate "Humanitarian Islam" abroad while their own welfare went unattended. The sharper wound is closer to home: NU accepted a coal mining concession in Kalimantan, and members who live with the damage from mining took it badly. None of this is a fight about doctrine. Every candidate backs Islam Nusantara, the idea that Indonesian Islam is shaped by local culture. It is about who NU stands with.

Why it matters

If NU touches your life through a school, a clinic or a mosque, the new chairman decides how that money and influence get used, and whether the organisation keeps taking business like the coal concession. For the government, an establishment win keeps a friendly partner with enormous reach; a grassroots win means Prabowo has to negotiate with a group he could once count on. Watch the branch nominations in the next two weeks, because the shortlist is settled before anyone votes.