The State and Religion in Indonesia: The Indonesian Ulama Council’s Authority on Public Health and National Lottery

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI), a Muslim umbrella organisation, and the Indonesian state. It focuses on the dynamic role that MUI has played in public health issues and the national lottery. The two topics were chosen to focus on MUI’s partly contradictory role in its relationship with the state of Indonesia. While MUI has largely played along with the state on issues of public health and family planning, it has stood in opposition to and provided moral resistance to the state on issues of gambling and the national lottery. The analysis uses the theories of Bourdieu on symbolic capital and power, and the resource dependence theory as analytical tools. The article discusses how the state depends on the MUI’s religious legitimacy regarding policies like family planning and COVID vaccination. It has used its symbolic capital to mediate between divine revelation, public morality, and state authority. The MUI has played a paradoxical role through the dual processes of halalisation and haramisation. In contrast to halalisation in areas such as commerce, the MUI has stipulated the haramisation of gambling executed through a national lottery.

1. Introduction

The Indonesian Ulama Council, Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), was established in 1975. The Arabic term ulama denotes the leading scholars of Islamic doctrine and law. The MUI was initially designed as a semi-official body, comprising a variety of Muslim groups tasked with helping the state guide Islamic practice and align it with developmental goals. The MUI was created under President Suharto’s dictatorial regime of New Order (1966–1988) as a “co-opted” religious authority, functioning both as the state’s partner and as an autonomous religious actor.

The significance of the MUI’s authority becomes especially clear when examining the post-Reformasi period (since 1998), in which the state has sought to promote moderasi beragama (religious moderation) as a strategy against extremism and for managing diversity.

Over time, however, the MUI’s role has expanded far beyond its original mandate. It has intervened in demographic policy, shaped consumer behaviour through halal certification, regulated lifestyle products from cosmetics to tourism, and issued fatwas that both legitimise and restrict pluralism. This dual capacity—to support state policy while reinforcing conservative doctrinal boundaries—has made the MUI both a partner of government and a guardian of Islamic orthodoxy.

The analysis of the relationship between the state of Indonesia and the MUI is relevant in itself. At the same time, it also sheds light on the relationship between state and religion on a general basis—or, more specifically, the relationship between a representative organisation of the majority religion and the state authority. In Europe, this could be exemplified by the relationship between the Church of England and the British Government. A Buddhist example could be the relationship between the Sangha Supreme Council and the Thai Government.

Indonesia provides a vivid example of a society where religion constitutes not merely a private matter but represents a public moral order that shapes political legitimacy, under which the MUI functions as both a religious authority and a quasi-state instrument. Understanding this relationship requires not only a historical and institutional analysis but also a theoretical mapping of how religion and state co-produce each other’s authority within complex fields of power.

1.1. The Organisation of MUI

The MUI is neither a state-appointed clerical body nor an association of independently selected Islamic scholars. Instead, it is constituted through a representational and negotiated mechanism, in which authority is aggregated institutionally rather than derived from individual scholarly charisma. Membership in the MUI is drawn primarily from Indonesia’s major Islamic mass organisations (van Bruinessen 2013; Hefner 2000). Alongside these organisational representatives, the MUI also incorporates selected professionals—such as medical doctors, legal scholars, economists, and food-science specialists. These professionals do not represent mass organisations and do not function as religious authorities in their own right; rather, they provide technical expertise intended to support, not replace, juristic reasoning. Their presence reflects the MUI’s self-positioning as an institution capable of addressing modern regulatory and technocratic questions while maintaining ulama supremacy in norm-setting (Hefner 2000).

At the national level, MUI leadership and membership are formalised through the Munas Musyawarah Nasional (National Congress), held every five years. During the Munas, participating organisations send delegates who collectively deliberate on leadership positions and on institutional direction, including fatwa policy. These positions are not filled through competitive elections but through elite bargaining, consensus-building, and organisational negotiation. As a result, the MUI can present itself as the “collective voice of the ulama” while concealing significant ideological diversity and internal contestation. Formally, MUI leadership positions are subject to five-year term limits, aligned with the Munas cycle. In practice, however, elite circulation is limited. Senior figures frequently serve multiple consecutive terms, rotate across commissions, or continue to exercise influence as advisors (van Bruinessen 1996; Saat 2021).

Local MUI branches are composed of ulama nominated by regional Islamic organisations and confirmed through local MUI forums, producing strong vertical integration between the national centre and local councils. While this structure enhances institutional coherence, it also reproduces dominant ideological orientations downward, limiting pluralism within local religious authority (Fealy and White 2008).

MUI members are not formally paid government functionaries. Nevertheless, during the New Order period, the Council relied heavily on state subsidies, facilities, and logistical support, and several of its leaders simultaneously occupied government or quasi-government positions. This arrangement blurred the boundary between religious autonomy and political co-optation, even though MUI membership itself did not carry an official government salary (Hefner 2000; van Bruinessen 2013).

In financial terms, the state has historically controlled the MUI’s purse strings through allocations from national and local government budgets. Since 1998, however, this dependence has been increasingly supplemented—and in some respects rivalled—by income from halal certification and related services. This shift has provided the Council with greater financial autonomy while not entirely severing its ties to state funding (Saat 2021).

Taken together, the MUI’s membership structure, leadership selection, funding arrangements, and financial opacity reveal an institution that is neither fully autonomous nor fully controlled by the state. Its authority is produced through organisational representation, sustained by selective state support, and increasingly reinforced through market-based mechanisms—an institutional configuration that has allowed the MUI to endure, adapt, and expand its influence across shifting political regimes.

1.2. Research Questions

The article, as well as the research question, focuses on the dynamic and sometimes contradictory role that MUI has played in public health issues and the national lottery. As previously stated, the two areas were chosen to focus on MOU’s contradictory role in its relationship with the state of Indonesia.

The research question of the article is as follows: How has the MUI, as a semi-official yet autonomous religious authority, shaped state–society relations in Indonesia regarding public health issues and state lottery since its establishment in 1975?

1.3. Method and Material

This article offers an analysis of the main primary sources within the field, namely the MUI’s formal fatwas. The analysis will, of course, also continually refer to the research literature, which means the relevant academic secondary sources.

1.4. Theoretical Framework

The study will use the theories of Bourdieu and resource dependence theory as analytical tools. None of these theories was specifically reconstructed to analyse this, but they may still be useful in shedding new light on this dynamic relationship. It is the first study to conduct a deep-dive analysis of the dynamics between the MUI and the State of Indonesia regarding the aspects of family planning, health and lottery using these theories as tools and a theoretical framework. In Bourdieu’s theoretical system, symbolic capital and symbolic power are mutually constitutive dimensions of social authority. Symbolic capital refers to the accumulation of recognition, prestige, and legitimacy that arises when other forms of capital—such as religious knowledge, cultural competence, or moral integrity—are acknowledged as socially valid and divinely sanctioned. It is a form of “credit” not in economic terms, but in the sense of collective belief: society “believes in” the legitimacy of certain actors to define truth, morality, or proper conduct. Unlike economic capital (material wealth), cultural capital (education, literacy, or expertise), or social capital (networks and relationships), symbolic capital exists only when others believe in the authenticity and authority of an actor’s claims. In the religious field, this symbolic capital is generated through the continuous interplay between knowledge of the sacred and recognition of holiness or moral trustworthiness by the faithful community.

Symbolic power, in contrast, is the capacity to impose meanings and make them recognised as legitimate, a power that operates through the consent, not coercion, of others. Symbolic power functions because people misrecognise it as neutral or divinely grounded rather than as a form of social domination (Bourdieu 1979, 1991; Bourdieu and Wacquant 2013).

Resource dependence theory (RDT)—first articulated by Salancik and Pfeffer (1978)—offers an analytical lens for understanding the mechanics of interdependence between state and religious institutions. The theory describes how organisations may be in a relationship of mutual dependence when it comes to access to, and control over, resources. This interdependence may be complex, dynamic, and fluctuating. According to RDT, organisations depend on external entities for critical resources—material, symbolic, or informational—and thus engage in strategic exchanges to secure autonomy and influence.

In this case, “organisations” may include states on one hand and religious associations on the other. “Resources” could—among other definitions—refer to different opportunities to exert influence over citizens of the nation in question. Based on this theory, the two entities may enter into strategic cooperation for mutual benefit, even though they have divergent goals, due to their relationship of dependence on each other.

1.5. Structure of the Article

After this Introduction (Section 1), the article continues with results, discussion and analysis of the results, which are covered in Section 2, Section 3 and Section 4. In Section 2 we discuss the historical development of the relationship between MUI and the state in a broader sense, as background for the two main issues of the article. Section 3 and Section 4 are organised thematically on public health (Section 3) and the national lottery (Section 4). The article ends with the conclusion in Section 5.

2. Historic Development of the Relationship Between the MUI and the State of Indonesia Since 1975

The MUI was established in 1975 by President Suharto, an act aimed both at appeasing conservative quarters and securing a peak institution that would concurrently serve the regime’s interests. Envisioned as a national body of Islamic scholars (ulama) who would issue religious rulings and legal opinions (fatwas), the underlying political consideration was to manage Islam within a framework of national development, check the power of the Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), and create the impression that the regime was not anti-Islam. From the outset, the MUI’s establishment reflected the regime’s attempt to incorporate Islamic authority into the state apparatus.

This origin reflects the historical co-optation of the ulama by political power. As Martin van Bruinessen (1990, 1996) argues, this strategy successfully contained potential dissent and used religious figures to align Islam with the state’s political system. The MUI received government funding, leading critics to label it a government “lackey”. This label was reinforced by its support for controversial state policies, such as the birth control programme, despite strong Muslim objections (Liddle 1996b). This strategy was a core part of the Suharto regime’s framework to manage political opposition.

The relationship between the MUI and the Suharto regime, which he named “New Order”, illustrates a dynamic of selective accommodation and moral contestation. Established to align Islamic authority with state developmentalism, the MUI was expected to endorse national policies in the name of social stability and modernisation. This creation of the MUI as a state-sanctioned body for religious guidance is a perfect example of a broader strategy that, as R. William Liddle’s analysis of the New Order regime shows, sought to control and co-opt social forces. Liddle argues that President Suharto used a strategy of “leadership from above” to manage potential opposition, including from Islamic groups, by creating and empowering semi-official bodies like the MUI to legitimise his rule (Liddle 1996b).

After the fall of Suharto and his New Order in 1998, the MUI underwent a profound shift, becoming more assertive and pushing a conservative agenda. This transformation is a key element of what van Bruinessen (2013) has termed the “conservative turn” in Indonesian Islam. As Hefner (2000) argues, the post-Suharto era saw the rise in an increasingly confident and autonomous Muslim civil society, enabling institutions like the MUI to become more independent and assertive in their own right. This assertiveness manifested in highly visible interventions. First, there was the MUI’s turn to theological exclusivism when it restated its fatwa on the deviancy of the Ahmadiyah sect in July 2005, issued the infamous anti-SIPILIS (anti-secularism, pluralism, and liberalism) fatwa in the same year, and did not counter a regional fatwa fanning tensions against the Shia minority. This trajectory of interventions highlights the MUI’s pervasive role in shaping religious discourse, with its move toward more restrictive rulings serving as a direct manifestation of the “conservative turn”. Second, the MUI began contesting the state. The MUI’s assertiveness has been evident in its conflicts with post-Suharto presidents. In the early 2000s, tension surfaced between the MUI and President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur)—an NU figure—regarding the halal status of Ajinomoto seasoning (a brand name for monosodium glutamate). The government reassured the public that consumption was permissible, whereas the MUI called for a complete boycott of the product. This marked the MUI’s shift from acting as a “state spokesperson” to being an assertive organisation in its own right.

Norshahril Saat (2021) argues that MUI’s contemporary assertiveness is explicitly linked to the broader national trend of shariatisation. “Shariatisation” may then be defined as the push for increased Islamic sharia provisions in public life. Saat offers a penetrating interpretation of this transformation by situating it within the larger process of “creeping shariatisation” (syariatisasi merayap)—the gradual institutionalisation of Islamic norms within state structures, economic regulation, and social policy. Saat contends that the MUI’s ultimate goal is not just political or religious, but also capitalistic: it seeks to secure a monopoly role in the lucrative halal certification, Islamic banking, and Muslim finance industries. The MUI’s modus operandi, as Saat explains, represents a fusion of religious authority with capitalist enterprise: fatwas become both instruments of piety and vehicles of economic accumulation.

This push for a sharia-compliant lifestyle is strongly reinforced by the rising middle class and is also driven by non-ulama, politicians, and the business community. The MUI aspires to be the leading organisation providing theological opinions to this growing market. The competition over the lucrative halal market, however, is structurally curtailed by the Ministry of Religion, which in 2014 was designated as the authoritative body for issuing certificates and charging fees.

The relationship between the MUI and the state intensified under President Joko Widodo (Jokowi). During Jokowi’s first term (2014–2019), the state initially attempted to continue past policies that marginalised the MUI’s demands. However, the 2016 and 2017 “Aksi Bela Islam” or Defending Islamic Action movements (protests demanding the resignation of then-Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama) became a turning point. Although the MUI was not directly involved, the protesters leveraged the organisation’s fatwa to claim legitimacy, and the MUI chairman at the time, Ma’ruf Amin, became a key symbol in rallying protesters.

The pervasive role of the MUI demonstrates its successful institutional transformation from a politically co-opted body under Suharto into an assertive power broker that decisively shapes contemporary Indonesian politics and economics. Strengthened by the conservative turn post-1998, the MUI leveraged its moral authority to push a profound national agenda: shariatisation. This agenda, as analysed by Saat, is driven not only by religious ideology but also by the capitalistic goal of securing control over the lucrative halal certification and Islamic finance industries. Ultimately, the state’s accommodation of the MUI, symbolised by President Jokowi selecting former MUI Chairman Ma’ruf Amin as Vice President, confirms that the religious institution has effectively transcended its original advisory mandate, becoming an indispensable force whose influence is now structurally embedded at the highest levels of government.

3. Politics of Public Health: From the Family Planning Programme to the COVID-19 Pandemic

As mentioned earlier, van Bruinessen (2013) has perceptively observed that the historical relationship between the ulama and political rulers (umara) in Indonesia has been marked by both collaboration and tension. He points out that the ulama have often been co-opted by the state to provide religious legitimacy for government programmes, although some ulama feel internal discomfort when their moral authority is used for political ends. While the state has often sought religious endorsement to legitimise its programmes, ulama have simultaneously negotiated their position to preserve theological independence.

This uneasy balance between co-optation and autonomy has shaped the MUI’s institutional identity since its founding in 1975. One of the most revealing illustrations of this dynamic is found in the MUI’s involvement in public health policies, from the national family planning programme under Suharto’s authoritarian regime to the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the democratic era.

Situated within the Bourdieusian frame, MUI’s authority regarding family planning and vaccination cannot be reduced to bureaucratic or administrative power. It must be understood as a form of symbolic capital produced and sustained through its recognised capacity to translate divine norms into the language of state regulation and social conduct. The symbolic capital of MUI is rooted in its religious competence: its ulama possess authoritative mastery over fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), scriptural interpretation, and moral reasoning. This expertise, publicly recognised by the Muslim community and endorsed by the state, constitutes the very foundation of its symbolic capital. However, this capital alone does not ensure influence. It becomes symbolic power only when mobilised in the field of public policy—when the MUI uses its legitimacy to shape national decisions, from halal certification to family planning programmes, from dietary and travel ethics to anti-gambling fatwas.

The MUI’s institutional position—as neither a purely theological body nor a state bureaucracy—gives it a mediating function between divine revelation, state policy, and everyday Muslim life. Its fatwas on family planning and vaccination represent acts of translation and transubstantiation: they transform religious ethics and metaphysical obligations into codified, state-governed practices that regulate the behaviour of citizens and institutions.

MUI plays an intermediary role that performs a delicate double translation. First, it translates Islam’s divine revelation—the ethical and moral imperatives of Islam—into socially actionable norms that the state can recognise and institutionalise. Second, it translates state policies into a moral-religious idiom that renders them acceptable to the Muslim public. That was exactly what happened regarding the policies of family and vaccination. The success of this dual translation depends entirely on the MUI’s symbolic capital—its recognised ability to speak simultaneously the languages of theology and bureaucracy. However, through this process, the MUI also exercises symbolic power: it defines the legitimate form of religiosity within the national space and determines what constitutes Islamic conduct in modern life.

These cases reveal not only how the MUI’s religious authority adapts to shifting political contexts but also how its symbolic capital has been strategically transformed into symbolic power, enabling the MUI to define the religious legitimacy of state-led health interventions.

One of the earliest and most consequential examples of the MUI’s collaboration with the state can be seen in the Indonesian national policy of controlling the birth rate through the family planning programme (KB: Keluarga Berencana). By the late 1960s, Indonesia faced a severe demographic challenge: fertility rates averaged 5.6 births per woman, and population growth was surging. Left unchecked, this growth threatened to overwhelm health systems, education, and economic stability. In response, the government launched the KB programme in 1970 through the newly established National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKN: Badan Koordinasi Keluarga Berencana Nasional), promoting the slogan “Two Children Are Enough” (dua anak cukup). This state-led initiative, however, required religious endorsement to be effective, given the deep-seated cultural and religious values surrounding procreation (Pels 2005). Pels discusses the political dimensions of public health, focusing on the family programme in its historical and political context. In this regard, the state had a strategic need for a religious partner and endorsement to overcome public suspicion and ensure the programme’s success.

Since the vast majority of Indonesians are Muslims, demographic policy could not succeed without religious backing and support to legitimise it. Family planning was initially viewed with deep suspicion by many ulama and pesantren (Islamic boarding school) leaders, as well as grassroots communities. Objections were twofold: theological, in that contraception was seen as interfering with divine will; and political, in that population control was perceived as a foreign agenda imposed on Indonesia. This resistance revealed a deep sociological tension: the government’s technocratic rationality, grounded in demography and economics, clashed with the ulama’s moral authority, rooted in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and traditional notions of divine providence. As Sari (2019) shows, debates among religious scholars during this period were neither uniform nor superficial, nor did they represent an outright rejection of the government initiative; they reflected genuine theological disagreements over whether limiting childbirth violated God’s sovereignty or could be justified through the higher objectives of Islamic law (maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah).

Against this backdrop, the MUI’s involvement became crucial. In 1979, it issued MUI Fatwa No. 13, prohibiting permanent sterilisation methods such as vasectomy and tubectomy, citing their irreversibility. However, as medical knowledge advanced—especially the development of recanalisation techniques that made some sterilisation reversible—the MUI revisited its position. At the 2012 Ijtimāʿ Ulama, it reaffirmed that sterilisation remained forbidden but clarified that reversible contraceptives could be permissible if they caused no harm and served the welfare (maṣlaḥah) of mother and child. This reinterpretation drew directly on a long-standing principle of Islamic legal theory, which holds that a ruling can be altered when its underlying rationale changes. A nuanced theological reinterpretation of the MUI’s fatwa is presented by Qomariyah, who analyses this reinterpretation through the lens of welfare or the public good (maṣlaḥah) and the objectives of Islamic law (maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah). The MUI’s flexible and pragmatic reinterpretation of the underlying Islamic legal principles has enabled it to endorse specific contraceptive methods, such as IUDs (intra-uterine devices; Qomariyah 2018).

Beyond issuing fatwas, the MUI collaborated with the BKKBN, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and Indonesia’s two largest Islamic organisations—Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah—to integrate Islamic ethics into family planning campaigns. Religious leaders were trained to frame birth control as consistent with Qur’anic injunctions to safeguard children’s welfare (Quran 4:9) and Prophetic traditions on maternal health. By embedding family planning within a legitimate Islamic framework, the MUI helped secure broad acceptance of the programme across Muslim communities.

The results were profound. Hull and Mosley, in their article “Contraceptive Use in Indonesia”, provide verifiable evidence of the programme’s demographic success. Fertility rates declined by more than half between 1970 and 2000, and by 2024, Indonesia’s total fertility rate (TFR) stood at around 2.0. Contraceptive prevalence exceeded 60%, while maternal and child health indicators improved significantly (Hull and Mosley 2009). This trajectory illustrates not only the demographic success of the family planning programme but also the MUI’s crucial role in legitimising it.

This early case of family planning established a lasting pattern: the MUI positioned itself as an indispensable intermediary, able to translate contested state agendas into acceptable Islamic terms. It would later extend this authority into the vast domain of halal regulation. Such flexibility exemplifies the MUI’s dual capacity: to support state policy on one hand, while carefully preserving doctrinal boundaries on the other, ensuring its legitimacy both as a partner of government and as an autonomous guardian of Islamic orthodoxy. This episode illustrates how theological authority intersects with demographic policy, confirming that state–religion relations in Indonesia are not confined to the legal domain but operate across intermediate spaces of public health and social regulation (Choudhry et al. 2016, pp. 173–74).

The same logic reappeared decades later when Indonesia faced another public-health crisis—the COVID-19 pandemic. When the virus struck in 2020, the government’s vaccination campaign depended on public acceptance among a population deeply concerned with religious conformity. Once again, the MUI was called upon to provide moral reassurance and religious legitimacy.

The MUI responded by issuing a series of fatwas concerning the halal status of vaccines and the permissibility of vaccination during Ramadan. (MUI Fatwa No. 02 of 2021 2021) declared the Sinovac vaccine (also known as CoronaVac, Vaccine COVID-19, and Vac2Bio) to be suci (holy) and halal (permissible) after a detailed audit of its ingredients and production processes. (MUI Fatwa No 14 of 2021 2021) ruled that AstraZeneca’s vaccine was haram because trypsin from pigs was used during its manufacture yet permitted its use under the principle of dharurah (emergency). The Council reasoned that the pandemic represented an urgent threat to life, that no adequate halal alternatives were available, and that delaying vaccination would cause greater damage or injury (dharar). The government had guaranteed the vaccine’s safety, and medical experts confirmed its necessity.

Further, in (MUI Fatwa No. 13 of 2021 2021), the MUI ruled that receiving an intramuscular vaccine injection did not invalidate fasting, since the vaccine did not constitute nourishment. Vaccination could thus continue during Ramadan, though night-time inoculation was recommended for those physically weakened by fasting. In multiple statements, the MUI emphasised that participating in the government’s vaccination programme was a collective obligation (fard kifayah) grounded in the Islamic principles of protecting life and securing the public good (maṣlaḥah).

The issuance of these fatwas, however, cannot be reduced to mere jurisprudence. They were the outcome of interlocking religious, institutional, political, and epistemological pressures. Theologically, the MUI had to respond to genuine questions among Muslims about the permissibility of biomedical substances and the ritual validity of fasting. In a society where halal observance constitutes a core identity marker, uncertainty risked paralysing public cooperation. The MUI’s intervention thus provided fiqh-based certainty, integrating the scientific logic of vaccination into an Islamic ethical framework.

Institutionally, the fatwas also asserted the MUI’s continuing centrality in Indonesia’s fragmented religious field. Since the Reformasi era, Islamic authority has been diffused among numerous organisations, digital preachers, and transnational movements. An organisation’s silence on a matter as consequential as vaccination could have been interpreted as a loss of relevance. By issuing fatwas on complex biomedical questions, the MUI reasserted its symbolic capital—the authority to define legitimate religious knowledge—and its strategic position between state technocracy and popular piety.

Politically, the MUI also faced pressure from both the state and the Muslim public. The Ministry of Health and Bio Farma formally requested the MUI’s halal audit as a precondition for a national rollout. The state could distribute vaccines, but only the MUI could confer the moral authorisation needed for mass compliance. Simultaneously, from below, pesantren networks and local ulama demanded clarity amid rumours and conspiracy theories circulating on social media. The MUI’s AstraZeneca ruling—declaring the vaccine haram yet allowable in an emergency—illustrates the organisation’s pragmatic balancing between doctrinal purity and societal necessity.

At a deeper level, these fatwas reveal the MUI’s enduring mediatory function between the epistemologies of science and faith. The pandemic produced not only a health crisis but also an epistemic fracture: biomedical discourse spoke in terms of epidemiology, while Muslim citizens sought moral assurance through divine law. The MUI’s invocation of objectives or goals, especially the protection of life (ḥifẓ al-nafs), served to reconcile the two, transforming medical necessity into religious virtue. The decision to permit vaccines with prohibited components under an emergency situation reflects this synthesis—saving lives overrides the prevention of ritual impurity when no alternatives exist.

The MUI’s fatwas on COVID-19 vaccination were at once reactive and strategic: reactive in addressing urgent state and societal demands, strategic in reaffirming the MUI’s symbolic power as the interpreter of divine command within the modern nation-state. Through these fatwas, the MUI once again performed its long-standing role as mediator—bridging state authority, religious ethics, and public welfare. The continuity between its stance on family planning and vaccination underscores a consistent institutional logic: public-health programmes in Indonesia achieve legitimacy only when translated into the moral language of Islam, a translation in which the MUI remains the central author and guarantor.

Beyond issuing fatwas on vaccines, the MUI also assumed a central role in regulating collective religious practices during the pandemic. Through (MUI Fatwa No. 14 of 2020 2020) on the Implementation of Worship During the COVID-19 Outbreak, the Council urged Muslims to temporarily modify the form and setting of their worship to prevent the spread of infection. The fatwa emphasised that communal prayers such as Friday congregations and the Eid al-Fitr prayer could be suspended if the outbreak remained uncontrolled, on the basis of the Islamic legal maxim that protecting life (ḥifẓ al-nafs) takes precedence over ritual continuity.

However, the MUI’s position was not one of absolute prohibition, but of contextual flexibility. While the suspension of collective worship applied to high-risk or uncontrolled areas, the Council allowed congregational prayers to continue in regions deemed safe—provided that strict health protocols were observed. This interpretive flexibility illustrates the MUI’s effort to balance the imperatives of public health with the collective religious life of Muslims, translating medical precaution into an act of pious discipline.

In coordination with the Ministry of Religious Affairs (Kementrian Agama) and supported by public-health authorities, the MUI publicly appealed for social distancing of approximately one metre between individuals during collective prayers, the use of personal prayer mats, and the wearing of masks in mosques. For those in affected zones, both institutions recommended performing prayers at home, including Friday and Eid prayers, until conditions improved. This graduated guidance, rather than a blanket decree, demonstrated the MUI’s sensitivity to regional disparities in infection rates and its role in mediating between scientific rationality and religious obligation.

The nuanced nature of this guidance became even clearer with (MUI Fatwa No. 28 of 2020 2020), which permitted Muslims to hold Eid al-Fitr prayers in open fields, mosques, or prayer rooms (musholla) located in “green zones”, that is, areas where COVID-19 transmission was under control. Conversely, in “red zones” or regions under large-scale social restrictions, the MUI recommended that prayers be performed at home. In both situations, strict adherence to health protocols was mandated. This fatwa represented MUI’s attempt to translate epidemiological risk maps into moral and ritual directives—binding public health categories with religious obligation.

However, this delicate theological flexibility was not always well understood or uniformly implemented. Hidayat Nur Wahid, a member of the national parliament and former chairman of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), publicly criticised what he perceived as the government’s overgeneralisation of the MUI’s fatwa. According to Hidayat, the state’s blanket ban on Eid prayers, even in green zones, “demonstrated the government’s disregard for the MUI fatwa” and constituted an unwise and unjust application of religious restrictions. He lamented that some mosques were locked, the call to prayer silenced, and worshippers barred even when all health protocols were already followed. For Hidayat, this was symptomatic of the state’s unequal treatment of Islamic worship compared with other public gatherings, a situation that undermined the MUI’s mediating authority.

This public dispute illuminated the persistent tension between religious authority and bureaucratic power. While the MUI’s fatwas sought to mediate between faith and science, the government’s bureaucratic enforcement often translated these theological nuances into rigid, standardised rules. The resulting friction underscored how the MUI’s symbolic capital—its recognised authority to define the legitimate relationship between divine command and human action—was both instrumentalised and contested in the public sphere.

In this sense, the MUI’s role during the COVID-19 crisis did not merely involve the issuance of religious rulings but also the active negotiation of symbolic power in the Bourdieusian sense. As Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1991) reminds us, symbolic power operates through the capacity to make certain meanings legitimate and binding in the social world. By sacralising health protocols, redefining obedience to medical advice as an act of piety, and contesting the state’s overreach in worship regulation, the MUI transformed its symbolic capital into a performative power that both legitimised and gave discipline to collective behaviour. The pandemic thus became a revealing moment in which the MUI’s religious authority was simultaneously affirmed, tested, and politicised, showing how theological legitimacy and state rationality coexist in a fragile but interdependent relationship.

The controversy revealed the social costs of social distancing. For many communities, the prohibition of Friday and Eid prayers disrupted not only collective worship but also the spiritual rhythm and social solidarity that sustain everyday piety. The mosque, as a locus of both devotion and communal identity, suddenly became a site of anxiety, negotiation, and sometimes defiance. In rural and suburban areas, some believers defied the ban, arguing that the state had no right to interfere in divine obligations. In others, compliance was reinterpreted as an act of moral discipline and social responsibility. Either way, the pandemic reshaped the social field of religion, producing new forms of pious citizenship that blurred the lines between religious devotion and civic duty (Aji and Habibaty 2020, pp. 673–86; Arifin et al. 2021, pp. 258–71; Basri 2021, pp. 155–70; Mahmuddin et al. 2020, pp. 89–104).

Amid this turbulence, the MUI’s position remained one of moral mediation: defending the sanctity of worship while stressing the necessity of public safety. It performed what Bourdieu (1977, 1991) calls the conversion of symbolic capital into symbolic power—deploying its accumulated religious credibility to redefine obedience to state health policy as an act of pious self-restraint. However, this same symbolic power was also contested, as differing interpretations among politicians, clerics, and lay believers exposed the pluralisation of Islamic authority in post-Reform Indonesia. The COVID-19 crisis thus served as a revealing moment in which the MUI’s symbolic capital operated within a fragmented public sphere: it could authorise, discipline, and protect, but not fully control, the meanings of religious compliance.

In this sense, the pandemic did not merely challenge Indonesia’s public health infrastructure—it redefined the moral economy of faith and governance. The MUI’s fatwas on vaccination and worship restrictions became instruments of both religious persuasion and state legitimacy, illustrating how, in contemporary Indonesia, the governance of health remains inseparable from the governance of the soul.

The MUI’s pandemic fatwas—suspending communal prayers and permitting limited worship with one-metre distancing and masks—show how religious authority translates biomedical directives into Islamic moral terms, aiming to protect life while retaining legitimacy. These measures produced social unease (spiritual isolation and contested enforcement) even as they reframed compliance as a pious responsibility. Seen sociologically, the MUI converted its accumulated religious legitimacy (symbolic capital) into practical symbolic power that shaped what counted as morally permissible public-health behaviour (Bourdieu 1991). At the same time, its resistance to purely technocratic governance models can be read through the lens of public religion and moral discourse—a public–religious intervention that both defended sacred norms and negotiated state power (Casanova 1994; Asad 2003)—and as an ethical counterpublic that re-voiced communal norms amid crisis (Hirschkind 2006).

When the MUI’s role is viewed across different political regimes, it is clear that it does not merely respond to state initiatives but actively participates in giving them legitimacy. From the New Order’s family planning campaign to the democratic state’s COVID-19 vaccination programme, the MUI has repeatedly translated biomedical and bureaucratic agendas into a moral and religious language accessible to the Muslim public. In doing so, it has acted as both a mediator and a moral gatekeeper, shaping the moral boundaries of what counts as “Islamically acceptable” public policy.

The two public health cases—family planning and COVID-19 vaccination—reveal how the MUI’s religious authority has long operated as a mediating force between state rationality and Islamic morality. In both instances, the Council translated state programmes into the moral idiom of Islam, turning biomedical and demographic interventions into acts of piety and social responsibility.

These two cases illustrates that the MUI’s symbolic capital is not merely theological—it is institutionalised faith, a socially recognised ability to mediate between the divine order and the secular governance of the state. The Council’s enduring influence lies in its capacity to present state policies as consonant with divine will, while simultaneously preserving its autonomy to resist state encroachment when moral principles are at stake. In Bourdieu’s terms, the MUI occupies a powerful position within the religious field precisely because it monopolises the legitimate interpretation of Islamic ethics and converts that recognition into symbolic power that organises public morality and legitimates state governance.

Resource dependence theory (RDT) highlights how the dynamics between the MUI and the state was a relationship of mutual dependence. The state required the MUI’s religious legitimacy to secure citizen compliance and moral endorsement for policies such as family planning and vaccination. On the other hand, MUI obtained a unique opportunity to influence and govern how the Muslim majority should behave regarding these specific issues, as well as the prestige this entailed. This dynamic captures the core of Salancik and Pfeffer’s insight: organisations rarely act autonomously but continually negotiate dependencies within power-laden environments.

However, the same mechanism that enabled religious legitimisation of technocratic policy would, in other contexts, become a source of moral resistance. When government initiatives violated the clear boundaries of Islamic law, the MUI’s symbolic capital was redeployed not to endorse, but to confront state authority. It is in this shifting moral landscape that the controversy over the national lottery (Porkas and Sumbangan Dermawan Sosial Berhadiah or SDSB) must be situated. Unlike family planning or vaccination—both justified through the maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah principle of protecting life and welfare—state-sponsored gambling directly contravened the Qur’anic prohibition of maisir (games of chance). The lottery programme thus became a decisive test of whether the MUI’s institutional loyalty to the state could withstand the theological imperative to uphold divine law.

4. The MUI’s Response to the National Lottery

One of the earliest and most revealing controversies that tested the MUI’s moral authority vis-à-vis the state was the New Order government’s national lottery initiatives—Porkas (a sports lottery), which was launched in 1986, and its successor, Sumbangan Dermawan Sosial Berhadiah (SDSB, or social charity lottery), which was introduced in 1989. Both programmes were justified by the Suharto government as creative means of generating funds for sports and social welfare projects, and they enjoyed strong bureaucratic and business backing (Liddle 1996a). However, from the perspective of Islamic ethics, gambling (maisir) constitutes a clear violation of Qur’anic injunctions, and the schemes immediately triggered heated debate among religious leaders and Muslim organisations condemning them as haram (Effendy 2003).

The controversy quickly escalated into a public dispute over the moral boundaries of state policy, exposing deep tensions between religious norms and the government’s developmental pragmatism (Fealy 1998; van Bruinessen 1996). Within the MUI, the escalating debates over the permissibility of Porkas exposed a deep tension between moral conviction and political expediency. It revealed deep divisions between those who prioritised religious principle and those who emphasised political loyalty. Several prominent ulama from Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah rejected the scheme outright as haram, arguing that charitable labels could not disguise its speculative and exploitative nature. Others urged restraint, insisting that participation in government programmes served the broader goal of national development. As Robert Hefner observes, this split illustrated how under the New Order, Islamic institutions were encouraged to “Islamize legitimacy rather than Islamize the state”—endorsing moral governance without challenging state authority (Hefner 2000).

Tensions reached a climax when the MUI’s chairman, Buya Hamka, publicly condemned Porkas as religiously impermissible. His stance angered the regime, which expected the MUI to provide theological endorsement for the policy. Caught between his conscience and the expectations of political obedience, Hamka chose resignation in 1981, declaring that he “could not reconcile faith with political submission” (van Bruinessen 1996; Saat 2021). His departure marked one of the earliest and most visible acts of moral defiance by a religious leader within Suharto’s tightly controlled political system.

When the government reintroduced the scheme under a new name, SDSB, in 1989, public resistance was immediate and widespread. Muslim organisations and preachers condemned the programme as haram, accusing the state of legitimising vice for financial gain. This time, the MUI took an unambiguous stand by issuing a formal fatwa declaring SDSB unlawful, stressing that gambling—no matter how charitable its guise—corrupted public morality and disproportionately harmed the poor (Fealy and White 2008; Hefner 2000). Under sustained social and religious pressure, the government finally ended SDSB in 1993, marking a rare instance where religious opposition forced policy reversal under the New Order.

The tension and struggle between the state and the MUI illustrates the MUI’s symbolic capital and mediatory capacity to render the unseen authority of God. At last the state and the public recognised the MUI’s legitimate voice of religious interpretation This recognition enabled MUI to act as a moral intermediary or religious broker whose pronouncements were binding not because of coercive power, but because they were perceived to embody divine truth. In this sense, the MUI functioned as a translator of transcendence, interpreting Islamic ethical codes and channelling them into institutional frameworks—such as national lottery—thereby converting symbolic legitimacy into practical, bureaucratic authority.

Such a position cannot be sustained by political decree alone. It depends on the continuous public acknowledgement of the MUI’s moral reliability and theological competence—a recognition that Bourdieu would describe as the essence of symbolic capital. Even when the MUI acts in opposition to the state—as it did in its anti-gambling fatwa during Suharto’s regime—it draws on the same symbolic capital to claim a higher moral ground, invoking the authority of revelation against the moral compromise of worldly politics. Conversely, when it collaborates with state programmes—as was the case regarding family planning—it uses its symbolic capital to sacralise bureaucratic objectives, embedding divine authority within the structure of state administration.

In retrospect, the Porkas–SDSB episode signalled an important shift in the MUI’s institutional character. It exposed both the limits of its dependence on state sponsorship and the possibilities of moral autonomy within an authoritarian regime. The SDSB controversy reveals the ambivalent nature of the MUI’s relationship with the state: while born as an instrument of political co-optation, it increasingly used its moral authority to challenge the government when core Islamic principles were at stake. The episode also exposed the limits of Suharto’s long-standing strategy of co-opting religious authority while demonstrating the MUI’s growing capacity to assert its own moral independence. Whereas, in the 1970s, the MUI was primarily seen as an obedient extension of Suharto’s political apparatus—endorsing programmes such as Keluarga Berencana (family planning) and remaining cautious in its public critiques—by the mid-1980s, it began to show signs of autonomy. The controversy surrounding Porkas and its successor SDSB became the clearest example of this transformation.

As Norshahril Saat (2021) argues, these episodes represented an early rehearsal of the MUI’s later assertiveness—a transition from acting as a state proxy to claiming moral leadership in the public sphere. The experience of confronting the regime over gambling policies not only enhanced the MUI’s credibility among the Muslim public but also laid the foundation for its post-reformation activism. These early tensions between accommodation and defiance foreshadowed the MUI’s post-Reformation transformation—when the Council shifted from being the state’s legitimating tool to an assertive moral actor driving the “growing shariatisation” (Saat 2021) of Indonesia’s public sphere. In this sense, the Porkas–SDSB controversy laid the groundwork for MUI’s later confidence to issue binding fatwas on matters ranging from family planning to halal commerce and religious pluralism. It underscores how religious legitimacy, once subordinated to political expediency, could evolve into a potent form of resistance—one that anticipated the MUI’s later assertiveness in areas such as halal certification, moral regulation, and the policing of theological orthodoxy (van Bruinessen 2013; Saat 2021).

Casciaro and Piskorski (2005) reformulated RDT by highlighting that interdependence is rarely balanced. Their model introduced the notion of power imbalance and constraint absorption. Under Suharto’s authoritarian regime, the state exercised dominant formal power over the MUI yet depended on the MUI’s symbolic authority to manage the religious sentiments of Muslim citizens.

Drees and Heugens (2013) emphased how organisations actively shape their dependency environments rather than passively adapting to them. In the post-Suharto era, the MUI has perfectly exemplified this adaptive agency. As the political system democratised and decentralised, the MUI repositioned itself from being a compliant partner of the state to become a semi-autonomous moral authority, negotiating with multiple centres of power—including political parties and bureaucracies. This transformation exemplifies what Drees and Heugens describe as the dynamic management of dependencies across shifting institutional environments.

Seen through the lenses of resource dependence theory (RDT), the oppositional role of MUI regarding these matters exemplifies such a kind of dynamic management of dependencies. Regarding the case of lottery, MUI obtained the opportunity to demonstrate its independence. By pressing the authorities, the balance of power shifting more in MUI’s favour—making the power relationship becoming more equal.

The MUI’s contrasting responses to Suharto’s developmental programmes—endorsement of family planning and resistance to gambling—marked an early template for how the Council would later navigate the intersection of faith, politics, and economics. Its willingness to support state initiatives that could be justified within Islamic jurisprudence while rejecting those that contradicted explicit religious prohibitions revealed a pattern of selective accommodation that endured beyond the New Order. This pattern evolved into a more sophisticated strategy in the post-Reformasi period, when the MUI reinterpreted its moral authority in economic terms through the institutionalisation of halal certification. If, during the 1970s and 1980s, the MUI’s legitimacy derived from its ability to Islamise development discourse, by the 2000s and 2010s, it increasingly drew power from the Islamisation of consumption. In both cases, the Council functioned as a mediator, translating state or market demands into acceptable religious idioms. As Norshahril Saat (2021) notes, the trajectory of “growing shariatisation” within the MUI represents not merely a theological trend but also the consolidation of institutional authority—where once the Council sanctioned state policies, it now sanctions markets and lifestyles. The halalisation of commerce, therefore, can be seen as the economic extension of the same logic that once allowed the MUI to legitimise family planning: transforming religious doctrine into a mechanism of governance, now operating through the market rather than the bureaucracy.

Taken together, the MUI’s contrasting responses to family planning and gambling reveal the dual logic underpinning its institutional behaviour during the New Order. When state programmes could be framed within Islamic ethical reasoning, such as protecting health or improving welfare, the Council provided religious endorsement to strengthen government legitimacy. Nevertheless, when policies directly contravened core Islamic prohibitions, it asserted its autonomy as the authoritative interpreter of divine law. These early experiences—of cooperation with Keluarga Berencana and confrontation in the case of Porkas and SDSB—established a lasting pattern of negotiation between religious and political authority in Indonesia.

Through these selective alliances and oppositions, the MUI gradually positioned itself as both a bridge between state and society and as a moral arbiter of public policy. This dual legacy would later form the institutional foundation for its more complex engagements in the post-Suharto period, where economic interests, particularly in the halal certification industry, further extended its reach beyond theology into the global marketplace of Islamic legitimacy.

In contrast to its role in legitimising state-led public health initiatives, MUI’s opposition to the national lottery underscored its capacity to transform symbolic authority into moral resistance. Here, religious legitimacy was not deployed to align divine law with state policy but to reassert the supremacy of Islamic ethics over economic pragmatism. This episode reveals how the MUI’s symbolic capital—rooted in its role as custodian of divine law—could be reactivated as moral power against the state’s commodification of social virtue. Rather than serving as a legitimating arm of the regime, the MUI became what José Casanova (1994) calls a “public religion,” intervening in the secular domain to redefine the moral limits of state action. In this sense, the MUI’s fatwas against Porkas and SDSB were not merely prohibitive rulings but symbolic acts that defended the sacred boundary between divine command and state expediency—an assertion of moral sovereignty that reaffirmed the Council’s position as both religious authority and “ethical counter public” (Hirschkind 2006).

In retrospect, the Porkas–SDSB controversy stands as a defining episode in the genealogy of MUI’s moral and institutional evolution. It revealed the shifting boundaries of religious authority under an authoritarian developmental state and demonstrated that the MUI’s legitimacy did not rest solely on its capacity to sacralise government programmes but equally on its willingness to place ethical limits on state power. In contrast to its role in legitimising the family planning and public health initiatives, the MUI’s rejection of the national lottery marked a moment when symbolic capital was transformed into moral defiance—a reassertion that divine command could not be subordinated to economic pragmatism. This confrontation redefined the MUI’s position from a compliant extension of the regime into a moral interlocutor capable of disciplining state policy through the language of faith.

Seen in the longer trajectory, the lottery episode foreshadowed the MUI’s later confidence in exercising religious authority beyond state tutelage. The same symbolic capital that once legitimised developmental policies was now mobilised to regulate morality and public virtue, anticipating its post-Reformasi assertiveness in domains such as halal certification, moral policing, and doctrinal orthodoxy. Thus, the Porkas–SDSB case not only illuminated the tension between religious ethics and political expediency but also signalled the emergence of a more autonomous, self-conscious form of public religion—one that intervenes in the secular domain to define the moral limits of power and the sacred boundaries of collective life.

The moral confrontation over Porkas and SDSB revealed that religious authority could not be indefinitely contained within the boundaries of state power. However, as Indonesia moved beyond the New Order’s authoritarian structure, the arena of moral contestation began to shift. The post-Reformasi era witnessed not the decline of the MUI’s authority, but its reorientation—from opposing state excesses to managing moral order through market mechanisms. If, during the 1980s, MUI’s moral capital was defined by its resistance to state-sponsored vice, in the 2000s and beyond, it was increasingly invested in certifying virtue through economic regulation. The Council’s authority expanded from prohibiting haram practices, such as gambling, to defining the parameters of halal in everyday consumption.

The MUI refused to align with the state’s economic interests regarding the national lottery, and instead drawing on its symbolic capital to assert religious sovereignty. The fatwa represented an act of symbolic power because it successfully redefined the moral boundaries of public policy—not through coercion, but through the authority of belief. Conversely, in the case of family planning, the MUI used its symbolic power to legitimate a controversial state policy by reinterpreting religious texts in flexible ways that aligned Islamic ethics with demographic goals. Both instances illustrate how symbolic capital (religious legitimacy) is converted into symbolic power (the authority to shape both moral discourse and state action).

5. Conclusions

This article has analysed the complex and dynamic relationship between MUI and the Indonesian state. By focusing on the two topics of public health and the national lottery, it has provided examples of how the relationship may range from close cooperation to sharp opposition. When it comes to public health, the two entities have largely, although not always, collaborated and had common goals. This has resulted in a radical decline in the birth rate and a high acceptance of the COVID vaccination among the Muslim population. When it comes to the national lottery, the relationship has been the opposite. Due to the ethical rejection of gambling in Islamic theology and tradition, MUI has shown resistance to the state authorities on this issue.

The present study has examined the MUI’s pervasive and divergent roles through multiple interconnected dimensions. Regarding its pervasive role, the analysis demonstrates that the MUI functions as more than a consultative body: it is an indispensable intermediary between the state and society, able to translate contested state agendas into religiously acceptable terms, while simultaneously preserving its independence as the guardian of orthodoxy. In the case of family planning, the MUI’s early fatwas illustrate how theological authority was mobilised to legitimise national demographic policies. By framing contraception within Qur’anic ethics and Islamic jurisprudence, the MUI helped transform suspicion into acceptance, ensuring that the family planning programme became one of Indonesia’s most successful public health policies.

In this article, we have used resource dependence theory (RDT) to highlight the mechanics of the interdependence between the MUI and the Indonesian state. The various topics discussed validate that this interdependence is complex, dynamic and fluctuating. The state depends on the MUI’s religious legitimacy regarding policies like family planning and lottery. At the same time, the interdependence is rarely balanced. The state exercises a dominant formal power, yet it depends on the MUI’s symbolic power to manage the religious sentiments of Muslim citizens.

From Pierre Bourdieu’s perspective, the MUI derives its symbolic capital from its acknowledged mastery of Islamic jurisprudence and moral reasoning, publicly recognised by Muslim citizens and politically endorsed by the state. This recognition allows the MUI to mediate between divine revelation, state authority, and public morality. When aligning with state programmes like family planning, it sanctifies bureaucratic objectives through religious legitimacy; when resisting, as with the anti-gambling fatwa, it asserts theological sovereignty over political interests. In both roles, the MUI transforms symbolic capital into symbolic power—the authority to define what counts as legitimate religiosity and moral behaviour. Through all these combined lenses, the MUI–state relationship can be interpreted as a dynamic field of negotiated dependencies. The state draws upon religious authority to consolidate political legitimacy and moral coherence, while the MUI strategically leverages its religious capital to expand influence and institutional power. The result is neither domination nor separation but a continuously evolving symbiosis of power and piety—a distinctive feature of Indonesia’s religious–political order.