A Biographical Study of A “Salafi Political Jihadist”: Dr. Fauzi

A biographical study through the lens of Mills’ sociological imagination provides an interesting understanding of Dr. Fauzi AR, an Islamist political activist who became a salafi jihadist. Fauzi was born in Yogyakarta in 1956 from a devout Muhammadiyah family, and grew up in Kauman, Yogyakarta, the heartland of the modernist Islamic mass organisation, Muhammadiyah. He was educated in Muhammadiyah schools and qualified as a medical doctor. His political career included chairmanship of the Islamic United Development Party (PPP), which he maintained when he joined Laskar Jihad, a salafi-wahabi paramilitary group, during the inter-religious conflict in Maluku in 2000. Fauzi became a reformed “maverick jihadist”, that is a person who is unpredictable yet competent. He remained the chairman of PPP during his jihadi involvement, which was unusual, as participation in partisan politics (hizbiyya) is forbidden by salafi doctrine. He remained a heavy smoker until his end of life in 2021, although smoking is forbidden (haram) by religious decree (fatwa), as declared by salafi clerics. When the salafi movement fragmented, he created his own “third way” by conducting regular salafi religious sermons at his home but somehow maintained good relations with Ja’far Umar Thalib, the former commander of Laskar Jihad, who was also an excommunicated salafi leader. Finally, Fauzi made an unprecedented move while a salafi activist by supporting, and campaigning for, his wife in an unsuccessful bid for a seat in national parliament as a member of the secular-nationalist party, Gerindra, in the 2009 election.