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Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) is Indonesia’s largest Islamic group, and has long served as a democratic force in the Muslim-majority country. It is a powerful social and cultural organisation with more than 40 million members nationwide and thousands of Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) directly managed by or associated with it.
On 31 August 2026, it elected Miftachul Akhyar (Kiai Miftach) as Supreme Leader (Rois ‘Am)) and Abdul Hakim Mahfudz (Gus Kikin) as Chair (Ketua Tanfidziyah) at its national congress in Jombang, East Java. The new leaders of NU’s main leadership bodies — the consultative council (syuriyah) and the executive body (tanfidziyah) respectively — will lead the organisation until 2031.
This congress was the first to be held under Prabowo Subianto’s presidency. It has been widely seen as another sign of a deepening state co-option of the Islamic group
This is indicated by allegations of elite orchestration involving members of Prabowo’s inner circle at the State Palace to place Kiai Miftach and Gus Kikin in key NU leadership posts. Shortly before their election, they were cast by congress participants as the ‘paket istana’ (palace package), indicating their status as the candidates favoured by Prabowo’s government.
This alarming trend suggests greater engagement from NU’s grassroots forces is needed to pressure NU elites to maintain the organisation’s past role as a defender of democratic norms and a promoter of civil Islam.
Deepening state co-option
As a major Islamic organisation, NU is no stranger to power politics. Throughout its 100-year history, NU has used politics, in one way or another, to expand its influence in society.
Under the New Order, NU maintained a relative distance from the state. Its then leader, Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), maintained the organisation’s independence despite repeated attempts by the Soeharto administration to co-opt it.
Under Gus Dur, a traditionalist Muslim widely regarded as an icon of civil Islam, NU was often critical of the New Order state, which was then moving closer to modernist Muslims within the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI), an organisation founded by Soeharto’s protégé, BJ Habibie.
In the last decade, however, NU appears to have moved much closer to the state. While NU elites, including Gus Dur, engaged in practical politics after the 1998 Reform, the Islamic group now seems focused on forging a stronger alliance with the ruling elite.
The trend was triggered mainly by the intense politicisation of ideological competition among Islamic groups on social media during the 2014 presidential election, which pitted Prabowo against his then enemy (and later ally) Joko Widodo (Jokowi).
Jokowi faced sectarian campaigns labelling him as a nominal Muslim, if not even an anti-Islam candidate. These attacks were launched by more scripturalist and hard-line Muslim voters, who favoured Prabowo.
Their negative campaigns forced Jokowi to build an alliance with NU. A moderate Islamic organisation, NU saw Prabowo’s main supporters among Muslims at the time – mainly Islamist groups linked to transnational Islamic movements such as Hizbut Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood – as their traditional ideological enemies.
Jokowi’s cemented his coalition with NU with a series of major decisions: to tap then NU supreme leader Maruf Amin as his running mate in the 2019 presidential election; to appoint then leader of NU’s paramilitary group, Banser, Yaqut Cholil Qoumas (Gus Yaqut), as religious affairs minister; to reportedly back Yahya Cholil Staquf (Gus Yahya) in NU’s 2021 national congress; and to grant NU a lucrative coal mining concession in 2024
The resulting alliance was instrumental in securing Jokowi’s reelection and neutralising sectarian attacks from hard-line Islamist groups against him. It also strengthened NU’s political position vis-à-vis other Islamic organisations.
Prabowo’s ‘takeover’ of NU?
Prabowo may have followed the same playbook in his efforts to bring NU under his control. According to Tempo, several Cabinet members and senior Gerindra Party politicians met at the State Palace to discuss the NU congress in the second week of August.
Among the attendees were Social Affairs Minister Syaifullah Yusuf, Agrarian Spatial Planning Minister Nusron Wahid, Religious Affairs Minister Nasaruddin Umar, State Secretary Prasetyo Hadi, Deputy State Secretary Juri Ardiantoro, Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya, and Gerindra politician and House deputy speaker Sufmi Dasco. Of these, Syaifullah Yusuf, Nusron Wahid, and Nasaruddin Umar are formally affiliated with NU.
Nasaruddin Umar was rumoured to have intentions to contest the NU leadership race, but he later announced he would focus on his ministerial job in Prabowo’s cabinet – and NU prohibits its chairman from holding public office while serving their term.
With Nasaruddin out of the race, the State Palace reportedly settled for Kiai Miftach and Gus Kikin.
According to Tempo magazine, the meeting also reportedly discussed the need to change the election mechanism for the NU chairman by restoring the mandate of the Ahlul Halli wal ‘Aqdi (‘The People of Loosening and Binding’, AHWA) council to appoint both the supreme leader and the chairman. Previous congresses had been more democratic, with congress participants electing the chairman.
The congress shortlisted five chairman candidates to be submitted to AHWA through a voting mechanism: Gus Kikin (the head of NU’s East Java chapter) with 472 votes, Zulfa Mustofa (NU deputy chairman) with 262 votes, Abdussalam Sochib (NU deputy secretary general) with 261 votes, Gus Yahya (the incumbent) with 258 votes, and Abdul Ghafar Rozin (head of NU’s Central Java chapter) with 155 votes.
AHWA members, who include Kiai Miftach, agreed to reappoint Kiai Miftach as supreme leader and appoint Gus Kikin as chairman. This seemed to confirm the widely circulated rumour that these two were the paket istana candidates.
Unsurprisingly, the State Palace and NU both denied claims that Prabowo had interfered with the NU leadership race.
Gus Yahya’s inevitable downfall
For Jokowi’s ally, Gus Yahya, the first incumbent NU leader to lose a re-election bid in years, his defeat may have seemed inevitable.
In an interview with Tempo, Gus Yahya said he had heard that several ministers and Gerindra Party politicians were pushing for the election of candidates endorsed by the State Palace, though he was sceptical that Prabowo was behind such a move. He also claimed in the same interview that his rivals had used dirty tricks, such as bribery and forgery, to rig the race.
In any case, his downfall at the congress marked the culmination of months of attempts by rival factions within NU, led by Kiai Miftach, to oust him.
Miftach, with the support of NU-affiliated ministers such as Syaifullah Yusuf, had issued a letter in 2025 to remove Gus Yahya from his leadership position over allegations of mismanagement, financial secrecy, and ties to pro-Israeli figures.
Gus Yahya refused to accept Miftach’s decision, claiming that his ‘illegal’ dismissal was triggered by his disagreements with Miftach over the management of NU’s mining concession in East Kalimantan. The conflict was only resolved after the two sides agreed to hold a national congress to elect a new leader earlier than scheduled – this was the congress just held.
The attempt to delegitimise Gus Yahya’s leadership came amid legal trouble faced by several NU figures close to him, including his brother, Gus Yaqut, who is now on trial, facing corruption allegations related to hajj quota management.
In other words, the political walls were already closing in on Gus Yahya long before he was toppled in Jombang.
The power of NU’s grassroots
Prabowo’s alleged interference with the NU leadership race reflects both the power and limitations of NU.
This local and traditionalist Islamic organisation now faces stiff ideological competition from global and modernist Islamic groups that have gained strong followings among Indonesian Muslims, especially in urban areas.
Prabowo needs NU mainly to cushion his government from attacks by pro-democracy civil society forces concerned about his authoritarian tendencies and ambition to recentralise political and economic power. NU, meanwhile, seeks to retain its access to state power in order to maintain its ideological dominance among Indonesian Muslims.
This symbiotic relationship, however, is dragging this organisation of Muslim clerics further into the spiral of Indonesia’s oligarchic politics, in which elites jostle and coalesce over state resources at the expense of the public interest. This will significantly damage NU’s already weakened reputation and undermine its ability to fulfil its once-proud role as a defender of freedom and civil rights.
With NU elites entangled in power politics within and outside NU, Indonesia can only hope that grassroots, non-structural NU forces, such as the Jaringan GusDurian (GusDurian Network) community and members of the Islam Bergerak (Islam in Motion) movement, can safeguard what is left of NU’s ideals as a traditionalist but progressive Islamic group.
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