OBEDIENCE TO ULIL AMRI AND THE REJECTION OF LAW NO. 52 OF 2009: SALAFI GROUPS, CITIZENSHIP, AND FAMILY PLANNING IN LEGALIST AND CONSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This article examines the tension between the professed obedience of Salafi Islamic groups in Indonesia (often labelled “conservative” or “Wahabi”) to the legitimate ruler (Ulil Amri) and their rejection of Law No. 52 of 2009 on Population Development and Family Development, together with its family-planning (Keluarga Berencana/KB) programme. Using doctrinal-normative legal research complemented by conceptual analysis, the study reads this tension through two lenses: the legalist theory of law associated with Han Feizi, which treats enforceable law backed by a capable ruler as the basis of social order, and the constitutional framework of the 1945 Constitution and Pancasila. The article presents the groups’ own position in their terms their distinction between birth limitation (tahdid al-nasl), which they reject, and birth spacing (tanzim al-nasl), and their reliance on a pronatalist reading and the Lajnah Daimah fatwa alongside the competing view that family planning is permissible, as affirmed by the MUI, Nahdlatul Ulama, and Muhammadiyah. It argues that the rejection sits in tension with the constitutional duty of equal submission to law (Article 27) and with the groups’ own doctrine of obedience, but that the category is internally diverse and that any state response is bounded by the constitutional freedoms of religion, expression, and association. The study concludes that, rather than the coercive control a strict legalist logic would imply, a constitutionally constrained approach combining law enforcement with dialogue and civic education is more defensible. The contribution of these groups to demographic trends is treated as a hypothesis requiring further empirical study.