Several faith-based Muslim organizations in the world have been transforming into more progressive socio-religious movements. What are the factors that explain these progressive changes? I will attempt here to discuss these changes through a comparative historical analysis of the two of the Indonesia's largest Islamic organizations: the Nahdlatul Ulama (Nil founded in 1926) and the Muhammadiya (founded in 1912) with commonalities to each other and very briefly to hizmet social movement that had originated (1966) in Turkey. It concludes that the NU was able to successfully reconcile its socio-religious positions due to the presence of a strong charismatic moral authority leader, and the tolerant institutional culture within the organization. However, socio-religious reforms within the Muhammadiya were not all fully reconciled. Even if Muhammadiya movement too has, in my view, transformed in numerous ways with constructive contributions, it failed to bring about an entire organizational consolidation despite its Rational-legal authoritative/ centralized/hierarchical leadership, intellectual talents, and many achievements but missing a strong charismatic moral leader, tolerant institutional culture and reconciling opposition. The analysis here does make theoretical contributions on the role of socio-religious-intellectual leadership within Islamic movements and the likelihood of Islamic groups to adopt inclusive political norms such as democracy, religion-state separation, and tolerance towards all religious minorities.
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