Heri Kusmanto
This article presents a comparative political model of Islamic societies between Indonesia and Malaysia. The political model of Islamic development was primarily determined by the ideology and the leader’s thought and strategies, although the strategy is often meant as the preaching efforts. In Indonesia, the preaching of Muhammadiyah is different with Al-Washliyah. Muhammadiyah is the Islamic society which struggles the religion purification and modern thoughts without depending to the MazhÄÂb, while the Al-Washliyah keeps using the MazhÄÂb as the ideological thoughts. The both Islamic societies use a holistic preaching strategy and keep their political distance against the government. This is contrary with the Pertubuhan Kebajikan Islam Malaysia (Perkim), an Islamic society that has significant role in Islamic development and preaching activity in Malaysia. There is no political distance between the Perkim and government. In fact, most of the Perkim leaders are part of the government. Those difference in phenomena are interesting to analyze especially the difference in ideology and developmental politics through Forum Group Discussion (FGD) approach. The findings showed that the difference of political orientation and leader’s thought were the main factors of the difference of developmental politics in regard with the political distance against the government which was as a part of the strategic development. Differently, the absence of political distance between Perkim and the government indicates their poor political involvement, because it is merely focused on the Islamization efforts.