Sarekat Islam

The Sarekat Islam is an organization founded in 1911 under the original name of Sarekat Dagang Islam ( “Association of Muslim merchants”) by traders in batik of district Laweyan in Surakarta in central Java , in what was then the Netherlands Indies . The purpose of Sarekat Dagang Islam was to give more power to the Javanese traders against the power wholesalers Chinese ¹ .

The organization changed after one year its name Sarekat Islam (1912) and politicized to defend the right of Indonesians against the colonial power ¹ . Its most famous leader is Hadji Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto, better known as HOS Cokroaminoto. The latter had three disciples who would later become famous: Soekarno , one of the great figures of Indonesian nationalism, Semaun, the future leader of the Indonesian Communist Party and Kartosuwiryo, who unleashed in 1948 a separatist movement fighting for the creation of a Indonesian Muslim state based on sharia , Darul Islam.

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