Tarbiyah movement has been growing and participating into political realm from 1999 up to the very recent time. Political condition after New Order facilitated these organizations to grow and in turn formed a political party. Its basic masse lays on the youth members in Senior high school and foremost in the campuses. The characteristic of this organization is based on the brotherhood where they call the member with ikhwan. Actually, this movement is not relatively new. It rooted to the effort of the Islamist activist since 1970’s as the respond to the political oppress by New Order by formed Islamic teaching groups in campuses.
When the party is getting bigger, their social and activities are extensive. Scope of the activities is growing to emanate into society. The existence of the movement became clear. Further, they brought to the mass self identifications in the forms of Islamic thought, political thought and dress code. One of the common identities for the followers is the name of Ikhwan. As the result ikhwan became identification of the Tarbiyah movement. In certain extent, the calling of ikhwan has been becoming popular in the society which refers to the Tarbiyah movement.
This phenomenon in turn became an identity formation. The ikhwan itself in turn refers to the member of the Tarbiyah movement. This new ikhwan associates with the political thought and dressing code. One can easily refer their ikhwan to sometime to dressing and sometime to the political code. The easiest way was by identification of certain symbol which attached to the personal performances. This trend tends to the popularity of ikhwan in the political vocabulary.
It is important to a group to reveal its identity to distinguish their distinctiveness among other social groups. In Indonesia the identification to the religious groups has already exist for example Nahdiyin for Nahdlatul Ulama members or kaum sarungan to santri.
The term of Ikhwan in Indonesia can be rooted to development of Sufism in Indonesia. Up to now, the Sufism has been growing in various forms from traditional into urban Sufism. They will call their proponent as ikhwan. These ikhwan, then, used to call every member of Sufism group members which linked to one Sufism group. Due to its harmonious character and self exercise the term of ikhwan in these groups is not really popular into society. It would rather recognize by calling sufi.
In summary, the term of ikhwan is not only refers tarbiyah movement but also can be rooted to the Sufism group. However, together with the intensification of the political involvement of tarbiyah movement into politic, in turn the ikhwan has been popularized as social identification to the political thought not only to Sufism.
