Associate Professor Greg Fealy and Dr Sally White are researchers in the Department of Political and Social Change at ANU. This article is a shortened version of a scholarship article that the two authors are writing with Burhanuddin Muhtadi on FPI and religious polarisation in Indonesia. The authors would like to thank the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for providing funding through the Southeast Asia Rules-Based Order (SEARBO) Program that enabled this research to take place.