The group's focus on personal piety and integrity includes daily readings of the Koran and prohibitions against all vices. Rahmat says the organization is so broke that neither he nor its office can pay the phone bills. Suharto prohibited politics on campuses so many students turned to campus mosques to express their aspirations. Suharto's fall only added to the strength of mosque-based student activists at the expense of a secular movement. Secular activists regret Pratama's influence.
Many students say supporters of the mosque-based groups now control most campus senates.
But veteran activists wonder about those days in 1998 when Indonesia watched them with hope. Instead, disagreements between the students only intensified. By the last day of the three-day occupation, all UI students had left because they suspected politicians were manipulating the protest. They regrouped for demonstrations rejecting a parliamentary session that secured the presidency for Suharto's prot g , B.J. Habibie, and the June 1999 elections, but the deep cracks in their movement proved impossible to contain. After all, flawed or not, being a student is anyway a transient identity.