Yoshie, lurking on this list, I have often learned much from you and have tremendous regard for your sheer energy.
But your statement above is most bothersome, as is your extract, omitting the issue which Tan Malaka was addressing -- the attitude to nationalist movements in the colonial and semi-colonial lands, within which he evidently located Sarekat Islam specifically and pan-Islamism generally.
Tan Malaka is not of much use to anyone -- anymore than Lenin -- if you treat Tan Malaka the way the M-L'ists treated Lenin, as some kind of textbook of settled knowledge and practice.
Yes, if you take to heart what Tan Malaka was actually doing -- giving a historical analysis of pan-Islamism, with specific reference to the Dutch East Indies, in that specific period. Not that his analysis then was right (although I happen to think he was), but that his historical and specific approach to the matter was right. (Although take into account Roy's contribution to the debate on the Eastern Question, esp that bit about "we thought that simply because they were all politically, economically, and socially backward, we could lump them all together, and deal with this problem as though it were a general problem")
You can't apply Tan Malaka's assessment for then to the Indonesia (or the world) of now. Also, pay attention to the people that were his focus -- the ordinary Muslims and their culture -- and his almost self-evident observation that you can't ignore that culture and go around with a militantly anti-religion stance and hope to get anyone to listen to you. In that, it is similar to what Hamid Dabashi said on Doug's radio show that Islam is a central component of Iranian life, which is not to say that Khomeini's take on it is.
Put it another way and ask yourself what you think is the equivalent of Sarekat Islam or pan-Islamism in Indonesia today? Would that be Nahdatul Ulama, or the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, or the Laskar Jihad, or the Jemaat Islamiyah, or Muhammadiyah, to take just a few?
Oh yes, and don't forget that some of those descendants of Sarekat Islam -- for Sarekat Islam was of course a big umbrella -- were among the perpetrators of the post-1965 massacres. Just as some other descendants were apparently in collaboration with the Anglo-American destabilisation of Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s.
And you can also be pretty sure that Tan Malaka would have little truck with the Iranian regime -- which probably would have marked him for early execution.