This paper examines how Indonesian university students in the Muslim Students' Association (HMI- Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam) turn to various teachings of Muslim thinkers and intellectuals to invigorate their activism and reinterpret religious values for their present situation. While some Indonesian youth are looking to a range of popular preachers and religious influencers that have risen to fame through social media, students who join HMI are instead primarily sharing PDFs of writing by various Muslim intellectuals and scholars via WhatsApp to train new cadres and to serve as the basis for their organizational discussions. Some of these are from Nurcholish Madjid (1939-2005), referred to as Cak Nur, an Indonesian Muslim intellectual and former student leader of HMI central in drafting the organization's core values, literally "values of struggle" (nilai dasar perjuangan), or the ideology that forms the foundation of the organization and is worth persevering for. Yet, they also draw on thinkers like the Iranian revolutionary and sociologist Ali Shariati and do not hesitate to consider work from Western scholars (political scientists, anthropologists) who have written about Islam and politics. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data among student activists, I examine the ways in which these eclectic ideas inform their approach to religiously-based political activism today. I also discuss some of the variation among students in their perspectives on the religious ideologies espoused by these intellectuals, as some activists emphasized their relevance yet many also observed a declining interest among their peers.