FRESH TAKE ON ANCIENT FAITH
A Muslim organisation says the nation should follow its cultural form of the religion that is moderate and tolerant
Indonesians say their culture makes for a very different Islamic experience,
JAKARTA // Through sermons and public debate, the Indonesian Muslim organisation Nahdlatul Ulama (Awakening of the Ulama) aims to promote the concept of Islam Indonesia-style.
Islam Nusantara, or Islam of the Archipelago, argues that Indonesia is culturally different from the Middle East and should follow its own, broad version of Islam.
Islam Nusantara emphasises moderation and supports indigenous cultures and the rights of women. For the 40 million followers of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), it also means clear distance between them and extremism.
“One of the difficulties with the Middle East is that it has too great a history,” says Yahya Cholil Staquf, NU’s secretary general.
“It is difficult for people not to admire the past. The fortune we have here is that we are less aligned with that mentality. By raising the idea of Islam Nusantara, we call upon different Muslim societies everywhere in the world to connect themselves to the actual reality of their social and cultural environment, to maintain a social bond and not to delete it for some alien idea. The Salafist way of thinking is that Muslims must abandon anything that is considered un-Islamic.”
A traditionalist Sunni Muslim organisation, NU was established in 1926 as a response to the rise of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and a surge in Is- lamic modernism at home. Muslims make up about 88 per cent of Indonesia’s 250 million-strong population. After an extremist rebellion in the 1950s, which ended in the execution of its leader, Indonesia has resisted further, peaceful efforts to undergo a conversion to an Islamic state.
Muslim activism was largely suppressed during the 32-year authoritarian rule of former president Suharto, but flowered again from the start of the democratic era in the late 1990s, a period marked by economic hardship.
But the revival – which brought militant leaders such as Abu Bakar Bashir back from exile – also fuelled a renewed outbreak of terrorism. Over the next decade, more than 290 people died in a series of bombings in Jakarta and on Bali, a tourism island. Thousands more died in massacres in regions with long-standing peaceful relations between Muslim and minority Christian communities. The bloodshed was finally brought under control, but the struggle against extremism, which threatens Indonesia’s reputation for tolerance, goes on. Now NU and its urban-based sister organisation, Muhammadiyah, argue that conflicts in the Middle East undermine the legitimacy of Islam as a peaceful religion. It has also deepened distrust between hardline Sunni groups and the tiny Shiite minority, concentrated in Java, Indonesia’s most populous island. By resisting Wahhabism and Salafism, moderate Indonesian Muslim leaders hope to instil a new belief in local forms of Islam, which entered the country as early as the 8th century. “Islam Nusantara should be embraced as a symbol of peace, diversity, tolerance and distinctiveness in how Muslims implement their faith in Indonesia,” says Mufizer Mahmud, a conflict resolution specialist and a devout Muslim from Aceh, the only province allowed to practise Sharia because of a long history of rebellion against the central government.
“In no way should it interfere with the principles taught in Islam, but Indonesia has always been the most tolerant country in the Muslim world, having adopted the notion that customs can’t be separated from the religion. It is these strong historical factors that have formed and built this nation.”
That view is shared by Natalia Soebagjo, a member of the international board of Transparency International.
She notes that before the arrival of Islam, “by way of trade and not the sword”, Indonesians were exposed to the teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism, indigenous belief systems and philosophies which remain strongly rooted in the country’s social ecology.
“Hence, how we interpret and practise the teachings of Mohammed is distinct from how Islam is understood in the Middle East or, for that matter, any other part of the world,” she says.
For all that, NU has had little cooperation from the three Sharia-based political parties and the conformist nature of Indonesian Muslims.
The religious affairs minister, Lukman Saifuddin, belongs to the Sharia-based United Development Party, but he has proved to be a refreshing change from a long line of ineffectual predecessors, who neither defended minorities nor faced up to growing radicalism.
“Anywhere in the world, Islamic values are based on local culture,” he says. “In India, Egypt, Sudan and China, for example, Islamic values are all part of the local culture.”
Although the Sharia-based parties have never won more than 13 per cent of the vote in elections, about a third of Indonesia’s 33 provinces have imposed various ordinances, including enforcing Quranic study, a strict dress code and forbidding women from venturing out at night. That is even though the ordinances contravene the constitution and the spirit of Pancasila, the state philosophy and ideological foundation of Indonesia as a secular state.
Still, even those Indonesians who consider themselves modern and progressive are not always enamoured with Islam Nusantara. “When you start compartmentalising Islam and its followers, you start creating divisions within Islam,” says Fajar Reksoprodjo, a tech-savvy entrepreneur in his late 30s. “I think that’s plain wrong, whether it is based on ethnicity or whatever.”