Distinguished scholars from around the globe convene in Indonesia to examine the significance of Nahdlatul Ulama’s Humanitarian Islam movement
“The ethical message at the heart of Humanitarian Islam is one the whole world needs to heed now more than ever”
~ Professor Robert W. Hefner, Boston University
President of the American Institute for Indonesian Studies
JAKARTA, Indonesia — During the first week of November 2024, prominent scholars from North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia gathered to examine the significance and global impact of the Humanitarian Islam movement. The three-day conference was co-sponsored by the Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board, the Center for Shared Civilizational Values, and Universitas Indonesia.
Dr. Robert W. Hefner (above) — a renowned professor of anthropology and global studies at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Affairs, and president of the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) — serves as lead editor of the academic volume that will emerge from the International Conference on Humanitarian Islam, held from 4 – 6 November in Jakarta. A second volume, containing foundational “source” texts of the Humanitarian Islam movement, will be published in conjunction with more than 20 essays produced by scholars for the Conference volume itself.
Professor Hefner is the author and/or editor of 23 scholarly volumes published by an array of university presses, including Princeton, Cambridge, the University of California, Indiana University, and the University of Hawaii Press. From 2009 – 2010 he served as President of the American Association for Asian Studies.
The opening session of the Conference — held on the grounds of Universitas Indonesia and attended by an audience that included six Government Ministers, as well as foreign ambassadors, religious authorities, university administrators, professors, students, and top scholars from around the world — featured addresses by H.E. Prabowo Subianto, President of the Republic of Indonesia; KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf, Chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board; H.E. Shaykh Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, Secretary General of the Muslim World League; and Professor Ari Kuncoro, Rector of the University of Indonesia.
The six remaining Conference sessions were thematically arranged, consisting of presentations and discussions among scholars whose academic specialties encompassed Indonesian studies; Islam, including Islamic jurisprudence and mysticism; international peace and security; geopolitics; political science; Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant theology; religious freedom; sociology; and gender studies.
With Nahdlatul Ulama’s Humanitarian Islam/Islam Nusantara initiative entering its second decade, the conference organizers believed that it was an appropriate moment to convene diverse experts to analyze its historical background, achievements, and future objectives. As Professor Hefner observed, “Humanitarian Islam constitutes one of the most important programs of ethical and religious reform underway in the modern world. As such, it is urgent that the development and impact of this global initiative be brought to the attention of — and assessed by — the broader scholarly and policy communities, Muslim as well as non-Muslim.”
The International Conference on Humanitarian Islam and the academic volume associated therewith were conceived with this objective in mind.
Harvard-educated political scientist Dr. Timothy S. Shah (above) served as moderator throughout the Conference. Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Center for Shared Civilizational Values (CSCV), Dr. Shah has authored or edited twelve scholarly volumes published by Oxford, Cambridge, and other prominent imprints.
Dr. Shah contributed three essays to the Conference volume: “‘Positive Deviance’ Within the Indosphere and the Muslim World”; “Humanitarian Islam: Fostering Shared Civilizational Values to Revitalize a Rules-Based International Order,” which he co-authored with Thomas G. Dinham; and “Three Rights Traditions Walk into a Bar in Jakarta: Inalienable Human Rights From the Perspective of Different Civilizations,” co-authored with CSCV Deputy Chairman and CEO C. Holland Taylor.
Deputy Chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Supreme Council, Kyai Haji Dr. Afifuddin Muhajir (above), delivered a paper titled “Humanitarian Islam,” which explained the theological mechanisms whereby Nahdlatul Ulama maintains harmony, and prevents conflict, between Islamic shari‘ah and the United Nations Charter.
Kyai Muhajir serves as Director of Education at the Salafiyyah Shafiyyah Islamic Boarding School in Situbondo, East Java. During a Nahdlatul Ulama National Congress held at this same educational institution in 1984, KH. Achmad Shiddiq, Chairman of the NU Supreme Council, first articulated the concept of universal human fraternity as a shari‘ah basis for ensuring legal equality between Muslim and non-Muslim citizens of a modern nation state.
Professor Greg Barton, Research Professor in Global Islamic Politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) at Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia), delivered a paper titled “Abdurrahman Wahid, Nahdlatul Ulama, and Humanitarian Islam.”
Professor Barton has over thirty-five years of experience researching Islam and social movements in Southeast Asia, and was a close personal friend of longtime NU Chairman and Indonesian President H.E. KH. Abdurrahman Wahid (“Gus Dur” 1940 – 2009), who inspired the birth of the Humanitarian Islam movement. Along with numerous scholarly volumes, Professor Barton is the author of Gus Dur: The Authorized Biography of Abdurrahman Wahid.
A slide from Prof. Barton’s presentation (below) features a popular saying by President Wahid, which reads, “To honor human beings is to honor their Creator. To insult and degrade human beings is to insult and degrade their Creator.”
Dr. Mirjam Künkler — Research Professor at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies in London, specializing in law, religion, and democracy in the Muslim world — has authored or edited 9 books published by Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh University presses, among others, as well as over 60 book chapters and academic articles. Dr. Künkler delivered a paper titled “Antecedents: Harun Nasution, Nurcholish Madjid, Abdurrahman Wahid, and Humanitarian Islam.”
Special Advisor for International Affairs to the General Chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board and CEO of the Center for Shared Civilizational Values, C. Holland Taylor, co-founded the Humanitarian Islam movement with senior NU leaders and co-authored a number of its foundational texts with Nahdlatul Ulama Chairman KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf. Mr. Taylor contributed an essay to the conference titled “Genealogy of the Humanitarian Islam Movement.”
KH. Ulil Abshar Abdalla (above), Deputy Chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board, delivered a presentation titled “The Roots of Humanitarian Islam in the Writings of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111) and the Javanese Reception of His Ideas.”
Kyai Haji Dr. Abdul Ghofur Maimoen (“Gus Ghofur,” above) holds BA, MA, and PhD degrees from al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt; serves as Secretary of the Nahdlatul Ulama Supreme Council; and is the immediate past Chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama’s Bahtsul Masa’il division, which in 2019 issued an historic ruling that the legal category of kafir (infidel) is no longer relevant within the context of modern nation states. Gus Ghofur’s presentation at the International Conference on Humanitarian Islam explained the theological underpinnings of NU efforts to recontextualize Islamic teachings.
Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History at New York University, Dr. Ismail Fajrie Alatas, delivered a paper titled “Humanitarian Islam and Sufism: Towards an Islamic Ethics of Cultivation and Ethos of Engagement.” Dr. Alatas is an associate editor of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and a fellow of The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Jordan. He is also the author of What is Religious Authority? Cultivating Islamic communities in Indonesia (Princeton, 2021), along with numerous articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries.
Dr. James Hoesterey, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Emory University and author of Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru (Stanford University Press, 2015), delivered a paper titled “The Soft Power of Humanitarian Islam: Prospects and Challenges for Nahdlatul Ulama’s Religious Diplomacy.” Seated beside Professor Hoesterey is Dr. Al Makin, a professor at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where he served as Rector from 2020 – 2024. Professor Al Makin delivered a paper titled “Pluralism and Humanity among Nahdlatul Ulama Intellectuals: Patriotism, Freedom of Religion, and Seeking Common Ground for all Faiths.”
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and inaugural Director of the MA program in International Affairs at John Cabot University (Rome, Italy), Dr. Michael D. Driessen, delivered a paper titled “Humanitarian Islam, Christian Humanism, and Democracy.” Dr. Driessen has authored dozens of academic publications, including two books for Oxford University Press.
Dr. Amanda tho Seeth, Professor of Southeast Asian History and Society at Humboldt University in Berlin, delivered a paper titled “Fiqh al-Hadarah [“Islamic Jurisprudence for a Global Civilization”] and Its Implications for the United Nations and the Future of a Rules-Based International Order.”
Thomas G. Dinham (center), CSCV Director of Communications, served as Conference Rapporteur and contributed an essay on Humanitarian Islam, which he co-authored with Dr. Timothy S. Shah. To his left sits the Egyptian writer and researcher Mostafa Zahran, who has authored numerous works on Islamic movements and is a specialist in Sufi religious orders. Mr. Zahran has contributed an academic paper titled “From Islam Nusantara to Humanitarian Islam: The Legacy of Gus Dur and the Ijtihad of Gus Yahya” to the Conference volume.
Dr. Nelly Van Doorn-Harder (above, center) with other conference participants visiting the headquarters of Gerakan Pemuda Ansor, NU’s 8-million-member young adults organization, which co-founded the Humanitarian Islam movement in 2017.
A Professor of Religious Studies at Wake Forest University and the Free University of Amsterdam, Dr. Van Doorn-Harder delivered an essay about the dynamic role of female ulama (religious scholars) in recontextualizing Islamic teachings in Indonesia, titled “The KUPI Movement: Scaling up NU Women’s Religious Activism.” She is the author of numerous books and the recipient of prestigious research grants from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Program, among others.
Dr. Kyle Wisdom (above) serves as Director for Global Advocacy for the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), which represents 600 million Evangelical Christians in 143 countries, and as Deputy Director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom. He delivered a paper titled “Protestant Christianity and Humanitarian Islam: War or Peace?” Dr. Wisdom co-authored the essay with Reverend Dr. Thomas K. Johnson, who serves as WEA’s Special Envoy to the Vatican and Special Envoy for Engaging Humanitarian Islam.
Deputy Secretary of the Nahdlatul Central Board, Dr. Muhammad Najib Azca, delivered a paper titled “Nahdlatul Ulama and Peacebuilding.” Dr. Azca is Associate Professor of Sociology at Universitas Gadjah Mada and from 2017 to 2022 led the University’s Center for Security and Peace Studies.
Dr. Ahmad Suaedy (above, left), Deputy Chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board and head of the Islam Nusantara (“East Indies Islam”) Program at the Nahdlatul Ulama University of Jakarta, co-chaired the Conference Organizing Committee.
Maria Ulfa Fauzi (above), a graduate of Egypt’s al-Azhar University and founder of an Islamic women’s website, neswa.id, played a central role in coordinating and ensuring the success of the International Conference on Humanitarian Islam.
KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf, General Chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board (above, right, with KH. Abdul Ghofur Maimoen), recognized the need for NU to seriously engage with the global academic community following a 2017 visit to Copenhagen as a guest of the Danish Foreign Ministry.
Appalled by the widespread, explicit denial — among mainstream European political, religious, academic, and media elites — of any significant link between ISIS and orthodox tenets of Sunni Islam, Mr. Staquf decided to address the disjunct between Western academic discussions of Islam and the actual tenets of Islamic jurisprudence, which constitute the theological center of gravity of movements such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the Taliban.
In his essay for the volume on Humanitarian Islam, titled “Moral Leadership at a Critical Juncture: Nahdlatul Ulama, Democracy, and the Quest for a Reformed Islamic Ethics,” Professor Robert W. Hefner observes:
In sum, and by way of conclusion, we can note that the moral vision at the heart of this NU project is at once both Islam-specific and relevant for people of all faiths. For Muslims, the vision seeks to promote a shariah that is able to “foster the welfare of all human beings, Muslim and non-Muslim alike,” thereby fulfilling the universal moral message conveyed by God to his Prophets. However, the NU example also speaks directly and powerfully to the adherents of other faith traditions. In leading the way in its own project of ethical reformation, NU has shown people in other civilizational traditions that they too must revitalize their values on the basis of a deepened commitment to human dignity and equality. In my view, there are few messages more profound than this one, and none more relevant for the troubled times in which humanity finds itself today. This is to say that the ethical message at the heart of Humanitarian Islam is one the whole world needs to heed now more than ever.
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