Al-Ahram (The Pyramids)
by Mohamed Abu Al-Fadl
“When I first wrote about ‘Indonesian Islam’ in this newspaper following a trip to Jakarta many years ago, the term — and its political and religious implications — astonished many.…
“The majority of Muslims look to the Arab world for guidance, but the failure of this region’s ulama to keep up with the transformations taking place will lead to the rug being pulled out from under them. For the openness adopted by Nahdlatul Ulama and its new Chairman, Yahya Cholil Staquf, will not stop at borders, nor be confined to one specific country or region. Mr. Staquf is following in the footsteps of the late NU leader and former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid. Critical thinking, vigilance regarding the nation state, and overcoming the problems of difference between the heavenly religions is among the factors that will encourage more ijtihad to block the path of extremists…. For the trans-national caliphate desired by ISIS and al-Qaeda — and which subtly appears in the discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood — is viewed by NU as an obstacle in the way of its project and duty to establish a fiqh foundation that may solve a crisis that has continued for many long centuries.” Read the full article (PDF).
by James M. Dorsey
“If you think Islamic scholars discussing the religious legitimacy of the United Nations and the nation-state will put you to sleep, think again.
“A call by Nahdlatul Ulama or the Revival of Islamic Scholars, arguably the world’s most moderate Muslim civil society movement, to anchor the nation-state and the United Nations in Islamic law (as opposed to a caliphate) is at the forefront of the ideological fight against extremism and jihadism as advocated by groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
“The call, launched on Tuesday at a mass rally in the Indonesian city of Sidoarjo commemorating the Indonesian group’s centennial and a gathering a day earlier of Islamic scholars from across the globe, lays down a gauntlet for the Muslim world’s autocratic and authoritarian leaders.
“Anchoring the United Nations and its charter in religious law would legally oblige nondemocratic regimes to respect human rights.
“The charter compels states to honor ‘fundamental human rights… the dignity and worth of the human person, (and)… the equal rights of men and women’ and makes it legally binding for its Muslim signatories, according to religious law.” Read the full article (PDF).
“A call by Nahdlatul Ulama… to anchor the nation-state and the United Nations in Islamic law (as opposed to a caliphate) is at the forefront of the ideological fight against extremism and jihadism as advocated by groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.”
~ The Times of Israel
There’s Life Yet in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
In the face of war and atrocities, the principles of the 75-year-old document remain sound.
by Mary Ann Glendon
“The United Nations General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, 1948, without a single dissenting vote (although Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the Soviet bloc countries abstained). Today that remarkable consensus, achieved in the wake of two world wars and unspeakable atrocities, is falling apart. Hope for global consensus on anything seems remote.
“But is it really the case that consensus on the relatively small set of fundamental principles in the Universal Declaration can’t be reinvigorated? The history of the declaration suggests three reasons why the effort is worthwhile. And a promising development, as yet little noticed in the West, indicates there may be a fourth.” Read the full article (PDF).
Indonesia wants to export moderate Islam
The world’s largest Muslim-majority country enters the Islamic debate
“On Christmas eve 22 years ago, jihadist terrorists planted bombs at churches in cities across Indonesia, killing 18 people. Every Christmas since then, members of the country’s largest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), have gathered outside churches in Indonesia to ensure that Christians can worship in safety. Now the powerful Islamic organization has a more ambitious goal: to spread its moderate views across the Muslim world.”
“The views of NU, in particular, have heft. The group claims to have over 100m followers— including several members of President Joko Widodo’s cabinet—and runs 23,000 Islamic boarding schools and over 250 universities. In February over a million of its followers clogged the streets of Sidoarjo, a city in East Java, for the group’s centenary celebrations. Many of the country’s top political figures, including the president (who is known as Jokowi), attended the event. NU used it to formally call for the abandonment of the caliphate, a notional authority that is considered to oversee all Muslims…” Read the full article on The Economist website (paywall).
by Amanda tho Seeth
“Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, is continuously increasing its Islamic diplomacy portfolio. A central element herein is the deployment of a moderate Islam discourse for global peace. In doing so, the country seeks to weaken Arab dominance within Islamic discourse and rebrand itself as a progressive role model for the Islamic world.
“Policy Implications
“Foreign policy stakeholders, international development agencies, and university staff should join Indonesia’s peace initiative. Indonesian Islamic actors should be considered partners in working towards realising the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 on sustainable development. In this context, the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 16 (‘peace’) is particularly suited for collaboration.” Read the full article (PDF).
How to Make the Islamic World Less Radical
Recontextualize the teachings of Islam to address extremism—and to inspire reform.
by Yahya Cholil Staquf
“Why is the modern world plagued by Islamic extremism? Why do al Qaeda, Boko Haram and Islamic State display such savagery? As I told the United Nations General Assembly recently, the doctrine, goals and strategy of these extremists can be traced to specific tenets of Islam as historically practiced. Portions of classical Islamic law mandate Islamic supremacy, encourage enmity toward non-Muslims, and require the establishment of a universal Islamic state, or caliphate. ISIS is not an aberration from history….
“Classical Islamic orthodoxy stipulates death as the punishment for apostasy and makes the rights of non-Muslims contingent on a Muslim sovereign’s will, offering few protections to nonbelievers outside this highly discriminatory framework. Millions of devout Muslims, including many in non-Muslim nations, regard the full implementation of these tenets as central to their faith….
“The most enduring way to address an extremist religious ideology is to recontextualize its teachings and reform it from within. Four centuries ago, Catholics and Protestants routinely killed each other; now they coexist. I believe the same type of change can occur within Islam in one or two generations. What’s needed is a credible alternative that is consistent with Islamic orthodoxy and developed and promulgated by those with religious and political authority in the Muslim world.
“Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest independent Muslim organization, for which I serve as general secretary, is promoting such an alternative.” Read the full article (PDF).
by Jonathan Benthall
“This article argues that the concept underpinning the R20, and the extent of its support, are new and deserve attention from those who study the intersection of religion and geopolitics in our day. It would be truly a game changer, I will suggest, if the R20 were to stimulate the world’s most important religious authorities to reform their traditions from within and become forces for peace, carrying along with them the huge number of adherents that each of them could mobilize. A more modest aim, with higher chances of being successful, would be for the NU to show that Indonesian Islam, more flexible and humanistic than the interpretations emanating from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, has its own authenticity and popular backing, and hence need not defer to the Middle East….
“[I]t seems achievable that the hold over Sunni Islamic orthodoxy currently exercised in Mecca and Medina and in Cairo, linked to autocratic governments, will be challenged by NU’s ideological assertiveness and popular support. As a follow-up to the R20 meeting in Bali, Islamic scholars will gather in February 2023 in Surabaya, Indonesia, to discuss ‘Islamic jurisprudence for a global civilization’. James Dorsey writes that this initiative is designed to undercut the interpretations of Islamic law that justify human rights abuses and enjoin absolute obedience to the ruler. These interpretations, still prevailing in Mecca, Medina and Cairo, are not challenged by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which with its 57 member states claims to be the collective voice of the Muslim world; and they offer insufficient protections against the rogue theologies that have underpinned Al-Qa`ida and ISIS. The consequences of Nahdlatul Ulama’s success could be far-reaching, although it is threatened by some political interests in Indonesia that for the last decade have set out to revert to the country’s authoritarian past.” Read the full article (PDF).
by Jonathan Benthall
“In The war for Muslim minds (2004), Gilles Kepel predicted that the most important site for this ‘war’ would be among Muslim communities in Europe. Twenty years later, battle lines coming to prominence in Asia may be more consequential, if we recognize the limits of Eurocentrism. This book is a scholarly commentary on an initiative by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, ‘Revival of the Ulama’) the world’s largest Islamic organization with a membership in Indonesia estimated at over 60 million – to promote a moderate and pluralistic interpretation of Islam, supported by the Indonesian government. The labels chosen for this variant of Islam are ‘humanitarian’ (though, as a translation of the Arabic insānī, ‘humanist’ would be better understood internationally) and Nusantara (a Javanese word for East Indies). The ambition is high: not merely to counterbalance the dominance currently exercised by Saudi and Egyptian religious authorities, tied to autocratic regimes, but also to set an example for all other scriptural religions, to renounce their ‘hard texts’, which can be cited to justify xenophobia and violence.” Read the full article (PDF).
by Joe Cochrane
“JAKARTA, Indonesia — The scene is horrifyingly familiar. Islamic State soldiers march a line of prisoners to a riverbank, shoot them one by one and dump their bodies over a blood-soaked dock into the water.
“But instead of the celebratory music and words of praise expected in a jihadi video, the soundtrack features the former Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid, singing a Javanese mystical poem: ‘Many who memorize the Quran and Hadith love to condemn others as infidels while ignoring their own infidelity to God, their hearts and minds still mired in filth.’
“That powerful scene is one of many in a 90-minute film that amounts to a relentless, religious repudiation of the Islamic State and the opening salvo in a global campaign by the world’s largest Muslim group to challenge its ideology head-on…” Read the full article (PDF).
by Muddassar Ahmed
“A remarkable transformation has been taking place in the Muslim world, a years-long shift towards pluralism and tolerance belying common assumptions about Islam.
“Maybe we missed this earlier: A lot has been going on, after all. But last week in Bali, at the G20’s ground-breaking Religion Forum, the R20, that transformation took center stage. Not only is it an epochal moment in modern Islam, but this moment also helped create the world’s most important interfaith conversation.
“By expanding beyond the G7 to the G20 — the world’s 20 largest economies — the developed world has created more space for non-Western populations to enter the space of global governance and bring their perspectives and insights with them. That extends to The Hill 2 India, with the world’s largest Hindu population and a massive Muslim minority, as well as three Muslim-majority countries: Turkey, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
“Over the course of a week in Bali, I watched, spellbound…” Read the full article (PDF).
A Muslim pilgrim prays on top of the rocky hill known as the Mountain of Mercy, on the Plain of Arafat, during the annual hajj pilgrimage, near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Friday, July 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
by Joe Cochrane
“JAKARTA, Indonesia — The imposing, six-foot-tall painting is a potent symbol of modern Indonesian history: the country’s founding father, Sukarno, cradling a dead, barefoot rebel killed by Dutch colonial forces amid rice fields and smoldering volcanoes in late-1940s Java.
“The fighter’s bloodied shirt draws immediate attention — but so does a necklace dangling from the body: a Christian cross, worn by the independence martyr for the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
“The 2006 painting has become the symbol of a global initiative by the Indonesian youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest mass Islamic organization in the world, that seeks to reinterpret Islamic law dating from the Middle Ages in ways that conform to 21st-century norms.” Read the full article (PDF).
The Voice of Moderate Muslims
In Indonesia, the renewal of Islam is easier than in the Arab heartland
by Rainer Hermann
“The encounters were important simply because of their symbolism. However, they have not produced a sustainable Christian-Islamic dialogue. In 2019, Pope Francis issued a declaration on the fraternity of all people with the Egyptian Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb, and in 2021 he visited the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Iraq. As early as 2007, the then Saudi King Abdullah was a guest of Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican State. However, this has not led to theological cooperation.
“Greater hopes are attached to the dialogue currently led by two large independent organizations: the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), whose national member organizations include several hundred million Christians, and the Indonesian Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the world’s largest independent Islamic organization with more than 90 million members. A year ago, they founded a joint working group that wants to be a voice against religiously motivated violence and religious persecution.” Read the full article (PDF).
by Mohamed Abu Al-Fadl
“The great Indonesian Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)—which is also the world’s largest, with 70 million followers—has begun to expand its operations internationally, to fill this gap. The NU represents the most tolerant face of Islam, which is compatible with Western societies’ values and traditions, and shows no sign of wishing to engage in conflict with the West.
“The Nahdlatul Ulama holds a view of Islam that its members describe as Islam Nusantara—East Indies, or Indonesian Islam—which emphasizes the adaptation of religion to local culture, and firmly rejects the ideology of extremist movements that have produced such a negative image of Islam in the West. This tolerant face of Islam, in Indonesia, accepts all the different religions and cultures that exist in the Malay Archipelago, and regards them as having a natural right to live side by side with Islam.
“Given the facts described above, the profoundly spiritual and tolerant worldview embodied in the term Islam Nusantara has begun to expand beyond its local framework to a global environment. Many lines of communication have been initiated between the Nahdlatul Ulama and various Western governments. [Spiritual leaders within] the Nahdlatul Ulama have begun to establish working relationships and operational nodes in many countries, operating under the organizational name, ‘Home of Divine Grace (Bayt ar-Rahmah).’ Each operational node propagates the model of tolerance embraced by the Nahdlatul Ulama—such as peaceful coexistence with others and respect for individuals’ right to privacy, including freedom of thought and conscience—and seeks to accomplish this by leveraging the profound humane and spiritual values that underlie and animate all religions.” Read the full article (PDF).
by Rüdiger Lohlker | orcid: 0000-0002-3927-0783
Professor of Islamic Studies, Oriental Institute, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
“Developments in the Islamic world outside of the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region traditionally receive little scientific attention….
“Often ignored because of the preoccupation in Europe with the development in the Arab world, Turkey and Iran, the important, paradigmatic case of Islamic law, to be more precise: fiqh, in Indonesia, may help to answer the following questions: to what extent can religious freedom, universal human rights and the rule of law be integrated in the legal conceptions of religious traditions? Can religions derive argumentative resources thereof against (renewed) political appropriation? In order to understand Islam nusantara, Islam in the Indonesian archipelago, as the living process of adapting to ever-changing circumstances, and not a mere collection of texts dear to any legal historian, there are some crucial texts that we can consult and that will help to conceptualize this living Indonesian Islam. The most important recent document is called the Gerakan Pemuda Ansor Declaration on Humanitarian Islam – however, there are other documents to be discussed….
“The last result of this ongoing process is a short statement called Nusantara Statement promulgated by [Nahdlatul Ulama’s 8-million-member young adults organization] Ansor at a mass rally on November 22, 2018, on the occasion of the birthday of the prophet (mawlid) and attended by the Indonesian president Joko Widodo.
“The statement reads:
“‘We call upon people of goodwill of every faith and nation to join in building a global consensus to prevent the political weaponization of Islam, whether by Muslims or non-Muslims, and to curtail the spread of communal hatred by fostering the emergence of a truly just and harmonious world order, founded upon respect for the equal rights and dignity of every human being.’
“Thus, we witness a seemingly technical debate on the methodology of fiqh in Indonesia turning into a religio-political statement with a potentially global impact. We may understand this statement as the final proof of indigenization cum globalization cum universalization of fiqh in Indonesia.
“Hence, it is possible to understand this process of indigenization as the development of a genuine Indonesian school of thought beginning to operate at a global level and claiming Islam as part of the universal values of humanity and not excluding other Islamic and non-Islamic parts of the global society.” Read the full article (PDF).
