Reforming the Faith: Indonesia’s battle for the soul of Islam
By James M. Dorsey
Nahdlatul Ulama, with 94 million members the world’s largest
Sunni Muslim movement, is bent on reforming Islam.
The powerful Indonesian conservative and nationalist group that
operates madrassahs or religious seminaries across the archipelago has taken on
the ambitious task of reintroducing ijtihad or legal interpretation to Islam as
it stands to enhance its political clout with its spiritual leader, Ma’ruf
Amin, slated to become vice president as the
running mate of incumbent President Joko Widodo in elections
scheduled for next April.
In a 40-page document, argued in terms of Islamic law and
jurisprudence and scheduled for publication in the coming days, Nahdlatul Ulama’s
powerful young adults wing, Gerakan Pemuda Ansor, spells out a framework
for what it sees as a humanitarian interpretation of Islam that is tolerant and
pluralistic in nature.
The initiative is designed to counter what many in Nahdlatul
Ulama, founded in 1926 in opposition to Wahhabism, see as Islam’s foremost
challenge; the rise of radical Islam. The group that boasts a two million-strong
private militia defines as radical not only militants and jihadists but any
expression of political Islam and asserts that it is struggling against the
weaponization of the faith.
While it stands a good chance of impacting Islamic discourse
in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, it is likely to face an uphill
battle in making substantial headway beyond Indonesia despite its links to
major Muslim organizations in India, the United States and elsewhere. It also
could encounter opposition from the group’s more conservative factions.
Mr. Amin, the vice-presidential candidate, is widely viewed
as a conservative who as issued
fatwas against minorities, including one in 2005 denouncing Ahmadis,
a sect widely viewed by Muslims as heretics. Violent attacks on Ahmadis by
extremists have since escalated with mob killings and the razing to the ground
of their homes.
Mr. Amin is also believed to have played a key role in last
year’s mass protests that brought
down Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, aka Ahok, an ethnic Chinese
Christian, and led to his sentencing to two years in prison on
charges of blasphemy against Islam.
The vice-presidential candidate appears to have since
mellowed. In a recent speech in Singapore hosted by the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies (RSIS), Mr. Amin projected himself as an advocate
of an Islam that represents a middle way and stands for balance, tolerance,
egalitarianism, non-discrimination, consultation, consensus and reform.
Mr. Amin’s speech appeared to be not out of sync with the
reformist thinking of Ansor.
To achieve its goal, Ansor hopes to win Middle Eastern
hearts and minds in a roundabout way by targeting European governments as well
as the Trump administration in a bid to generate pressure on Arab regimes to
promote a tolerant, pluralistic form of Islam rather than use the faith to
garner legitimacy and enhance regional influence.
To further that goal, Yahya Staquf, a diminutive,
soft-spoken general secretary of the group’s Supreme Council and a member of Mr.
Widodo’s presidential advisory council, met
in June with US Vice President Mike Pence and Reverend Johnnie Moore.
Mr Moore is an evangelist who in May was appointed by President
Donald J. Trump as a member of the board of the US Commission on International
Religious Freedom.
Mr. Staquf also paid in June a controversial visit to Israel
where he met with Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu against the backdrop of Mr.
Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office trumpeted the meeting as an indication
that “Arab countries and many Muslim countries (are) getting closer to Israel”
despite Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians becoming with US backing more
hard line. The meeting served to strengthen Nahdlatul Ulama’s relations with
Mr. Trump’s evangelist, pro-Israel supporters.
While making significant inroads in the West, Nahdlatul
Ulama risks being identified with autocrats like United Arab Emirates crown
prince Mohammed bin Zayed who strives to depoliticize Islam as a means of
ensuring the survival of his regime. It also risks being tainted by its
tactical association with Islamophobes and Christian fundamentalists who would project
their alliance as Muslim justification of their perception of the evils of
Islam.
Nahdlatul Ulama’s association could further bolster the
position of evangelists
locked into battle with expanding Islam along the 10th parallel,
the front line between the two belief systems, with
Nigeria and Boko Haram, the West African jihadist group, at its core.
If successful, Nahdlatul Ulama’s strategy could have
far-reaching consequences. For many Middle Eastern autocrats, adopting a more
tolerant, pluralistic interpretation of Islam would mean allowing far greater
social and political freedoms. That would likely lead to a weakening of their
grip on power.
Nahdlatul Ulama’s credibility in pushing a tolerant,
pluralistic interpretation of Islam rides in part on its willingness to subdue
its own demons, first and foremost among which sectarianism manifested in
deep-seated prejudice against Muslim sects, including Shiites and Ahmadis. That
may be too tall an order in a country in which ultra-conservative Islam remains
a social and political force.
As a result, Nahdlatul Ulama’s battlefields are as much at
home as they are in the larger Muslim world. Proponents of the reform strategy
chose to launch it under the auspices of the group’s young adults wing in an
admission that not all of Nahdlatul Ulama’s members may embrace it.
Moreover, the group’s meetings at times coincide with clashes
between its militia and Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a banned non-violent organization that
seeks to re-establish the caliphate.
The most recent clash occurred last week on the eve of a
meeting in Yogyakarta of the Ansor-sponsored Global Unity Forum convened
to stop the politicization of Islam. Attendees included Mr. Moore as
well as Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi of the All India Imam Organization and imams
from the United States.
Beyond militants in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama’s foremost
rival is Turkey.
It is a battle that is shaped by the need to counter the
fallout of a $100 billion, four decades-long Saudi public diplomacy campaign
that enjoyed tacit Western support to anchor ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim
Islam in communities across the globe in a bid to dampen the appeal of
post-1979 Iranian revolutionary zeal. The campaign created a breeding ground
for more militant and violent strands of the faith.
The battle for the soul of Islam finds it most geopolitical
expression in the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well as Iran. The
battle with Turkey has come to a head with the killing earlier this month of
journalist Jamal Khashoggi while visiting the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul
to certify his divorce papers.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan drove the point home by
exploiting the Khashoggi crisis to advise religious leaders that “Turkey with
its cultural wealth, accretion of history and geographical location, has hosted
diverse faiths in peace for centuries, and is
the only country that can lead the Muslim world.”
If Nahdlatul Ulama couches its position in terms of Islamic
law and jurisprudence, Mr. Erdogan’s framework is history and geopolitics. “The
Turkish president’s foreign policy strategy aims to make Muslims proud again. Under
this vision,
a reimagined and modernized version of the Ottoman past, the Turks
are to lead Muslims to greatness,” said Turkey scholar Soner Cagaptay.
Nahdlatul Ulama’s focus may not
be Middle Eastern geopolitics. Nevertheless, its strategy, if successful, would
significantly impact the region’s political map. In attempting to do so, the
group may find that the odds are humongous, if not insurmountable.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture,
and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and just published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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