Indonesian G20 presidency promises to put a ‘battle for the soul of Islam’ on the front burner
By James M. Dorsey
Indonesian religious affairs minister Yaqut
Cholil Qoumas set the bar high for President Joko Widodo as well as Nahdlatul
Ulama, the religious backbone of Mr. Widodo’s government when he laid out the agenda for his country’s
presidency of the Group of 20. The G20
groups the world’s largest economies.
Speaking to the G20 Interfaith Forum in Bologna as
Italy prepared to handover its presidency to Indonesia, Mr. Qoumas also threw
down a gauntlet for Indonesia’s Middle Eastern competitors in a battle to define the degree to
which Islam incorporates principles of tolerance,
pluralism, gender equality, secularism and human rights as defined in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The battle,
which is likely to likewise determine which Muslim-majority country or
countries will be recognized as leaders of the Islamic world, takes on added
significance with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and concerns about
Taliban policy towards militants on Afghan soil.
Meanwhile, uncertainty about US reliability as a
security guarantor in the Gulf is prompting regional foes to contain their
differences to ensure that they don’t spin out of control, increasing their
emphasis on the projection of soft power.
Turkey’s 2022 budget appears to
signal the shift and the importance President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan attributes to this particular challenge.
The budget
of the powerful Directorate of Religious Affairs or Diyanet is
expected to increase by 20 per cent for fiscal 2022, giving it greater
financial flexibility than the ministries of interior, foreign affairs, trade,
industry and technology, environment and urbanization, energy and natural
resources and culture and tourism.
These ministries are key for enabling Turkey to
resolve its economic problems, compensate for the fallout of the pandemic and
enhance its appeal as a potential leader of the Muslim world.
The Diyanet, in another sign of Mr. Erdogan’s emphasis
on religious rather than national identity, recently urged Turks to use the
religiously framed greeting Peace Be Upon (Selamün aleyküm) You rather than
phrases like Good Morning (Gunaydin), prevalent in Turkey since its founding as
a republic almost a century ago.
Diyanet president Ali Erbas argued in a recently
published Turkish-language book, Human Religion and Religion in the
Information Age, that the greeting ‘Good Morning’
traced its origins to the pre-Islamic era.
These latest moves suggest that Mr. Erdogan is taking
his country, also a member of the G20, down a path diametrically opposed to
what Mr. Qoumas was arguing in Bologna.
The minister contended in contrast to Mr. Erdogan’s
policies that religion “has the potential to help block the political
weaponization of identity; curtail the spread of communal hatred; promote solidarity
and respect among the diverse people, cultures and nations of the world; and
foster the emergence of a truly just and harmonious world order, founded upon
respect for the equal rights and dignity of every human being. Yet to realize
this potential, we must wisely manage the inevitable struggle between competing
values, as globalization brings highly diverse peoples, cultures, and
traditions into ever closer contact.”
Mr. Qoumas made his remarks as an Islamist journalist
called on Mr. Erdogan to avoid the weaponization of religion.
Writing in Karar, a Turkish publication
believed to be close to Mr. Erdogan’s erstwhile prime and foreign minister,
Ahmet Davutoglu, who left the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to
found a party of his own, journalist Ahmet Tasgetiren, warned that the
president appeared to be politicizing the Diyanet.
Drawing a comparison to Mr. Erdogan’ politicization of
Turkey’s judiciary, Mr. Tasgetiren noted that it “weakens people’s confidence
in it.” Pleading with Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Tasgetiren cautioned that “the politicization of the religion
and the Diyanet ruins people’s relationship with religion… I
think you would never want this for the religion. For the religion’s sake,
please.”
Mr. Qoumas, the scion of an influential Nahdlatul
Ulama family and the former head of the group’s powerful youth wing, GP Ansor, went
on to say in his speech that “one major task that lies before us is to identify,
and conscientiously observe, those universal values that a majority of the
world’s inhabitants already acknowledge, such as the virtues of honesty, truth-seeking,
compassion and justice. Another parallel task is to develop a global consensus
regarding shared values that the world’s diverse cultures will need to embrace
if we are to co-exist peacefully.”
Implicitly, the minister noted that in contrast to its
competitors – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Iran – in the
battle to reshape mainstream Islam, Nahdlatul Ulama, one of, if not the world’s
largest Muslim civil society organization, has put its money where its mouth
is.
Mr. Qoumas noted that a gathering in 2019 of more than
20,000 Muslim religious scholars associated with Nahdlatul Ulama ruled that the
legal category of infidel was “neither relevant to nor applicable within, the
context of a modern nation-state.” In doing so, Nahdlatul Ulama became the
world’s first major contemporary Sunni Muslim religious entity to seek to
update and modernize Islamic jurisprudence.
Mr. Qoumas stopped short of laying out an agenda for
dealing with other concepts in Islamic law that Nahdlatul Ulama clerics have identified
as either problematic or obsolete such as blasphemy. Nahdlatul Ulama has argued that concepts like
the dhimmi or people of the book who are recognized in classical Islamic
jurisprudence but not granted equal status before the law, and apostasy, had
been invalidated by the ruling on infidels.
To be sure, countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE,
where Islamic law is at the least recognized constitutionally as a main source
of legislation if it does not constitute the main fountain of legislation, have
significantly liberalized social rights.
Saudi Arabia has significantly enhanced women’s rights
in recent years by lifting a ban on women’s driving, liberalizing gender
segregation, reducing men’s control over women’s lives, and expanding
professional opportunities.
Similarly, the UAE announced last November a major overhaul of the
country’s Islamic personal laws, allowing
unmarried couples to cohabitate, loosening alcohol restrictions and
criminalizing “honour killings,” a widely criticized religiously packaged
tribal custom that allows a male relative to kill a woman accused of
dishonouring a family.
Liberalization of social mores in Saudi Arabia and the
UAE were anchored in civilian law, rules, and regulations but neither country,
in contrast to the process initiated by Nahdlatul Ulama, adopted Islamic
jurisprudence accordingly.
That way, the two Gulf states, in contrast to
Indonesia, seek to keep tight state control of their interpretation of Islam
with no input by civil society.
The dichotomy raises fundamental questions, including
whether what Nahdlatul Ulama calls the “recontextualization” of Islam can be
achieved by autocratic or authoritarian regimes that are seeking to ensure
their survival and project themselves internationally in a positive light or
whether religious reform needs to be popularly anchored and driven by civil
society.
Despite being in government, Mr. Qoumas implicitly
provided his answer to the question by quoting a poem by Kyai Haji Mustofa
Bisri, a prominent Nahdlatul Ulama spiritual leader. The poem, titled
‘Religion’ focuses on the behaviour of the individual rather than the role of
the state.
“Religion is a golden carriage prepared by God to
convey you along the path to His Divine Presence.
Don’t become mesmerized by its beauty, much less
enchanted to the point that you come to blows with your own brothers and
sisters over who occupies the front seat.
Depart!” the poem reads.
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