A moderate voice for a moderate Islam?

A moderate voice rises above in Indonesia

Indonesia will hold national legislative and presidential elections in April 2019, and although the official campaign has not yet begun, the political scene is already noisy.

On the surface, the platforms scarcely differ for the two presidential candidates, President Joko Widodo (known colloquially as Jokowi) and retired army general Prabowo Subianto. Jokowi’s slogan is “Work hard, work hard, work hard.”

Prabowo’s followers chant “Change the president.” A recent television debate was entitled Kerja keras vs Suara keras (Hard work vs Hard talk).

But hidden in plain sight within the presidential race is a contest over the role of Islam in Indonesian society. Widodo is considered a moderate Muslim while Prabowo is courting the religious right.

To make things more interesting, Jokowi has chosen leading conservative Muslim cleric, Ma’ruf Amin, as his vice-presidential running mate. In the midst of this debate, Yenny Wahid, daughter of the late president Abdurrahman Wahid, is a particularly important player, perhaps the most prominent female political proponent of moderate Islam, once Indonesia’s religious calling card.

Yenny Wahid is a princess of the Indonesian Islamic establishment. Her father, nicknamed Gus Dur, was a much admired but controversially progressive Islamic cleric. Her grandfather Wahid Hasyim served as Indonesia’s first minister of religion. Wahid’s great-grandfather Hasyim Asy’ari founded the world’s largest Muslim membership organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) that still thrives today – with Ma’ruf Amin as its leader.

But Wahid, 44, is more than NU royalty. She is an energetic activist for moderate Islam, the acknowledged heir of her father’s mission to fight intolerance in Indonesian society. Gus Dur, president from 1999 to 2001, was a voice of inclusiveness and moderation in the face of the sudden rise of the religious right when Suharto’s three decades-plus of repression ended in 1998. That quest goes forward through the Wahid Institute, founded in 2004, with Yenny Wahid now its director.

Wahid has prepared for this mission to win hearts and minds through education and practical experience. She has a bachelor’s degree in design and visual communication from Trisakti University in Jakarta and a master’s from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Between earning these degrees, she worked as a correspondent for Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, reporting on separatist movements in Indonesia’s Aceh and East Timor.

Her team won journalism’s Walkley Award for covering the violence in East Timor following the 1999 independence referendum. Wahid left and moved across the table as a communications adviser in her father’s administration and to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2005–2007. At the recent Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2018 in Bali, Yenny Wahid arrived fresh from a United Nations engagement and got the rock star treatment, drawing packed houses of predominantly young Indonesians.

In response to a question about the most important thing Gus Dur taught his four daughters, Wahid said, “He taught us to read widely and critically. It enabled us to be able to question things and get many perspectives, to form our own thoughts about foreign ideas.” Gus Dur was remarkable for his own broad perspective, Wahid noted. “Despite being raised in a conservative Islamic background with very strict teachings and lifestyle, he was exposed to many thinkers, including a German priest who taught him to love classical music,” she said. “He looked at the world in a deeper way. He exposed us to people from different cultures and taught us to be open to ideas and brave in confronting the truth.”

In contrast with that tradition of openness sits Indonesia’s controversial blasphemy law – actually a web of legislation, presidential decrees and ministerial directives – a sharp dividing line between moderate and right-wing Muslims. Islamic hardliners brought blasphemy charges against popular but outspoken Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok, a Christian of Chinese descent. The governor lost his bid for a new term while battling the legal case, then was convicted of blasphemy and is now serving a two-year prison sentence. “We didn’t create the law,” Wahid said. “We inherited it from the Dutch.” She explained that many European countries, such as Denmark, have similar statutes on their books. In Indonesia, as in Europe, the blasphemy law is routinely ignored – until it can be used for political purposes. Her solution is to work through legal processes to overturn the law, an effort now winding its way though Indonesia’s courts that hasn’t yet paid off.

Wahid offered a practical political perspective about Jokowi’s running mate, Ma’ruf Amin. As head of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), an Islamic oversight board, Ma’ruf has taken extreme positions on social issues, including supporting the blasphemy law and banning of Ahmadiyah, a Muslim sect. Many moderate Muslims were aghast that the moderate Jokowi appointed the hardline Ma’ruf, once a presidential adviser to her father. “Political wisdom says that when a presidential candidate is a nationalist, the running mate should come from the Islamic camp,” Wahid explained. She dismissed fears that the vice president would exert conservative influence on the government.

“President Jokowi is committed to more openness in society, and he has the final call on government policy. Knowing him, I don’t think it would be easy for anyone to influence him. “Besides, Ma’ruf Amin is a politician. And politicians have a wonderful ability to adapt when the situation dictates that you must be friends with people you once opposed. A good politician is always open to this.” Despite the unsettling cocktail of Islam and politics that Indonesia has experienced, Wahid contends there is a constructive role for religion in affairs of state.  “Eighty percent of the world’s population belong to some religion. You need to work with that,” she said.  “We’re seeing religious interest groups promoting social issues based on religious tenets, such as Christians for Fair Trade, Muslims for the Environment."  “The problem is when religion is used to attack people, even people of the same belief. We need religious people to bring more kindness and goodness into society.” Amin (amen), her father would undoubtedly add.

A moderate voice for a moderate Islam?

There is a fundamental problem with the use of the notion of "moderate" in relation to the complex reality of Islamic practices, interpretations and historically based belief systems. The rhetoric used around the world that speaks of extremism in the context of counter-terrorism, often uses the idea of a moderate Islam as the complement of "Islamic extremism", implying that the support of Islamic terrorism is the characteristic of a "radical" faction within Islam, and that there is a "moderate" faction of Muslims who denounce terrorism. If we follow this line of discourse it is going to lead to an extension of a set of western European attitudes, misunderstandings and projections that are to be found encapsulated in one word - "orientalism". 

On the other hand, there is a Moderate Islam that is used in the interpretation of the Islamic concept of Wasatiyyah or Wasat. In the Islamic context, it refers to the "middle way" or "moderation", a justly balanced way of life, avoiding extremes and experiencing things in moderation. The word is used in the Quran:

And thus we have made you a wasat (moderate) community that you will be witnesses over the people and the Messenger will be a witness over you. And We did not make the qiblah which you used to face except that We might make evident who would follow the Messenger from who would turn back on his heels. And indeed, it is difficult except for those whom Allah has guided. And never would Allah have caused you to lose your faith. Indeed Allah is, to the people, Kind and Merciful.
   
— Al-Baqara, 2: 143

The term is also found in these Hadiths:

Abu Huraira reported: The Prophet (sallallaahu ’alayhi wa sallam) said, “The religion (of Islam) is easy, and whoever makes the religion a rigour, it will overpower him. So, follow a middle course (in worship); if you can’t do this, do something near to it and give glad tidings and seek help (of Allah) at morn and at dusk and some part of night”.
    
— Bukhari:39
 
Narrated `Aisha: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "Do good deeds properly, sincerely and moderately and know that your deeds will not make you enter Paradise, and that the most beloved deed to Allah is the most regular and constant even if it were little."
    
— Sahih Bukhari, chapter: 68, Hadith no: 6020
 
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) once asked a companion: "(Is it true) that you fast all day and stand in prayer all night?" The companion replied that the report was indeed true. The Prophet then said: "Do not do that! Observe the fast sometimes and also leave (it) at other times. Stand up for prayer at night and also sleep at night. Your body has a right over you, your eyes have a right over you and your wife has a right over you."
    
— Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Hadith 127
 
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Do good deeds properly, sincerely and moderately. . .Always adopt a middle, moderate, regular course, whereby you will reach your target (of paradise)."
    
— Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Hadith 470
 
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "The good deeds of any person will not make him enter Paradise (i.e., no one enters paradise only through his good deeds)." The Prophet's companions asked: "Not even you?" The Prophet replied: "Not even myself, unless God bestows His favor and mercy on me. So be moderate in your religious deeds and do what is within your ability. None of you should wish for death, for if he is a doer of good, he may increase his good deeds, and if he is an evil doer, he may repent to God."
    
— Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Hadith 577
 
Ibn Abbas reported Allah’s Messenger (May Allah exalt his mention) as saying, “A good manner of conduct and moderation are a 25th part of Prophethood.”
    
— Sunan Abī Dāwūd 4776
 
Hakam bin Hazan Qulafi narrated that the Messenger of Allah said, O mankind! You will not be able to do all that you are ordered to do. But follow moderate means and give good news.
    

— Ahmad 17856, Abu Dawood 1098, Sahihul Jami '7871

Indonesia’s Moderate Islam is Slowly Crumbling

Liberal Muslims are fretting as fundamentalists seize the popular moment.

By Krithika Varagur | February 14, 2017, 11:33 AM

JAKARTA, Indonesia — In the struggle against Islamic extremism, few groups have been fighting for longer than Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the Sunni organization that has become the global face of Indonesia’s pluralistic Islam. Founded in 1926 to prevent Saudi Arabia’s bitterly intolerant Wahhabism from taking root in Indonesia, it’s a cultural touchstone for Indonesians proud of their heritage of religious tolerance — and a symbol of moderate Islam worldwide.

But NU’s work seems to be collapsing at home. The national conversation of the last five months has been monopolized by a far-right Islamist group called the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). FPI has around 200,000 members; NU — somewhat dubiously — claims 50 million worldwide. But it’s the extremists who are setting the pace in Indonesia and threatening to transform NU in the process.

FPI has organized huge, racially charged rallies in Jakarta to protest the city’s Chinese Christian governor, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, whom it accused of blasphemy for quoting a Quran verse about electing non-Muslim leaders. NU discouraged, but didn’t prohibit, its members from attending them. Some NU members, wearing the group’s scarves and holding its flags, even attended FPI’s rallies. FPI’s hyperbolic allegation went all the way to court, where the governor is now sitting trial as he runs for re-election. In charging Ahok, the police sided with FPI rather than NU, which publicly disputed the blasphemy charge. It was a stunning accomplishment for a fringe group — and one that has left the Indonesian center shaken and frightened.

NU is reliably quick to defuse anxiety about radicalism with the refrain that the “real” Islam is tolerant, peaceful, and inhospitable to jihad — especially in Indonesia. And it’s true that Indonesia has remarkably few terrorists given its population size. NU also has a prominent global profile due to its fondness for interfaith conferences, summits for Muslim leaders, and ambitious campaigns against extremism.

But there is a growing chasm between Indonesia’s national refrain about its tolerant, pluralistic tradition and the conservative populism that has breached public life. People on both sides are now waiting to see if the governor’s trial will help revive Indonesia’s moderate Muslim establishment or mark the beginning of its end.

“The Ahok affair has been a huge wake-up call,” said Alissa Wahid, a social activist, NU official, and daughter of late Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid. “We have been suffering for 10 years, letting hard-liners take center stage on social issues and even commit violence,” she said. “The challenges for NU going forward are not small.”

NU was a political party until 1984 but now concentrates on social welfare and religious education, often in tandem with other faith groups, encapsulating Indonesia’s syncretic mix of animistic, Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist traditions alongside Islam. The archetypal NU public figure was Abdurrahman Wahid, who was chairman of the group for 15 years before he was elected president in 1999. Yet under Wahid, far more strident groups started to elbow NU offstage.

“The prominence of liberal Muslim intellectuals like Wahid made moderate Islam seem like a stable and dominant ideology,” said Luthfi Assyaukanie, a researcher and co-founder of the Liberal Islam Network. “But before 1998, when [the dictator] Suharto fell, the media was tightly controlled and privileged the discourse of liberal, tolerant groups like NU.”

In retrospect, Assyaukanie said, the center could not hold. Suharto’s authoritarianism prioritized religious tolerance — for the sake of stability, if nothing else. But when the democratic floodgates opened in 1998, conservatives could finally organize and evangelize. FPI was founded in late 1998, the sharia-promoting hard-line Indonesian Mujahideen Council in 2000, and the reactionary Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) in 2002.

“I don’t think NU adapted fast enough to the new media environment,” said Savic Ali, a young NU member who runs its website and Nutizen, a new streaming video platform. “The people who really took advantage of it were the hard right — conservative voices like that of [the celebrity TV preacher] Abdullah Gymnastiar who amass huge followings on TV and social media.” Ali is spearheading an effort to raise the digital profile of NU preachers but admits they’re playing catch-up.

Indonesian Muslims, including NU’s member base, are becoming more intensely and visibly conservative. A recent survey found that four in five public school religion teachers support imposing sharia, or Islamic law. And “more women wear hijab, more families go to Mecca, more people pray in public spaces after 1998,” Assyaukanie said.