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Ahmadiyah and crisis of Indonesian Islam

It has been said of Indonesia's Muslims that they constitute a majority with a minority mentality -- a contradictory situation in which Muslims, while comprising 90 percent of Indonesia's population, have felt unjustly restricted from politics, especially from the strongly Pancasila-based governments of Sukarno and Soeharto

Thomas Barker (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, July 11, 2008

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Ahmadiyah and crisis of Indonesian Islam

It has been said of Indonesia's Muslims that they constitute a majority with a minority mentality -- a contradictory situation in which Muslims, while comprising 90 percent of Indonesia's population, have felt unjustly restricted from politics, especially from the strongly Pancasila-based governments of Sukarno and Soeharto.

This observation may not hold true today, but what we see is worse: Islam in Indonesia is experiencing a crisis of legitimacy.

It has been seven years since September 11th, after which Islam became synonymous with violence and terrorism. Although this orientalist fallacy still persists in some quarters, our perceptions of Islam have broadened. That it is as diverse as any other system of human belief should not be surprising, as its history is as rich, varied and tumultuous as any other.

However, in Indonesia -- often referred to as the world's largest Muslim nation -- the specter of violence in the name of religion has returned. Persistent attacks against and vilification of Ahmadiyah by fundamentalist Islamic groups acting in the name of a unitary Islam. Continued harassment of Christians and the destruction of their churches in Bekasi.

And one month ago, only a stone's throw away from the presidential palace, a violent attack on a rally for religious freedom and tolerance. This newspaper, like many others, has been filled with articles expressing outrage at these vigilante groups.

In broader geopolitical terms, Islam is having trouble proving to the world that it is not a religion of violence. This is the case even in Indonesia -- often seen as the poster boy for Islam and democracy working together.

While the rhetoric surrounding Islam and violence is wrong, Islam itself has failed to prove otherwise. It will continue to be plagued by the specter of violence unless it can take on a more constructive role in civil society.

This argument may seem to lump together mainstream and fundamentalist Islamic groups. But recent events have tended to blur the distinction between the two. While mainstream groups have made obligatory statements against violence, this is only the tip of the iceberg: The controversy surrounding violence points to disarray and a deeper crisis of legitimacy in Indonesian Islam.

Ahmadiyah's mistake was perhaps rather simple. By professing to be Islamic while at the same time acknowledging a prophet after Muhammad, they engaged in heresy. The sect could have avoided this situation if it had withdrawn from Islam. While Christianity, another Abrahamic religion, tolerates splinter beliefs, branches and other prophets, Islam requires the acknowledgment of Muhammad as God's true and only prophet.

However, the issue is not merely one of Ahmadis exiting Islam because certain vigilante groups have made it their mission to obliterate the sect from the archipelago, but rather: Why draw attention to them now? Ahmadis have been in Indonesia for more than 70 years, quietly building a religious community.

According to a recently quoted statistic, Ahmadiyah in Indonesia comprises 242 branches. It is understandable that smaller fundamentalist groups started to notice these branches and, feeling threatened, took action.

However, the problem does not lie with Ahmadiyah itself. Many have pointed their fingers at the government's inability to handle incidents surrounding the sect.

For example, Fahri Hamzah of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) strongly criticized the government's immature response and said the government should seek a solution in the form of an inter-Muslim dialogue. Likewise, the police have been severely criticized for failing to protect Ahmadis and their property and for being benign toward vigilante groups.

The debate has also turned to the two mainstream Islamic organizations -- Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) -- and their inability to provide a moderate response to both the question of Ahmadiyah and to the actions of fundamentalist Islamic groups. In fact, NU has started training its own militant group, Ansor, without realizing this is a recipe for disaster.

These events and responses to it all point to a religion deep in crisis. Islam in Indonesia has never been homogeneous but instead characterized by a diverse range of interpretations -- from orthodox to the particular Javanese syncretic forms.

What we see, however, is a religion that has turned (in) on itself, albeit led by its more extreme wing. Unable to effect change in society more broadly, certain groups within Islam have started to attack members of their own religious community. The move to "purify" is emblematic of a religion in crisis.

The failure of Islam, more generally, has been its failure to deal with this problem. Although it has now become the state's problem, alarm bells should have gone off long ago within the Muslim community. A political Islam, ready to take on a more active and constructive role in civil society, has not emerged from the instrumentalist policies of the New Order. Instead, the New Order accustomed Muslims to complacency and powerlessness while Islam as a moral system has failed to dominate political discourse, leaving the task to the often arbitrary and incoherent decisions of individual Muslims.

After decades of being politically repressed, mainstream Islamic groups have failed to take up the mantle of responsibility. Even today, the political arm of Muhammadiyah -- the National Mandate Party (PAN) -- is still engaged in reactionary and populist politics, just like the majority of political parties.

No coherent political platform exists to marry Muhammadiyah's ideology with its vast experience in the democratic process. Likewise the Indonesia Ulama Council (MUI), whose only activity seems to be releasing fatwa, provides little in the way of religious leadership or example.

Despite arguments from within Islam against the "Islam equals violence" fallacy, it is hard to see where the community of Muslims has made concrete efforts to substantiate its claim. There are certainly individual cases of charity and assistance -- the spate of responses to recent natural disasters being the most obvious example.

However, with current concern over food scarcity and the recent hike in fuel prices, Islamic groups have been conspicuously absent from programs of social aid and poverty alleviation. Likewise in the political arena, they have been missing from constructive discussions of possible policy solutions to these current problems.

Instead, we have seen reactionary politics from moderate Islam and violent intimidation from fundamentalist Islamic groups acting in the name of the people. Sharia law, introduced in some areas to address social problems -- so it was argued -- has become nothing more than a set of laws governing public morality, laws that unfairly target women and society's vulnerable.

Unfortunately these events reflect negatively on the entire Muslim community. The opportunities afforded by the reform era to improve governance and social conditions in Indonesia are being squandered by Islamic groups and their dearth of leadership.

The writer is a Ph.D. candidate in the sociology department at the National University of Singapore. He can be reached at thomas.barker@nus.edu.sg

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