‘Gus Dur contributed to the politicization of NU’

A five-day national leadership conference of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) in Makassar, South Sulawesi, which concluded last Friday, attracted a number of foreign scholars on Islam to attend, including contemporary Muslim societies expert Martin van Bruinessen from Utrecht University, in The Netherlands. The following are excerpts on his views on Indonesia’s biggest mass Muslim organization, as told to The Jakarta Post’s Muhammad Nafik and Bagus BT Saragih after the conference.

Question: How do you see the political maneuvering during the race?

Answer: There are a lot of negotiations during the conference. Perhaps the vote was not bought outright but people expect something in return. That’s negotiating.

 And people often shift the choices in the course of the conference more than once. The negotiations sometimes involve money but also arguments, which are the most important things.

Are you saying that candidates bought the votes?

In organizations such as the Golkar Party and other parties, the strongest bidder is the one who has the most convincing arguments, especially financial arguments. But in NU it is more complicated. Money does play a role but it’s more complicated.

Many other things also play role include loyalty to the organization. Said Agil Siradj (the newly elected NU chairman) for instance mobilized loyalties and recognition of his abilities. He is known as capable of speaking Arabic, while for Pak Hasyim, he knows some Arabic but his Arabic is, unfortunately, not fluent.

For rais aam, they should understand kitab kuning (traditional textbooks), which uses Arabic that is different from Arabic newspapers. In this second round of chairmanship election, there is an outsider who put his candidacy. In this case, money doesn’t play a part in collecting votes more than I expected.

How about liberal NU scholar Ulil Abshar-Abdalla?

Ulil came as an outsider who was denied because of his connection with the Liberal Islam Network (JIL), which faced strong resistance from NU under Hasyim’s leadership. But he managed to get 22 votes.  Money is definitely not an important consideration.

The fact is that money plays a part, but it’s not a great amount of money we speak about. It’s more like airline tickets and hotel fares.

What I understand is that the provincial committee of the NU conference received tickets, sometimes money, from candidates. In exchange they promised to vote for them. Many people had apparently promised to vote for Hasyim, but he eventually lost.

How could the NU resist influences from outsiders to become an independent organization?

It’s very difficult to become a self-reliant large organization like NU. The infrastructure to communicate with your members is so costly.

Currently, the NU itself is not a rich organization. It has hardly any regular sources of income.  They are highly dependent on contributions from outsiders.

Soeharto is no longer around to pay for everything. That makes NU open to influence from outsiders. They have millions of members, but in the sense that they are not contribution-paying members.

Around 20 percent of the Indonesian population, perhaps even more, feel more or less represented by NU. Very few of those join up as card-carrying members who pay contributions annually. They have tried several times to register memberships. NU is notoriously chaotic, difficult to manage. But for me this is an interesting aspect.

If people accuse Pak Hasyim of money politics, he as a chairman has had to find money. If he had not done that he would be accused of failure. If you find money, you will be accused of money politics, but if you don’t find money you’re also wrong.

How do you see the implementation of khittah (NU’s principles to stay away from practical politics)?
It is the guiding principles. The decision (of NU in 1984) to return to khittah means to stay out of practical politics. Everyone says that. Pak Hasyim said NU should be able to keep away from practical politics, but he became the candidate for vice president [in 2004]. He also supported Jusuf Kalla who ran for president [in 2009].

Obviously his definition of practical politics is probably different. I think that in 1984 the pragmatic meaning of khittah was that any member of the board in any level of NU was not allowed to be on the board of any political party at the same time. But Gus Dur established the National Awakening Party (PKB) as a political channel for NU members, a fact that is very important.

You can definitely say that Gus Dur contributed to the politicization of NU. Everyone seems to define practical politics a little bit differently. But khittah primarily means that you cannot be a leader of NU and a leader of a political party at the same time.