Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

74
SESSION II
lives of Muslims. And, in the world’s fourth largest
country where most of the world’s Muslims live and
almost half of them in various degree of poverty Islam
must surely play a major role in determining the future
of the people and the nation. PKS appears to have the
political will to re-examine the failings of today’s Islam
and act to make for a better one. Further, this party’s
discipline has been demonstrated many times over in
huge demonstrations that have been kept orderly and
peaceful as witnessed in the many anti-US protests that
the party and its members have organized.
The leadership is, though, careful in their expression of
the party’s US sentiments, but they take the attitude
that Iraq has been tyrannized and the rights of the Iraqis
robbed without reasons that have been proven beyond
doubt and that Saddam Hussein is an internal matter to
be sorted out by the Iraqis themselves. A striking analogy
was given by a PKS member of the Dewan Perwakilan
Rakyat Daerah (DPRD), Jogjakarta, Pak Ariff, member
from Kabupaten Bandul: What if Saddam Hussein asks
for the United States to be liberated from George W.
Bush?
THE ISLAMO-DEMOCRACY OF NURCHOLISH
MADJID
One contemporary Indonesian thinker stands out
above all the rest because of the very brave position
he has always taken vis-à-vis Islam in Indonesia. He
was fundamental to the shaping of today’s Reformasi
and was once tipped to be the president of post-Suharto
Indonesia. But, Cak Nur, as he is affectionately referred
to, had no stomach for power. An intellectual by
inclination, he remained well within the inner circle but
never officially part of the formal elite power structure.
His importance to Indonesia lies in his many works on
Islamic political philosophy.
In a book written by Anas Urbaningrum “Islamo-
Demokrasi: Pemikiran Nurcholish Madjid” the author
attempts an interpretation, which is summarized here
as the following:
“Namun demikian, dalam implementasi hubungan
Islam dengan demokrasi setidaknya membutuhkan
empat prasyarat tambahan.” 28
The four preconditions are:
• Accountability to Allah and the ummah or
community of Muslims
• Moral norms that is preferred as benchmark of
democracy is Islamic.
• Commitment to Islamic teachings in moral and
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows
ethical matters, and
• Non-dictatorship by the majority.
This last fully explains the notion of political Islam that
Cak Nur subscribes to. In Islamizing democracy, he
argues for a non-exclusive community that can sustain
religious freedom, hence his staunch advocacy of the
secular state. His interpretation of Islam upholds the
belief that there is no obligation on a Muslim to set up
an Islamic state. 29
STATE OF INDONESIAN ISLAM
Today Islam in Indonesia is an interesting blossoming
of thought and action. The spectrum covers the
liberalism of Cak Nur on the one hand and the extremist
tendency of Abu Bakar Ba’syir, on the other. Neither
of these two polarities, however, appears likely to leave
hope for Islam and Muslims per se because the ideas of
the former are drowned in a modernity that seems to
have little faith in the ability of Islam to bring to the
world and globalism an imprint that is original to Islam.
Rather, western notions of liberal democracy are being
dressed up as Islamic by finding within Islam values that
match the democratic identity. This approach merely
abrogates important indicators that tend to point to a
different Islam; for example, the Quranic injunction
of men as protectors, which brings to the fore the
universal human rights principle of gender equality.
The issue then is whether Islam is able to accommodate
the very important indicator of democracy, i.e., equality.
Can a fundamental status differential between men and
women be construed as democratic?
Further, a religion as the basis of faith is not sustainable
without a notion of exclusivity. How does a Muslim
maintain faith in the face of open proselytizing by other
religions that keeps its exclusive identity: the notion of
a chosen people? Cak Nur’s idea of deconstructing
received Islam in favor of alignment with western
democratic principles, which has the potential of
undermining its integrity, has the tendency to unmake
Islam and reconstruct it in the image of western
democratic liberalism. Such a consequence does not
contribute towards answering the questions addressed
by this research.
At the other end of the Islamic political spectrum, it goes
without saying that where Abu Bakar Ba’syir intends to
take Muslims does not bear rationalizing. An advocate
of the Islamic state, this school of thought does not even
realize that if at all this is, even today, merely a concept
and that the Medina Charter of old cannot sustain a
modern society. These are romantics, fundamentalists