Southeast Asia's confident Muslims

In his introductory remarks to the launch of his most recent publication Indonesia Riding: Islam, Democracy and the Rise of Indonesia as a Major Power, author Dr. Nasir Tamara made it a point to note that the appearance of 'Islam' as the first word in the book's subtitle was not a coincidence, but rather meant to underscore the significance of Islam in the recent political history of Indonesia. Tamara, a Sorbonne-educated scholar and leading Indonesian journalist, argues that the religion factor is a key constituent element of what he considers -- in spite of its ups and downs -- the success story of Indonesia's democratization process.


Indonesia Risingis the outcome of a research project entitled Moderate Islam in Indonesia, Indonesian Presidency under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, which Tamara executed as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (INSEAS) in Singapore (Cf. also the commentary in the Financial Times of 9 July published under the same title). After the rocky presidencies of Abdurrahman Wahid (a.k.a. Gus Dur) and Megawati Sukarnoputri, and in spite of the scepticism of many when taking the disrupting activities and violent attacks by Muslim radicals into account, Tamara maintains that the policies of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) are starting to sort tangible effects.

In the opening pages of his book he backs this up by invoking the comment made by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton during her visit to Indonesia earlier this year that 'if you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women's rights can coexist, go to Indonesia'. Tamara feels further strengthened in his claim of Indonesia's rising stature on the global scene by President Obama's decision to sent Secretary Clinton to Jakarta on her first international assessment mission - not to mention his own personal interest in things Indonesian dating back to the primary school years he spent there.

Although his own study focuses on Indonesia, amplifying its role as an exemplatory Muslim state, Tamara does note that the developments in that country are part of a much broader phenomenon affecting the Muslim world, as his visits to Morocco, Turkey, and -- yes -- Iran had shown him (the same countries I have singled out for another research project on the recent intellectual history of the Muslim world).

I believe Nasir Tamara's assertive position also forms parts of another more regional phenomenon: the growing self-confidence displayed by Southeast Asian Muslims. In a 2002 interview with Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria, the current Secretary General of ASEAN and former Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs, Surin Pitsuwan (interesting in itself that a Muslim can serve as the chief diplomat of a Buddhist kingdom), stated that: 'For all Islam's history, Southeast Asia was considered a backwater. But the flows of globalization now need to be reversed. Islam must learn not from the Center but rather the periphery'. Two years later, the Malaysian Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Datu Seri Rais Yatim came out against the 'Arabisation' of Malay culture in an interview in the newspaper The Star, encouraging his countrymen to 'challenge those who condemn deep-rooted practices of the Malay community as UnIslamic'.


As the main protagonist of Tamara's narrative argued himself in a speech delivered at the LSE in March 2009, Indonesia has a bridge function to play, connecting the Muslim world, Asia and the West. Also during SBY's second term in office as president of the largest Muslim nation in the world, the eyes of those interested in alternative Islamic discourses will continue to focus on developments in Indonesia.

Indonesia's Muslims between religious pluralism and intolerance

 This article was written for the Middle-East Asia Project (MAP) of the Middle East Instite (MEI) in Washington DC:

Religious pluralism has been under threat and sectarianism on the rise during the ten-year (2004-2014) tenure of outgoing president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (also known as SBY).  During his two terms in office, Indonesia has seen rising tensions both between and within religious groups, increasing religious intolerance, and more cases of religiously inspired violence. This antagonistic climate has led to the closure and burning of churches, the displacement of Shi‘i communities, physical violence against civil society activists campaigning for religious pluralism, and even the lynching of Ahmadis. Colluding local and regional authorities not only undermine the rule of law by failing to prosecute the perpetrators, but even seek to “resolve” tensions caused by the presence of minority groups by condoning—and sometimes stimulating—intimidation and hate crimes against them.

Outgoing Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

These apparently domestic issues have wider significance for three reasons. First, in addition to being the largest Muslim nation-state in the world and a regional heavyweight in Southeast Asia, Indonesia also has the potential to become a global force on par with countries such as Russia and Brazil; second, its strategic location in an area where the United States, Chinese, and Indian interests meet makes it an important factor in the repositioning of a future world order, and finally, fifteen years of experience with a democratization process demonstrates that shaping a democratic political system for a pluralist society is hard work that must involve both institutional reform and the formation of a civil society capable of facilitating peaceful coexistence among diverse members of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious population.  As a self-proclaimed “natural bridge” between the Muslim world, Asia, and the West, Indonesia offers a cautionary lesson for other Muslim countries planning alternative political trajectories in the aftermath of regime change.

 

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Obama and the 'Absent Word'

Recently, I have registered interesting responses by two very different Muslims to Barack Obama's historic Cairo speech * in which he sought to redefine America's relations with the Muslim world.

The more high-profile response came on 29 September from the leader of the world's most populous Muslim country. Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) used again a G20 summit to present himself as the architect of a new global policy for the Muslim world's interaction with other civilizations.

Whereas in April he had outlined Indonesia's bridge function between the rest of the Asia, the Muslim world and the West during a lecture at the London School of Economics (mentioned my post of 3 September 2009), in September he provided a more generic vision for resolving the conflicts in the Muslim world and ease its relations with the rest of the global community. At the beginning of his second term in office, reinforced by an even stronger electoral mandate, SBY's confidence as a leading figure in the Muslim world rings through in the no less than nine imperatives he suggested in a speech entitled 'Harmony Between Civilizations' delivered at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School for Government, after the G20 meeting in Pennsylvania.

Recalling Samuel Huntington's seminal article of sixteen years ago, in which the latter defined a 'Clash of Civilizations' as the governing paradigm for the 21st century, SBY opined that, even though he considered it a counterproductive projection, it must yet be acknowledged that the fault lines identified by Huntington are 'not a trivial reminder' of the many complicated issues affecting international relations.

A more harmonious way of global interaction however would first of all depend on exercising 'soft power' instead of 'hard power'. SBY cited the example of the thirteenth-century Islamic civilisation which was at the time the most sophisticated in the world due to its enormous thirst for learning. The accrued body of knowledge was later utilised by the Western Renaissance, showing how 'civilizations have built on each other's knowledge and have become enriched by it'.

The second imperative is the need for a much intenser global dialogue. Some initiatives in that direction have actually been launched by Muslim states. In conjunction with Spain, Turkey established the Alliance of Civilizations and, more recently, Saudi Arabia convened the Interfaith Conference at the UN.

The third imperative is finding solutions for the actual political conflicts in which two out of every three Muslim countries are caught up. This needs also a degree of soul-searching on the part of Muslim nations, instead of blaming all problems on a concerted "war against Islam".

The fourth and fifth imperatives concern the need for moderation and turning multiculturalism and tolerance into a 'global norm'. This can only be achieved if globalisation is made to work for all (6) through a reform of global governance (7), as there can be no genuine harmony among civilisations as long as the majority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims feel marginalised and insecure. While the G-20 is more representative of today's global dynamics, the UN Security Council still reflects the power balance of 1945 rather than 2009. Therefore the council needs to be restructured to keep up with today's geopolitical realities.

The real battlegrounds to achieve such a rethinking of world order lie in the education systems (8) where the global conscience (9) of future generations s shaped. His experiences with the overwhelming response to the tragedy hitting the Indonesian province of Aceh in northern Sumatra with the 2004 Tsunami, convinced SBY that such a global conscience indeed exists.


A week later, the French-Algerian historian of Islam Mohammed Arkoun formulated a more intellectualised assessment in his closing remarks at the conference 'Construction of Belief' (see my post of 11 October 2009). Engaging with what in Braudelian terms is called the 'geohistorical space' of the Mediterranean has been Arkoun's life-long scholarly concern, as it allowed him to move away from the geo-political dimensions of the post-WWII perspective on the relations between civilisations.

This forms part of his concern for various forms of 'reason' in which he has shown himself to be equally critical of the miserable track record of religious thought as well as the 'political theology; of modernity, which can be traced to the origins of monotheism (some 4000 years ago) and the Greek concept of logos respectively. Both have been ever present, working and creating the violence that has marred the history of the Mediterranean, and give Arkoun the long duree perspective needed to analyse the beginnings of the current situation in that region.

According to Arkoun, the Mediterranean Space cannot be accurately described in terms of a north-south divide grounded in notions of 'true religion'. However current-day modern thinking nor politics appear to be able to break free from what has become a vicious circle of the Christian-Muslim dichotomy in the Mediterranean. These two traditions have been at loggerheads since the end of the thirteenth century when the Muslim world turned against the so-called 'intrusive sciences' (al-Ulum al-Dakhiliya) that is the Hellenic legacy it had embraced in earlier centuries.

To deal with this polarisation a new dictionary is required to adequately conceptualise this situation. The Islam 'on the ground' is not reflected in the way it is ethnographically or culturally represented in scholarship.

In political terms, post-independence Northwest Africans had been expecting a democracy as propagated by the West, instead their region has regressed into an imagined model of the early community in Medina. Authoritarian regimes have created a fictive Islam, allowing them to claim to be following a divine law. Unfortunately, the way political scientists tend to study this situation is too short-term to accurately analyse the local phenomena. what is needed is a corrective through a new scholarship in religion.

So far this scholarship has not emerged because both intellectuals and politicians are locked into a form of logocentrism that has declared whole areas of our cultural heritage or civilisational legacy as 'The Unthought', which through existing power structures has been been reified into the 'The Unthinkable'.

It is in the realm of actual global politics that the missing key word (parole absente) has finally been pronounced by Barack Obama, when he acknowledged that until now the West has spoken with a hegemonic voice. This extends not only to contemporary post-war and post-cold war politics but also to the cognitive status of Revelation, to which Arkoun not only counts sacred scriptures such as the Bible, The Gospel, or the Upanishads for that matter, but also the oeuvre of Karl Marx to which a similar status has been attributed.

This sanctifaction and sacralisation much be recognized as the outcome of social and historical processes and the only way to escape from it is to trangress all boundaries of knowledge production, displace all theologies into the realm of linguistic analysis, and thus surpass hegemonic discourse.

* for the video of Obama's speech, click here

YES WE CAN work with Obama.

Reactions from Muslims and the Muslim world to the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.

Relations between the United States and the Muslim World -- not to forget the country's government and its own Muslim citizens -- have not exactly warmed under George W. Bush's watch at the White House. Not surprisingly then that the election of Barack Obama rises expections for an imminent improvement of these relations, although many remain cautious. Here are some reactions from Muslim quarters to the Democrat's victory.

The altmuslim website, based -- of all places -- in Austin (Texas), greeted Barack Obama with a special three-part report entitled 'Assalamu aleikum, Mr. President: Obama prevailed. So will we', "exploring what an Obama victory means for Muslims in the US and around the world"

The Muslim Council of Britain said it was "confident the vast majority of Muslims, not just in the UK, but worldwide, would welcome an Obama victory. The last eight years under Bush are viewed as hugely damaging ones, not just for America, but for the world" [...] "Obama is seen as a person who will hopefully be more inclined to take into consideration the views of other people. We hope Obama will work with other countries. "As someone from a minority background, he embodies America's best ideals in practice. Obama's victory in the election is living proof of America as a symbol of hope around the world."

French Press Bureau AFP reports that, in the Middle East, the Obama win was hailed "amid mixed expectations of change". Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Palestian Authority President Abbas are looking forward to Obama's plans for restarting the Peace Process. Banned from participating on the grounds that the US 'does not negotiate with terrorists', the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas was reserved in its response. But it 'urged the Democrat leader to learn from the "mistakes" of previous US administrations in dealing with the Muslim and Arab worlds'. Spokesman Fawzi Barhum accused the Bush administration of having "destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine".

Gamil Matar, director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research, warned that even with Obama in the White House and the Democrats a majority in Congress, "the policies of the neocons are not going to vanish overnight." Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia it was 'business as usual', as Saudi King Abdullah sent Obama a congratulatory message, hailing the "historic and close" ties between the two countries.

Put in the 'Axis of Evil' by outgoing President Bush, many Iranians have their hopes pinned on president-elect Obama, but a BBC assessment of the prospects for any immediate improvement of relations is not overly optimistic for the near future.

Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a senior adviser to Iran's Surpeme Leader, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, said: "Obama's election displays the failure of America's policies around the globe. Americans have to change their policies to rescue themselves from the quagmire created by Bush." Prominent MP Hamid Reza Haji Baba'i said Obama's victory was an "opportunity and test" and that the Islamic republic had been waiting for a change.

In neighbouring Iraq, the sentiments of Shi'ite leaders were not very different from their Iranian counterparts, although the movement of Iraq's anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr welcomed Obama's victory. "We consider his victory as a wish of the American public to withdraw forces from Iraq. This is what we are looking for," spokesman Sheikh Saleh al-Obeidi said in the holy city of Najaf.

For a detailed account of the intricacies of the US relationship with the Middle East, and Iraq in particular, read Juan Cole's Informed Comment

One country appears to be unreserved in its welcome of the new president. Indonesia is not only the world's most populous Muslim country, but Barack Obama lived there for four years (1967-1971) after his mother married geologist Lolo Soetoro. Obama's halfsister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, even addressed the Democratic National Convention. One of the top stories carried by The Jakarta Post reports on the reactions at Obama's former school in Jakarta's Menteng District. The country's president Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, meanwhile, "welcomed Mr Obama's election", but concentrated in his comments on economical issues, rather than the disturbed relationship between the US and the many parts of the Muslim world: "I want to congratulate Senator Obama for his success in being elected as US President. I also want to congratulate US citizens [...] Indonesia hopes that the US will continue to play a role in bringing peace and security in the world and a fair global economy. [...] In particular, Indonesia hopes the US can take concrete measures to settle the global economic crisis and the financial crisis in the United States."

Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, founder of the Liberal Islam Network and one of Indonesia's most prominent young Muslim intellectuals, commented from Boston, where he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Harvard University, that "The election of Obama is clearly a punishment for [a] miserable four years of Bush administration! Salute to [the] American people".

On the Northwestern fringe of the Muslim world, in Turkey, the focus is also on economic issues rather than anything else. Prime Minister Erdogan, whose AKP or Justice and Development Party walks a tightrope between its own stress on 'Islamic values' and the country's staunchly secular constitution, congratulated the newly elected president, but added that "I believe that Turkish-American relations should be defined by the strategic ties between Turkey and the United States, not by government changes there". He went on to say that Obama would "have to shoulder a heavy burden at a time of global financial crisis and compelling international issues." Turkish media are cautiously optimistic, pinning their hope for a better future on Obama, or adopting a 'wait-and-see' attitude.

This somewhat lukewarm response can be explained by the Turkish reservations towards Vice-President-elect Joe Biden, who as a senator went on record stating that the emergence of a Kurdish state in the border regions of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey would have to be reckoned with as a feasible possibility. In addition there is apprehension over Americans of Armenian descent advocating the Armenian issue with a Democrat occupant of the White House. The largest contingent of American-Armenians lives in California, the state of the current Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who would be in a position to facilitate access to the new administration.

A Cosmopolitan Muslim: Abdurrahman Wahid (1940-2009)

Abdurrahman Wahid, affectionately known as Gus Dur, has died at the age of 69 in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

The first freely elected head of state of the Indonesian republic after the fall of the Soeharto regime, Gus Dur's term in office (1999-2001) was troublesome and cut short by impeachment procedures which saw him replaced by Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of the country's founding father, Soekarno.

His legacy as a Muslim reformist, however, will outlast the sad demise of his short-lived political career. Together with Nurcholish Madjid he was the face of the liberal and pluralist Islam which emerged in Indonesia during the last three decades of the 20th century.

Born in the East-Javanese district of Jombang, Abdurrahman Wahid was the grandson K.H. Hasjim Asj'ari (1875-1947), a prominent Muslim scholar and founder of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). Now one of the largest Muslim organisations in the world (it claims a following of over 30 million), the NU has for decades represented the traditionalist Muslim establishment; the gurus or kyai whose bases of power were the Islamic boarding schools known as pesantrens found throughout rural Java. Hasjim Asj'ari's son -- and Gus Dur's father -- K.H. Wahid Hasjim served as the first Minister or Religious Affairs (1945, and again 1949-52) and succeeded as NU leader in 1947, until his untimely death in 1953.

After receiving both a secular and traditional Islamic education in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Jombang, and Magelang Gus Dur worked as a teacher at a modernist Islamic school (madrasa) affiliated with Pesantren Tambakberas and as a journalist.

In 1953, he was awarded a scholarship for study at Cairo's al-Azhar University. Forced to take remedial classes in Arabic before attending the university's Higher Institute of Islamic and Arabic Studies, Gus Dur preferred spending his time reading world literature, watching European and American movies, and football. Bored with the curriculum at al-Azhar, Gus Dur opted for a transfer to the University of Baghdad, where he studied Arabic literature. Leaving Iraq in 1970, he made a failed bid to enter Leiden University in the Netherlands and then decided to travel home via France and Germany.

Back in Indonesia, Gus Dur joined the Institute for Economic and Social Research, Education and Information, also known under the acronym LP3ES . In addition he became a journalist, working for periodicals such as Prisma, Tempo and Kompas, and returning to Pesantren Tambakberas as a teacher.

As a descendant from an elite NU family, Abdurahman Wahid also become involved in the Pesantren reform policies initiated by Minister of Religious Affairs, Abdul Mukti Ali (1971-78), which he supported enthusiastically. These Islamic schools would provide the seedbed for the new Muslim intelligentsia emerging in the course of the 1980s and 1990s, which formed the constituency for the alternative Islamic discourse referred to as Islam Kultural (Cultural Islam) or Islam Sipil (Civil Islam), and for which Gus Dur himself coined the term Islam Kosmopolitan (Cosmopolitan Islam).

More interested in working as a public intellectual and writer than an organisational and administrative career, Gus Dur was very reluctant to become involved in NU affairs and only after a third appeal from his maternal grandfather Bisri Syansuri did he accept a place on the NU religious advisory council.

From this position he began to challenge the existing NU leadership which he held responsible for the organisation's rampant stagnation. Gus Dur proposed not only drastic internal reforms but withdrew the NU also from party politics, severing its links with the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan or PPP). His successful proposals for revitalising the stale NU made him very popular and in 1984 he followed in his father and grandfather's footsteps by being elected chairman of the NU -- a post he would continue to hold until 1998.

During those fifteen years, Gus Dur groomed a new generation of NU intellectuals, which came to be known as the NU Muda or 'Young NU Members'. Educated at reformed pesantrens, many went on to study at the State Institutes of Islamic Studies (IAIN) found in cities such as Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, and Bandung. The most talented would subsequently be given the opportunity to pursue postgraduate studies at universities in North America (in particular McGill University in Canada), Europe and Australia. Combining intimate familiarity with the Islamic tradition with knowledge of the latest advances of Western scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, they are now making their own contributions to the formulation of alternative Islamic discourses through a critical engagement with the Islamic heritage, informed by the cosmopolitan outlook they have acquired through their exposure to a wide array of intellectual influences. For more on this, read the article Indonesia's New Muslim Intellectuals in Religion Compass.

After leaving office, Gus Dur concentrated his efforts on promoting his own pluralist interpretation of Islam's civilisational legacy through lectures, publications and a think tank called the Wahid Institute.




Abdurrahman al-Dakhil Wahid was buried near his father and grandfather's shrines in his hometown Tebuireng, dstrict Jombang, with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono presiding at the funeral ceremony.