Islam, yes, Islamic party, no: A relevant call<\/p>\n
Rozi Ali, New Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur<\/p>\n
Cak Nur, as he is popularly called, is a respected thinker.
\nObservers of the Islamic revivalism in this region would have
\nremembered Cak Nur for his slogan in the early 1970s, one which
\nthe likes of Pas would find blasphemous, \"Islam, Yes. Islamic
\nParty, No\".<\/p>\n
It would be good for Barisan Nasional-led Malaysia and Umno's
\nIslam if Indonesia boasts of a modernist ulama as president -- an
\nulama who, quite correctly, rejects the idea of an Islamic state
\nas a \"myth\". Since the 1960s, Cak Nur had already seen the
\ndangers of polarization in the Muslim community where the
\ntraditionalist and pro-Islamic state modernists are pitted
\nagainst the so-called secular modernists.<\/p>\n
A Javanese raised in the traditionalist stronghold of Jombang
\nin East Java and anak didik of the great Islamic thinker,
\nUniversity Chicago's Fazlur Rahman, Cak Nur's writings represents
\na new genre of Islamic scholarship that puts together Quranic
\ntafsir (commentary) with contemporary political analysis and
\nsophisticated social theory.<\/p>\n
He does not invoke jurisprudential cadences of Islamic
\ntraditions or talk about the abstract idealism of Islamic
\nmodernism. I remember him as a thinker who initially troubled me
\nwith his provocative scholarship on the legitimacy and role of
\nsecularization in Islam -- now increasingly accepted and enlarged
\nby intellectuals like Abdullahi An-Naim, Ja'far Sheikh Idris and
\nZaid Shakir.<\/p>\n
Like Indonesia's Islamic modernists such as Djohan Effendi and
\nFachry Ali, Cak Nur chose the middle road between secular
\nliberalism and the Kaum Tua's ideologised Islam. As early as the
\n1970s, Cak Nur criticized fellow ulema for misunderstanding the
\nessence of Islam by turning the profane into the sacrilegious.<\/p>\n
Among the profane are the notions of an Islamic state and
\nIslamic political parties. In a nutshell, Cak Nur challenged the
\northodox views of the traditionalists.<\/p>\n
Like Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Cak Nur believes in the
\nfundamentals of Islam but vehemently rejects the man-made
\nimperatives (and the attendant deviations that accrue from their
\nblind acceptance) such as the Islamic state. Cak Nur bristles
\nagainst those Muslims who instead of focusing on intellectual and
\nsocial renewal, waste their time on ideological bickering.
\nCentral to Cak Nur's religious thought is the need for Muslims to
\nsecularize the political while preserving the truly sacred in
\nIslam.<\/p>\n
As he wrote in Islam, Kemodernan dan Keindonesiaan: \"Islam
\nitself, if examined truthfully, was begun with a process of
\nsecularization. Indeed, the principle of tauhid represents the
\nstarting point for a much larger secularization. This commitment
\nto tauhid requires a never-ending effort to distinguish the
\ndivine from the human in Islamic traditions.\"<\/p>\n
In distinguishing the divine from the human in Islamic
\ntraditions, tauhid implies a commitment to reason, knowledge and
\nscience. This can be understood as acts of devotion to a creator
\nwhose majesty is immanent in the natural laws of the world. Going
\nby the thought of Cak Nur, modernity resides in a process -- a
\nprocess of discovery in which truths are relative, leading to the
\ndiscovery of the Absolute Truth, Allah. Cak Nur's critics argue
\nthat since Islam is a total way of life, accepting secularization
\namounts to a renunciation of Islam's holism. He is accused of
\nbeing overly influenced by Western theologians such as Harvey
\nCox, who wrote The Secular City.<\/p>\n
More commonly, he is accused of ignoring the Sunnah or
\nProphet's traditions. A Malaysian critic -- a certain professor
\nwhom I had the privilege of studying under for two wholesome
\nyears -- wrote, \"to deny this precedent is to rid Islam of its
\nsociological wholeness, transforming it into a mere spiritual
\npersonalist ethical system akin to what Christianity has become
\nin the West\".<\/p>\n
I disagree. I am inclined to believe that what Cak Nur meant
\nis that some areas in the Sunnah responded to the immediate
\nissues and concerns that had emerged during specific historical
\ncontext. Thus, the sieving of the divine from the human or the
\nuse of reason is integral in the process of interpreting the
\ntraditions.<\/p>\n
Cak Nur's critics are trapped in the straitjacket of
\ndogmatism. Imprisoned in their worldview of 18th century West
\nEurope, they understand secularism as the separation of church
\nfrom state. The Muslim modernists of Cak Nur's ilk view
\nsecularism as \"a principle of public policy for organizing the
\nrelationship between religion and the state in a specific
\ncontext\" and that it must be understood in a con-textual sense of
\neach particular society.<\/p>\n
Cak Nur warns that the subordination of Islam to party
\npolitics would cause the stagnation of modernism among the ummah.
\nThis alarm is already ringing in Malaysia.<\/p>",
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