Ulil goes against fundamentalism<\/p>\n
Berni K. Moestafa, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
Relatively small but vocal, Indonesia's Muslim fundamentalists
\nare a thorn in the side to the country's majority of Muslim
\nmoderates. But recently, the hardliners are complaining of an
\nannoying sting. It goes by the name Ulil Abshar-Abdalla.<\/p>\n
A 36-year old intellectual from the country's largest Muslim
\norganization, Nahdlatul Ulama, he has broken the deafening
\nsilence of the moderate majority over the growing influence of
\nfundamentalism here since Soeharto fell in 1998.<\/p>\n
Now he confronts them wherever they are found: the Internet,
\nradio, newspapers, television and face to face at debates.<\/p>\n
"I prefer calling them revivalists," Ulil said in an interview
\non Monday.<\/p>\n
Revivalists, because their ultimate aim is to bring back Islam
\nexactly as it was practiced over 1,400 years ago. Ulil thinks
\nthis copy-and-paste approach is unrealistic.<\/p>\n
He agrees that Muslims need to change, but in looking for that
\nchange Ulil urges them to leave no stone unturned.<\/p>\n
He said the revivalists tend to stifle the options and limit
\nthe scope of debate for a solution. "If there is no balance,
\n(against the revivalists) they could become a risk to free
\nthinking."<\/p>\n
Ulil helped found the Islamic Liberal Network (JIL), a loose
\nalliance of intellectual Muslims that aims to stimulate debate on
\nIslamic topics.<\/p>\n
JIL was founded in 2001 and made its debut over the Internet
\nas a mailing list. Ulil said JIL currently had around 500
\nmembers, mainly students, but also academicians, employees and
\nhousewives.<\/p>\n
The mailing list's first topic, he said, was whether a secular
\nstate was acceptable under Islam. "The answers tended to be yes,
\nand that a secular state was consistent with Islam."<\/p>\n
JIL became a website then a radio talk-show, which Ulil still
\nhosts at radio station 68H. The program is being aired on 50
\nstations throughout Indonesia.<\/p>\n
And just as the country's current experiment with democracy
\ngave fundamentalists the chance to rise and expand, it also
\nallowed JIL's message to spread.<\/p>\n
Soon JIL turned its attention toward institutions of higher
\neducation, suspecting that the academia had become hotbeds of
\nIslamic reactionaries.<\/p>\n
"So we go to the universities and institutes to provide
\ndifferent views on Islam," he said, adding that "we confront
\nevery effort to limit the field of discussion."<\/p>\n
JIL blew threw the campuses like a fresh breeze. "For a long
\ntime students had felt there was a domination of a religious
\nvision that was one sided ... an Islamic vision that was too
\nfundamentalist."<\/p>\n
Naturally, the schools became the support bases for many
\nhardline organizations, even political parties. Among them the
\nJustice Party (PK), which Ulil said he admired, but not for their
\nfundamentalist religious vision. "Their vision is, in my view,
\nnot correct, it must be countered."<\/p>\n
It was just a matter of time before JIL's blunt messages drew
\nthe ire of the reactionaries.<\/p>\n
In August last year, a private television station scrapped a
\nJIL info-mercial, which featured the phrase "Colorful Islam", --
\nessentially promoting diversity and tolerance -- because a
\nhardline Muslim group, the Majelis Mujahiddin complained
\nvociferously that the ad was an insult to Islam.<\/p>\n
Ulil demonstrated what it was to be a liberal Muslim with a
\npiece that appeared in the country's largest daily paper Kompas,
\nlast November.<\/p>\n
In it, he posed questions about various obligations under
\nIslamic law, or sharia, arguing that some things, like hacking
\nthe hands off of thieves, might not be applicable in this culture
\nand this century.<\/p>\n
A number of Muslim clerics were irate about the article. The
\nBandung-based Indonesian People's Ulama Forum (FUUI) called it an
\ninsult to Islam and warned that such a violation was punishable
\nby death.<\/p>\n
Asked what drove him to write the article, Ulil said, "I just
\nfelt the time was ripe."<\/p>\n
He explained that the article was a summary of years of
\ndebates he had had with like-minded Muslims and with the
\nrevivalists.<\/p>\n
Born into a family of conservative NU Muslims in the Central
\nJava town of Pati in 1967, Ulil was educated until the age of 19
\nat an Islamic boarding school run by his father and grandfather.<\/p>\n
He remains a member of NU and continues to head its human
\nresource development research division.<\/p>\n
He studied at the Institute of Islamic and Arabian Sciences
\nand the Driyarka Institute of Philosophy.<\/p>\n
Ulil's solid foundation in Islamic education and his NU
\naffiliation lend him credibility when he discusses Islam.
\nHowever, it also begs the question as to why he became critical
\ntoward the establishment.<\/p>\n
Ulil said that Muslim organizations like NU and Muhammadiyah
\nalready had a long tradition of critical thinkers. In fact, he
\ncited former NU chairman and president Abdurrahman Wahid as
\nhaving inspired him to think differently.<\/p>\n
Another influential figure he recalled was Muslim scholar
\nNurcholish Madjid whose progressive thoughts on Islam defied the
\nmainstream opinion during the 1980s.<\/p>\n
But when he first got interested doing something was when
\nPresident Soeharto shut down the country's leading weekly
\nmagazine Tempo in 1994.<\/p>\n
"I got really angry," he said. "Even though I wasn't connected
\nwith Tempo... I don't know, it just wasn't fair," he said,
\nexplaining he had enjoyed the magazine's frank articles
\nat a time when political openness was rare.<\/p>\n
He said he took part in protests against Tempo's closure, and
\nthis led him to join the Institute for Studies on the Free Flow
\nof Information (ISA).<\/p>\n
Established by noted Tempo journalist Goenawan Mohammad in
\n1995, ISAI promotes freedom of the press and freedom of
\nexpression.<\/p>\n
Religion was not ISAI's concern at first, however JIL later
\ntook it up in the same spirit as ISAI. Said Ulil, "we feared the
\nrise of religious radicalism could threaten the freedom of
\nexpression."<\/p>\n
His work and ideas are an eye-opener for Muslims here. For too
\nlong, most people just thought that the revivalists were the only
\nones around offering a change, albeit change that would turn the
\nclock back several centuries.<\/p>",
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