'Bottle' and 'oil': Islam's classical difficulties

Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, Researcher, Freedom Institute, Jakarta

The modern history of Islam is a history of bottle and oil, of "form" and "substance". Let me be more clear and elaborate.

The battle over the inclusion of seven words in the amended Indonesian Constitution sparked widespread fear as this move may lead to the disintegration of Indonesia. To others, the fear is obviously baseless as the turnout at the 1999 election shows that almost 30 percent of the populace voted for the supposedly nationalist-secular Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan). A survey undertaken by Jakarta-based Center for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) last year indicated that almost 62 percent of PDI Perjuangan constituents were more or less devout Muslims, a fact that runs contrary to the commonly held perception that all Muslims support Islamic parties.

The battle is merely a part of a more serious and bigger concern shared by the Muslim community to see their religious tenets being reflected in their daily life. Every Muslim individual is eager to build a hospitable environment in which Islamic teaching helps to shape public virtues. A popular Muslim view is that our public life is so permissive and "secular" that it brings about a hostile environment for the devout Muslim.

Public life is seen as rife with "social sins" such as prostitution, adultery, gambling, corruption and the like. Religion matters because it eradicates social sins and builds a much more decent life according to one's religious point of view.

What ensues from this line of thinking is a seemingly tempting conclusion that, as long as Islamic principles and doctrines don't materialize in public life, the Muslim community in particular, and the whole of society in general, will be incessantly haunted by disorder, chaos and disharmony.

The implementation of Islamic principles and law is inevitable in this regard. However, the implementation of Islamic law is not a matter that the Muslim community, with its variety of views and cultural inclinations, would have seemed to agree on easily. Muslims, themselves, differ on how Islamic law should materialize in their life. What is at stake here is the question of whether Islamic law should be implemented through state authority.

Many Muslims believe in the inseparability between religion and politics, Islam and the state. The belief is epitomized in the classical doctrine of the unity of "otherworldly-and-this worldly matters". State authority is presumed a necessary instrument through which Islamic law is enforced.

Others claim that the enforcement of Islamic law through the state apparatus runs contrary to the basic principle of pluralism. The state is public property and is not allowed to be "privatized" for the benefit of a particular group, such as the Muslim community. If Muslims are willing to see their religious tenets enforced by the government apparatus, they should press for that through the democratic process in the legislature.

To Muslims, Islamic law, as stipulated in the Koran and Hadith (prophetic tradition), is an absolute truth, but not to others. Belief in "absolutism" is allowed only within the border of a particular group. Once the group meets others in "public deliberation", all truths melt into relative truth.

Different people subscribe to different laws that are supposedly revealed by God. What people need in a democracy is to organize their life according to the agreement they can reach. It's undeniable that every individual in society will aspire to mold public life according to his or her particular religious values. But he or she needs public consent to transform that particular set of values into universal values that bind all members of society. I am personally of this kind of opinion.

Muslims differ either on the question of the content of syariah (Islamic law). They are divided into two different groups, the first of which says that Islamic law in its literal meaning is binding to all Muslims all of the time, both during the prophet's life and now. The second group who consider themselves "Liberal Muslims" say: What matters is not the form but the substance. Just to pick an example: Wearing a veil or head scarf for women.

Two groups differ as to whether the question here is the head scarf or the idea behind it, namely that women be decently dressed. Millions of Muslim women around the world shed their veil and yet are still committed to their religion and lead a decent life. Are they any less Muslim?

Concerns were raised again and again over the issue of civil liberties, and the question is whether or not Islamic law, as proposed by those who take it literally, pays full respect to civil liberties. In other parts of the Islamic world, Muslim intellectuals often complain that women's issues are always at the forefront of the Muslim reformists' agenda, ignoring the real problems that plague Muslims' lives such as poverty, ignorance, lack of freedom, lack of good governance, corruption, and so forth.

Civil liberties are seemingly always on the margin of the Muslim agenda. Experiences from other Muslim countries strongly indicates that enforcing Islamic law presumes the existence of a clergy-like body accorded the task of overseeing the compatibility of the law being enforced with the basic teaching of Islam. What ensues from here is a monopoly of interpretation of religion by a particular group at the cost of banishing other divergent and dissident views. Islam always ends up with different interpretations.

But the most important thing to consider here is that Islam is a matter of personal belief. What kind of state do Muslims aspire to then? Here, Muslims come up with different answers. On the one hand, one group of Muslims will say every Muslim should stand steadfastly for an Islamic state in its formal meaning; others will say that it is a modern and democratic state that matters, a state where Muslims' right to preserve their identity is fully respected and where public affairs is run through open and fair deliberation. For the former, the name "Islam" matters very much, while for the latter "substance" is more incumbent.

Modern Islam has witnessed a heated debate between "literal" and "liberal" intellectuals, the first of whom heavily emphasized the importance of form and "bottle", while the other stood for the substance and "oil". Abduh, of course, epitomized those who preside over the oil than bottle. For others, oil is not enough, as you need a bottle to pour it. Why not both? Learning from past experience, it's not an easy job to combine "bottle" and "oil" at the same time.

Nowadays, Muslims regard the question of identity as the most important enterprise. Wearing a veil for them is not merely a matter of fashion, a matter of "bottle". It is instead a hint of identity that distinguishes "the believers" from "un-believers". It is a matter of faith.

In my personal view, it is only a democracy that serves for the best interests of both literal and liberal Muslims, for the people of "bottle" and "oil" as well. Oppression and authoritarianism only brings desperation both to literal and liberal Muslims.