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

'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.