Cak Nur: A locomotive for change in Islam
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Prominent Muslim scholar Nurcholish "Cak Nur" Madjid has won acclaim from scholars for his contribution to changing the way people understood Islam by encouraging Muslims to accept contemporary values.
"Nurcholish has emerged as one of few intellectuals in Indonesia who cares and is aware of the importance of making a distinction between culture and religion," Muslim intellectual Abdul Hadi told a two-day symposium that ended on Friday.
The event was held to mark Cak Nur's 66th birthday by the Paramadina University in Jakarta, which he leads. The respected scholar had been hospitalized in Singapore after undergoing a liver transplant in China. He is now being treated at Pondok Indah Hospital in South Jakarta.
Hadi said Cak Nur encouraged Muslims to embrace modern values by arguing that many developments in a Muslim's modern life should be not considered bid'ah, or forbidden innovations under Islamic law.
"Cak Nur believes that Muslims unable to differentiate between cultural and religious values will face a kind of 'mental imprisonment'. He thinks that these people consider symbols more important than the function and substance of culture," Hadi said, describing Cak Nur's critique of Muslims opposed to modernization who tried to live the way they believed the pious did during Prophet Muhammad's era.
Another scholar, Ahmad Gaus, called Cak Nur a locomotive of change in Islamic thought and praised his support for secularization.
That idea sparked prolonged controversy in the 1990s, when Cak Nur, a graduate of the Gontor Islamic boarding school in East Java and Jakarta's Syarif Hidayatullah State Institute of Islamic Studies (IAIN), espoused the liberal slogans -- "Islam Yes, Islamic Party No" and "No Islamic State".
"For him, secularization is a consequence of faith, which distinguishes between God and humans, heaven and earth, the relative and the absolute, the profane and the sacred," Gaus said.
Cak Nur, who obtained a doctorate degree from Chicago University, also promoted ideas on gender equity in Islamic perspectives.
His views on this issue were based on tauhid (the teachings of Allah as the sole power to be worshiped), according to Siti Musdah Mulia, the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace (ICRP) secretary general who led a team designing the much criticized draft Islamic law code that promotes gender equality.
"In Cak Nur's minds, tauhid contains human liberation, which leads to egalitarianism. In this context, according to him, tauhid forbids absolutism against other humans and therefore it aspires the establishment of a democratic society, and democracy always needs the contributions of both men and women. That's what he believes," Musdah said.
Nurcholish, who was granted an award from the Freedom Institute last August, also defended ideas of inter-religious marriage and the freedom of choice to wear head scarves. He also brought up women's affairs as a human rights issue, she said.
A lecturer at Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Budhy Munawar Rachman said many people had been amazed that while Cak Nur quoted Koranic verses in his speeches, he ended up with liberal and modern conclusions.
"Once several ambassadors asked him why he kept quoting Koranic verses, but ended up with liberal conclusions. He answered,'This logically would mean that the Koran itself is liberal'," Budhy said.
Cak Nur used Koranic verses as the base to building new perspectives on issues, he said. (006)