Cak Nur's ideas will prevail, say scholars

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The foremost and highly respected Muslim thinker Nurcholish "Cak Nur" Madjid was laid to rest here on Tuesday at a state funeral at the Kalibata Heroes Cemetery, with more than 1,000 people including non-Muslim figures in attendance.

The mourners paid their last respects to Cak Nur, who many Muslim scholars say had put in place every basis of epistimological and theological thought on Islam, making him the last of Indonesia's great thinkers.

Cak Nur, who passed away at 66 on Monday, played a crucial role in coloring the discourse on modern Islam, Islamic politics and plurality. Last March, a three-day symposium was held to discuss this issue in commemoration of his 66th birthday.

Ulil Absar-Abdalla of the Liberal Muslim Network, who attended Tuesday's funeral, once said Indonesia might not see another intellectual of his caliber emerge in the short term.

"After Cak Nur, there will be no more major thought, no more extraordinary thinkers... The 'Big Bang' of Islamic thought is finished," Ulil told the symposium.

He and many other Muslim scholars said Cak Nur built the theological foundation for matters that previously were very difficult to discuss publicly.

"It was Cak Nur's ideas that opened the possibility of interfaith marriages," Ulil added.

For mainstream Indonesian Muslims, their religion bans interfaith marriages, but many couples of different religions came to the Cak Nur-founded Paramadina Mulya University to make it possible for them to get married.

His colleagues said on Tuesday that Cak Nur's extraordinary ideas on religious pluralism and moderation would not die, despite rising radical conservatism in this pre-dominantly Muslim nation with dozens of churches being sealed off by hard-liners.

Catholic scholar Frans-Magniz Suseno of the Driyarkara Institute of Philosophy hailed Cak Nur as a true pluralism advocate who believed that salvation was given by Allah to all humans, regardless of their religions.

"He (Cak Nur) told us about the so-called universal salvation," he said.

"He believed that all religions, be they Islam, Christianity, Buddhism or Konghucu and others, are granted such a salvation," Frans-Magniz told The Jakarta Post.

"Another important point of his Islamic thought is the way he believed that the state must not fix its roles into religion. This idea was raised to prevent religious politicking," he added.

Komaruddin Hidayat, from Paramadina Mulya University founded by Cak Nur, said his late senior colleague had created a strong basis on how to be a Muslim in a pluralist nation.

"During his life, Cak Nur was close to the minority groups. He stood by them as he believed that being an exclusivist in this pluralist society was illogical," he said.

Cak Nur always said that Islam was a religion which gives high respect to the values of humanity, Komaruddin.

Budhy Munawar-Rachman, director of the Center for Spirituality and Leadership, said all present and future issues related to Islam had already been discussed in Cak Nur's books and speeches.

The funeral ceremony, presided over by People's Consultative Assembly speaker Hidayat Nurwahid, was attended by hundreds of people, ranging from state officials, politicians, activists to religious figures, including Buddhist monks and Christian priests.

When Cak Nur's remains were laid out at the Paramadina Mulya University on Monday night, Muslims and non-Muslims alike together prayed for him.

He was eligible for a state funeral as he had been awarded the Mahaputra Utama medal by the government in 1999, a year after he helped force dictator Soeharto to quit his 32-year rule in May.

Born on March 17, 1939 in the small East Java town of Jombang, Cak Nur died at 2:05 p.m. on Monday at Pondok Indah Hospital in South Jakarta due to liver problems that he had fought for more than a year.

He had undergone a liver transplant in Guangzhou, China, late last year.