Is the ulema-intellectual dichotomy a valid issue?

Mochtar Buchori, Jakarta

I am writing this article after it was officially announced that Din Syamsudin was unanimously elected as the new chairman of Muhammadiyah for the next five years (2005-2010). While writing these lines, I am thinking of the debate that went on earlier at the 45th Muhammadiyah congress, which was about whether Muhammadiyah should be chaired by an ulema or by an intellectual.

What was the background of this debate?

During the chairmanships of Amien Rais and Syafiie Maarif -- two respectable scholars within the Indonesian academic community -- Muhammadiyah was seen by some as being guarded and controlled by intellectuals. This was perceived as not being in line with tradition, viz that Muhammadiyah had always been guided and nursed by ulema.

This tradition lasted for a fairly long period, from the inception of Muhammadiyah in 1912 until 1994, when the then chairman of the organization, Achmad Azhar Basyir, died before completing his term. It was then that Amien Rais moved in to take over the leadership, acting first as a caretaker chairman and later on as the definitive chairman after being elected during the organization's 43rd congress (1995) in Banda Aceh,

It was against this background that two groups with different views and ideas concerning the Muhammadiyah chairmanship emerged during the recent congress in Malang. These two groups were competing against one another to promote their respective ideas concerning the type of person that should lead the organization.

The group insisting that the new Muhammadiyah chairman should be an ulema argued that, as long as the various defects in our national life remained unabated, what the organization needed was a leader with a clear vision of the road that must be followed to correct the wrongs in our life and culture. Remedying our "sick" society is basically a matter of amending our national conscience. When it comes to this, ulema are better prepared than intellectuals who, in general, are knowledgeable in interpreting the meaning of values, but not in implanting them in the minds of the people.

The group advocating an intellectual as the new chairman, on the other hand, argued that the nation was engulfed in the process of transformation, affecting the deepest layers of our national life. Furthermore, they said our national life had been influenced by significant global changes.

This transformation process imposes new demands and challenges on the nation, one of them being the demand to reformulate the role of religion in directing the process of our cultural transformation. With this kind of situation, the nation, Muhammadiyah included, needs a leader that thoroughly understands the nature of our national transformation. Without this understanding no leader can move the nation toward a less selfish and more creative stance.

This kind of leadership can be provided only by intellectuals with the kind knowledge, skills and wisdom acquired through rigorous study with a broad spectrum. For this reason, Muhammadiyah has to be put under the guardian of an intellectual who can translate the mission of Muhammadiyah into action of strategic significance for the rehabilitation of our current national condition.

This intellectual divide is, in my understanding, based on traditional stereotypes regarding ulema and intellectuals. In the traditional view, the image of ulema is of clerics who deal mainly with problems related to religious life. Ulema, in this view, are always pictured as clerics whose style of thinking is deductive and whose language is richly filled with religious phrases in Arabic.

Intellectuals, on the other hand, are in the traditional view portrayed as people who mainly pursue knowledge about life in this world, whose language is sprinkled with phrases in one of the Western languages or Japanese, and whose vocabulary is loaded with technical terminology.

This is a comparison drawn on traditional stereotypes. I do not think that this comparison is still true. So many fundamental changes have taken place in the world and the lives of the ulema that have gradually changed their physical appearance and their intellectual makeup. On the side of the intellectuals, many changes have also taken place, perhaps not as fundamental as the ones occurring within the ulema community, but equally significant nonetheless.

Young intellectuals are no longer confined to worldly problems in their preoccupations. Many intellectuals have a sincere interest in religious matters. This is because more and more intellectuals have begun to realize the limitations of their knowledge. When it comes to questions about wisdom in life they are turning to history, philosophy, religion and theology. A truly intellectual path!

The outcome of this transformation is that nowadays it is difficult to draw a clear line between ulema and intellectuals. Ulema are intellectuals in their own right, and intellectuals are no longer indifferent toward religious matters. This being the case, one can ask whether the real issue behind the election of the new Muhammadiyah chairman is really anchored in the ulema- intellectual dichotomy.

It is difficult for me to entirely believe it. The real issue behind the quest for the top leadership is probably something else. What this might be, outsiders like myself will never know, and informed insiders will quite probably never reveal it. Whatever it may be, I hope that the final outcome of the congress will satisfy the political and cultural appetites of all within the Muhammadiyah community. After all, the new chairman is in one sense both an ulema and an intellectual.

May Muhammadiyah under its new leadership find its way to an increasingly more meaningful existence in this era of tumultuous transition.

The writer has a doctorate in education from Harvard University.