Islam as a 'cultural movement'

By Arief Fauzi-Marzuki

YOGYAKARTA (JP): The politics of Islam has resurfaced as a lively intellectual exercise after the relatively peaceful June 7 general election.

Three important things may have prompted the emergence of this matter. First, most political parties taking part in the general election were based on Islam. Second, the winner in the recent elections was not an Islam-based party, but the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), a nationalist party, which is even considered by certain quarters to be anti- Islam. Third, the nomination of PDI Perjuangan chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri as a presidential candidate has led to a new problem for Muslims: Can a woman be president?

These three issues have become a problem and an agenda that the nation must solve and discuss in the post-election era. Nevertheless, for some Muslims, these three concerns are not an important problem because they believe that whoever wins the elections must be given an opportunity to lead this nation. Such proponents believe that the issue of the country's leadership must be exercised on the basis of the principles of justice and with the interest of the entire nation put first.

Unfortunately, a tendency to say that one is acting "on behalf of Muslims" in the interest of certain groups has become increasingly common. Such groups have fanned issues which may provoke Muslims to anger and trigger inter-religious conflicts. To all intents and purposes, this group has revived a "nostalgia" on the part of Muslims for fundamentalist movements.

Therefore, this article seeks to find an answer to the following question: Why have fundamentalist groups reappeared, and how should Muslims change their movement into one which is more cultural than political in nature?

Two factors are generally responsible for recent leanings toward fundamentalism in Indonesia. First, we are now in a transitional period from a traditionally religious life toward a modern and open life, a change which will lead to the disappearance of psychological and cultural roots. In this transitional period, many religious followers are yet to respond to these new times and accept openness when professing a religion.

Second, a religion has become a venue for the pursuit of political interests and used as a political banner against people professing another religion. This is an example of how a religion has been made so hollow that the interest of the religion is placed in an exclusive and important territory. The result is, of course, the presence in the community of religious exclusiveness. An exclusive attitude has then led to an effort to politicize a religion, namely turning it into a political commodity in order to topple a political group.

Politicizing a religion often has its beginnings in a not always correct theological perception. Believers of a particular religion are yet to be able to see where the interests of another religion lies and where the position of the believers of another religion are. Adherents to each religion usually generalize about matters and consider those who profess other beliefs to be their foes. This belief that those who profess to another belief system are enemies is so widespread that people are easily provoked into generating animosity and perpetrating riots in the name of religion.

To prevent the emergence of fundamentalism, which may endanger national integration and safety, it is now time for Indonesian Muslims to revive the idea of "Islam as a cultural movement". Muslims should first try to discard the orientation of practical politics as a reflection of new developments which must be responded to in a more intelligent and realistic manner. Muslims must be aware that the New Order administration -- which was influenced by the myth of disobedience or opposition to Islam -- had a tendency to accommodate only the nonpolitical aspirations of Islam.

As a consequence, Muslims must be able to undertake what Bassam Tibi (1994) calls "cultural revitalization". This move is seen as an effort to reinforce the multifaceted Islamic dimension of culture in the context of promoting Muslim potentials and qualities and to elicit a sympathetic response from the government.

This form of cultural revitalization would finally lead to the emergence of "cultural Islam", the appearance of Islam as a source of ethics and morality and a cultural foundation in the life of the entire Indonesian nation.

Efforts to present cultural Islam are noticeable not only from an enthusiasm to articulate Islamic injunctions in order that they may contribute to the ongoing development process, but also from efforts made in educational and socioeconomic areas to promote Muslim qualities.

The presence of a cultural movement of Muslims does not mean complete negation of the political movement. The political movement of Muslims may be geared toward efforts to substantiate the values of Islam.

In this respect, significant efforts must be made to ensure that political thoughts and orientations will emphasize substantial manifestation of Islamic values in political activities. This manifestation must be seen not only in the appearance but also in the format of political institutions of cultural Muslims.

In this way, leaders of Islamic parties and Muslims will realize that the intrinsic existence and articulation of Islamic values in Indonesia's political climate play an important role. Indeed, the values are adequate to develop Islamization with the cultural face of modern Indonesian society.

This is the view held by the substantialists, who base their understandings on the historical perspective that a cultural process has given birth to competition among various cultural forces.

In order that Islam may win this competition, the process of Islamization must assume a cultural format, not a politicized one. In this way, Islamic movements should manifest themselves as cultural movements, rather than political ones.

The Muslim intellectual Nurcholish Madjid has introduced to us the concept of cultural Islamic movements. His attachment to substance is seen when he elaborates on what is called parallelism, or the total integration of being Muslim and being Indonesian.

He has said that in Indonesia, Islam is accepted and comprehended within broader circles as one of the main sources for fostering common values serving as the foundation of national development in its entirety. In other words, as one of the pillars and main source of values for being Indonesian Islam is expected to appear with productive and constructive cultural approaches.

It is, therefore, demanded of Indonesian Muslims to be better able to present and introduce their religious teachings as the harbingers of virtue to all (rahmatan lil'alamin in Arabic terms) without resorting to communal exclusiveness.

It is certainly not Nurcholish's intention to nurture an idea of a "national Islam". Rather, he tries to emphasize that according to Islamic tenets it is true that it is always possible to use local methods and solutions to solve local problems without necessarily losing contact with the universal teachings of Islam.

For Nurcholish, a substantial theological problem for Islam in Indonesia is to make Indonesian Muslims no longer see a distance between being Muslim and being Indonesian. As stated earlier, this is only possible if Islam also appears with productive and constructive cultural proposals. In regard to these three offers, at least three requirements must first be met.

* These offers must not merely concern narrow-minded and partisan matters, for example in a political or ideological format alone. The offers must be concerned with cultural Islam and encompass all its aspects. This is the main requirement.

* Islam accompanied with cultural proposals must be more responsive to the ever-changing challenges of the era.

* Islam, appearing with cultural offers, must be the result of dialog held over time. In the context of Indonesia, Islam must certainly dialog with the range of views emerging in Indonesia.

In this regard, Nurcholish takes poverty as an example. If Muslims see poverty as simply an individual problem, and not a structural one, poverty will prevail because it will end up with an economic structure that will only exploit the lower-class. Conditions will worsen if such a simplistic framework also includes various tendencies which do not help solve poverty- related problems, such as a scriptural approach for a religious life, a legal-formal attitude in social life and a completely apologetic worldview.

In line with this notion, Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid has proposed the need to: (1) link efforts to eliminate poverty with an attempt to properly honor human dignity inasmuch as man is a social creature with his/her own basic rights and basic needs; (2) provide religious legitimacy in a social context as long as it can promote the development of human dignity; and (3) be willing to introduce basic changes in religious thoughts in order to accommodate the necessity to promote human dignity and the social context needed for this purpose.

In this way, Muslims will see poverty-related problems as not only problems of a micro nature but also problems of a macro nature; problems which must be solved through a social vision and not by means of social or charitable services.

Regarding the question of Islam as a cultural movement, Gus Dur has his own idea about "turning Islam indigenous". This idea is based on a postulate that the establishment of the Indonesian state was prompted more by a nationalist awareness rather than the factor of Islamic ideology.

Gus Dur is of the opinion that the teaching of Islam, as a component that forms and substantiates the social life of Indonesian citizens, should be assigned a role complementary to the roles played by other components. In this way, Islam would not function as a counterforce, a catalyst which could cause the entire national life to disintegrate.

The writer is a staff member of the Bentang Budaya Foundation in Yogyakarta.