Islam resurgence 'won't turn RI Muslims into radicals'

Islam resurgence 'won't turn RI Muslims into radicals'

Veeramalla Anjaiah, The Jakarta Post, Paris

The resurgence of Islam in Southeast Asia will not turn
Indonesian Muslims, the majority of whom are moderate, into
radicals, said a renowned Indonesian Islamic scholar at a
conference in Paris last week.

"Indonesian Muslims are moderate people and would remain
moderate in the future," Prof. Azyumardi Azra, the president of
the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, told the Round
Table discussion on the "Islamic Resurgence and Renewal in
Southeast Asia" at the European Association for Southeast Asian
Studies (EUROSEAS) conference.

The meeting was held from Sept. 1 to Sept. 4, 2004 at the
University of Paris.

Azyumardi who stole the show at the Round Table by saying
there is no room for radical Salafi (Wahabbi) teachings in
Indonesia, which has the largest number of Muslims in the world.

"Indonesia's biggest Muslim organizations like Nahdlathul
Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah adhere to moderate Islam and oppose
the implementation of the strict form of sharia in the
multiethnic and multireligious country," he said.

Azyumardi, who is also an honorary professor at the University
of Melbourne in Australia, assured the audience -- mainly
academicians, intellectuals, scholars and government officials
from all over the world -- that the growing revival of interest
in Islam in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia, would not
threaten the pillars of moderate Islam.

For the past two decades, Southeast Asia, a region which was
home to many of the Asia's "tiger economies" until the 1997
financial crisis, has experienced an unprecedented resurgence of
Islam. Throughout the region, Islam has attained an increasingly
prominent place in the public sphere.

Another relatively marginal aspect of this resurgence --
interreligious conflicts and the rise of small but dangerous
jihadist movements -- has received "disproportional Western media
attention".

"The main aim of this Round Table is to make an attempt to
adopt a more balanced approach and discuss the current movements
in Southeast Asian Islam in their full complexity and emphasize
the diversity of expression," Mathias Diederich, an expert on
Southeast Asia from the Frankfurt University in Germany, said.

As far as Indonesia is concerned, the resurgence of
Islam, according to Azyumardi, has its roots in what it called
Cultural Islam, in which culture plays a key role in the
resurgence of Islam, but it also has political repercussions.

"Though the politicization of Islam began in 1970s, the
establishment of the powerful Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals'
Association (ICMI) by former president B.J. Habibie gave new
impetus to the resurgence of Islam in Indonesia," he said.

Simultaneously, there was a shift during the Soeharto era:
from conflict to a conciliatory approach toward Islam, which
changed the entire scenario.

Another important aspect of Islam's revival was the increase
in religious education.

"Since the Sukarno era (1945-1965), we have had a parallel
system of education. On one side, national education under the
education ministry and on the other, religious schools under the
ministry of religious affairs. It's a balanced system," Azyumardi
said.

Indonesia also has higher educational institutes like
Azyumardi's university, which produces Islamic scholars with
liberal and moderate views on religion.

That is why Azyumardi is confident about moderate Islam's
future in the country, while adding that Indonesia was neither a
secular state nor a theocratic state.

In the Philippines, the religious schools will not get any
support from the government and they do not teach modern
subjects.

"But it was not the religious education that led to the
resurgence of Islam in the Philippines. It is the decades of
injustice and oppression that led to the birth of radical Islam,"
Prof. Carmen A. Abubakar from the University of the Philippines
Diliman said at the meeting, which was co-hosted by the Asia-
Europe Foundation (ASEF) and the Association Francaise pour la
Recherchi surl'Asie du Sud-Est (AFRASE).

Another Indonesian participant, Mujiburrahman from Utrecht
University in the Netherlands, said the relations between Muslims
and the non-Muslims was good.

"The conflicts like in Poso and Maluku are nothing to do with
Islam. Because of vested interests, some small groups are
painting these conflicts as religious strife," Mujiburrahman told
The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the discussion.