Islamic revival no threat to the West, scholars say

JAKARTA (JP): Scholars strove yesterday to correct the growing view that the Islamic resurgence worldwide is a threat to the Western world, saying that the phenomenon of revival is actually affecting all religions.

The scholars further asserted that many Islamic countries are still embroiled in their own problems, so it would be difficult for them to engage in the so-called "clash of civilization" with the West.

Minister of Religious Affairs Tarmizi Taher, the leader of the influential Indonesian Association of Moslem Intellectuals (ICMI) Nurcholish Madjid and other intellectuals Dr. Quraish Shihab and Dr. Din Syamsuddin agreed in a discussion yesterday about the need to educate non-Moslems about the true essence of Islam, which is that of peace.

"Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Shintoism will revive in the modern world, today and tomorrow," Tarmizi said.

Held by International Forum Indonesia, the discussion was attended by several foreign ambassadors, including Pietro Sambi of the Vatican and Jaroslav Olsa of Czech.

The discussion explored the origins of misunderstanding between Islam and the West.

Tarmizi attacked American thinker Samuel Huntington's thesis about the next international conflicts being that of civilizations, mainly between Islam and the West.

"The Moslem world in the foreseeable future will still struggle with their internal political problems and basic human needs," Tarmizi said. "How could it be considered the next threat?"

Tarmizi, who is a retired Navy rear admiral and medical doctor, said that in the last two decades the West has been gripped by the image of Islam as a threat replacing communism.

The Western countries' perception of Islam "oscillates between excessive alarm and equally excessive neglect", a rather simplistic picture for too huge a group of people, he said.

Too diverse

"The Moslem world is too large and too diverse to march to the beat of a single drummer," he said, explaining that the Moslem domain extends from Morocco to Merauke, in the eastern-most part of Indonesia, and from Uzbekistan to Cameroon.

Tarmizi said there are only two elements in the Moslem world, namely the faith of Islam and the problem of political turbulence.

"The rivalries in the Moslem world have made it a cauldron of conflicts," he said, adding that these political conflicts have so far forced the Moslem countries to spend a total of over eight percent of their gross national products on military expenditure for security and defense against probable surprise attacks from their hard-liner neighbors.

Despite these conditions and the existing backwardness, Islam will prevail and the Moslem societies will experience, as other religious societies, a resurgence, he said. In the process, constructive cooperation among societies, Moslem or otherwise, is needed for Moslems to reveal the true, peaceful identity of Islam, he added.

Ambassador Sambi supported Tarmizi's statement, saying that religions become threats only if they are politically manipulated. "There is no religion of war ... similar problems can affect any religion," Sambi said.

Aggressiveness

Nurcholish explained that the "aggressiveness" or hostility of some Moslem countries toward the West grew out of the still indelible feeling of defeat after having been the unrivaled dominant world power for about six centuries.

"In a way, some Moslem societies do not grow out of their shock of being defeated," he said, describing in length the beginning of the decline of the Islamic civilization in the 12th century.

Regarding Indonesia, Nurcholish predicted not only an Islamic resurgence, but also the emergence of intellectual powers from among the walls of pesantren, or the traditional Islamic boarding schools.

"There is no way we can deny or stop the tide," he said. The resurgence of Islam in Indonesia, he said, is related to the development of the country's social and political systems.

In the early 1970s, a great number of "modern Moslem intellectuals" began to emerge, but their presence was only manifested socially, politically and culturally in the next decade, he said.

"From this perspective it is quite natural that they felt the need to organize themselves," he said, adding that it was at this time that ICMI entered the picture.

However, "ICMI is only a temporary phenomenon", according to Nurcholish, who is member of advisory board of the organization, which has been widely attacked for its excessive involvement in politics.

"It may submerge any time ... but the force will emerge in other forms and influence development here in other ways," he said. "Nevertheless, the emergence of Indonesian Moslem intellectuals ... is part and parcel of the natural growth of Indonesia." (swe)