Islamic revival no threat to the West, scholars say

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)