NU calls for end to sharia campaigns and violence

Muhammad Nafik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country's largest Muslim organization, urged Muslims, in particular radicals, to cease campaigns for Islamic sharia law, as well as violence in promoting religion.

"Struggling for sharia to be enforced in Indonesia is not realistic. What we need is to develop universal values for the people's prosperity," NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

"Universal values are also Islamic. This has already been adopted in the 1945 Constitution," he added.

In a year-end news conference on Saturday in Jakarta, Hasyim said a moral movement involving national leaders of different faiths and non-partisan scholars should promote religious values that are coherent with national interests.

"This is because confusing religion with the state will only destabilize the country and its people. That's why religious politicization in a narrow-minded sense will only undermine noble values and religious universalities," he was quoted by the Antara news agency as saying.

Hasyim further said Muslims should shed Islamic symbols and formalities in an effort to make a success of their struggle for the nation's prosperity.

"The Islamic struggle should be packed with national idioms. If Islamic formalities like sharia are put forward in this common struggle, it will collide with other beliefs, and then it's a failure," he added.

Hasyim told members of the 40-million strong NU to stick to embracing the organization's principles of developing the nation, namely that the unitary state of Indonesia as proclaimed by the country's founding fathers was "final".

Several Islamic parties and radical organizations, including recently self-dissolved groups Laskar Jihad and the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), have been campaigning for the implementation of sharia in Indonesia.

Muslim-oriented political groups in support of the campaign include the United Development Party (PPP), the Crescent Star Party (PBB) and the Justice Party.

Unlike these parties, Laskar Jihad and FPI had often used violence to promote Islam by attacking nightclubs and other entertainment centers.

The NU's remarks came as a response to terrorist attacks in the country towards the end of this year: the bombings on the resort island of Bali on Oct. 12 that killed over 190 people, and bombings in the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar on Dec. 5, which claimed the lives of three people.

Aside from these, a series of Christmas Eve bombings had also hit several cities across the country in 2000, leaving at least 19 people dead.

Such incidents have shattered the image of Islam and Muslims, as all the suspects were inadvertently Muslims, although radical in their beliefs.

Muslims have also been involved in sectarian fighting with Christians in Maluku since 1999, and in the Central Sulawesi town of Poso since 2000, in which many thousands of people were killed.

Hasyim also called on Muslim hard-liners to stop using violence in disseminating and promoting religious teachings, as it would only hurt the people.

Historically and factually, violence has never produced favorable results, he added.

"Violence that breaks out between religious followers, such as in Maluku, does not lead any Muslim to a conversion to Christianity. Likewise, no Christians would convert to Islam on the basis of violence. So the war has only reduced the number of religious followers," he said.

The NU, which was founded in 1926, propagates moderate Islamic teachings. Most Indonesian Muslims also adopt a moderate form of Islam.

Meanwhile, the country's second largest Muslim organization, the Muhammadiyah, urged all elements of the nation to be united in an effort to save the nation from its prolonged multidimensional crisis.

"Without a united effort, I wonder whether the fate of our nation and state would remain unchanged in the years to come, or would turn out to be worse," Muhammadiyah chairman Ahmad Syafii Maarif was quoted as saying by Antara on Saturday.

He said indications of the declining fate of the nation could be seen in almost all aspects, such as in the standard of living, morality, education, rising rate of unemployment, and the transferal of national assets to foreign ownership through questionable procedures.

Consequently, those who often travel abroad or read various articles in the foreign media would find the nation trivialized or ridiculed from time to time in international lobbying, Syafii added.