NU calls for end to sharia campaigns and violence

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.