NU, Muhammadiyah should be pro-active: Scholars
NU, Muhammadiyah should be pro-active: Scholars
Muhammad Nafik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Scholars and political observers on Thursday urged Indonesia's
two biggest moderate Islamic groups to take the lead in restoring
the image of Islam and its followers, which has been tarnished
over major anti-U.S. protests by extremist Muslims.
Along with Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, President
Megawati Soekarnoputri's government should also play a key role
in facilitating religious dialogs with Muslim leaders,
particularly those from militant groups, they said.
"Leaders of big (Muslim) organizations, like NU, Muhammadiyah
and others, should take a more proactive stance," said Azyumardi
Azra, rector of Jakarta's Syarif Hidayatullah State Institute of
Islamic Studies (IAIN).
He said influential Muslim leaders should be "more outspoken"
and "assertive" to publicly state their groups' stance on both
attacks on the United States and Afghanistan.
He said dialogs with Muslim hardliners are crucial to
"formulate a more proportional stance in a response to various
developments at home and overseas, which have affected Muslims
and Islam" over the attacks on New York and Pentagon, and the
U.S. strikes of Afghanistan.
"President Megawati and her cabinet should also be more
proactive to hold talks with Muslim leaders... It should be
acknowledged that she has extremely rarely invited such dialogs,"
Azyumardi added.
He said Muslim leaders are a very important force, not only to
make a success of Megawati's political sustainability, but to
accelerate her national agenda as well.
NU Chairman Salahuddin Wahid and Muhammadiyah leader Syafi'i
Maarif, who spoke at the seminar themed 'the National Interests
over Attacks on WTC and Pentagon', welcomed the call as positive.
"It's a good idea. We should meet first with Muhammadiyah,"
Salahuddin told The Jakarta Post after the discussion,
criticizing the foreign media for exaggerating the coverage on
anti-U.S. protests in Indonesia.
Chusnul Mariah, a political observer from the University of
Indonesia, said the silence of Muslim moderate figures in
responding to the escalating protests against the U.S. was due to
the counter attacks by Western nations on Afghanistan.
"If the U.S. had not bombed Taliban, Muslim moderate leaders
would have spoken out," she told the same seminar.
Azyumardi said a recent wave of demonstrations by Muslim
radicals against the U.S. and its Western allies have tarnished
the image of Islam in Indonesia as a tolerant and moderate
religion that emphasizes peace and harmony.
"This shift of image has at least changed the perception and
hopes of many people, particularly Muslims in other countries,
that Islam Indonesia is an alternative (solution) to the
development of Islam among the would's civilization and
modernization."
Moeslim Abdurrahman, another Muslim scholar, agreed, saying
the anti-U.S. protests has dominantly painted a negative picture
of Islam in Indonesia, although they only represented a small
group of people.
He gave support to calls for the government along NU and
Muhammadiyah to build up dialogs with leaders from hardline
Muslim organizations in order to maintain the national interests.
According to him, the Western negative perception of Islam and
Muslims in Indonesia following the September 11 tragedy in the
U.S. was contributed to by the absence of proper communications
between Americans and Indonesians.
Moeslim criticized Megawati for having not invited Muslim
moderate scholars, like Nurcholish Madjid, Syafi'i Maarif or
Azyumardi Azra, to accompany her during a recent state visit to
Washington late September.
Azyumardi said the anti-U.S. demonstrations contained a
political motive to unseat Megawati's government as the
protesters were those from the Muslim extreme group that had
actively raised the issue of gender in a move to block her
presidential candidacy.
"The anti-U.S. demonstrations were a first step to destabilize
the country's politics. If going ahead, they could overthrow
President Megawati. But it's clear that she is too strong to be
downed."
He rejected claims by foreign analysts that Indonesian Muslims
are practicing the Islamic Taliban-style character dubbed as
radical, intolerant, and extremely extreme.
"In many elements, the religious understanding and practices
adopted by (Osama bin Laden) and Taliban are extremely different
from those by Indonesian Muslims in general," Azyumardi said.
He said Muslim radical groups in Indonesia even called Taliban
a group of Khawarij followers, which opposes the popular Islamic
school of Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamaah that most Indonesian Muslims
follow.