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.