Nurcholish, for Islam and Indonesia

Fachry Ali, Bahtiar Effendy and Ichsan Ali-Fauzi, Jakarta

It is simply impossible for someone to discuss contemporary Indonesian Islam, or perhaps even Indonesia in general, without mentioning Nurcholish Madjid. For nearly three decades, scholars have been writing books and dissertations on his ideas and practices. His own articles and essays collected in several books received remarkable responses.

Born 66 years ago in the small town of Jombang, East Java, Nurcholish was a "biological child" of Indonesian society who, through his parents, inherited the intellectualism and activism of the country's two major Islamic organizations: The modernist political party Masyumi, banned by the late president Sukarno in 1960, and the traditionalist socio-religious organization Nahdlatul Ulama. He synthesized these two intellectual traditions into a larger area of social and political concern.

The basis of this synthesis was theological: the Arabic saying "conserve the old and the good, and accommodate the new and the improved," is particularly apt here.

Nurcholish started his intellectual career at the State Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN), often perceived as an avenue for upward mobility among Muslims. But it was within the Association of Muslim Students (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam, HMI) -- a modernist, urban Muslim student organization -- that he was able to articulate his intellectual orientations.

During his time with HMI, he wrote its ideological manual, The basic values of struggle. To this day, it serves as required reading during leadership training programs attended by hundreds of thousands of members of this largest student organization in Southeast Asia. His natural stature -- also contributed to by his mastership of Arabic, English, Urdu and French -- resulted in him being elected to chair the HMI on two consecutive occasions (1966-1969 and 1969-1971), something that no one else had ever done.

What made him controversial was his electrifying speech delivered to a gathering of four Islamic organizations on Jan. 2, 1970, in Jakarta. In his paper on "The necessity for renewal of Islamic thought and integration of the Islamic community", Nurcholish bluntly stated that Indonesian Muslims were suffering from stagnation in religious thinking and had lost "psychological striking force" in their struggle. The speech marked a watershed in his career as for the first time in the contemporary Indonesian Islam it offered an amalgam of theological, sociological and hermeneutical analysis.

He not only deconstructed the structure of the theological and ideological framework employed by most Indonesian Muslims, but also proposed the possibility of viewing the Islamic situation and the makeup of Muslims as objective facts that result from living factors at work; not things that are theologically determined.

The essence of Nurcholish's ideas was his observation that most Muslims here were unable to differentiate values that are transcendental from those that are temporal. He pointed out that the hierarchy of values is often reversed; transcendental values are conceived of as temporal and vice versa.

Everything was likely to be perceived as transcendental, and therefore, without exception, valued as divine. As a result of this type of religiosity, "Islam is [viewed as] equal in value to tradition; and becoming Islamic is comparable to being a traditionalist."

Reform was possible provided that Muslims were prepared to set out on the path toward renewal -- even if this was at the expense of the integration of the Muslim community. To undergo this religious renewal, he suggested that Muslims liberate themselves from the tendency to convert values that were actually profane into divine values. As a consequence of the belief that Islam was timeless and universal, there was an inherent obligation for Muslims to engage in creative thinking that was relevant to the demands of the modern age.

According to Nurcholish, this endeavor could only be realized if Muslims enjoyed the confidence to allow ideas, however unconventional they may be, to be expressed and communicated freely. More importantly, given that Islam conceived of human beings as naturally oriented toward truthfulness (hanief), Muslims need to be open-minded. Furthermore, they should accept and absorb all ideas, regardless of their origins, provided they objectively spoke the truth.

The social and political implications of this statement are profound. In particular, Nurcholish deconstructed the theological basis of many Indonesian Muslims as reflected in their devotion to an Islamic state, Islamic parties, Islamic ideology, and legalistic and formalistic pronouncements.

Conversely, he encouraged his fellow Muslims to adopt Islamic values that shared the notion of universal humanism. This idea also had practical consequences for our daily lives. More especially, it shed light on the necessity for Muslims to develop tolerant attitudes about pluralism even if this originated from secular sources or other worldly religions. For Nurcholish, only God possessed the absolute truth.

Accordingly, self-righteous claims ran counter to the very notion of Islamic monotheism (al-tawhid). In the Indonesian context, characterized by such things as demographic plurality, this idea has a major role to play not only in the nation's endeavor to develop a harmonious relationship among adherents of different religions, but also in the effort to lay the groundwork for democratization in the socio-economic and political spheres.

In short, Nurcholish is the type of figure who believes in inclusiveness, associating with various groups of people without becoming attached to any of them. As a pious Muslim, he believes that the victory of Islam is neither the victory of an institution nor individual nor group of people, even if they wave Islamic flags and symbols.

For him, the victory of Islam is the victory of ideas -- the realization of the idea of justice (qadalah), equality (masawah), and democracy (musyawarah) in the structure of our national life.

With his intellectual armory, wisdom, and commitment to upholding high standards of morality and value, Nurcholish emerged on the socio-religious and political stage of our society, bringing with him fresh and liberating ideas.

This positions him as a unique Muslim intellectual in Indonesia. A Western proverb seems applicable to Nurcholish: "To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing!" One thing is for sure, Nurcholish never wanted to be nothing.

He never courted popularity, however. Rather, his involvement in socio-economic and political intellectualism and activism -- including his pioneering role in requesting then president Soeharto to step down and to urge his fellow countrymen to adopt the spirit of reform -- was mainly shaped and influenced by his profound belief that it was his religious duty as servant of Allah.

On Monday, Nurcholish passed away, leaving a rich and diverse intellectual legacy to us. As he himself often suggested, what he had endeavored to achieve over the last three decades will continue in the years to come. His efforts need to be continued by his contemporaries within Indonesia's Muslim community.