Nurcholish' new book focuses on formation of civil society
Cita-cita Politik Islam Era Reformasi (Islam's Political Ideals in the Reform Era)
Nurcholish Madjid
Paramadina Jakarta, March 1999
xiv + 278pp
Rp 31,700
YOGYAKARTA (JP): Since the fall of the New Order regime last May, the political and constitutional institutions it created, including the People's Consultative Assembly, the House of Representatives and political parties, have been demoralized. This shows the New Order regime failed to keep up with the fast changing political current.
A major "blessing" resulting from the political crisis following the regime's fall has been the advent of unprecedented political freedom, as evidenced by the mushrooming political parties. Another striking result is the emergence of religious- based political parties with nationalist agendas.
Needless to say this is an interesting development because a nationalist orientation has always been a center of conflict between fundamentalist and nationalist Muslims. Now, the debate on nationalist orientation has led the conservative and fundamentalist camps to deal with so-called "Islamic politics".
The scope of Islamic politics is no longer limited to the formalization of Islamic values in political organizations, but has been expanded to include Islam as the source of inspiration for democratization.
The fall of the New Order regime has not only given rise to political and moral reform movements but also has brought about a fragmentation in Islamic politics.
There are at least two reasons for this fragmentation. First, there is the belief that Islam offers political vision and that it can become an ideology itself. Second, Islam is a source of political ideas. It offers a political platform which is open to people from any background.
In this book, Nurcholish shows the Indonesian people have everything needed to create a civil society based on Islamic values. But the question is, are Muslims, who constitute the majority of the Indonesian population, able to make this political, and also religious, move possible? This, Nurcholish argues, is the biggest challenge facing Indonesian Muslims. Nurcholish's ideas follow the theological principles laid out in the Koran.
In his opinion, when one talks about Indonesia, one talks about Islam in Indonesia. This, Nurcholish argues, is a result of mere statistics because some 90 percent of the population is Muslim. By the same token, a vision about Indonesia is basically a vision about Islam in Indonesia. The same is true of one's view about civil society.
According to Nurcholish, Islam's involvement in politics dates back to the time Prophet Muhammad moved from Mecca to Yastrib (Madina). The Prophet gave his personal views on the relationship between Islam and the state after he moved to Madina.
"Madina state", as Nurcholish quotes theological sociologist Roberty N. Bellah, "serves as the model for the relationship between Islam and the state". Nurcholish calls this model in upholding civil society the "Madina Experiment", which is characterized by, among other things, egalitarianism, reward based on merit (rather than on ethnicity, etc.), public participation and elected leadership.
In the Indonesian context, Nurcholish analogizes Pancasila, the state ideology, and the Madina charter because the two offer a common platform for people of different religions. Pancasila can be enriched with Islamic values.
The Madina charter, which has become an important source of Islamic political ethics, is worth reviewing in view of modern political ethics. It provides guidelines for the relationship between Islam and the state, which -- from the modern political point of view -- is still amazingly relevant. It deals with issues such as the freedom of religion and human's basic rights to economy, which are quite similar to the ones prescribed in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
Obviously, it was the Madina charter which inspired Nurcholish to write this book to express his longing for a civil society to take root in Indonesia.
-- Arief Fauzi Marzuki
The reviewer is a freelancer.