Once again questioning the Jakarta Charter

Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ, Professor of Social Philosophy, Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta

In this newspaper (May 15) Wisnu Pramudya pleaded for a more informed view on the question of introducing syariah, or Islamic law, in Indonesia. This intention can only be applauded. Nevertheless, Wisnu Pramudya's explanations leave more questions than answers.

But first some corrections.

The Jakarta Charter was not the result of months of preparations, but was formulated on June 22, 1945, three weeks after Sukarno's famous "Birth of Pancasila" speech, by the "Commission of Nine" and accepted by the Body for the Preparation of Independence (BPUPKI) on June 14.

Nothing was missing when Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta read out "a makeshift text" (Wisnu Pramudya means the proclamation of Indonesia's independence) on Aug. 17, because at that time they did not read anything from the draft of the Constitution, the place of the Jakarta Charter.

Hatta made his famous decision to strike out the "seven words" regarding the obligation of Muslims to practice syariah on the morning of Aug. 18.

What really strikes me is Wisnu Pramudya's central argument that making syariah the state law in Indonesia would be the same as the introduction of democracy in France and Britain.

In fact, what happened in both countries, and all over Europe, was exactly the opposite. After a century of terrible religious wars, and against stiff resistance from the Catholic Church (which finally made her peace with the new political ethics only 50 years ago) and the more conservative part of the population, the new (mostly bourgeois) political elites, following the philosophy of the Enlightenment, enacted what we now call the secular state.

Thus in France, the French Revolution, based on its controversial new ideals of liberty, equality and brotherhood, suppressed by bloody terror the -- then -- Catholic ideal of an absolute (Catholic) monarchy.

In Britain, the dominant Anglican Church, as a result of a long and peaceful development, finally lost its special position in the first part of the 19th century.

Thus France and Britain, followed by the rest of Europe, and of course, before them, the United States, were able to accommodate pluralism by resolutely refusing to found modern states on religion, ending the tutelage of religions by the state.

What Wisnu Pramudya is proposing is precisely the opposite, namely making one religion the basis of the state. It is, of course, his right to propose this, but how he can base his proposal on Europe's ending the privileges of Anglican, Protestant and Catholic majority religions beats me.

By the way, implying, as Wisnu Pramudya does, that introducing syariah would mean having Indonesia ordered according to the Indonesian way needs some explaining.

Haven't most parts of Indonesia been Muslim for centuries? Aren't Indonesian cultures, most of them Islamic -- think for instance of the Minangkabau, the Javanese or the Buginese -- of an impressive plurality, proving ad occulos what many Muslims rightly stress: that Islam is an universal religion where all people can find there place without having to shed their identity?

Has not this cultural plurality admirably been supported by the fact that the Indonesian state has been based on Pancasila, giving every community, including the non-Muslim ones, the space to live according to their identities and ideals?

Is not every Muslim community completely free to live in the fullest way, unhampered by any adverse state pressures, according to their understanding of syariah?

That some Muslim ideologues believe that this Islamic plurality should be remolded into an uniform way of Muslim life where all Muslims (especially women) would look precisely the same, from Sabang to Savanah, is another question.

It certainly has nothing to do with Indonesian identity.

In order to debunk "the myth that Islam is no longer relevant", Wisnu Pramudya points out "that the West's knowledge and technological advancements of today were founded on what was developed by Muslim scholars centuries earlier".

With the exception of Europe's technological advancements (which only really got under way in the second half of the 18th century, 600 years after the last scientific influences of Islam on Europe, obviously driven by quite different forces), I agree completely. Except that it was precisely the other way around.

Europe certainly got decisive intellectual infuse from the Muslim world. But it got it from the great Muslim scientists and philosophers that were able to flourish in the cultural space of the open Islam of the first 600 years, which developed a civilization that in intellectual daring, scientific advancement and cultural sophistication was state of the art on the world stage.

A point to mention is the impact of the great Muslim philosophers Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. Their thinking was received enthusiastically in Europe.

The truly great merit of these Muslim philosophers was that they brought Aristotle to Europe. It is generally accepted that it was the switch from Plato to Aristotle as "the philosopher" that put Europe on her way to modernity. The reason is that Aristotle made it possible for European thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas to distinguish philosophy from theology.

Thereby they opened the space for reason to take due place in the ongoing human quest for a deeper understanding of their situation, thus freeing Europe from a stifling myopic reliance on religion.

A concerted attack by the sufis on the one hand and the teachers of religious law (fiqh) on the other succeeded in stifling philosophy in the Islamic world (some strains surviving in Persia) in this same 13th century.

What followed was, as we know, the slow disappearance of Islam from the map of global intellectuality.

Thus while Europe was appreciative of what the great Muslim intellectuals brought her, developing it further on her own accord, the Islamic world, led by pious mystics and orthodox legal scholars, disavowed her own most brilliant sons.

It was the victory of the legalists over open-minded intellectuals -- and the first 600 years of Islam prove that Islam can provide a conducive environment for the highest intellectual performance -- that confined the Muslim world for centuries to an intellectual backyard.

The most revealing sentence of Wisnu Pramudya's whole article sits in the middle: "Pluralism is never a hindrance to upholding the truth. Because the truth is not the result of consensus."

In other words: Where truth is concerned, the opinions of other people can be disregarded.

The only problem is: As political philosophers from Aristotle to Kant and Habermas have pointed out, politics are not a question of truth, but of valuation. The difference is crucial.

Transforming political questions into questions of truth is the usual ploy of secular and religious ideologists to evade the test of democratic approval.

By making politics a problem of eternal truth, ideological high priests, claiming to have such metaphysical knowledge, hijack the right of the citizenry to decide for themselves how they want to live, including how they should practice their religion.

On syariah, for example, there is a wide ranging spectrum of opinion among knowledgeable and responsible Muslim scholars.

By giving state organs the right to enforce syariah, the whole question of what, on the basis of the Koran and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad, is really meant and implied by syariah is sidelined.

Indonesian Muslims and non-Muslims may end up by having to live according to what certain state officials and their advisers decree to be the law of God.

For me a monstrous idea.

A last remark. Non-Muslims will not be reassured by Wisnu Pramudya's remark that apprehensions that the "implementation of syariah will threaten human rights" are only "a myth".

Even Muslims in Indonesia are asking what syariah would mean for women and whether we would have syariah police entering private houses in order to check on the strict observance of the law.

These examples may not be conclusive, but they deserve to be addressed seriously and in honesty.