The 'API' of the Muslim Community

At Hotel Bidakara in Jakarta at the end of July, a scene unfolded that might be difficult to find in many Muslim countries. Kiai, ulama, scholars, state officials, leaders of Islamic organisations, academics, and pesantren administrators sat together in one forum. There were those who habitually recite qunut during Subuh prayers and those who do not. Some perform eight rakaat of tarawih, others twenty. Some determine the start of Ramadan by rukyat, others by hisab. Yet there was no news of them quarrelling over prayer mats because of these differences. They came for the 8th Indonesian Muslim Congress (KUII VIII). More than 400 participants, including representatives from 87 national-level Islamic community organisations, gathered under a bold theme: ‘Ummah United, Nation Sovereign, State Strong.’ The Chair of the KUII VIII Steering Committee, KH Marsudi Syuhud, offered two more operational terms for the theme: taswirul manhaj, the unification of mindsets, and tansiqul harakah, the coordination of movements. However, the theme raises a question: after eight congresses and decades of Islamic organisational activity in Indonesia, is ‘unity’ truly the greatest problem facing the ummah today? Previously, it was, because its meaning was easier to recognise. Relations among Muslims were once preoccupied with furu’iyah debates: qunut, tahlil, talqin, maulid, grave pilgrimage, the number of tarawih rakaat, and the determination of the start of Ramadan and Idul Fitri. Differences in fiqh methodology, rarely understood by the lay community, transformed into social identities. Mosques sometimes even had an ‘organisational mazhab’, though it was not written on their signboards. Even when KUII VI was held in Yogyakarta in 2015, the need to strengthen ukhuwah and consolidate the ummah was still part of the conversational atmosphere, even though the congress agenda had already moved significantly towards political, economic, socio-cultural issues, and strengthening the ummah’s role in national life. More than a decade later, many of those fences have lowered. A Muhammadiyah member can pray in an NU mosque without an ideological check at the door. A Nahdliyin traveller no longer needs to find another mosque because the imam does not recite qunut. Families even live with mixed religious traditions: a Muhammadiyah father, an NU mother, children studying in another institution, while their grandchildren might choose a YouTube preacher. The only routine difference still visible is the determination of the start of Ramadan and Idul Fitri. Even that is merely a difference in the method of determining ‘worship time’, not the worship itself. Everyone still fasts during Ramadan and performs the Id prayer. The only occasional difference is when to start cooking opor. Thus, KUII VIII confronts us with a new question: if the quarrels over qunut are subsiding, where exactly is the Indonesian Muslim community fractured? The fault lines appear to have shifted. The division is no longer primarily on the prayer mat, but rather in ‘institutions, economy, politics, human resources, technology, data, media, and the ability to organise power’. We have become increasingly successful at building ritualistic ukhuwah, but perhaps not yet institutional ukhuwah. The number of Indonesian Muslims is extraordinarily large: over 240 million people. Almost every major issue facing the ummah is automatically a national issue. The ummah is the nation, and the nation is the ummah. But numbers are not synonymous with strength. Mancur Olson, in The Logic of Collective Action, long ago warned that large groups do not automatically achieve their common interests. The larger the group, the more difficult coordination can become. There is a long road from ‘many’ to ‘strong’. I formulate it simply as: ‘Numbers → Unity → Organisation → Capacity → Strength.’ The KUII VIII theme already possesses the two ends: ‘umat bersatu’ and ‘negara kuat’. What is often missing is the arrow in the middle. Look at Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama. Both are extraordinary treasures of Indonesian civilisation, but they grew with different institutional architectures. Muhammadiyah is relatively easy to quantify. Organisational data mentions thousands of schools, hundreds of pesantren and universities, over a hundred hospitals, and hundreds of clinics. They have a term containing an organisational philosophy: ‘Amal Usaha Muhammadiyah’. A university does not belong to its rector, nor a hospital to its director. All of Muhammadiyah’s wealth becomes part of an institution that can be inherited beyond a human lifespan. KH Ahmad Dahlan passed away long ago, but his schools continue to multiply. That is one of the wonders of an institution: ‘people die, but the organisation is not buried with them.’ NU possesses a different ecology. Within the Nahdliyin environment, there is a vast network of pesantren, Ma’arif schools, universities, hospitals, clinics, cooperatives, mosques, waqf land, and various economic activities. However, a pesantren that is culturally very NU may not necessarily be a ‘PBNU asset’. It could be owned by a foundation, a kiai’s family, a separate legal entity, or a local waqf. Comparing the asset value of Muhammadiyah with that of PBNU directly is therefore like ‘comparing apples to mango orchards’. Muhammadiyah resembles a federation of institutions whose assets are easier to identify. NU resembles a giant social ecosystem with thousands of autonomous nodes. One fits easily into a spreadsheet; the other must be searched for down to the village level. It is precisely this difference that brings us back to the Bidakara event. If the two largest organisations have such different architectures, imagine the 87 ormas gathered at KUII VIII. What exactly do they possess if all their strengths were mapped? How many schools, universities, and pesantren? How many hospitals and clinics? How many hectares of land and waqf assets? How many cooperatives, baitul mal wa tamwil, and companies? How many media outlets? How many doctors, professors, researchers, engineers, economists, legal experts, entrepreneurs, and artificial intelligence specialists?