The political impact of the sharia question
The political impact of the sharia question
Lambert J. Giebels
Historian
Breda, The Netherlands
After the fall of president Soeharto the sharia movement did
revive in the political field. The sharia question is haunting
Indonesia from the very beginning of its existence.
When on the first of June 1945 Sukarno had delivered his
famous Pancasila speech to the preparatory committee of the
constitution and it was decided that the Pancasila would be
included in the Preamble of the constitution, orthodox Muslims
among the founding fathers made it clear that they would only
accept the inclusion of the Pancasila under certain conditions:
Sukarno's last pillar, Believe in God, had to become the first; a
sentence of seven words should be added in the Preamble, stating
that all Islamic Indonesians were obliged to follow the Koranic
laws; only a Indonesian Muslim might become president.
Bung Karno accepted the "Djakarta Charter", as it was named,
with tears in his eyes, for he was well aware that the seven
words could undermine his concept of Pancasila.
Then came the Aug. 18, constitution-day. In the evening and
night of the sixteenth a Japanese vice-admiral, Maeda Tadashi,
had put his house at Nassau boulevard (Jalan Boncol) at the
disposal of the preparatory committee for the drafting of the
Declaration of independence; on the seventeenth, independence-
day, Maeda protected Sukarno's declaration in his front garden
against an intervention by the Japanese army, and prevented a
bloodbath.
In the course of the evening of the Aug. 17 the Japanese
warned Hatta that if the seven words would be included in the
constitution, several non-Muslim islands of the archipelago would
refuse to become part of the sharia state Indonesia. Hatta, a
dedicated Muslim, but also a realistic politician, as well as
Sukarno decided to drop the seven words.
As Sukarno's biographer I have become impressed by the
cleverness with which he was looking for western thinking that
could benefit his beloved country. Also his approach of the
sharia issue was based on western thinking. Being a western
educated man Sukarno understood, earlier than many western
thinker, that the Enlightenment might have brought separation of
church and state, but not a separation of religion and politics.
He understood that during the nineteenth and twentieth
century, when democracy settled in the western world, Christian
parties played a dominant role in the formation of the politics
of their countries -- like a party as the CDU in Germany still
does. He thought it an example to be followed by the Muslim-
world.
In his Pancasila speech Bung Karno emphasized that Muslims
rather than demanding a sharia state, had to accept the
separation of church and state, but build strong political
parties which should in parliament, in the wording of Sukarno:
"Permeate the laws with the spirit and soul of Islam".
Again and again the sharia discussion created political
tension in the new-born state. The climax came when on the first
of June 1959 the Constituent Assembly, assembled in Bandung, had
to take a decision on the replacement of the Dutch-fabricated
constitution of 1950 by the constitution-1945.
One part of the Assembly wanted a sharia state, the other a
Pancasila state. In the thrilling voting of that day, that was
radioed all over the archipelago, neither the one, nor the other
got the needed 2/3 majority. The deadlock forced the strong man
of those days, Gen. Nasution, to take action. He dissolved the
Assembly, sent its members home and summoned president Sukarno,
who stayed in Japan, to come home. Back in Djakarta, Sukarno on
July 5, 1959 reinstated in his Dekrit Kembali the constitution-
1945, without the seven words.
Soon after that he proclaimed the "Guided Democracy". From
then on Bung Karno ruled like a enlightened despot. With his
intoxicating charisma he persuaded the nation to accept with hart
and soul his Pancasila state; he even forced the atheistic PKI to
swallow his Pancasila, completely with Believe in God!
After the fall of president Sukarno the Pancasila state was
continued by Soeharto, and any political discussion about sharia
was suppressed. Underground, however, the sharia movement
continued its activities. Frustrated orthodox Muslims found an
outlet for their frustrations in violence. Their victim became
Christianity. Several churches were burned down or destroyed; at
the end of Soeharto's regime it were more than hundred per year.
The violence against Christian belongings did not stop with
the fall of Soeharto. The reader will remember the bomb attacks
of catholic churches on Christmas 2000. The violence was now
meant as a support of the revived political sharia movement.
It seemed that the movement would fizzle out, when in 2000 the
MPR with a big majority rejected a move to have the sharia
embedded in the constitution. The supporters of sharia shifted
for some time their activities to the local level.
At this moment the political movement for sharia is back at
the national level. Widespread Muslim magazines are promoting a
sharia state and political parties are trying to win votes by
promising it. In case one of those parties will win 3 percent in
the parliamentary election, the sharia discussion will also
infect the presidential elections of July.
The fact alone already that sharia is an item in the campaign
hurts the traditional image in the west of a tolerant Indonesia.
It will become much worse if sharia would get a majority, and
Indonesia would become a sharia state -- like the province Aceh
already seems to be. A sharia state is, rightly or wrongly, seen
in western eyes as a bulwark of Islam fundamentalism and a hotbed
for Islam terrorism.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, when it became apparent that a "clash of
civilizations" is going on, the western world is inclined to
isolate sharia states and to separate them from the world market
economy. An isolation of Indonesia would for many of us Dutchmen
be a great lost, for Indonesia itself it would be a disaster. To
prove this the reader of a English language paper in Indonesia
will be superfluous, I guess.