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.