Nurcholish, for Islam and Indonesia

Nurcholish, for Islam and Indonesia

Fachry Ali, Bahtiar Effendy and Ichsan Ali-Fauzi, Jakarta

It is simply impossible for someone to discuss contemporary Indonesian
Islam, or perhaps even Indonesia in general, without mentioning
Nurcholish Madjid. For nearly three decades, scholars have been
writing books and dissertations on his ideas and practices. His own
articles and essays collected in several books received remarkable
responses.

Born 66 years ago in the small town of Jombang, East Java, Nurcholish
was a "biological child" of Indonesian society who, through his
parents, inherited the intellectualism and activism of the country's
two major Islamic organizations: The modernist political party
Masyumi, banned by the late president Sukarno in 1960, and the
traditionalist socio-religious organization Nahdlatul Ulama. He
synthesized these two intellectual traditions into a larger area of
social and political concern.

The basis of this synthesis was theological: the Arabic saying
"conserve the old and the good, and accommodate the new and the
improved," is particularly apt here.

Nurcholish started his intellectual career at the State Institute for
Islamic Studies (IAIN), often perceived as an avenue for upward
mobility among Muslims. But it was within the Association of Muslim
Students (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam, HMI) -- a modernist, urban Muslim
student organization -- that he was able to articulate his
intellectual orientations.

During his time with HMI, he wrote its ideological manual, The basic
values of struggle. To this day, it serves as required reading during
leadership training programs attended by hundreds of thousands of
members of this largest student organization in Southeast Asia. His
natural stature -- also contributed to by his mastership of Arabic,
English, Urdu and French -- resulted in him being elected to chair the
HMI on two consecutive occasions (1966-1969 and 1969-1971), something
that no one else had ever done.

What made him controversial was his electrifying speech delivered to a
gathering of four Islamic organizations on Jan. 2, 1970, in Jakarta.
In his paper on "The necessity for renewal of Islamic thought and
integration of the Islamic community", Nurcholish bluntly stated that
Indonesian Muslims were suffering from stagnation in religious
thinking and had lost "psychological striking force" in their
struggle. The speech marked a watershed in his career as for the first
time in the contemporary Indonesian Islam it offered an amalgam of
theological, sociological and hermeneutical analysis.

He not only deconstructed the structure of the theological and
ideological framework employed by most Indonesian Muslims, but also
proposed the possibility of viewing the Islamic situation and the
makeup of Muslims as objective facts that result from living factors
at work; not things that are theologically determined.

The essence of Nurcholish's ideas was his observation that most
Muslims here were unable to differentiate values that are
transcendental from those that are temporal. He pointed out that the
hierarchy of values is often reversed; transcendental values are
conceived of as temporal and vice versa.

Everything was likely to be perceived as transcendental, and
therefore, without exception, valued as divine. As a result of this
type of religiosity, "Islam is [viewed as] equal in value to
tradition; and becoming Islamic is comparable to being a
traditionalist."

Reform was possible provided that Muslims were prepared to set out on
the path toward renewal -- even if this was at the expense of the
integration of the Muslim community. To undergo this religious
renewal, he suggested that Muslims liberate themselves from the
tendency to convert values that were actually profane into divine
values. As a consequence of the belief that Islam was timeless and
universal, there was an inherent obligation for Muslims to engage in
creative thinking that was relevant to the demands of the modern age.

According to Nurcholish, this endeavor could only be realized if
Muslims enjoyed the confidence to allow ideas, however unconventional
they may be, to be expressed and communicated freely. More
importantly, given that Islam conceived of human beings as naturally
oriented toward truthfulness (hanief), Muslims need to be open-minded.
Furthermore, they should accept and absorb all ideas, regardless of
their origins, provided they objectively spoke the truth.

The social and political implications of this statement are profound.
In particular, Nurcholish deconstructed the theological basis of many
Indonesian Muslims as reflected in their devotion to an Islamic state,
Islamic parties, Islamic ideology, and legalistic and formalistic
pronouncements.

Conversely, he encouraged his fellow Muslims to adopt Islamic values
that shared the notion of universal humanism. This idea also had
practical consequences for our daily lives. More especially, it shed
light on the necessity for Muslims to develop tolerant attitudes about
pluralism even if this originated from secular sources or other
worldly religions. For Nurcholish, only God possessed the absolute
truth.

Accordingly, self-righteous claims ran counter to the very notion of
Islamic monotheism (al-tawhid). In the Indonesian context,
characterized by such things as demographic plurality, this idea has a
major role to play not only in the nation's endeavor to develop a
harmonious relationship among adherents of different religions, but
also in the effort to lay the groundwork for democratization in the
socio-economic and political spheres.

In short, Nurcholish is the type of figure who believes in
inclusiveness, associating with various groups of people without
becoming attached to any of them. As a pious Muslim, he believes that
the victory of Islam is neither the victory of an institution nor
individual nor group of people, even if they wave Islamic flags and
symbols.

For him, the victory of Islam is the victory of ideas -- the
realization of the idea of justice (qadalah), equality (masawah), and
democracy (musyawarah) in the structure of our national life.

With his intellectual armory, wisdom, and commitment to upholding high
standards of morality and value, Nurcholish emerged on the
socio-religious and political stage of our society, bringing with him
fresh and liberating ideas.

This positions him as a unique Muslim intellectual in Indonesia. A
Western proverb seems applicable to Nurcholish: "To avoid criticism,
do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing!" One thing is for sure,
Nurcholish never wanted to be nothing.

He never courted popularity, however. Rather, his involvement in
socio-economic and political intellectualism and activism -- including
his pioneering role in requesting then president Soeharto to step down
and to urge his fellow countrymen to adopt the spirit of reform -- was
mainly shaped and influenced by his profound belief that it was his
religious duty as servant of Allah.

On Monday, Nurcholish passed away, leaving a rich and diverse
intellectual legacy to us. As he himself often suggested, what he had
endeavored to achieve over the last three decades will continue in the
years to come. His efforts need to be continued by his contemporaries
within Indonesia's Muslim community.

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