What happened to the smiling face of Indonesian Islam?

Bruinessen, Martin Van. 2011. What happened to the smiling face of Indonesian Islam?: Muslim intellectualism and the conservative turn in post-Suharto Indonesia. Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.

The transition from authoritarian to democratic rule in Indonesia has been accompanied by the apparent decline of the liberal Muslim discourse that was dominant during the 1970s and 1980s and the increasing prominence of Islamist and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam. This paper attempts to go beyond a superficial reading of these developments and explores the conditions that favored the flourishing of liberal Muslim thought during the New Order as well as the various factors that from the 1980s onwards supported the rise of transnational Islamist movements, at the expense of the established mainstream organizations, Muhammadiyah and NU.
 
Available online at: http://www.rsis.edu.sg/publications/WorkingPapers/WP222.pdf

The threat to 'smiling Islam'

Martin Van Bruinessen

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/incomingFeeds/article766276.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

 

CIVIL ISLAM. Muslims and democratization in Indonesia. Robert W. Hefner. 286pp.
Princeton University Press; distributed in the UK by Wiley. Pounds 35 (paperback, Pounds 11.50). 0 691 05047 3.

Until the late 1980s, Islam made so little noticeable impact on Indonesia's politics that few outsiders were aware that this is in fact the world's largest Muslim country. Seven out of eight Indonesians are Muslims, making their numbers 200 million by the end of 2000, or more than those of all Arab countries combined. A large proportion of Indonesian Muslims adhere to syncretistic beliefs and practices (rituals relating to earth spirits, ancestor spirits, deities from the Hindu pantheon), and reject the formal obligations, such as daily prayer, that stricter Muslims consider essential to Islam. Since Clifford Geertz's classic study of Islam in an East Javanese town in the 1950s, it has become common to refer to these syncretists as abangan and to their stricter brothers as santri.

Indonesia's first two Presidents, Sukarno and Suharto, were both known to be abangan, and the state bureaucracy and military were long dominated by abangan and Christians. The latter, only some 8 per cent of the total population, were over-represented because of their better education, one of the lasting effects of Dutch colonization, the former because until recently few if any santri were ever promoted to the upper echelons of the state apparatus. Both Presidents, as well as the armed forces, deeply distrusted their santri Muslim subjects as a potential threat to the unity and integrity of the Republic, because of several early efforts to turn the country into an Islamic state.

President Sukarno kept power by carefully managing a balance between the armed forces and the two major mass-based political movements, Islam (santri) and Communism (abangan). General Suharto's rule started with the physical elimination of Communism, coordinated by his army but willingly carried out by Muslim killing squads. The only significant organized forces remaining then were the Muslim parties and associations, and efforts to depoliticize Islam have been one of the most consistent aspects of Suharto's policies. Protest against these policies and against the Suharto dictatorship in general was forcefully repressed; by the end of the 1980s, Muslim opposition was to all purposes silenced.

It looked like a dramatic reversal of these policies when, in the late 1980s, Suharto began gradually distancing himself from his erstwhile abangan and Christian allies (most visibly represented by his most powerful general, the Catholic Bennie Moerdani) and made overtures towards former Muslim critics. He allowed and even patronized the establishment of a new Muslim association, ICMI, that had at least one clear political objective: affirmative action on behalf of educated santri, who had an acute awareness of being under-represented in economic, political and cultural life. The Christian ministers who had been in charge of the economy were, in 1992, replaced by Muslims, several generals of santri background were promoted to the highest positions, and Muslim civil servants found that joining ICMI was virtually obligatory for their careers.

Suharto moreover supported various efforts designed to give Islam a more prominent role in social and political life, such as an Islamic bank, a well-funded Muslim newspaper and a Muslim think tank -the latter two being alternatives to influential Catholic and Chinesecontrolled institutions that many Muslims had long perceived as hostile.

Whereas expressions of anti-Christian or anti-Chinese sentiment had in the past been swiftly and vigorously suppressed, radical Muslim groups that specialized in the assertive defence of Islam against perceived non-Muslim conspiracies appeared to enjoy high protection in the 1990s. They were among Suharto's staunchest supporters in his final days and later aggressively supported his first successor, Habibie, against the secular-oriented wings of the reform movement. Since the election of Abdurrahman Wahid to the presidency and the first cautious attempts to curb the still significant power of Suharto and his closest associates, such radical Muslim groups have proliferated and contributed much to the inter-religious conflicts that destabilized Wahid's government and now threaten that of his successor, Megawati.

Robert Hefner's important book, Civil Islam, is the most detailed study of Islam in the Suharto period to appear to date, and ICMI and the power struggles of the 1990s receive ample coverage. Hefner takes pains to show that that Islamization and democratization have come from committed Muslim intellectuals.

His rich descriptions show an awareness of the varied and conflicting interests of Suharto, Habibie, ICMI's Muslim intellectuals and the other actors involved in bringing Islam back into the public sphere. His chief emphasis is, however, on the gradual Islamization of public discourse that began well before Suharto gave his blessings to ICMI. He focuses especially on the development of liberal and tolerant Muslim discourses under the New Order, without which ICMI would not have been possible, whatever the political purposes it was designed to serve.

Hefner is an anthropologist with an interest in social history, who established his reputation with two excellent monographs on the Tengger, a Hindu community in East Java, and their abangan and santri Muslim neighbours. He observed there how the previously self- contained Hindu and abangan communities were little by little Islamicized, and he understood this to be a natural concomitant of their opening up and integration into a larger social and economic world. In this context, Islam stood, besides much else, for modernity and cosmopolitanism. In the 1990s, Hefner shifted his research interest to the role of Islam in the national public sphere, where he perceived analogous processes at work. Hence, probably, his focus on ICMI as the expression of an underlying process of modernizing Islamization.

Hefner writes with special sympathy on those influential currents in Indonesian Islam -represented most prominently by Nurcholish Madjid and Wahid -that advocate pluralism and tolerance and that have contributed significantly to the democratic reform movement, but he also discusses other currents, including some definitely uncivil ones. Most of his informants were ICMI activists, and he gives a clear view of the complexity of this part of the Islamic spectrum, where staunch Suharto supporters, principled opponents, pragmatic careerists, pious apolitical intellectuals and NGO activists intermingled. On the whole, I find his representation of the Muslim liberals a little too idyllic; he takes their words too often at face value and too uncritically reproduces their favourite self-image of a "smiling Islam" (as other Indonesian Muslims call it in self-mockery). The liberals could only flourish because of the Suharto regime, whose legitimizers and apologists they remained almost until the end.

ICMI as a whole, and not only those few members whom Hefner describes as "regimist", was much more part of the regime than Hefner's informants were willing to admit.

The most prominent Muslim opponent of ICMI was the always controversial Wahid, the leader of the "traditionalist" Nahdlatul Ulama, which probably is the largest Muslim organization in the world. In the 1990s, Wahid, who had long been by far the most interesting public personality in Indonesia, gradually grew into the most brilliant player in Indonesia's shadow-play politics. The efforts by Suharto and various military-Muslim coalitions to cut Wahid down to size, Wahid's own alliances with (mostly non-santri) pro-democracy actors (including Megawati) and secularist military figures, and his later accommodation with the Suharto family (at a price) constitute another important strand of Hefner's narrative.

In the course of the political power struggles of the mid-1990s, churches and Chinese shops were burnt down, as Muslim mobs went on the rampage in towns such as Situbondo, Banjarmasin and Tasikmalaya -not accidentally, places where Wahid's Nahdlatul Ulama is dominant. In each case, the arson and looting were started by unidentified groups brought in from outside, but local people later joined in. Wahid, perceiving a conspiracy to destroy him politically and to stigmatize his organization, made great efforts to restore trust between Christians and Muslims, and was quick to accuse his military and Muslim enemies, mentioning several of them by name. Hefner records Wahid's accusations, the substance of which was corroborated by later developments, with less scepticism than they were greeted with by most Indonesian journalists. There were military men and Muslim activists who deliberately incited ethnic and religious conflict as Suharto's reign was approaching its end. Hefner sketches the dirty politics of those final years, and notably the role that a handful of unsavoury Muslim activists in league with Muslim generals played in efforts to weaken or destroy Wahid's and Megawati's grassroots movements as well as the Chinese business elite.

The book ends with Suharto's fall in 1998 and therefore fails to discuss the rise of Abdurrahman Wahid to the presidency in October 1999 and his deposition in less than two years, and the civil war that broke out between Christians and Muslims in the Moluccas, leading to increasing radicalism among Muslims everywhere in the country. Readers will find the book quite helpful, nevertheless, in making these recent developments understandable.

Hefner's "civil" Muslims have not been much in evidence in recent press reports on the country; they appear to be helpless in the face of the rising tide of military-connected militant jihadist groups and of calls for the enactment of the shariah. The September 11 terrorist attacks, and especially the Western response to them, have given Indonesia's Muslim radicals the opportunity to make their voice widely heard. Yet, liberal Muslims of the type on whom Robert Hefner focuses remain an important and influential group. In the struggle for openness and democratization, they are a crucial factor

Retrieved from: http://www.marufcanada.com/web/islamicpopulation.com/asia/Indonesia/The%20threat%20to%20%27smiling%20Islam%27.html

Tiga Problem Dasar dalam Perlindungan Agama-agama Minoritas di Indonesia

Jurnal MAARIF, Vol.7 No.1 Desember 2012, pp. 43-55.

Ahmad Najib Burhani

Peneliti LIPI (Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia)

‘Apakah kita hendak mendirikan Indonesia Merdeka untuk sesuatu orang, untuk sesuatu golongan?... Sudah tentu tidak!...  bukan negara yang demikian itulah kita punya tujuan.  Kita hendak mendirikan suatu negara “semua buat semua”’

--Sukarno, Lahirnya Pancasila, 1947, 7--

‘Dasar Ketuhanan Yang Mahaesa jadi dasar yang memimpin cita-cita negara kita, yang memberikan jiwa kepada usaha menyelenggarakan segala yang benar, adil dan baik… Ketuhanan Yang Mahaesa tidak lagi hanya dasar hormat menghormati agama masing-masing, melainkan jadi dasar yang memimpin ke jalan kebenaran, kebaikan, kejujuran persaudaraan’

--Mohammad Hatta, Pengertian Pancasila, 1977, 18--

Abstrak

Meski Indonesia telah mencantumkan jaminan kebebasan beragama terhadap agama-agama minoritas dalam konstitusi dan perundang-undangan yang lain, namun pada kenyataannya masih banyak terjadi pelanggaran hak-hak beragama kelompok minoritas. Karena itu, pertanyaan yang akan dibahas dalam tulisan ini adalah permasalahan idologis atau teologis apa yang menghambat pelaksanaan hak-hak pemeluk agama-agama minoritas? Tulisan ini berargumen bahwa ada tiga persoalan dasar yang bersifat ideologis yang menghambat kebebasan beragama dan berkeyakinan di Indonesia. Ketiga hal itu adalah sila pertama Pancasila, paradigm tentang agama yang berkembang di masyarakat Indonesia, dan adanya penetapan bahwa subyek perlindungan adalah agama itu sendiri, bukan pemeluk agama.

Kata kunci: Pancasila, agama minoritas, ortodoksi-heterodoksi, kebebasan beragama, agama resmi dan tidak resmi, Victorian mind

Indonesian Muslims and Their Place in the Larger World of Islam

Martin van Bruinessen,
‘Indonesian Muslims and Their Place in the Larger World of Islam’,
Paper presented at the 29th Indonesia Update conference, Australian National
University, Canberra, September 30 – October 2, 2011.

With over 220 million Muslims, Indonesia has the largest community of Muslims in the world. Nevertheless, Indonesian Muslims do not play a role in global Muslim thought and action that is commensurate with their numbers. Indonesian Muslims have been eager to learn from Arab as well as Indian, Turkish and Persian thinkers, but do not seem to think they may have something valuable to offer in return. In Indonesian bookshops one finds the translated works of classical and modern Arabic authors, as well as studies of and by major Indian, Pakistani, Iranian and Turkish authors. But Malaysia is the only other country where one can find works by Indonesian Muslim authors, and there are virtually no serious studies of Indonesian Islam by scholars of other Muslim nations. The Arab world has shown a remarkable lack of interest in Asia in general, let alone in the social and cultural forms of Islam in Southeast Asia.1 Though more outward looking, other Muslim regions of Asia have not taken a serious interest in their Southeast Asian co-religionists either.


Retrieved from: http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/th/2012-0210-200244/Bruinessen_Indonesian_Muslims_in_the_larger_world_of_Islam.pdf

Indigenous Community Identity Within Muslim Societies in Indonesia: A Study of Katab Kebahan Dayak in West Borneo

Prasojo Z.H. 2011. "Indigenous community identity within muslim societies in Indonesia: A study of Katab Kebahan Dayak in West Borneo". Journal of Islamic Studies. 22 (1): 50-65.

Zaenuddin Hudi Prasojo
Pontianak State College for Islamic Studies West Borneo, Indonesia

Abstract

The discourse of locality versus globalization has become a topic of interest in the social sciences and cultural studies. Globalization representing the modern world has provoked the awakening of ‘the silent voice’ of local traditions, especially those of indigenous communities. This paper examines the contribution of globalization to the dynamics of religion, ethnicity, and identity in a local, Muslim indigenous community, the Katab Kebahan Dayak, in West Kalimantan. As the dynamics of society in West Borneo have come under increasing influence from the outside world, the Dayak identity has become more important to people living in the region. It is generally thought that the Dayak are affiliated either to local religious practices and/or to Christian churches, while the Malays are considered as Muslim. However, Katab Kebahan Dayak community members have kept their ethno-religious identity as Muslim Dayak. This paper explores the process of ethno-religious identity formulation in this community and the influences of globalization on inter-group relations within ethnic groups in Melawi District, West Kalimantan. It affirms that the Katab Kebahan Dayak community members consider themselves as historically of Dayak origin and are proud of that. They trace their Muslim ancestry to more than five generations ago and feel no need to switch their ethnic identity. The research shows that the interactions they have with both Malay Muslim and Dayak communities around the region have strengthened their Muslim identity. This paper contributes to the discourse on local traditions within Muslim societies, and argues in favour of the endurance of local indigenous traditions in response to modern globalization. 

http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/1/50.abstract

Reaktualisasi Ajaran Samin

Suara Merdeka, 21 Oktober 2012 | 20:27 wib


Oleh Junaidi Abdul Munif

Samin, begitulah khalayak umum menyebut mereka. Mereka bermukim di sekitar Pegunungan Kendeng yang memanjang dari Pati hingga Tuban. Meski tak mengenyam pendidikan formal, warga Samin memiliki sikap hidup lebih santun daripada yang berpendidikan tinggi. Saminisme, ajaran hidup kaum Samin, selalu mengedepankan kejujuran dan kesahajaan.
BAGI mereka, gaya hidup orang modern sudah keluar dari koridor tujuan penciptaan manusia di bumi. Egoisme, hedonisme, kebohongan, dan kerakusan kekuasaan adalah gaya hidup manusia modern. Korupsi (mencuri), debat kusir, dan saling fitnah tampaknya bukan sesuatu yang aneh dalam kehidupan saat ini. Dan, kaum Samin meyakini itulah yang memicu kerusakan di dunia.

Harmonisasi, bagi mereka, adalah tujuan utama menjalani hidup. Samin Surosentiko, pelopor ajaran saminisme, menyatakan tugas manusia di dunia adalah sebagai utusan Tuhan. "Yang dinamakan sifat wisesa adiluhung) adalah bertindak sebagai wakil Allah," tutur Samin.

Alam dan jiwa masyarakat Samin seolah-olah sudah menyatu. Alam ibarat ibu mereka, karena alam menghidangkan kekayaan melimpah untuk dinikmati kapan pun. Karena itu mereka begitu mencintai dan menjaga alam. Wajar ketika investor asing (semen) datang dan hendak mengeksploitasi Pegunungan Kendeng, mereka berada di garda terdepan: melawan!

Orang Samin juga tidak kenal istilah berdagang. Karena berdagang, bagi mereka, selalu melahirkan unsur 'ketidakjujuran'. Mereka memilih sistem barter karena berlandaskan kejujuran dan tidak merugikan pihak lain. Bagi orang Samin, bohong adalah tabu. Mereka juga tidak menerima bantuan dalam bentuk uang.

Tabu Berbohong 
Raden Kohar atau Samin Surosentiko adalah otak intelektual paham saminisme. Samin lahir 1859 di Desa Plosokediren, Randublatung, Kabupaten Blora. Sang ayah bernama Raden Surowijaya atau lebih dikenal sebagai Samin Sepuh. Samin Surosentiko memiliki pertalian darah dengan Kiai Keti di Rajegwesi, Bojonegoro, dan Pangeran Kusumoningayu yang berkuasa di Kabupaten Sumoroto (kini menjadi daerah kecil di Kabupaten Tulungagung) tahun 1802-1826.

Sastroatmodjo (2003) mengemukakan, saminisme muncul sebagai reaksi terhadap pemerintah kolonial Hindia-Belanda yang sewenang-wenang. Mereka tidak melawan secara fisik, tetapi berwujud penentangan terhadap segala peraturan dan kewajiban yang harus dilakukan rakyat terhadap Belanda.

Misalnya, tidak mau membayar pajak. Resistensi itu akhirnya membuat mereka memiliki tatanan, adat istiadat, dan kebiasaan tersendiri. Samin Surosentiko juga melawan kekuasaan kolonial lewat ekspansi gagasan dan pengetahuan. Samin Surosentiko mentransformasikan gagasan melalui ceramah di pendapa-pendapa pemerintahan desa. Inti ceramahnya seolah olah ingin membangun Kerajaan Amartapura.

Artinya, Samin menghendaki masyarakat bersifat jatmika (bijaksana) dalam kehendak, ibadah, mawas diri, mengatasi bencana alam, dan jatmika selalu berpegangan pada budi pekerti. Dianggap penghasut masyarakat, tahun 1907 Samin Surosentiko ditangkap Belanda. Dia dibuang ke Sawahlunto, Sumatera barat, dan di sanalah maut menjemput tahun 1914.

Samin Surosentiko mewariskan sebuah kitab sastra adiluhung sebagai falsafah hidup orang Samin, yakni Serat Jamus Kalimasada. Saat ini, orang Samin sering disebut sebagai Wong Sikep yang berarti, jujur, dan baik. Kini, krisis moralitas melanda bangsa ini. Hedonisme dan pragmatisme bak dewa yang selalu disembah- sembah manusia. Rakus, tamak, dan perbuatan keji lain menjadi efek pasti kedua dewa itu.

Arus globalisasi sering dijadikan kambing hitam sebagai pemicu. Kendati demikian, masyarakat Samin bergeming dan tetap memegang prinsip hidup mereka. Karena itulah, saminisme sangat layak dijadikan cerminan hidup. Keharmonisan, keselarasan, dan keseimbangan adalah representasi masyarakat Samin.

Seolah-olah tak dijumpai celah dalam kehidupan mereka untuk berbuat iri, dengki, rakus, dan perbuatan negatif lain. Sikap Mulia Ada sebuah kisah menarik sebagai ilustrasi. Suatu ketika ada orang asing tersesat di desa masyarakat Samin. Karena kelaparan dan melihat buah pisang yang masak, orang asing itu pun memetik. Namun sang pemilik memergoki. Sang pemilik sama sekali tidak marah, bahkan berkata, "Kenapa mencuri, jika meminta saja diberi?"
Sungguh, suatu sikap yang mulia. Dalam Serat Jamus Kalimasada, Samin Surosentiko mengatakan, "Aja dengki srei, tukar padu, dahpen kemeren, aja kutil jumput, mbedog colong." Ya, masyarakat Samin dilarang berhati jahat, berperang mulut, iri hati kepada orang lain, dan mengambil milik orang (mencuri). Sebab, semua tindakan itu merupakan awal kerusakan di bumi.

Ketika ditanya soal kejujuran, Hardjo Kardi, 'kepala adat' Samin, mengatakan, "Kejujuran adalah segalanya. Kejujuran harus menjadi dasar dan pegangan bagi manusia untuk mendapatkan kekuatan. Jangan pernah dengki dan iri hati. Semua manusia sama. Membedabedakan manusia tabu dalam mayarakat kami."

Secara eksplisit, ucapan indah itu mengindikasikan mereka senantiasa menerapkan sikap toleransi dan pluralitas. Bandingkan dengan fenomena yang acap menghinggapi manusia saat ini. Hampir setiap hari kita disuguhi tindakan amoral dari berbagai pihak. Sungguh ironis.

Bangsa yang tersohor dengan kesantunan dan kesopanan sudah bermetamofosis menjadi bangsa kurang beradab, jika tidak boleh dikatakan bangsa amoral dan biadab.

- Abdullah Hanif, pemerhati budaya asal Blora, kini mukim di Bantul
(RED/CN27)

Retrieved from: http://www.suaramerdeka.com/v1/index.php/read/kejawen/2012/10/21/610/Reaktualisasi-Ajaran-Samin

Agama Jawa Sunda

Hisyam, Muhamad. 2004. "Agama Jawa Sunda." In Isma'il, Ibnu Qoyim. Religi lokal & pandangan hidup: kajian tentang masyarakat penganut religi Tolotang dan Patuntung, Sipelebegu (Permalim), Samimisme, dan agama Jawa Sunda. Jakarta: Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia, Pusat Penelitian Kemasyarakatan dan Kebudayaan. pp. 137-74.

Available online