Barun Roy: The 'Big Bang' of Islamic reform

ASIA FILE

Nurcholish Madjid is not a name most Indians are familiar with, but those who are will agree that this is one person we should want to know more about. He stood for a cause "" and fought for it with courage "" that has particular relevance to this country at this time of religious strife and ideological confusion.

For decades, Madjid had been Indonesia's foremost voices of reason and liberalism, a highly respected Muslim scholar and national figure who, in 1998, bluntly told Suharto "Your time is up" and persuaded him to resign, and whose famous declaration, "Islam yes, Islamic party no!" laid to the birth of an Islamic neo-modernist movement in a predominantly Muslim country.

That voice was silenced on August 29, when Madjid died at the age of 66, but the message of religious and racial tolerance, it's heartening to see, lives on.

As large numbers of people, of all faiths and affiliations, gathered for the burial of this extraordinary Indonesian, Indonesia's Minister for Home Affairs, M Ma'ruf, declared that the government had decided to review a controversial 1969 decree that says no houses of worship can be set up without permission from local communities and administrations.

Muslims, for obvious reasons, have had no problem with this decree, but Christians find it highly discriminatory. The decree, in effect, has forced them to go "underground" and hold services privately in homes, shops and other commercial buildings.

The government's decision to review the controversial decree was hailed as a fitting tribute to a person who never believed in nationhood based on religion and wanted Indonesia to live in the spirit of its official motto, "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika", which roughly translates as "Unity in Diversity."

Unfortunately, that unity hasn't always been preserved with fairness. Christians account for about 9 per cent of Indonesia's 220 million population, but hardline Muslim groups have never liked their presence.

In fact, according to the Indonesian Communion of Churches, at least 23 churches in and around Bandung alone had been forcibly closed down between September 2004 and August this year. It must be pointed out, however, that these acts don't have the support of large sections of Indonesians.

At the burial ceremony in Jakarta, one Muslim leader described Madjid as the "Big Bang" of Islamic thinking. Others said it was because of him that matters that previously couldn't be publicly discussed, like inter-faith marriages, could now be openly raised. Madjid saw nothing wrong in couples belonging to different religions wanting to get married. Would there be another voice like his, some wondered.

What did Madjid, an Islamic Studies PhD from the University of Chicago and founder of the Paramadina University that aims at creating an ideal Islamic society, stand for that makes him such an outstanding neo-modernist Muslim leader and a bold thinker whose views have relevance extending far beyond the borders of Indonesia? Four things, basically, four precise ideas developed with care and broached with courage without the slightest trace of intellectual dissimulation.

First, Muslims must give up their reactionary, reclusive, and "fossilised" attitudes and pessimism towards history. Be rational, have an open mind, and accept ideas from any source as long as they are consistent with the concept of progress and contain truth, was his advice to the Muslim community.

"Maintain what is old and good," he once wrote, "but embrace what is new and better." Without fresh ideas, he said, Muslims would neither regain their psychological striking force nor be able to focus on societal conditions constantly developing in economic, political, and social fields.

Second, the state must be truly secular and avoid having any role in religion. His logic ran like this: since humans are not God and their understanding of religion is limited by the fact they are not infallible, any attempt by the state to impose its own religious understanding is like wanting to play God, and that, in Islam, is a heinous crime.

Third, the state shouldn't be an exclusivist in a society that's pluralistic. He never liked the nationalist and centrist mindset of the nationalists epitomised by Sukarno and inherited by his daughter Megawati.

"Now we are paying the price of this centrist policy," he wrote, "and there are rebellions in the country." Federalism, he never ceased to point out, was the only way ahead for Indonesia as "we are a United Nations actually and each major ethnic group could be, by European standards, a nation by itself."

And last, a pluralistic society must follow the democratic path. Without a built-in process of deliberation and consensus building, there are bound to be disruptive tensions. It was Madjid's firm belief that unless a government can ensure civil liberties and a chance of open discourse, it can never tame radicalism.

These are precisely the lessons we in India so badly need to be reminded of.