Wednesday, December 23, 2015

 How Has Islamic Orthodoxy Changed Over Time?

A new book by the late scholar Shahab Ahmed reveals the capaciousness, complexity, and contradictions of Islam.

By Elias Muhann

 The medieval English allegorical poem Piers Plowman described the birth of Islam as the result of a clever hoax. Muhammad, it asserted, was a former Christian who had made a failed attempt to become pope and then set off for Syria to mislead the innocents. He tamed a turtledove and taught it to eat grains of wheat placed in his ear. In a scene reminiscent of the enchantment of Melampus, the Greek oracle who was granted the ability to understand animal speech when his ears were licked by snakes, Piers’s Muhammad mesmerized audiences by having the bird fly down during the course of his preaching and appear to whisper in his ear. Staging a moment of revelation from God, the false prophet led men to misbelief by “wiles of his wit and a whit dowve.”

In the centuries following Muhammad’s death in 632, many Christians like William Langland, the author of Piers Plowman, sought to make sense of Islam in the terms and symbols of their own faith. Was it just another schismatic sect led by a great here­siarch, as Dante portrayed it in his Divine Comedy? Or was it an ancient form of chivalry, a Saracen code of ethics? Did Muhammad’s followers think him a god? The figure of the prophet-as-trickster found in Piers Plowman was not the most outlandish attempt to explain the origins of Islam. Medieval French chansons de gestes attributed a welter of fantastical qualities to the cult of “Mahom,” including a pantheon of minor deities superimposed from Roman mythology.

University chairs in Oriental studies began proliferating in Europe in the 17th century and were soon followed by the establishment of scholarly associations and academic journals. By the late 19th century, European knowledge of the languages, histories, and customs of Muslim societies had advanced significantly beyond the scope of medieval apologetics, but the interpretation of Islam through the lens of Christianity remained a central current of Orientalist scholarship. As Shahab Ahmed writes in a major new study, the consequences of this approach and its legacy have made it difficult for moderns—­scholars and laypeople, Muslims and non-Muslims alike—to grasp the “historical and human phenomenon that is Islam in its plenitude and complexity of meaning.” Coming to terms with Islam—“saying Islam meaningfully,” as he puts it—requires making ourselves sensitive to the “capaciousness, complexity, and, often, outright contradiction” that inheres within the broadest possible range of practices, beliefs, representational forms, metaphors, and objects associated with Islam.

Ahmed, a scholar of Islamic studies at Harvard, died this autumn at the tragically young age of 48. His book is a strange and brilliant work, encyclopedic in vision and tautly argued in the manner of a logical proof, yet pervaded by the urgency of a political manifesto. It is, in a way, all of these things. For those who knew him, the peculiar ambition of What Is Islam? will not come as a surprise, because Ahmed had been at work for years on a much-anticipated and controversial study about the formation of Islamic orthodoxy. The surprise is that What Is Islam? is not that book.

* * *

Shahab Ahmed arrived at Harvard as an assistant professor in 2005. I was a doctoral student at the time and had heard most of the hagiographical accounts of his life that flowed through graduate-student circles. Fluent in many languages, Ahmed had lived in Singapore, England, Malaysia, and Egypt before coming to America for graduate school. After completing a doctorate at Princeton, he was admitted to Harvard’s prestigious Society of Fellows, where he spent three years before joining the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Mutual acquaintances spoke of his terrifying erudition and wit, sharpened by an unrepentantly refined British accent.

At Princeton, Ahmed had been a student of Michael Cook, the eminent historian. During his first year, he became interested in the “Satanic Verses” incident, an episode from early Islamic history in which the Prophet Muhammad was said to have mistaken some verses suggested by Satan as being part of the divinely revealed Koran. The topic intrigued him. Reading through the earliest sources, Ahmed found a widespread and untroubled consensus on the historical authenticity of the event, which stood in contrast to the doctrinal rejection that emerged centuries later. As he would argue in an award-winning dissertation, the early view of Muhammad as a man “subject to error and Divine correction” represented an outlook at odds with the later theories of prophetic infallibility. At the Society of Fellows, Ahmed began to expand his project into a larger study that would trace Muslim attitudes toward the figure of Muhammad through time and space, using the Satanic Verses problem as a way to explore the development of orthodoxy across the centuries. He assembled an enormous archive of legal, theological, literary, and historical sources on the subject in more than a dozen languages, drawn from manuscript libraries all over the world.

A faculty position interrupted the reverie of research. At Harvard, Ahmed swiftly established a reputation for teaching demanding graduate seminars. The first session of each course seemed designed to turn away as many curious students as possible. A fearsome syllabus front-loaded with hundreds of pages of reading each week, mainly in primary sources, was his deterrent of choice—and an effective one. While at Princeton, Ahmed had taken almost no courses, devoting all of his time to his own research. Michael Cook told me, “In those days, we had no rules obliging students to take courses—they were just expected to do so. Now, thanks to Shahab, we do have rules.”

Those who braved Ahmed’s courses were frequently stunned by the audacity of his expectations. He could be prickly, arrogant, contemptuous of poor preparation, and imperious. Despite this, I was enthralled by him. During my second year, I responded to an advertisement he placed for a research assistant. The job paid a pittance; about this, he was honest, but I convinced him to let me sign on. In his office were shelves filled with hundreds of identical orange file folders, each devoted to a different historical figure. This was the great collection he had put together on the Satanic Verses, an archive of everything ever said and written about the incident. Many of the folders contained transcriptions, in Ahmed’s impeccable Arabic cursive, of excerpts from manuscripts he had consulted in Istanbul’s great libraries and elsewhere in the Islamic world.

My task was to locate whatever information existed about the historical individuals in the archive, drawing on the extensive corpus of premodern biographical dictionaries and chronicles. For the rest of the year, I lived in a world of medieval authorities and onomastic wild-goose chases through the classical tradition. No figure in Ahmed’s archive was too obscure to escape his attention. We hunted for Transoxanian jurists, North African mystics, Andalusian grammarians, Iraqi logicians. Every scrap of opinion about the controversy buried in the great wall of orange files was somehow significant to Ahmed, and the most minor figures were often the most interesting. For months, I had no sense of what I was doing and how it fit into the larger project. Over time, however, things began to fall into place.

The story Ahmed was telling comprehended a tremendous braid of narratives, a pageant of contradiction and diversity in an intellectual tradition that spanned over a millennium. By historicizing the transformation in attitudes toward Muhammad’s prophetic mission, Ahmed hoped that his study might provoke an engagement with the tremendous resources of the past in confronting the questions of the present. How has Islamic orthodoxy been formulated over time, and how might it be reformulated today? As ambitious a thinker as he was, however, Ahmed also seemed to recognize that developing the full implications of his argument was a delicate business. This was the reason for the immensity of the book’s dimensions. As he confided to me one afternoon while we sifted through the mountains of references I had flagged, he was erecting a scholarly edifice so formidable that no one could challenge it.

Ahmed never fully completed the Satanic Verses project. The book grew larger in his mind, with the work accomplished occupying a correspondingly smaller portion of it. At some point, he entered a limbo between research positions and fellowships, during which time he embarked on a different project, co-authoring a book on heresy trials in the Ottoman Empire. When I saw him a year after I’d completed my degree, he seemed strangely happy, even accepting of the foregone conclusion that his chances of receiving tenure at Harvard looked impossibly slim. The new book was nearly finished; all that was left to write was an introduction.

Like the first project, however, that introduction grew larger and larger, absorbing all of its author’s attention and time. Eventually, it would become a 600-page tome with over a thousand footnotes. What Is Islam? is that book.

* * *

When discussing the modern discipline of Islamic studies, Ahmed liked to complain that it was possible to earn a doctorate in this field from an Ivy League university without ever reading the Divan of Hafiz, the great 14th-century Persian poet. He describes that work in What Is Islam? as “the most widely-copied, widely-circulated, widely-­read, widely-memorized, widely-­recited, widely-invoked, and widely-­proverbialized book of poetry in Islamic history.” This was not merely a work of belles lettres, but a book that exemplified “ideals of self-conception…in the largest part of the Islamic world for half-a-millennium.” How could a modern student of Islamic civilization formulate an understanding of this subject without taking stock of such a work, and especially its treatment of wine drinking, erotic love, and the hypocrisies of self-righteous moralists? If Hafiz’s work is not Islamic, then what is?

This might as well be the central question of What Is Islam? The medieval world in which Hafiz’s Divan was a best seller was also a world suffused with the traditions of Avicennan rationalism, Sufi experiential mysticism, the celebration of figural representation, a taste for literary ambiguity, a distinction between public and private selves, and one between legal discourses and other measures of normativity. It was, in other words, a world crowded with variation and contradiction.

Such variety is everywhere to be found in the textual and material record of what Ahmed calls the “Balkan-to-Bengal complex,” the great belt of Muslim societies that stretched from southeastern Europe and Central Asia into North India between the 15th and late 19th centuries. This vast zone represented “the most geographically, demographically, and temporally extensive instance of a highly-articulated shared paradigm of life and thought in the history of Muslims—it is, demographically, spatially, and temporally, an (if not the) historically major paradigm of Islam.” To answer the question of what Islam is, Ahmed suggests, one must at least come to terms with what Islam was in the Balkans-to-Bengal complex, “as a matter of human fact.”

Among that region’s notable characteristics are the significance of rationalist philosophy (both in its purest form and as an epistemological framework for scholastic theology); the omnipresence of Sufi thought and practice; and the tradition of figural representation in painting. The writings of Avicenna, the 11th-century Persian polymath, and the great legacy of commentary he inspired advanced the idea of a superior Truth accessible to the most powerful intellects (belonging, naturally, to philosophers), and “a lesser version of that Truth that communicates itself via Prophets, such as Muhammad.” A prophet was, to Avicenna, a kind of “über-philosopher,” and the prescribed laws promulgated in the Koran were meant “to address the multitude in terms intelligible to them, seeking to bring home to them what transcends their intelligence by means of simile and symbol.”

This understanding of the relationship between reason and revelation prompted some charges of heresy, but the scale of Avicenna’s reception suggests that, in many quarters, he had won the argument, with his philosophical method and conceptual vocabulary becoming part of a standard scholastic curriculum across the Islamic world. In this light, if a modern definition of Islam does not account for the worldview of a figure such as Avicenna—whom Ahmed describes as “the man who effectively defined God for Muslims”—then something is amiss.

Ahmed examines the definition of Islam in a series of similar provocations. Alongside Avicenna, Hafiz, and the great Sufi thinker Ibn Arabi, he also considers the practice of wine drinking, a classical example of something prohibited by Islamic law and yet “positively valued in non-legal discourse.” The most cursory familiarity with premodern Islamic literatures, even beyond the Balkans-to-Bengal complex, attests to it. Poetry and belletristic prose in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Urdu fairly overflow with wine, while historical accounts of famous rulers and their courts portray scenes of literary salons congregating late into the night, fueled by musical performances and great quantities of drink. On the cover of What Is Islam? is one such sovereign, the 17th-century Mughal emperor Jahangir, pictured on the face of a gold coin contemplating a goblet of wine.

How to make sense of these contradictions? Since the beginnings of their academic study of the faith, scholars have grappled with the problem of reconciling the heterogeneity of Muslim beliefs and customs with the uniformity of “Islam.” One long-standing approach makes a distinction between the domains of “religion” and “culture.” Perhaps the most prominent representative of this school, the historian Marshall Hodgson, coined the term “Islamicate” to account for the fullest range of ways of thinking and living found within the cultural sphere of “Islamdom.” Ahmed thinks that Hodgson was motivated by the correct impulse, but came to the wrong conclusions. To separate religion from culture is to make an artificial distinction that becomes untenable in the case of Islam, in which religion and culture are thoroughly interwoven.

Another approach argues that it is senseless to speak of Islam as a monolith; what exists is an array of local islams. If Islam is anything, it is “whatever Muslims say it is.” This has a powerful and pluralistic ring; it accommodates both Avicenna and his great critic, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, the 11th-century theologian. But as Ahmed observes, the islams argument is analytically weak, sacrificing explanatory power in the service of rhetorical efficiency. The assertion that Islam is whatever Muslims say it is offers a description, not a concept.

* * *

The solution that Ahmed puts forward is a definition of Islam as an act of interpretation, something no less elemental than the production of meaning. It is not as narrow a practice as interpreting the Koran—the Text of Revelation—but is rather an engagement with the larger reality within which the Koran was revealed, what Ahmed calls the “Pre-Text of Revelation.” The Koran does not contain all truth; about this fact, there can be no disagreement. Where disagreement does exist “is over the question of whether and in what degree and by what mechanism the Truth of the Pre-Text of Revelation may be accessed.” Can one apprehend truth through some other means, such as the rationality of the philosophers or the Sufi “experiential annexation” of the self? Can the truth of the Pre-Text—which is ontologically prior to that of the Text—be accessed “without the Text, or via the Text, or only in the Text?”

For Ahmed, the history of Islam is a history of the many ways that Muslims have answered this question. It comprehends the literalism of “textual-restrictivists,” who give absolute priority to the text of the Koran and the Hadith (the corpus of sayings attributed to Muhammad) in determining a set of norms as exclusively Islamic, while rejecting other forms of interpretation. This history, of course, also embraces the authority of such “expansivist” projects as Islamic philosophy and Sufism, and everything in between.

When viewed as a single body, these different manners of interpretation form what Ahmed calls the “Con-Text of Revelation… the entire accumulated lexicon of means and meanings of Islam that has been historically generated and recorded up to any given moment: it is the full historical vocabulary of Islam at any given moment.” Something may be said to be Islamic—whether it is a law, a painting, an item of clothing, a poem, a joke—insofar as it expresses its meaning in the terms of Con-Text, connecting in some fashion with the whole archive of earlier hermeneutic engagements.

Can the celebration of wine drinking be Islamic? To Ahmed, the answer is: obviously, yes. It is Islamic insofar as this celebration is expressed, for example, in the terms of such classical Sufi metaphors for “the experience of intoxication with the Divine,” as well as the more mundane recognition of wine’s virtues as a social lubricant. The extensive medical literature of the premodern Islamic world attests openly to the latter fact. As the 10th-century physician and philosopher Abu Zayd al-Balkhi put it, “It is wine that provides excellence to society and conversation…and there is nothing that makes possible relations of intimacy and confidence between friends so tastefully and pleasantly and effectively as does drinking wine together.”

To say that wine drinking is un-Islamic may be akin to saying that the refusal to serve in the military during a period of wartime conscription is un-American. In the view of some citizens, such a refusal may well violate the essence of Americanness, in addition to violating American law; to others, however, this act may rather fulfill and epitomize the requirements of citizenship. By Ahmed’s logic, the refusal to serve in the military is not just American in spite of its opposition to other, contradictory values associated with Americanness, but precisely because of it.

* * *

What is the use of a concept? Does it make any difference whether we conceive of Islam as a religion, a culture, a family of heterogeneous local islams, or a process of meaning-­making? Why and to whom do such distinctions matter? In the academy, concepts count for something, and Ahmed’s book represents the most sustained effort in decades to establish a conceptual basis for Islam. It goes without saying that his vision of Islam is a scholar’s vision; it is scholarly not merely in its style and rhetoric, but in the substance of its argument. If Islam is nothing less than the encyclopedic range of what it has been in history, it is impossible to be alive to that range of possibility without the deliberate study of its previous incarnations. No one could have felt this more deeply than Ahmed, whose shelves of orange file folders contained a millennium’s worth of thought and argument about a single event in Islamic history. While few could share his penchant for comprehensiveness, he believed that every Muslim had his or her own wall of orange file folders, so to speak, with which to make sense of the world.

It often seemed to me that Ahmed had contempt for the academy, even though he was as pure a product of it as could be imagined. He regarded the dominant approaches to conceptualizing Islam as structurally flawed, an assessment he documents at length in his book. Over a third of What Is Islam? is devoted to a tour of Orientalist, classical anthropological, and postcolonial scholarship on the subject. It is a survey that is, at times, hairsplitting, ungenerous, combative, and overwrought. It is also, as he put it resignedly to me before he died, “the bit that graduate students will probably end up quoting.” Unsurprisingly, the scholars whose positions are closest to Ahmed’s come in for the most sustained and sometimes withering evaluations, bringing to mind something that he liked to say about how it was “better to be 100 percent wrong than 50 percent right.”

Is Ahmed right? His definition of Islam as a model of “coherent contradiction”—one whereby a Muslim can simultaneously hold in mind many competing views of Islam’s teachings and values—is compelling; but is it true? There is something Gödelian in this project, an attempt to speak aloud a self-negating paradox. Perhaps an unavoidable consequence is that Ahmed’s arguments sometimes sound circular. If the Islamic is that which is recognizable in terms of what has been previously identified as Islamic, where does the buck stop? And might one not argue that any concept as vast as Islam must also be vastly self-contradictory and yet somehow coherent, especially when surveyed through the encyclopedic prism that Ahmed sets before his subject? What distinguishes Islam from such concepts as Christianity, Judaism, or liberalism in this respect?

A more significant problem concerns the consequences of insisting, as Ahmed does, on the inapplicability of distinctions like “religious vs. cultural” or “sacred vs. secular” when studying Islam. There is something unpleasantly exoticizing about making “Islamic” the only, or even the principal, lens through which to interpret a Hafizian love poem, a historic building, a metaphor, or a wine goblet. This was the sort of thing that got Orientalists into hot water: the assumption that every aspect of quotidian life in the societies of the Orient was somehow a reflection of Islam. The Orientalists, at least, pointed out the practices and artifacts that seemed to contradict the tenets of conservative piety. Ahmed’s “Islam” comprehends these contradictions, and so flirts with another analytical pitfall: the danger that “Islam,” by containing multitudes, means nothing in particular as a concept.

The academy is not the only place where concepts matter. Ahmed’s intended audience, one senses, also lies beyond the gates of Western universities. Looming in the background of the work is the specter of modern Muslim “textual-restrictivism” and “legal-supremacism,” as exemplified by many political Islamists. Here, he detects an ironic agreement between much Western scholarship and modern Islamist thought. Both groups concur that what is central to Islam is the law, which must be accessed through the study of the Koran and the Hadith. Philosophy and Sufism are dismissed by most Islamists as marginal—if not inimical—to the core of Islam, and to Ahmed’s great frustration, Western academics have tended to agree. Like the Islamist, the academic who makes a distinction between the religious essence of Islam on the one hand, and the cultural practices of the “Islamicate” on the other, is favoring one as more authentic than the other. To Ahmed, the modern fundamentalist happily agrees with this formula, insofar as it necessitates a return to “pure and authentic faith…back to the religion, back to Qur’an and [Hadith], back to the law, back to Islam, and not—God forbid!—to Islamicate.”

The challenge facing modern reformers is to circumvent this obstacle by making use of the rich resources of the historical tradition to explore the different modalities of Islam. Ahmed was quite pessimistic about this prospect, as he felt that the connection between Muslims and their medieval philosophical/Sufi heritage had become considerably attenuated in the modern world. Yet if a 14th-century theologian such as Ibn Taymiyyah—­the intellectual godfather of Wahhabism and other ultra-orthodox currents—­can become one of the best-selling authors of the contemporary Middle East, perhaps there is hope yet for Avicenna.

* * *

Ever since he fell ill earlier this year, I have thought of my former teacher nearly every day. The fact of his death is difficult to accept, not merely because of his young age but because Ahmed inhabited, in my mind, a kind of future tense. Many of us—students, colleagues, and his own mentors—related to him in a mode of anticipation. To ask a friend for news of Shahab was to ask about the progress of his magnum opus, his life’s work. Is he finally nearing the end of the great book we’ve been waiting to read? Is he there yet? That there should suddenly be a book in the world with his name on it while the man himself is gone seems a cruel trick of fate.

Shahab Ahmed was buried on a beautiful fall morning in September. As a group of mourners prepared to lower his body into the earth, a quiet discussion arose among them about the lawful burial rituals. The group included Muslims from all over the world; naturally, the opinions varied. The matter was eventually settled, but I imagine that Shahab would have delighted in the knowledge that contradiction and debate accompanied him to the grave.

http://www.thenation.com/article/contradiction-and-diversity/

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Ahmadiyah dan Dua Jenis Kenabian

Ulil Abshar-Abdalla

IslamLib – Salah satu titik pertengkaran antara kaum Sunni pada umumnya dan Ahmadiyah ialah mengenai perkara kenabian. Kaum Sunni percaya bahwa kenabian telah berhenti dengan diutusnya nabi terakhir, yaitu Nabi Muhammad. Doktrin finalitas kenabian ini menjadi batu-sudut yang sangat penting dalam keyakinan umat Islam di luar Ahmadiyah.

Ahmadiyah datang dengan ide yang lain. Ide ini bertentangan secara diametral dengan keyakinan kaum Sunni. Mereka percaya bahwa ada dua jenis kenabian: kenabian legislatif (nubuwwah tasyri’) dan kenabian afirmatif. Kenabian tasyri’ ialah jenis kenabian di mana nabi di sana membawa agama baru, dengan syariat baru. Sementara kenabian afirmatif tidak demikian. Di sana, nabi tidak datang dengan agama dan ajaran baru. Ia hanya menegaskan dan memperkuat agama yang dibawa nabi sebelumnya.

Dalam pandangan Ahmadiyah, yang berakhir dan tidak ada kelanjutannya lagi adalah kenabian jenis pertama. Nabi yang membawa agama dan syariat baru seperti Nabi Muhmmad memang sudah tak ada lagi. Nabi seperti itu sudah berakhir dengan kedatangan Muhammad. Tetapi kenabian jenis kedua, menurut Ahmadiyah, masih bisa terus berlanjut. Mereka meyakini bahwa pendiri gerakan ini, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), adalah nabi dalam pengertian kedua itu.

Bagaimana menilai keyakinan Ahmadiyah ini dalam terang keyakinan umat Islam pada umumnya?

Sebagian besar umat Islam tentu saja menolak keyakinan Ahmadiyah ini. Mereka menganggap keyakinan itu telah menyimpang dari ortodoksi, dari keyakinan pakem yang dianggap oleh umat Islam sebagai satu-satunya keyakinan yang benar dan tepat. Tetapi, jika kita telaah secara mendalam, apa sih yang ada di balik doktrin finalitas kenabian ini? What is at stake here?

Di balik doktrin ini, saya menduga ada asumsi tertentu. Yaitu, nabi terakhir adalah nabi yang menutup seluruh rangkaian kenabian. Dia adalah nabi pamuncak. Kebenaran paling “hakiki” akhirnya disingkap oleh nabi yang terakhir. Dengan kata lain, di balik konsep finalitas kenabian ini terkandung suatu asumsi bahwa kebenaran puncak dan terlengkap dicapai dan diartikulasikan oleh nabi terakhir itu.

Jika asumsi ini benar, apakah keyakinan Ahmadiyah membahayakan asumsi itu? Menurut saya: tidak. Sebab, orang-orang Ahmadiyah tetap percaya bahwa Nabi Muhammad adalah nabi terakhir dalam pengertian nubuwwa al-tasyri’. Status Nabi Muhmmad sebagai “the pinnacle of truth”, puncak kebenaran tak diingkari oleh orang-orang Ahmadiyah. Jadi, kenapa takut pada Ahmadiyah?

Doktrin finalitas kenabian juga berkaitan dengan keyakinan umat Islam yang lain, yakni, bahwa Islam adalah agama terakhir yang paling sempurna. Jika ada nabi baru setelah Muhammad, ada kekhawatiran kesempurnaan Islam itu akan dibatalkan oleh nabi baru. Agar kesempurnaan itu terlindungi dengan aman, muncullah dotrin tentang finalitas kenabian.

Sekali lagi, apakah keyakinan Ahmadiyah tentang nabi baru mengganggu kesempurnaan Islam? Tentu saja tidak. Sebab, nabi baru yang diyakini oleh pengikut Ahmadiyah tidak membawa agama baru. Dia hanya bertugas untuk memperkuat agama yang ada sebelumnya, yaitu Islam. Ahmadiyah tidak mengkleim adanya agama baru, meskipun oleh banyak umat Islam yang lain, mereka dipaksa untuk mendirikan agama terpisah.

Keyakinan tentang “kebenaran terakhir” ini sebetulnya bukan khas Islam saja. Dalam agama Yahudi, sebagaimana tampak dalam pandangan filosof besar Yahudi Musa ibn Maimun atau Maimonides (w. 1204), Musa adalah nabi terbesar terakhir. Setelah Musa memang ada nabi-nabi yang lain, tetapi dia tetap nabi terbesar. Nabi-nabi setelah Musa tidak membawa hukum baru. Mereka semua melanjutkan “covenant” atau perjanjian yang dibawa oleh Musa.

Dalam Kristen, doktrin yang nyaris serupa juga kita temukan. Yesus, dalam pandangan Kristen, dianggap sebagai satu-satunya nama melalui mana manusia bisa mencapai keselamatan, seperti ditegaskan (Kisah Para Rasul 4:12). Keyakinan ini pernah dikritik dengan tajam oleh pemikir Kristen, Paul Knitter, dalam bukunya No Other Name? (1985).

Saya pernah menulis sebuah twit pendek (mana ada twit panjang?): doktrin finalitas kenabian harus ditinjau ulang. Saya memang mengajak umat Islam untuk meninjau kembali doktrin itu. Bukan dalam rangka menghimbau mereka untuk meninggalkan keyakinan mereka bahwa Nabi Muhammad adalah nabi dan rasul terakhir. Sebaliknya, saya hendak mengajak umat umat berpikir ulang: yang berakhir itu kenabian yang mana? Kenabian tasyri’ atau kenabian secara keseluruhan?

Tentu saja dalam Quran dan hadis tak akan anda temukan jawaban atas pertanyaan ini. Sebab dalam dua sumber utama Islam itu tak kita jumpai sebuah pembedaan antara dua jenis kenabian seperti diajukan oleh Ahmadiyah itu. Jangankan mengenai pembedaan ini. Bahkan definisi tentang nabi dan rasul pun tak ada di sana. Definisi nabi dan rasul yang kita kenal selama ini adalah produk dari pemikiran para ulama dari generasi pasca-nabi.

Menurut saya, tak ada yang salah dengan pembedaan yang dibikin oleh Ahmadiyah itu. Secara historis, memang kita jumpai dua jenis kenabian itu dalam sejarah nabi-nabi Israel sebelum Islam. Seperti tampak dalam pemikiran Maimonides di atas, Musa lah nabi yang sebenar-benar nabi, dalam pengertian dialah sosok yang membawa “commandement” atau perintah Tuhan. Katakan saja, Musa lah satu-satunya nabi tasyri’ dalam sejarah keyahudian. Sementara nabi-nabi setelahnya hanyalah meneruskan saja “jalan” yang sudah dibuka oleh Musa.

Para ulama Sunni biasa memakai dalil berikut ini: jika anda bisa menghindari tindakan “takfir” atau mengkafirkan seseorang dengan “mahmal al-ta’wil”, kemungkinan ta’wil atau interpretasi, maka sebaiknya tindakan itu dilakukan. Selagi ada jalan untuk menghindarkan pengkafiran dengan jalan menakwilkan keyakinan orang dengan kemungkinan tafsir tentu, sebaiknya jalan itu ditempuh.

Menurut saya, jalan ini bisa kita pakai dalam kasus Ahmadiyah. Ada kemugkinan untuk menakwilkan keyakinan Ahmadiyah tentang kenabian dengan cara begitu rupa sehingga kita bisa menghindarkan diri untuk “mengkafirkan” mereka. Yaitu, dengan cara kembali ke teori tentang dua jenis kenabian tersebut. Sebagaimana kita lihat di atas, pengikut Ahmadiyah tetap mengakui Muhamad sebagai nabi terakhir dalam pengertian nabi legislator.

Dengan kata lain, masih ada titik temu antara Ahmdiyah dengan umat Islam yang lain dalam soal teori kenabian. Jadi, tak ada gunanya umat Islam melakukan permusuhan terus-menerus terhadap Ahmadiyah, bahkan melakukan tindakan kekerasan terhadap mereka.[]

http://islamlib.com/mazhab/ahmadiyah/ahmadiyah-dan-dua-jenis-kenabian/

Thursday, October 1, 2015

International Peace Symposium

International Peace Symposium on "Implementation of Tolerance for Humanity and Harmony" organized by PB JAI and Fakultas Ushuluddin & Filsafat UIN Jakarta in the Auditorium Harun Nasution, UIN Jakarta, 30 September 2015.










Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Ahmadiyah dan Khilafah Spiritual


Ulil Abshar-Abdalla 19 hours ago 1,317 Views
4.27/5 (30)

IslamLib – Hari ini, saya diundang untuk memberikan ceramah di depan jamaah Ahmadiyah untuk memperingati satu abad gerakan ini. Suatu kehormatan yang benar-benar tak saya sangka. Saya bukan pengikut Ahmadiyah, meski saya punya simpati yang besar pada gerakan itu. Posisi saya mirip dengan Bung Karno. Seperti tampak dalam surat-surat yang ia tulis dari pengasingan, Bung Karno memiliki apresiasi yang besar pada Ahmadiyah, meski bukan pengikut gerakan itu.

Gerakan Ahmadiyah memiliki daya tarik tersendiri buat saya. Ada sesuatu yang istimewa pada gerakan ini yang tak saya jumpai pada gerakan-gerakan Islam yang lain. Menurut saya, ada banyak hal positif yang bisa dipelajari dari gerakan ini. Sayang sekali, kebencian sebagian kalangan Islam terhadap kelompok ini membuat mereka terhalang untuk melihat hal-hal yang positif di dalamnya.
Ciri pada Ahmadiyah yang jarang kita jumpai pada gerakan Islam yang lain ialah ketaatan yang nyaris total kepada sebuah otoritas pusat yang tunggal. Di dalam Ahmadiyah kita jumpai konsep mengenai khilafah atau kepemimpinan terpusat. Seluruh anggota Ahmadiyah yang konon jumlahnya sekitar 200 juta orang (jauh lebih banyak dari orang Wahabi, saya kira!) dan tersebar di seluruh dunia, tunduk pada khalifah tunggal.

Hanya saja, konsep khilafah Ahmadiyah bukan bersifat politik. Ini yang membedakan Ahmadiyah dengan gerakan Hizbut Tahrir (HT) yang juga mengusung konsep serupa. Tetapi yang diusung oleh HT adalah khilafah politik. Perbedaan pokok antara dua khilafah itu sangat mendasar. Khilafah politik mengandaikan adanya suatu teritori, wilayah yang jelas, yang dijaga dengan pasukan bersenjata.

Khilafah spiritual berbeda sama sekali. Anggota Ahmadiyah bisa tinggal di mana saja, dan tunduk kepada pemerintahan negeri-negeri di mana mereka tinggal. Tetapi, hati dan rohani mereka tunduk kepada kekuasaan spiritual, yaitu khalifah tunggal yang sekarang tinggal di London. Khilafah spiritual tak membutuhkan teritori. Yang dibutuhkan adalah hati yang mau tunduk dan taat kepada sebuah otoritas.

Khilafah politik berkuasa di tanah. Sementara khilafah spiritual berkuasa atas hati dan pikiran. Menciptakan khilafah spiritual tak mengandung resiko yang berat, karena tak ada keharusan untuk merebut kekuasaan politik yang berdarah-darah. Perjuangan khilafah spiritual bukan merebut kekuasaan duniawi, tetapi simpati hati dan pikiran publik. Khilafah Ahmadiyah adalah sejenis “Kingdom of heart“, sementara khilafah politik ala HT adalah “Kingdom of the body“.

Dalam hal ini, Ahmadiyah memiliki ciri-ciri yang mirip dengan Gereja Katolik. Dalam gereja Katolik kita kenal juga ketaatan yang nyaris tanpa “reserve” kepada otoritas tunggal yang berpusat di Vatikan. Kekuasaan Paus tak membutuhkan wilayah teritorial yang jelas batas-batasnya. Umat Katolik tersebar di seluruh dunia, tetapi mereka, dengan hati dan pikiran, tunduk kepada seorang “khalifah” tunggal.

Adakah kesamaan antara Ahmadiyah dengan Syiah? Bukankah dalam Syiah dikenal juga semacam otoritas yang disebut dengan marja’ dini atau rujukan keagamaan? Dalam Syiah memang ada otoritas yang ditaati oleh seluruh umat Syiah. Tetapi, tidak seperti dalam Ahmadiyah, marja’ di Syiah tidaklah tunggal, melainkan banyak. Meskipun keragaman otoritas dalam Syiah tidak seekstrim dalam masyarakat Sunni.

Dalam masyarakat Sunni, seperti yang terjadi di Indonesia, ada masalah dengan soal otoritas ini. Di era ketika otoritas tradisional dalam sosok kiai atau ustaz hancur karena perubahan struktur sosial yang berubah dalam masyarakat perkotaan, yang muncul adalah semacam anarki otoritas. Siapapun sekarang bisa menjadi “ustaz” tanpa kualifikasi yang jelas. Ini yang menjelaskan kenapa muncul da’i selebriti yang bisa mendadak populer berkat media televisi.

Hal seperti ini tak akan mungkin terjadi dalam Ahmadiyah. Sebab semua hal yang berkaitan dengan kehidupan spiritual ada di bawah otoritas tunggal seorang khalifah. Kehidupan umat Ahmadiyah, tidak seperti umat Sunni, tak banyak goncangan dan turbulensi. Mereka menikmati stabilitas rohaniah berkat adanya otoritas tunggal itu.

Implikasi dari unifikasi otoritas ini sangat penting. Tidak seperti dalam masyarakat Sunni, gerakan Ahmadiyah benar-benar hidup berdasarkan pendanaan yang sepenuhnya independen. Saya pernah bertemu dengan seorang da’i Ahmadiyah yang berkisah bahwa ia ditawari bantuan sosial oleh instansi pemerintah. Mereka, dengan halus, menolak bantuan itu. Sebab, segala hal dalam gerakan ini “self financed“, didanai secara mandiri oleh jamaah. Anda tak akan pernah menengar anggota jamaah Ahmadiah mengajukan proposal untuk pembangunan masjid mereka.

Banyak diskusi yang saya ikuti di kalangan umat Islam mengenai pentingnya kemandirian finansial untuk menjaga otonomi organisasi. Sebetulnya mereka tak perlu pergi jauh. Di halaman rumah mereka sendiri ada contoh yang bisa mereka jadikan perbandingan. Contoh itu ada dalam gerakan Ahmadiyah.

Gerakan ini bisa melakukan mobilisasi dana yang demikian besar karena, saya kira, adanya ketaatan yang mutlak kepada seorang khalifah itu. Ketataan yang sukarela dan menyentuh komitmen terdalam itulah yang membuat anggota Ahmadiyah membiayai organisasi mereka dengan sepenuh hati. Dengan kata lain, ada daya/kekuatan intrinsik yang menggerakkan anggota Ahmadiyah untuk bersedekah. Daya itu berasal dari ketaatan pada otoritas tunggal.

Hal terakhir yang menarik saya adalah berikut ini: Ahmadiyah mungkin bisa saya sebut sebagai satu-satunya gerakan Islam dengan cakupan global yang dengan sengaja meninggalkan konsep penyatuan din (agama) dan daulah (negara). Gerakan ini, sampai kapanpun, tak akan memiliki proyek mendirikan negara. Ahmadiyah adalah gerakan yang sepenuhnya spiritual dan keagamaan.

Menurut saya, ini salah satu sumbangan penting Ahmadiyah dalam gerakan Islam modern. Kelompok-kelompok Islam yang lain masih punya ambisi, baik langsung atau tidak, untuk menguasai negara. Ahmadiyah sama sekali tidak. Mereka sudah memutuskan dari sejak menit pertama untuk menjatuhkan talak tiga pada “state project” — proyek mendirikan negara.

Kemampuan Ahmadiyah untuk memotong sama sekali “state project” ini mempunyai implikasi penting. Orang Ahmadiyah tak memiliki kesulitan apapun untuk mengembangkan jaringan gerakan mereka di negeri-negeri non-Muslim. Sebab Ahmadiyah memiliki prinsip “politik” yang penting: di manapun orang Ahmadiyah tinggal, dia harus taat pada hukum nasioanl di negeri itu. Prinsip ini membuat negeri-negeri Barat tak menaruh curiga apapun terhadap gerakan ini.

Anda tak akan pernah melihat anggota Ahmadiyah yang berjuang untuk pelaksanaan syariat Islam, baik di dunia Islam sendiri, atau –apalagi– di Barat. Sebab hukum yang berlaku buat anggota Ahmadiyah adalah hukum nasional di negeri bersangkutan.

Menurut saya, untuk untuk sementara umat Islam harus membuang jauh-jauh kecurigaan dan kebencian mereka kepada Ahmadiyah. Sebab banyak hal dalam gerakan ini yang patut dijadikan sebagai bahan pelajaran untuk memperbaiki model gerakan dalam masyarakat Islam, terutama masyarakat Sunni yang sekarang ini mengalami problem dengan “anarki otoritas”.[]

http://islamlib.com/mazhab/ahmadiyah/ahmadiyah-dan-khilafah-spiritual/

International Peace Symposium UIN Jakarta

International Peace Symposium on "Implementation of Tolerance for Humanity and Harmony" organized by PB JAI and Fakultas Ushuluddin & Filsafat UIN Jakarta in the Auditorium Harun Nasution, UIN Jakarta, 30 September 2015






Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Governing Religion Democratically in Indonesia

The Jakarta Globe,

Announcements by Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin and Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo that they plan to change the way that the government regulates religious affairs is a promising sign that the administration of President Joko Widodo will work to improve the rights of religious minorities. At the same time, this reform has sparked concern among Islamic civil society groups like Muhammadiyah that reforming the regulation of religion means abandoning the country’s commitment to the promotion of Belief in God. These proposals have also prompted suggestions that the reforms should follow the model of Malaysia, a troubling argument given that Indonesia has had more success than its neighbor in transitioning to a more open model of governance. At the heart of this debate is a simple question: how do democracies regulate religious affairs?

While some activists feel that the best regulation of religion is the least regulation of religion, this is not the policy of most states. Most states, including most democracies, are heavily involved in the management of religion. These democracies manage to synthesize their commitments to individual human rights with the promotion of the religious values that are central to the country’s national identity and sociopolitical institutions. In other words, the Indonesian state need not become secular in order to protect minority rights; it simply needs to learn from the policies of consolidated democracies like Greece, Austria, Switzerland, Senegal, Romania and India.

Discrimination in schools
For example, religious education in schools has been an important part of the Indonesian nation developing common values and communal ties. Indonesia is not unusual in making religious education mandatory; 14 other democracies do the same. This policy is tolerant to the recognized minority religions, but discriminates against students whose faiths fall outside those recognized by the state, like the Sunda Wiwitan. Members of unrecognized faiths have kept their children out of schools rather than subject them to mandatory education in one of the recognized religions.

Such discrimination is not inherent to governing religion. The 1965 blasphemy law states that other religions such as Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, and Taoism cannot be banned in Indonesia, and makes clear that the Religious Affairs Ministry could simply recognize additional religions. Another policy that could remedy this discrimination is for students of unrecognized religions to be accommodated in a class on comparative religions or ethics; Indonesia is unusual among democracies in not providing an option to take comparative religions or ethics, nor allowing students to withdraw on request.

Greece has compulsory religious education in primary and secondary schools but students may be exempted upon request. In Austria, attendance in religious instruction is mandatory for all students unless they formally withdraw at the beginning of the school year. In some Swiss cantons religious education is mandatory although parents can submit a waver and have their children withdraw. Senegal provides formal education in multiple religions with an option to withdraw. In sum, democracies can mandate religious education in schools as long as students have a choice in which religion they are incorporated including an option to study comparative religions or ethics.

Registration of religious groups
Another potentially useful policy is a multi-tiered registration system for religious groups, with different privileges attached to different tiers. In Romania, registered religious denominations are recognized as public utilities that benefit the entire population. The state recognizes eighteen denominations that enjoy the right to build houses of worship, perform rights of baptism, marriage, or burial, a guarantee to state noninterference, and protection against public stereotypes and negative media campaigns. The second tier is composed of religious associations that also get tax breaks but do not otherwise enjoy the advantages of recognition. A similar example is Austria, which has three tiers of registration.  The highest are religious societies, which have the authority to participate in mandatory church contributions programs, provide government-funded religious instruction in schools, and bring religious workers into the country. The second tier is reserved for confessional communities, which must have 300 members, a written version of their doctrine and must differ from other societies or confessional communities. Religious groups that do not qualify for the first two tiers may become legal associations, which have juridical standing and can own real estate but cannot receive government funding.

This tiered registration system is an example of an institutional mechanism for promoting religious values without persecuting minority faiths. Democratic states that demand registration may promote orthodox religious values through recognized privileges, but they must also allow heterodox groups like Shiites and the Baha’i to register and receive protection from persecution. A multi-tiered registration system is informally already in effect through the differing recognition systems of the Religious Affairs Ministry and the Home Affairs Ministry; formalizing this process and allowing all registered groups to list their religious identification on their identity card (KTP), or to leave the column blank, would be consistent with the protection of individual rights, the promotion of communal values, and the transparency that befits Indonesia’s consolidated democracy.

Blasphemy and heresy
A third useful policy would be to differentiate between blasphemy and heresy. Indonesia’s blasphemy law is not unusual in forbidding instigation of religious hatred through speech, press or disturbing religious rituals; 14 other democracies have blasphemy laws. Indonesia is unusual, however, in that the law is extended to prosecute heresy by small sects like Lia Eden, Amanat Keagungan Ilahi, and to individuals like Herison Riwu. India provides a good example of how splinter groups like Ahmadiyah can exist without being endorsed by the majority or persecuted. India distinguishes acts of blasphemy (defiling religions) from acts of heresy (belief that runs counter to orthodox doctrines). The Kerala High Court has ruled that Ahmadis cannot be prosecuted for blasphemy despite differences from orthodox Sunni doctrine. In other words, India manages to punish acts of blasphemy that are intended to foster communal violence without persecuting small religious sects for holding beliefs that differ from the majority.

These are three examples of strategies modern democracies employ to balance the promotion of religious values with their obligation to protect individuals who hold views that are contrary to the majority. While the United States receives an inordinate amount of attention from supporters and opponents of secular government, it is an empirical oddity among modern democracies. Instead, scholars, policy makers, and activists in Indonesia would benefit from studying Romania, Austria, India, Greece, Senegal, Switzerland, and other religious democracies in order to discern more productive examples of how to govern religion.

Jeremy Menchik is an assistant professor in the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His forthcoming book, "Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance Without Liberalism," explores the meaning of tolerance to leaders of the Islamic organizations Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah and Persatuan Islam.

http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/opinion/governing-religion-democratically-indonesia/

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

The origins of intolerance to ward Ahmadiyah

The Jakarta Post,
 
Jeremy Menchik, Boston | Opinion | Fri, February 10 2012, 10:43 A

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the tragedy of Cikeusik in Banten, when members of the Cikeusik Muslim Movement killed three members of the Muslim-minority sect Ahmadiyah. Since then, Indonesian human rights organizations have launched a conversation about the place of religious tolerance in society.

Unfortunately, this conversation is rife with uncertainty. The origins of intolerance to ward Ahmadiyah, the attitudes of the civil society organizations Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah toward Ahmadiyah, and the state policies toward Ahmadiyah are poorly understood. This ambiguity makes it difficult to pinpoint the cause of the violence, let alone try and stop the violence.

In explaining the origins of contemporary intolerance toward Ahmadiyah, most commentators point to 2005, when the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) reissued their fatwa (edict) declaring Ahmadiyah a deviant sect. Yet polemics against Ahmadiyah began much earlier.

The famous Islamic reformer Hamka reports that his father, Haji Rasul, launched the first polemic against Ahmadiyah in Yogyakarta in 1925. The charges against Ahmadiyah were that they followed a prophet other than Muhammad and that they denied the death of the Prophet Jesus.

These charges were repeated in Pembela Islam magazine throughout the 1930s, and by self-proclaimed Anti-Ahmadiyah groups connected to Persatuan Islam (Persis) and established in Bandung, Bogor, Medan, Padang, Priok, Leles, Ciledug, Cirebon, Gorontalo and Garut. Pembela Islam called Ahmadiyah members as deviant (sesat), apostates (murtad), infidels (kafir), crazy, and labeled Mirza Ghoelam Ahmad a false prophet.

These polemics were not limited to Islamic reformers like Persis. President Sukarno denounced Ahmadiyah, stating that while he admired them for their modernism, they were also “devoted to British imperialism”. NU’s magazine reprinted an article from Pembela Islam denouncing Ahmadiyah. And NU used the question of Ahmadiyah to decry ijtihad, a method of Koranic interpretation involving setting aside past interpretations.

Abandoning past interpretations, NU argued, would inevitably lead to the kind of deviance seen among followers of Ahmadiyah. NU further protested the inclusion of an Ahmadiyah branch in the country’s first important Islamic political coalition, the Great Islamic Council of Indonesia (Al-Madjlisoel-Islamil-A’laa Indonesia, MIAI). NU ran a series of essays attempting to expose the Ahmadiyah movement for their alleged collusion with British imperialism and for Ghoelam Ahmad’s claim to prophecy.

In response, the MIAI excluded the Ahmadiyah branch. And after the MIAI was transformed into Masyumi, leaders of Masyumi staffed the Religious Affairs Ministry and again rejected the Ahmadiyah movement’s appeal for recognition. Rather than being a recent development, history suggests that intolerance toward Ahmadiyah precedes the establishment of the state.

Muhammadiyah and NU are widely seen as the backbone of Indonesia’s culture of tolerance. Yet, they have not protected members of Ahmadiyah, something most commentators attribute to their inability to combat the militants.

This assumption is inaccurate. Survey data that I collected in 2010 with branch-level leaders of Muhammadiyah and NU demonstrates that an overwhelming majority do not believe members of Ahmadiyah should be allowed to hold public office, build houses of worship, or teach in schools.

The data revealed that 75 percent of Muhammadiyah leaders and 59 percent of NU leaders say no members of Ahmadiyah should be allowed to become the mayor in Jakarta; 80percent of Muhammadiyah leaders and 67 percent of NU leaders say that no members of Ahmadiyah should be allowed to build a house of worship in Jakarta; 88 percent of Muhammadiyah leaders and 82 percent of NU leaders say that no members of Ahmadiyah should be permitted to teach Islamic studies in public schools.

These views are not indicative of endemic intolerance; those same leaders believe that Christians, Hindus and Buddhists are entitled to religious and political freedom. The closest parallel to their intolerance of Ahmadiyah is in their views of the rights of Communists.

This similarity between Ahmadiyah and Communists points to the most important reason why intolerance toward Ahmadiyah has persisted for decades; state policy, specifically long-standing policies promulgated by the Religious Affairs Ministry with the backing of NU and Muhammadiyah. Religion is a privileged category according to the ministry and syncretic movements like the Javanese kebatinan and heterodox movements like Ahmadiyah are denied recognition.

The ministry’s privileging of religious orthodoxy was given presidential sanction in 1965 when Sukarno passed a decree stating that there were only six officially recognized religions and that any group who threatened these religions would be dissolved. That decree is still in force; PNPS No. 1/1965 was upheld in 2010 by the Constitutional Court with the backing of the Religious Affairs Ministry, NU, Muhammadiyah, Persis, numerous political parties, the Confucian group Matakin, the Buddhist group Walubi, the Hindu group PHDI, MUI, and many conservative Islamic groups.

Most accounts of sectarian conflict in Indonesia argue that the issue of Ahmadiyah pits the peripheral militant Islamic groups against the majority of Indonesian moderates. Others point to the 2008 joint ministerial decree as fostering intolerance. This history and survey data suggest otherwise.

Anti-Ahmadiyah sentiment is broader and more deeply institutionalized than the shallow dichotomy between moderates and militants would suggest. The exclusion of Ahmadiyah is built into the structure of the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Despite President Yudhoyono’s frequent speeches about tolerance, official state policy is that members of Ahmadiyah are not given the same protection as orthodox religions. The coalition backing the Constitutional Court decision, and survey data of NU and Muhammadiyah leaders, suggests that this policy has broad public support.

As a result, it should come as no surprise that the state and the police are unwilling to intervene to protect the lives of members of Ahmadiyah. While this does not mean that violence against Ahmadiyah members is inevitable, it does mean that institutional changes, such as to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, must be central to programs designed to reduce conflict.

The writer is a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, and will be an assistant professor of international relations at Boston University beginning in 2013. - See more at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/02/10/the-origins-intolerance-ward-ahmadiyah.html#sthash.lUyzHHMd.dpuf
 This week marks the one-year anniversary of the tragedy of Cikeusik in Banten, when members of the Cikeusik Muslim Movement killed three members of the Muslim-minority sect Ahmadiyah. Since then, Indonesian human rights organizations have launched a conversation about the place of religious tolerance in society.

Unfortunately, this conversation is rife with uncertainty. The origins of intolerance to ward Ahmadiyah, the attitudes of the civil society organizations Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah toward Ahmadiyah, and the state policies toward Ahmadiyah are poorly understood. This ambiguity makes it difficult to pinpoint the cause of the violence, let alone try and stop the violence.

In explaining the origins of contemporary intolerance toward Ahmadiyah, most commentators point to 2005, when the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) reissued their fatwa (edict) declaring Ahmadiyah a deviant sect. Yet polemics against Ahmadiyah began much earlier.

The famous Islamic reformer Hamka reports that his father, Haji Rasul, launched the first polemic against Ahmadiyah in Yogyakarta in 1925. The charges against Ahmadiyah were that they followed a prophet other than Muhammad and that they denied the death of the Prophet Jesus.

These charges were repeated in Pembela Islam magazine throughout the 1930s, and by self-proclaimed Anti-Ahmadiyah groups connected to Persatuan Islam (Persis) and established in Bandung, Bogor, Medan, Padang, Priok, Leles, Ciledug, Cirebon, Gorontalo and Garut. Pembela Islam called Ahmadiyah members as deviant (sesat), apostates (murtad), infidels (kafir), crazy, and labeled Mirza Ghoelam Ahmad a false prophet.

These polemics were not limited to Islamic reformers like Persis. President Sukarno denounced Ahmadiyah, stating that while he admired them for their modernism, they were also “devoted to British imperialism”. NU’s magazine reprinted an article from Pembela Islam denouncing Ahmadiyah. And NU used the question of Ahmadiyah to decry ijtihad, a method of Koranic interpretation involving setting aside past interpretations.

Abandoning past interpretations, NU argued, would inevitably lead to the kind of deviance seen among followers of Ahmadiyah. NU further protested the inclusion of an Ahmadiyah branch in the country’s first important Islamic political coalition, the Great Islamic Council of Indonesia (Al-Madjlisoel-Islamil-A’laa Indonesia, MIAI). NU ran a series of essays attempting to expose the Ahmadiyah movement for their alleged collusion with British imperialism and for Ghoelam Ahmad’s claim to prophecy.

In response, the MIAI excluded the Ahmadiyah branch. And after the MIAI was transformed into Masyumi, leaders of Masyumi staffed the Religious Affairs Ministry and again rejected the Ahmadiyah movement’s appeal for recognition. Rather than being a recent development, history suggests that intolerance toward Ahmadiyah precedes the establishment of the state.

Muhammadiyah and NU are widely seen as the backbone of Indonesia’s culture of tolerance. Yet, they have not protected members of Ahmadiyah, something most commentators attribute to their inability to combat the militants.

This assumption is inaccurate. Survey data that I collected in 2010 with branch-level leaders of Muhammadiyah and NU demonstrates that an overwhelming majority do not believe members of Ahmadiyah should be allowed to hold public office, build houses of worship, or teach in schools.

The data revealed that 75 percent of Muhammadiyah leaders and 59 percent of NU leaders say no members of Ahmadiyah should be allowed to become the mayor in Jakarta; 80percent of Muhammadiyah leaders and 67 percent of NU leaders say that no members of Ahmadiyah should be allowed to build a house of worship in Jakarta; 88 percent of Muhammadiyah leaders and 82 percent of NU leaders say that no members of Ahmadiyah should be permitted to teach Islamic studies in public schools.

These views are not indicative of endemic intolerance; those same leaders believe that Christians, Hindus and Buddhists are entitled to religious and political freedom. The closest parallel to their intolerance of Ahmadiyah is in their views of the rights of Communists.

This similarity between Ahmadiyah and Communists points to the most important reason why intolerance toward Ahmadiyah has persisted for decades; state policy, specifically long-standing policies promulgated by the Religious Affairs Ministry with the backing of NU and Muhammadiyah. Religion is a privileged category according to the ministry and syncretic movements like the Javanese kebatinan and heterodox movements like Ahmadiyah are denied recognition.

The ministry’s privileging of religious orthodoxy was given presidential sanction in 1965 when Sukarno passed a decree stating that there were only six officially recognized religions and that any group who threatened these religions would be dissolved. That decree is still in force; PNPS No. 1/1965 was upheld in 2010 by the Constitutional Court with the backing of the Religious Affairs Ministry, NU, Muhammadiyah, Persis, numerous political parties, the Confucian group Matakin, the Buddhist group Walubi, the Hindu group PHDI, MUI, and many conservative Islamic groups.

Most accounts of sectarian conflict in Indonesia argue that the issue of Ahmadiyah pits the peripheral militant Islamic groups against the majority of Indonesian moderates. Others point to the 2008 joint ministerial decree as fostering intolerance. This history and survey data suggest otherwise.

Anti-Ahmadiyah sentiment is broader and more deeply institutionalized than the shallow dichotomy between moderates and militants would suggest. The exclusion of Ahmadiyah is built into the structure of the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Despite President Yudhoyono’s frequent speeches about tolerance, official state policy is that members of Ahmadiyah are not given the same protection as orthodox religions. The coalition backing the Constitutional Court decision, and survey data of NU and Muhammadiyah leaders, suggests that this policy has broad public support.

As a result, it should come as no surprise that the state and the police are unwilling to intervene to protect the lives of members of Ahmadiyah. While this does not mean that violence against Ahmadiyah members is inevitable, it does mean that institutional changes, such as to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, must be central to programs designed to reduce conflict.

The writer is a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University, and will be an assistant professor of international relations at Boston University beginning in 2013. -

See more at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/02/10/the-origins-intolerance-ward-ahmadiyah.html#sthash.lUyzHHMd.dpuf

Monday, September 21, 2015

Tantangan Nasionalisme Bertuhan


KOMPAS, 20 September 2014
Oleh: R William Liddle,

DALAM masalah kebebasan beragama, sejauh mana kita bisa harapkan kebijakan yang lebih baik dari pemerintahan Presiden Joko Widodo ketimbang pendahulunya?

Pemerintahan Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono sudah lama dituding membiarkan para Islamis garis keras bertindak sewenang-wenang. Menurut Komisi Nasional Hak Asasi Manusia, ”kekerasan terhadap kelompok minoritas beda keyakinan masih terus berulang beberapa tahun terakhir. Rekomendasi ditujukan langsung kepada Presiden SBY dalam kasus Ahmadiyah di Mataram dan Syiah di Sampang, tetapi pelaksanaan rekomendasi itu tidak kunjung dilakukan”.

Perihal presiden terpilih Jokowi, ekspektasi masyarakat sudah tinggi sekali. Alasannya, selaku Gubernur DKI Jakarta, dia sudah membuktikan, misalnya dalam kasus Lurah Susan, bahwa dia berani mengambil dan melaksanakan keputusan sulit yang menyangkut minoritas agama. Lagi pula, koalisi partai yang sedang dibangunnya hampir tak mungkin merangkum Partai Keadilan Sejahtera yang konon merupakan sumber utama keengganan Presiden SBY bertindak.

Kendala budaya politik
Ekspektasi saya sendiri tidak setinggi itu, atau setidaknya bercampur dengan keprihatinan. Sebab, ada kemungkinan lain, yaitu bahwa perilaku SBY dibentuk oleh suatu kendala budaya politik. Alih-alih merupakan hasil perhitungan politik sadar, ketidaktegasan SBY mungkin lebih tepat dimengerti selaku reaksi semi-otomatis kepada sebuah konsensus nasional tentang peran agama dalam politik. Jangan-jangan presiden terpilih Jokowi akan merasa terbelenggu pula oleh budaya politik tersebut.

Keprihatinan saya berasal dari analisis Jeremy Menchik, Indonesianis muda di Universitas Boston, yang menerbitkan sebuah artikel, ”Productive Intolerance: Godly Nationalism in Indonesia (Intoleransi Produktif: Nasionalisme Bertuhan di Indonesia)”, dalam jurnal Comparative Studies in Society and History, Juli 2014.

Istilah nasionalisme bertuhan diciptakan Menchik untuk menjelaskan kenapa sekte Ahmadiyah, minoritas kecil dan terpinggirkan, semakin sering diserang oleh kelompok-kelompok militan. Penjelasan sarjana lain, bahwa yang bertanggung jawab adalah kaum Islamis radikal belaka, tidak memuaskan Menchik. Sebaliknya, ia menegaskan bahwa kaum Ahmadiyah diserang karena mereka berada di luar sebuah konsensus umum tentang hubungan yang wajar antara agama dan negara. Hubungan itu dirincikannya sebagai ideologi nasionalisme bertuhan.

Menurut Menchik, nasionalisme bertuhan mengandung tiga unsur pokok. Pertama, teisme, kewajiban semua warga negara untuk menganut salah satu dari enam agama yang sah. Hal itu berarti bahwa nasionalisme bertuhan berbeda dengan nasionalisme religius, seperti terdapat di Israel atau beberapa negara Muslim, tempat hanya satu agama dianggap sah. Namun, warga negara Indonesia tidak diperbolehkan menjadi ateis.

Kedua, bagi setiap agama sah, negara berhak menentukan keyakinan dan ibadah mana yang ortodoks atau patut diterima sebagai bagian resmi dari agama tersebut. Ketiga, penentuan itu dilakukannya bersama-sama dengan organisasi-organisasi yang mewakili agama masing-masing, seperti Nahdlatul Ulama dan Muhammadiyah dalam kasus Islam. Hal itu berarti bahwa keyakinan dan ibadah Ahmadiyah (juga Syiah dan banyak sekte lain) dianggap heterodoks, di luar Islam dan dengan sendirinya di luar perlindungan negara. Koersi dibenarkan dalam bentuk pelaksanaan hukum oleh polisi, jaksa, dan hakim, tetapi tentu tidak dalam bentuk tindakan liar oleh kelompok masyarakat di luar negara.

Nasionalisme bertuhan
Akar ideologi nasionalisme bertuhan dan perlawanan kepada Ahmadiyah dirunut sampai zaman penjajahan. Pada 1928, Muhammadiyah melarang penyebaran ajaran Ahmadiyah atas dasar sekte itu mengakui seorang nabi setelah Nabi Muhammad. Persatuan Islam (Persis) dan NU lekas menyusul. Menurut Menchik, hampir tidak ada yang disetujui tiga organisasi besar tersebut selain kesepakatannya bahwa Ahmadiyah berada di luar Islam!

Argumen Menchik yang paling meyakinkan adalah penjelasannya tentang ”Sukarno’s blasphemy law”, Penetapan Presiden No 1/1965 tentang penodaan agama, yang berhasil ”mengkristalisasikan pelembagaan nasionalisme bertuhan”. Hal itu terbukti pada 2010 ketika petisi Aliansi Kebangsaan untuk Kebebasan Beragama dan Berkeyakinan yang menentang undang-undang tersebut ditolak oleh Mahkamah Konstitusi.

Peran Soekarno penting sebab, selain menjabat presiden, dia melengkapi konsensus nasional sebagai wakil suara kaum abangan dan sekuler, sekitar separuh dari konstelasi politik zaman itu. Aliran itu diwarisi kini oleh Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, pemenang Pemilu 2014, dan presiden terpilih Jokowi. Di situlah terletak keprihatinan saya tentang masa depan kebebasan beragama di Indonesia.

Menchik berpendirian lain. Bagi dia, nasionalisme bertuhan merupakan suatu ”intoleransi produktif”. Maksudnya, bangsa Indonesia telah menciptakan solusi orisinal atas masalah pertikaian agama yang masih mewabah di mana-mana. Solusi itu ”modern dan plural,” meski tidak sekuler atau liberal, dan patut dituruti oleh bangsa lain.

Tentu saya senang kalau ada prestasi Indonesia yang bisa dimanfaatkan bangsa lain. Namun, ongkosnya mungkin terlalu besar. Sebuah hak yang begitu asasi, hak setiap orang untuk merumuskan sendiri hubungannya dengan alam semesta, diabaikan begitu saja oleh Menchik dengan alasan politik praktis.

Alhasil, bagi saya, argumen bahwa Undang-Undang Dasar 1945 menjamin setiap warga bebas beragama tetap lebih kuat meski tidak diterima oleh Mahkamah Konstitusi. ●

R William Liddle ; Profesor Emeritus, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, AS


http://print.kompas.com/baca/KOMPAS_ART0000000000000000008964452

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Sectarian Translation of the Qur'an in Indonesia: The Case of the Ahmadiyya



Paper presented in the workshop on "Qur'anic Studies in Contemporary Indonesia", organized by LP2M UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, 2 September 2015.


Ahmad Najib Burhani
The Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta

Abstract
Ahmadiyya translations of the Qur’an have some distinctive characteristics compared to the translations from Sunni Muslims. However, these translations, particularly Soedowo-Dutch translation of Muhammad Ali’s The holy Qur’an, have been influential in Indonesian Sunni community in the first half of the 20th century. Against the opposition from the Muhammadiyah and the fatwa from Muhammad Rashid Rida of Egypt, which prohibited the use of Ahmadiyya translation, the Soedewo-Dutch translation was widely used by Dutch-educated intelligentsia as a main source to know about Islam. This article specifically answers the following questions: Why did Ahmadiyya translations of the Qur’an have a significant place in Indonesia? What was the appeal of these translations to Indonesian intelligentsia? What is the contribution of these translations to the study of the Qur’an in this country? This paper argues that the success of Ahmadiyya translation, particularly the Dutch version, during the revolution era is based on three reasons: language (Dutch is the language of intelligentsia), content (it fit with the need of intelligentsia who seek a harmonious understanding between religie and wetenschap), and form (the only available rendering of the Qur’an in modern form of publication). In the context of ideology, the reception of Muslim intelligentsia was mainly for their contribution in defending Islam against the penetration of Christian mission and the coming of anti-religion ideologies, particularly materialism and atheism, by strongly challenging their doctrines.

Keywords: Ahmadiyya, sectarianism, Dutch-educated intelligentsia, wetenschap, rationalism.