ABDURRAHMAN WAHID ON ISLAM, DEMOCRACY,
AND THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA
A. INTRODUCTION
B. DISCUSSION
Abdurrahman Wahid on the Relationship
between Islam and State
1. There is no concept of an Islamic
State
2. Abdurrahman Wahid, the Fiqh
Paradigm, and the Nation State
3. Abdurrahman Wahid’s Ideas on the Mutual
Legitimacy
C. CONCLUSION
POLITICAL APPROACH TO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
ISLAM AND THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA
DEMOCRACY
-- STATE
(QUASI-NORM)
ISLAM -- MUTUAL LEGITIMACY --STATE
!
CIVIL SOCIETY
ISLAM --
LEGAL FORMAL APPROACH:
ISLAM -- ISLAMIC STATE
A. There is no concept of an Islamic State
1. The basic concept of societal system in Islam is a law (alhukmu), not a state (al-daulatu): not on the form of state but
on its arrangement
2. Qur’an does not mention the term daulah Islamiyah.
Daulah with the meaning ‘rotate’ or ‘circulate’.
refers to sociological context of a good state
3. Muhammad PBHU did not formulate a successive mechanism
4. Muhammad’s actions were not of a political characters, but
moral. Wa ma arsalnaka illa rahmatan lil ‘alamin
Caliphate is not a religious system but a worldly system.
Ali bin Abi Thalib acted as the advisors of the first three caliphs.
5. God does not ordain explicitly political system of the state:
3:159: wa syaawirhum fil amr; wa amruhum syuura bainahum
Muhammad was not to build a state but to spread humanity
amongst people.
6. Community is t most essential for implementing Islamic law.
Muhammad did not order the Muslim minority in Ethiopia to
establish an Islamic state.
7. The collapse of caliphate did not mean the end of Islam.
A. INTRODUCTION
1. Marginal Role of Islam in the Republic of Ind
: mismatch between Islam n Modern
Political System
2. Secular paradigm dominated Ind political system
3. The Failure of Secular Paradigm in Muslim countries;
Indonesia
: Lack of political participation
4. The Failure of other paradigms to counter Islamic
radicalism such as JIL and JIMM
WAHID’S EFFORTS TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEMS
1. Substantial Islamic Values democracy
not legal formal Shari’a
2. His thought of democracy is to challenge the
Western concept of democracy
…….is to relate democracy to Islamic tradition
3. His thought of Islamic democracy is to
encourage Muslims participating in modern
political system
4. Wahid offers Fiqh paradigm to counter Islamic
radicalism
Wahid develops Fiqh-plus paradigm: not only
recognizing Islam n the State as different entities, but
proposing democracy as quasi-norm which should be
agreed by both Muslims and the ruler.
Fiqh paradigm works through negotiating Islam as the
‘norm’ and the social systems, including state political
system.
Fiqh paradigm advocates a mutual legitimacy
Wahid challenges:
1.Bureaucratization of culture by Soeharto
2.Bureaucratization of Islam, advocated by the Islamists
A. Wahid, the Fiqh-plus Paradigm, n the Nation State
Backgrounds:
1.NU party was not an Islamist party, but Soeharto
tried to marginalize it.
2. Wahid was worried about the cooperation between
the regime and the modernist Muslims b it was
a kind of ‘a marriage of convenience’
Accordingly,
He tried to unify Muslims into one front in the effort of
controlling the regime.
What did Wahid do?
1. He followed the Sunni tradition of NU which developed the
Fiqh paradigm as a tool for providing legitimacy to the RI
Islam should accommodate the culture in which Islam
develops its missionary targets.
2. He developed the Fiqh paradigm into the Fiqh-plus paradigm
and offered democracy as a ‘quasi-norm’.
He did not want to establish Islamic state in Indonesia b:
a. some Sultans ruled autocratically
b. Islam as the gift from God, n the state as the creation
3. Fiqh paradigm is truly Shari’a. NU differentiates ‘religious
practices’ from ‘non-religious practices’.
4. Islamic state is a phenomenon of 19th C when Muslims
encountered with some modern ideologies.
5. The failure of Reformism by the Islamists b it did not tolerate
the plurality of Shari’a.
6. He opposed the idea of bureaucratization of Islam.
7. He aspired to the idea of religious communities playing the
role of civil society.
8. Muslims practices Islam in community under the guidance of
clerics.
9. They practice the substantial Shari’a within the national
political system.
C. Wahid’s Ideas on the Mutual Legitimacy
1.Secularists failed to modernize the countries b they neglected
Islam as the source of values; beside ruling undemocratically.
2.Fiqh paradigm recognizes Islam n state as different entities, but
both should develop mutual legitimacies.
3.Fiqh paradigm justifies the existence of a state as a tool for
implementing public order
4.He offers democracy as a quasi-norm
5.Islamic state does not guarantee the state run democratically
6.He traces the conception of control social from classical
Muslim scholars.
7. al-Mawardi developed the idea of the caliph’s rights and
obligations.
8. al-Ghazali proposed the idea of the ‘basic needs model’
9. Wahid evaluated them as not questioning the principle of
governing mentioned in the Q, namely syuro.
10. His idea of mutual legitimacy was to respond to the Soeharto
autocratic regime which clearly broke the Constitution.
11. Soeharto manipulated the interpretation of Constitution in
the guise of protecting the national ideology of Pancasila.
12. Regimes tried to control the bureaucracy and governmental
institutions.
13. Wahid made use of Pancasila to counter the monolithic
interpretation of Pancasila by Soeharto