Indonesia: Pluralism and the Fatwa Against Pluralism

Satu bagian dari bangunan dalam komplek Masjid Niujie, Beijing, Tionkok.
 (Foto: Dok, Des 2015)

June 28, 2006

 Indonesia: Pluralism and the Fatwa Against Pluralism

By Diana L. Eck

I spent ten days in late August in Indonesia at the invitation of the U.S. State Department, giving lectures and participating in public forums in connection with the translation of A New Religious America into Indonesian (Amerika Baru Yang Religius, published by Pustaka Sinar Harapan).

My visit came at a time of intense public discussion of pluralism in Indonesia and as Director of the Pluralism Project it was a wonderful opportunity both to participate in the discussion and to learn about the shape 

of these issues in another multireligious democracy.

In late July, the Ulama Council (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI) issued a fatwa denouncing pluralism, secularism, liberal forms of Islam, along with interfaith marriage and interfaith prayer.

Yet in mid-August, Indonesia celebrated sixty years of independence as what many would call a pluralist, multireligious, multicultural state. While Indonesia is often referred to as the world’s most populous Muslim nation, it is not a Muslim state. It is, rather, a state based on the Panchasila –the basic principles or values of belief in God, common humanity, the Indonesian nation, democracy, and social justice.

Ten days in Indonesia gave me another glimpse of the many challenges of amulti religious democracy. The distinction between religious pluralism as viewed from the stand point of a particular religious or theological perspective and religious pluralism as viewed from the stand point of civic life was all too often blurred in the discussion, as it is in the United States.

After all, the MUI speaks to the Muslim majority, but not to the Constitutional issues of Indonesia’s state. However, in Indonesia (more than 80% Muslim) as in America (more than 80% Christian) there is a strong presumptive normative consciousness of the majority. The issues addressed by the Pluralism Project in the American context made for a timely dialogue connecting our work with that of colleagues in Indonesia. 

The three book-launch events in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, in Java and Padang in Sumatra were extremely well organized three-hour events that included half hour responses from two Indonesians scholars and then at least an hour of open-mike public discussion.

The respondents included some of the public intellectuals most actively engaged in the discussion of pluralism in the Indonesian context, including Azyumardi Azra, the Rector of the State Islamic University in Jakarta, Irwan Abdullah, Director of the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, and Shofwan Karim of the Muhammadiya University in Padang.

The open discussions were fascinating and lively too. While I found an almost universal anger at American foreign policy, which didn’t surprise me, there was also great interest in the American people, in the discussion of religious pluralism, and especially in the development of Islam in America. 

In addition to the public forums, I also had the opportunity to meet in smaller seminar

settings with students and faculty at Atma Jaya University, a Catholic University in

Jakarta; UIN, the State Islamic University in Jakarta, and the Center for Cross-Cultural and Religious Studies at Gadjah Mada, the only graduate program in religious studies in Indonesia http://www.crcs-ugm.com/index.php?lang=english.php.

I also met with Syafi’I Anwar of the International Center for Islam and Pluralism

http://www.icipglobal.org/contact_us.html, a research center that shares many of the

goals of the Pluralism Project.

Indeed, developing a relationship with other university departments and research centers that are working on the issues of religious pluralism is part of the current international initiative of the Pluralism Project. 

The motto of the Indonesian nation is, in some respects, like that of the United States:

"Bhineka Tunggal Ika,” or “Unity in Diversity. The diversity of Indonesia was fully on

display in August, as the nation celebrated its 60th anniversary of independence. The

diversity of cultures and arts was celebrated the first day I was in Jakarta with an enormous parade of people from all the provinces of Indonesia through the center of the city, past the Sunday crowds at the curb, past the reviewing stands of government

officials.

They were dancers, musicians, and artists, wearing brilliantly hued  , body paint, feathers, leaves, and flowers, representing the culture, music, and dance distinctive to their region. 

Sumber :

http://shofwankarim-pluralitassosio-kultural.blogspot.com/2006/06/indonesia-pluralism-and-fatwa-against.html. Akses, 7.8.2018

Siapa Diana L. Eck ?

Diana L. Eck

Diana L. Eck (lahir 1946 di Bozeman, Montana) adalah profesor Perbandingan Agama dan Studi Agama-agama India di Universitas Harvard. Di universitas yang sama itu, ia pun menjabat sebagai anggota pada Komisi Studi Agama dalam Fakultas Seni dan Ilmu Pengetahuan. Selain itu, ia juga menjadi profesor di Fakultas Bahasa Sanskerta dan Studi India serta Fakultas Teologi. Eck berasal dari Gereja Methodis.

Pendidikan

 

Eck mendapatkan gelar S1-nya (B.A.) dari Smith College pada 1967 dalam studi Agama, dan gelar S2-nya (M.A.) dari "Sekolah Studi Oriental dan Afrika" (School of Oriental and African Studies), dari Universitas London pada 1968. Gelar Ph.D.nya diperolehnya dari Universitas Harvard pada 1976 dalam bidang Studi Perbandingan Agama.

Pada tahun 1994 ia menjadi anggota American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Akademi Amerika untuk Seni dan Ilmu Pengetahuan).

Minat Eck terhadap agama-agama, dan agama Hindu khususnya, pertama kali muncul ketika pada usia 20 tahun ia mengambil kuliah di Banaras, India, dan berjumpa dengan seorang Hindu yang berumur sekitar 80-an tahun, yang bertanya kepadanya, "Benarkah orang Kristen percaya bahwa Yesus itu satu-satunya Avatar?"

Mempelajari Pluralisme Agama

Sejak 1991, Diana Eck memimpin sebuah tim penelitian di Harvard untuk mempelajari keanekaragaman agama di Amerika Serikat dan maknanya untuk pengalaman pluralis Amerika

Pada 2001, terbit bukunya yang berjudul "A New Religious America" membahas tantangan-tantangan yang dihadapi Amerika Serikat dari kepelbagaian agama yang merupakan kenyataan di negeri itu.

Penghargaan

Pada 1994, Diana Eck bersama Proyek Pluralisme menerbitkan buku "World Religions in Boston, A Guide to Communities and Resources" yang isinya memperkenalkan tradisi-tradisi dan komunitas agama di Boston, Massachusetts - dari masyarakat Pribumi Amerika, Kristen, Yahudi, Muslim, Buddhis, Hindu, Sikh, Jain, dan Zoroastrian. Buku ini memperoleh penghargaan dari Media & Methods, EdPress, and Educom.

Pada 1996 Eck diangkat menjadi anggota Komite Penasihat Departemen Luar Negeri AS untuk Kebebasan Beragama di Luar Negeri, sebuah komisi dengan 20 orang anggota yang ditugasi memberikan nasihat kepada Departemen Luar Negeri AS tentang konteks masalah-masalah hak-hak asasi manusia.

Pada 1998 Presiden Bill Clinton menganugerahinya Medali Kemanusiaan Nasional dan Wakaf Nasional untuk Kemanusiaan untuk karyanya dalam bidang pluralisme agama Amerika.

Sebagian buku karangan Eck

Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India (1981)

Banaras, City of Light (1982)

Speaking of Faith: Global Perspectives on Women, Religion, and Social Change (ditulis bersama Devaki Jain) (1987)

Devotion Divine: Bhakti Traditions from the Regions of India, esai untuk menghormati sarjana Indologi Prancis, Charlotte Vaudeville (disunting bersama Francoise Mallison)

Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras (1993) memenangkan penghargaan Melcher dari Unitarian Universalis (1994) dan Grawemeyer Book Award (1995) dari Louisville

On Common Ground: World Religions In America (1997)

New Religious America: How A "Christian Country" Has Now Become The World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation (2001)

Sumber: https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_L._Eck. Akses, 7.8.2018

Pranala luar (Inggris) Riwayat hidup Diana L. Eck di situs web Pluralism

An Independence Day supplement to The Jakarta Post was titled “Living Diversity” and included articles on the ongoing struggled to discover what “Unity in Diversity” really means in Indonesia.

One of the lead articles was by Azyumardi Azra, the Rector of the State Islamic University, calling for a rethinking of religious pluralism from the Islamic point of view, looking closely at the Qur’an as a text that “establishes the legitimacy of differences, diversity, and pluralism.” There were also personal stories of pluralism, written in the real lives of Indonesians, such as the story of a woman whose mother is Balinese Hindu and father is Muslim who is married to a man who is Chinese Indonesian Catholic.

Their child, little Nayanda, was born with a Muslim prayer whispered in her ear and Hindu, Catholic, and Muslim grandparents looking on. And there were heart breaking stories of the devastating communal violence between Muslims and Christians in Poso in Central Sulawesi and in Ambon in the province of Maluku, stories in which neighbors have become enemies overnight. The editors entitled their own comment “Pluralism: Beyond Unity in Diversity.” “We all need to build the bridges that somehow connect us in spite of our differences,” they wrote, “If we want to go one step beyond unity in diversity, pluralism is the way forward.” 

While the fatwa condemns “pluralism,” it also seems to have an understanding of

pluralism which views all religions as essentially the same, equally valid and with

relative truths. The Fatwa Commission chairman Ma'ruf Amin, was quoted in The

Jakarta Post (July 29) as saying, "Pluralism in that sense is haram (forbidden under

Islamic law), because it justifies other religions." Maruf added that people should be

allowed to claim that their religion is the true one and that other faiths are wrong.

However, he stressed that the council accepted the fact that Indonesia was home to

different religions and that their followers could live side by side. "Plurality in the sense that people believe in different religions is allowed," Ma'ruf explained. "As such, we have to respect each other and coexist peacefully." In one sense, then, the fatwa condemns attitudes and ways of thinking it defines only vaguely and negatively --such as pluralism, secularism, and liberalism. It is not surprising that many respected Indonesian leaders have responded with stinging critique to the fatwa, including former president Abdurrahman Wahid, Azyumardi Azra of the State Islamic University, and Ulil Abshar Abdalla of the Liberal Islamic Network http://islamlib.com/en/page.php.  In my own view, of course, pluralism is not at all premised on the equal truth or validity of all religious perspectives and traditions. It is not premised on the idea that all religions are the same, not at all. The language of pluralism is not the language of sameness, nor is it simply the language of difference, but it is the language of dialogue. Pluralism is not about erasing differences, but about engaging differences in the creating of a common society. The language of pluralism is the language of traffic, exchange, dialogue, and debate. From a civic standpoint, it is the language any democracy needs in order to survive.

From a religious or theological standpoint, it is the language of faith, held not in isolation from those of other faiths, but in relation to them.

Another set of discussions and conversations focused on the ways in which “religion” is recognized by the state in Indonesia and in the U.S. In the U.S., there is no officially recognized religion, aside from the recognition of the Internal Revenue Service for tax purposes and the multitude of ways in which ceremonial civic recognition has become more complex and inclusive –such as Muslim invocations in legislatures and Iftar fast-breaking meals in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

Indonesia, in the compromises worked out at the time of its independence, recognized five religions -- Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Protestant Christianity, and Catholic Christianity. This arrangement has led to countless issues that even a government Department of Religious Affairs (Agama is the term used) has not been able to solve. Is Confucianism a “religion?” Javanese traditional practice? Must a Sikh be officially a Hindu? What about the Ahmadiyyas who call themselves Muslim but are the focus of another fatwa of the MUI, which insists they are not?

What happens when a Muslim marries a Catholic? What “religion” is listed on the child’s national identity card? Is it possible not to  have a “religion?” As I often told Indonesian audiences, we have no Department of Religion in the United   government, but we do have Departments of Religion in virtually every college and university. 

It is not only, of course, that religion can be, and should be, a subject of study, but religious pluralism is also an important subject of study. How is it that complex, multireligious societies negotiate the issues of religious difference? This brief and very stimulating visit to Indonesia made clear to me that the issues of religious pluralism can benefit from comparative study. ***

Rivers of Faith

The religious traditions of humankind are shown here as squares, each containing a commonly used symbol of that tradition. But this visual image of separate boundaried squares—graphically convenient as it is—is highly misleading, for every religious tradition has grown through the ages in dialogue and historical interaction with others. Christians, Jews, and Muslims have been part of one another’s histories, have shared not only villages and cities, but ideas of God and divine revelation. Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, and Sikhs have shared a common cultural milieu in India, while in East Asia the Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian traditions are not only part of common cultures, but are also part of the complex religious inheritance of families and individuals whose lives are shaped by all three religions.

And there is a second caution: each tradition represented so neatly by a circle and a symbol has its own internal complexity which you will discover as you click one of those circles and begin to explore the tradition. The Native Peoples of America are not one, but many, each with its distinctive life-ways. The Hindu tradition is a rich tapestry of many streams of thought and devotion, many gods, and many regional cultures. The Christian, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions have spanned the world and speak in hundreds of languages and cultural contexts. Many traditions have their own complex internal disagreements and sectarian movements: Sunni and Shi’i Muslims; Orthodox and Reform Jews; Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians. And each tradition has many voices—women and men, traditionalists and reformers, clergy and laity.

And there is a third caution here as well: religious traditions are dynamic. Though they carry continuities through the centuries, they also have changed through the centuries and continue to change today. Religions are far more like rivers than like boundaried circles or even complex structures. Nourished by mountain springs, they gather tributaries, flow in full flood through the plains, divide into multiple branches, merge in confluence with other streams, and spread into vast deltas. Some eventually spend themselves and dry up, leaving behind the traces of an ancient riverbed. Others become so extensive and complex they constitute an entire river system. It is important to remember, then, that living religious traditions are in motion as each new generation makes that tradition its own—in its own time, and in its own ways. Religions are not simply sets of ideas or practices passed in a box from generation to generation, but living traditions of faith that must be appropriated anew.

Today all these rivers of faith are flowing through the landscape of America. Some have been here for centuries, and some are finding their way through a landscape that is relatively new for them. All of these religious traditions will continue to change in the new context of multireligious America. The history of religions is not over, but is an ongoing history, taking place today before our very eyes as new religious traditions begin to grow and flourish in the context of the United States. As a Vietnamese Buddhist monk told a Pluralism Project researcher in Phoenix, “We must take the plant of Buddhism out of the pot and plant it now in the soil of Arizona.” What is Buddhism becoming as it grows in the soil of Arizona? What is India’s Sikh tradition becoming as American Sikhs double the size of their gurdwara, sing out their devotions, and celebrate their holidays in Oklahoma City? How are American Muslims passing on their most cherished values in Houston or Seattle? How are American Hindus reshaping the complex religious and regional traditions of India in Nashville? And how are America’s Christians and Jews changing as they encounter new neighbors of other faiths and learn to work together on school boards and interfaith councils?

In “America’s Many Religions” you are invited to explore the religious traditions of America. There are brief introductory essays and world timelines. The history of each tradition in the U.S. is also traced, through essays, photos, and timelines. Under the menu item “Experience” you are invited to learn something of the lived religious experience of each tradition: their places of worship, their songs and devotions, their festivals and forms of social action. Under the menu item “Issues” you can get a sense of the things people of each religious tradition care—and even argue—about in America today.

(http://pluralism.org/religions/rivers-of-faith/. Akses, 7.8.2018)