Islamic Perspectives on the New Millennium

14. Developing Islamic Arguments for Change through "Liberal Islam"

231 Developing Islamic Arguments for Change through “Liberal Islam” 14 DEVELOPING ISLAMIC ARGUMENTS FOR CHANGE THROUGH “LIBERAL ISLAM” Virginia Hooker Preserve the fire of Islam not its ashes! Discover the fire of Islam! (President Sukarno, 1958).1 The last decade of the twentieth century saw the publication of many writings by Muslims who argued that extremists were causing violence not only to people but also to the basic precepts of Islam. In 1997 for example, Bassam Tibi, well-known analyst of contemporary Islam, concluded the Preface to his book The Challenge of Fundamentalism, with the sentences: “As the ‘open society’ has its enemies, to use the phrase of Sir Karl Popper, so too does an ‘open Islam’ have its enemies: the fundamentalists. They are a challenge not only to world order but also to us liberal Muslims”.2 Tibi’s response to “the burgeoning global phenomenon of religious fundamentalism” is “a compact based on secular democracy and human rights”. If this were to become the basis for “an international cross-cultural morality”, he argues, different civilizations and cultures might be brought together into more peaceful forms of coexistence.3 The last chapter of Tibi’s study canvasses the possibility that human rights might become the means of establishing “a cross-cultural international morality” which could be shared by individuals in Muslim and Western civilizations. In reaching this position, Tibi acknowledges the “inspiring” 231 Virginia Hooker 232 discussions he enjoyed in Jakarta with Indonesian Muslim intellectuals. That experience led him to believe that “Southeast Asian Muslims offer us some hope for easing the desperate situation of Islamic civilization and the disintegrating order of the world at the turn of the new century”.4 Tibi uses the term “liberal Muslims” and he singles out Southeast Asia, in particular Indonesia, as the region which might produce ideas for cross-cultural understanding, which could underpin a new sense of morality for all mankind. His optimism is the starting point for this final chapter which will encompass many of the themes of the previous chapters but present them through the eyes of a recently formed group of “liberal Muslims” in Indonesia. In his book, Tibi was referring to the late twentieth and early twentyfirst century and he may not have realized that, a century earlier, Indonesian Muslims were already engaged in debates about how to combine the principles of Islam with the demands of a modern world.5 Their argumentation and writings were greatly influenced by the intellectual movements in Cairo which, responding to Western ideas of progress, were advocating that Muslims pay greater attention to the achievements of the West or risk being left behind in a rapidly changing world. Many Muslims in Indonesia are still inspired by the modernizing Muslims of the late nineteenth century and by their successors, the neo-modernist Indonesian thinkers (especially Nurcholish Madjid and Abdurrahman Wahid) who developed their philosophies during the 1970s. The group of Indonesian liberal Muslims has been chosen as representative of other similar groups who are actively engaging with the challenge of how to be true to Islam and at the same time use concepts developed by the non-Muslim West (secularism, equal rights for women, scientific rationalism, capitalism). One of the reasons why Tibi and others have remarked on the vibrant nature of discussions in the Muslim intellectual milieu of Indonesia is that there has always been a tradition of serious debate in Muslim communities of the archipelago. This has strong roots in the many societies which make up Indonesia and demonstrates a genuine tolerance of diversity of thought and respect for informed opinion. Religious debate is considered a normal part of religious life and the Indonesian tradition has long drawn on intellectual trends beyond its own region, encountered by its scholars and savants in their contact with foreign visitors or on their own extensive travels. The group to be discussed in this chapter exhibits the same flair for eclectic argumentation, a flair they share with many other groups in the Muslim world of the early twenty-first century. However, in Indonesia, unlike some Muslim countries, there is also the legacy of Dutch colonialism and the Japanese occupation, which insisted on 233 Developing Islamic Arguments for Change through “Liberal Islam” separation of religion and politics in all matters of governance. This separation which, although not unchallenged, was maintained by the secular nationalists who governed Indonesia after independence and during the 1950s. Under...