Religion: Public or Private? - Roy Allan B. Tolentino

Following the development of the concept of Indonesia as a nation, one observes that religion plays a significant role in the formation of that concept. More than being an ethical resource for mobilizing the people against the colonizers, religion becomes key to determining the identity of Indonesia.

The Sarikat Islam, established in 1912, sought to uphold the rights of Muslims, and to do so in the public sphere. Inasmuch as the organization gained support, Hefner notes that it “eventually foundered on precisely this question of Islam’s role in an independent state.” (Hefner 2000:38) The group eventually divided into a leftist and a more traditional faction; this ideological schism spelled the end for the organization.

This ideological schism, however, is not unique to Sarikat Islam; it describes a tension which is ever-present in the Islamic world. Despite the unity of Muslims in their creed, from the death of the Prophet at least, the Islamic world has been divided according to differences in understanding and interpretation of their laws and traditions. Among the bones of contention is the precisely the question of the Islamic state. For some Muslims, it simply means the unity of all those who profess their belief in Allah; for others, it refers to the religious character of a state as differentiated from other states; for others, still, it is the prescription of a form of government run under Islamic law. These are but a few of the positions that have been advanced in pondering the relationship between Islam and the state.

In the development of the concept of the state in the West, religion has largely been relegated to the realm of the private. Despite what certain foundational documents may say (“One nation under God,” for instance), the modern state has been constructed in such a way that religion cannot enter the public sphere; if it does, it becomes subject to secular values and rights which are deemed more universal. One question comes to mind: Does this separation undermine the absolute and universal claims of religion? Some religions respond by saying that religion is ultimately concerned with the life to come, and not this life; and so these religions are able to coexist with a secular state by a marking of boundaries. This cannot be applied to Islam, however, as it sees no division between the religious and the political.

In the case of Indonesia, an attempt to resolve this dilemma emerged with Sukarno. His exposure to Western conceptions of nationalism led him to understand the situation differently. “Separating Islam from state, Sukarno argued, would liberate Islam from the tutelage of corrupt rulers and unleash its progressive potentialities.” (Hefner 2000: 39) After much debate and some compromise, this position led to the precept of belief in one God, as one of the founding principles of Indonesia as a nation. Of course, this solution did not satisfy everyone, and despite the widespread acceptance of Pancasila as a basis for nationhood and identity, the clamour for an Islamic state has not disappeared. Should religion be a private affair? Should it govern public life? The question becomes more complicated in light of secularism, which sees belief in God as only one of many possibilities for human life. (Taylor) If belief in God is only one possibility among many, what becomes of Pancasila then?

Hefner, Robert. Civil Islam: Muslims and democratization in Indonesia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Taylor, Charles. A secular age. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007.