A Critical Response to Hefner's book, Civil Islam

ICRS Yogya
Class of History of Religion in Indonesia Part II
Dr. Bernard Adeney-Risakotta
Dr. Sri Margono

Assignment week 3
Abraham S. Wilar

Religion and Politics in Indonesia
A Critical Response to Robert Hefner’s book
Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia

Heffner’s thesis in this book is the fate of democratic movement will ultimately depend not only on the struggle for a civil society but on efforts to reform the state (p.xviii). And he argues that Islam, with regard to his thesis, must be included and put as major concern (p.xix). He addresses this point is to counter the American-Indonesianists whose works both on Indonesian studies, and on Islam in Indonesia, have been marginalized Islam from their exploration.

Although in the book Hefner has mentioned, for example, Nurcholish Madjid, as an exemplary figure on civil Islam and an outspoken Muslim against the idea of Islamic state (p.116-119), amongst other names such as Gus Dur, Kuntowijoyo, and so on, Hefner did not explicitly explore and state that Madjid could become such outstanding speaker for democracy and civility of society was at least influenced by his experience living in a secular state when he was pursuing his Ph.D in the State. Living in a socially and culturally secular society, meaning a society whose foundation is both clear and focus on separation of state and religion and the state rejects to be controlled by religious tenets and its apparatus, Madjid had been accustomed to think and act as free as he could, either in private manners or religious business, without having any threat of being killed or arrested as long he did not do certain crimes. Here, at this point, the role of the state to be persistence on being a secular state has decisively determined the atmosphere and the culture of thinking and behaving its citizens.

The present paper believes Hefner actually had that kind of analysis, as same as this paper has just mentioned above, because he came and ended up with an idea to reform the state as an ultimate effort to bring a civil society. He believes that by reforming the state the civil society may be built afterwards.

The paper would rather like to focus on identifying the ‘identity marker’ for Muslims developing self-defense mechanism against any of ‘Western products’. The paper believes that it is the influence of the Arab culture where Islam was born there. Within the Arabian culture the Arabs are being accustomed to see religiously their worldly affairs. They have been practicing this ‘totalizing’ Allah into their daily practices. This actually expresses and carries out the way of Arabs thinking and acting in their daily practices, and also has become at least one of the ‘identity markers’ for Muslim. Such a way of thinking and acting has become part of Muslim identity, including Muslim living in Indonesia. So they would hardly be attached to see and understand the Arab cultures as identical as the Islamic cultures.

If one expects to see the civilization of civil Islam built in Indonesia, one must start struggling with new paradigm of understanding Islam and replace the Arab culture with the Indonesian one while dealing with Islam. The Arab culture, including its logic, must be de-attached from the references for Muslim reading and comprehending Islam. Build a new one of approaching and reading Islam through the Indonesian context. Even though Hefner has described the developments taken place within Muslim community (he has named such developments as religious revitalization), his exploration has not yet addressed the developments on Islamic thought amongst Muslim Indonesian. His book is more historical sociology book, with emphasize on the social dynamics of Muslim living within democracy issue and civil society concerns. The book is not even describing how Islam and its tenets, or the Islamic syari’a, must be interpreted and represented by Muslim community as to become compatible with the core value and the governing way of civil society, as experienced by Madjid in the State. In other words, this book seems to be another expression for marginalizing Islam from the social dynamics takes place in modern Indonesia context.

As I have imagined while reading the book, I thought Hefner would pay attention to the problem of the ‘constructed knowledge’ of Islam shared within Muslim community in Indonesia in which it was built within the Arab context, and now that knowledge is transferred to Indonesia, and to answer the question of how Muslim in Indonesia deal with that knowledge. He however prefers to discuss more on the dynamics of Muslim living in Indonesia within an effort to build civil society and apply democracy as its governing principles.