“What do We Mean by Islam?”; Defining Religion in the History of Suharto’s Era by Faqihuddin Abdul Kodir

I am often disturbed by an inconsistency of academic scholarship in defining Islam in the context of politically matters of Suharto’s era. On the one hand, many scholars have welcomed the development of ‘the inclusive and subtantive Islam’ during Suharto’s regime. On the other hand, they still analyze Islam in this era from perspective of its symbols and its legal formals. They define ‘proper Islam’ in modern era as ‘the inclusive Islam’ of Nurcholis Madjid and Gus Dur, while they still define Indonesia’s Suharto as secular state not an ‘Islamic’ state.

The idea of inclusive Islam, in simple way, is that Islam is not originally a political matter, rather is moral behavior of individuals. In this understanding, Islam preserves justice, equality, and democracy as it core values. It is not important, according to this understanding, to define Islam through its symbols and its legal formals. Moreover, Islamic symbols are not Islamic in the sense that they violet the values of justice and equality. This is the notion of the inclusive Islam which has been developed since 1980’s of Suharto’s era. Although it is “a matter of interpretation” (Hefner, p. 218), the inclusive Islam has been accepted by many Indonesian Muslim scholars and welcomed by Western researchers.

It will be different when we read researches analyzing whether policy of Suharto is Islamic or not. In this field, many will come back to the definition of Islam as a symbolic, institutional, and a matter of legal formal. Discussing political matters of Suharto from the perspective of Islamic symbols contradicts to the acceptance of substantive Islam as a proper Islam in the modern era. If we accept the view point of substantive Islam in Indonesia, we should implement it in the field of academic scholarship in studying political matters of Muslims. Sukarno and Suharto are Muslims. Their political matters should be analyzed from the sense of policy of justice, not from symbolic Islam, when we apply the perspective of Islamic or non-Islamic. The article of Leo Suryadinata is a good example of how Islam defined as mere a symbol and representation when applied to analyze political matters of Suharto.


Readings:
1. Robert Hefner. 2000. Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia. (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
2. Leo Suryadinata. 1995. “Islam and Suharto’s Foreign Policy: Indonesia, the Middle East, and Bosnia”. In: Asian Survey, vol. 35, no. 3 (Mar., 1995), pp. 291-303.