USIPP #3: Big Players in Religious Pluralism


Today we have pretty tight schedule. We visited some official offices such as the Ministry of Higher Education (DIKTI), Forum for Interfaith Discussion (Forum Kerukunan Umat Beragama-FKUB), Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), and the last but not least one was Muhammadiyah.

The first visitation was to DIKTI where Mr. Purwanto, the Secretary of DIKTI welcomed us and kindly explained about the roles of DIKTI in order to ensure the achievement of the quality standard of higher education in all over Indonesia. Furthermore, to internationalize (to make the world acknowledge Indonesian’s univerties or education). they have several programs like a joint program with USA which called DIKTI Fullbright Scholarship Program, Sandwich Program which offers academic staff to experience student exchange program for 4 months), and SAMI (Academic Mobility) for PhD to visit overseas universities or to conduct a joint research.





Next, we went to FKUB and were warmly welcomed by several figures from each different religion in Indonesia. FKUB has 21 members from 6 religions, they are: Islam, Christianity, Protestant, Budhism, Hindu, Kong Hu Chu. FKUB exerts 5 main tasks as stated below:
1.       Conduct the interfaith dialog.
2.       Welcome aspirations from people of Indonesia.
3.       Deliver the aspiration to the government.
4.       Socialization of policies in regard to religion.
5.       Recommend the worship place (rumah ibadah).

The different that FKUB felt in regard to the New Order Era and today is that in the New Order, you had top-down approach. According to FKUB, what was happening in Indonesia regarding chaotic situation which involved religion actually isn’t merely because of different religions we have. There are some parties who stir the situation to gain political power or personal interest.

The discussion in FKUB was very lively and enlightening. Not only the USIPP’s participants but also the FKUB members themselves benefited from the discussion. They were pretty excited to ask what is going with the Moslem population in United States, how the US government protect each individualto practising their beliefs, or how the US perceptions regarding religious pluralism in Indonesia, and so on. The discussion improved our (both side) understandings about each other perceptions and clarifying things in regard to religious pluralism in US and Indonesia. This is vital because US is a significant player in the world including the one who play a role in Palestine which is a very sensitive issue for Islamic-populated country such as Indonesia.


In NU, we have Prof. Zaki Mubarak as the spekaer along with other 2 or 3 persons. NU is the oldest and the biggest Islamic organization in Indonesia which embracing the local cultures in preaching Islamic teachings. They believe that their position is in between the hardliner and the liberalist. According to them, the hardliner uses only “hard verses” and leaves the soft one. Meanwhile the liberalist is quite the opposite. Thus NU try to redirect them by providing a complete verses in Al-qur’an along with As-Sunah and Ijtihad in order to give a comprehensive understanding.

NU’s preaching methods is actually similar with Wali Songo’s (9 Saints) in Central Java’s coastal areas. They proclaimed that even (believe it or not) the founding fathers and the leader of NU itself was decendants from Wali Songo. This is interesting because there was a long debate in matter of whether Wali Songo are Chinese. However, the politic condition in that time, make it impossible to acknowledged the truth. In that time, there was a discrimination related to Chinese especially in Soeharto Era. That explains why almost all Chinese in Indonesia have their Indonesian’s name beside their Chinese one. Interestingly, if the claim of NU’s members is true (that their leaders are decendant from Wali Songo), then it may be true that Wali Songo is the Chinese decendant because as we know, the former Presdident Abdurrahman Wahid was the leader of NU and he was Chinese. Well, it still needs to be clarify with the historical evidents though.

The last destination was Muhammadiyah. Muhammadiyah is the second largest Islamic organization in Indonesia based on the amount of members. The provide four major services to the community such as:
1.       Education: Muhammadiyah currently operated more than 14.000 schools and higher education institutions in all over Indonesia ranging from elementary schools to universities. In some places such as Palangkaraya and Nusa Tenggara, more than 70% of their students are non-moslem students. For those students, they provide them with religion study based on their own religion. This is proven that Muhammadiyah embraces differences in religions and tolerant toward others.
2.       Health services by building hospitals and clinics in alll over Indonesia.
3.       Economic empowerment through microfinancing, including bank.
4.       Disaster management and rescue.

You must  be wondering how they generate the money to conduct all of their agendas which requires a huge funding. Generally, they have 3 main sources of fund as below:
1.       Member’s donation
2.       Partnership with other Non or Islamic organizations.
3.       Profit from the schools, universities, institutes, and hospitals.
Responding on Ahmadiyah issue, Muhammadiyah said that actually Muhammadiyah’s leader has a strong relationship with Ahmad Ghulam who later become the leader of Ahmadiyah. There was also a hospital in West Java owned by Ahmadiyah which only want to be sold to Muhammadiyah. I just found out that in 1932, Muhammadiyah has issued a Fatwa stated that Ahmadiyah is not Islam but they FORBID ummah to conducted any  violantion to Ahmadiyah and encouraged a peace dialog with Ahmadiyah.

In conclusion, we may see that in some cases, mass media plays a big role on blowing up a certain issue. Like in the case, we saw that Ahmadiyah has been existing since a long time ago yet the issue itself just came up recently.

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