Azra on Ahmadiyah and the so-called deviant teachings

‘The first attack on Ahmadiyah was led by a descendant from Hadral Maut’

Violent clashes between sects within Islam are no longer unusual in Indonesia, a country, once known for its religious tolerance. The past months for example, saw several attacks made on the sect Ahmadiyah. The obvious question is: Why now? After all, the Ahmadiyah community has lived in peaceful co-existence with mainstream Muslims in this country ever since it was still a Dutch colony. Could it be because the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI) declared it an “errant” and “deviant” sect? Or is it because the government has allowed violence to pass unpunished?

To get at the root of the problem, a colleague of mine, spoke to Azyumardi Azra, a professor of history and director of post-graduate studies at Jakarta's State Islamic University (UIN) Syarief Hidayatullah. Below are excerpts of the interview (with some minor editing from me):

Q: Do these conflicts have their root far back in the past, during the time of the Prophet Muhammad, or are there other reasons?

A: When we talk about frictions, conflicts and so forth, Islam is actually no different from other religions. To a certain degree, other religions, particularly Christianity, could be even worse. We can see this in Europe's history, what happened there when Protestantism became a religion apart from Catholicism. All religions are susceptible to break-ups because the principles laid down in the scriptures could be multi-interpretable. That creates differences in understanding, and often one understanding is held to be the truest by those who promulgate that interpretation. And so each sect, or school of thought, comes to see its own interpretation as the “most correct.” This happens especially because of the emergence of movements, or ideas, that are transnational in character and position themselves (in the case of Islam) as the only unadulterated teachings of Islam—or the Salafiah, the school of Salafi, in the popular vernacular. This movement is brought and disseminated here by descendants of people from Hadral Maut, in Yemen.

Q: Could you be a little more specific?

A: If we look at the attack on the first attack on Ahmadiyah in Parung, that was led by a descendant from Hadral Maut. I forgot his name. But that is the way they express themselves. They are different from NU (Nahdlatul Ulama) or Muhammadiyah—the country’s two largest Muslim organizations—which are more tolerant because their Islam is more in a social, cultural and political Indonesian context.

Q: What actually is the orientation, and the societal and social-political leaning of groups such as Hisbut Tahrir?

A: Hisbut Tahrir is one of the transnational movements of Islam that emerged in Syria, led by a sheik named Taqiuddin Adamhani, which separated from the original group, the Ihwanul Muslimin. He founded the Hisbut Tahrir. Its main idea is to set up a caliphate embracing all Muslims in the world. Second is to establish the sharia (Islamic law). In their belief, only the establishment of a caliphate can unite all Muslims in the world. Therefore, the establishment of a universal caliphate is a central issue for Hisbut Tahrir, although the idea of a caliphate has never been popular in Indonesia. It has never been an important issue within NU or Muhammadiyah. Actually, Hisbut Tahrir has existed since the late 1970s or early 1980s, although they did not dare to proclaim their existence openly. That only happened after the reform movement (reformasi).

Q: And what about Ahmadiyah?

A: Ahmadiyah already existed here during the Dutch colonial era, since the 1920s. And I know for sure that for more than 90%, both in practice and religious understanding, Ahmadiyah is identical with Sunni or Syiah. They are different only in one respect: that of Mirza Gulam Ahmad. Whether Ahmad is a “mujadid” (renewer) or a prophet. Yes, there is a group within Ahmadiyah which considers Ahmad to be a “prophet,” but not in the sense that he introduced a new sharia. Their sharia is still that of the Prophet Muhammad. Ahmad as a “prophet” only revitalized it. Our Dutch-educated Muslim leaders became familiar and studied Islam using Ahmadiyah books written in English. The interpretation of the Koran by Muhammad Ali, an Ahmadiyah follower—leaders like Muhammad Roem and Haji Agus Salim, used that to study Islam.

Q: So Ahmadiyah is not a new phenomenon. What about Wahabiah, or Wahabism?

A: Not at all. And generally they live in peace with the local population. But since the puritan teachings of Islam came to Indonesia and grew more immoderate, Ahmadiyah became a target. So there is a foreign, or transnational element. The arrival of Wahabism or Salafiah from the Middle East did sway certain people in certain organizations or joined the MUI, for example—and it was then that Ahmadiyah was decreed an aberrant sect. Wahabiah (Wahabism) is a sect within Islam which puts the emphasis on purifying the teachings of Islam. Under their societal idea, people who practice things that in their view is not in accordance with the teachings of Islam will be made their target. Maulid Nabi (the birth of the Prophet), for example, they consider it haram (forbidden) while in our villages it has become part of the people's tradition. It is these things that upset the stability of Islamic life in Indonesia, creating frictions and even growing violence.

Q: What can our Islamic leader and thinkers do to ensure that Islam in Indonesia can grow more tolerant and peaceful?

A: I am now criticizing MUI's fatwas that are based on a very rigid interpretation of the fiqih (Islamic law), such as the one which says that liberalism, pluralism and secularism are haram. Quite often their understanding is wrong, like equating pluralism with syncretism, so that accepting pluralism would mean mixing religions. Of course this is wrong, because pluralism is recognizing the existence of other religions and respecting their beliefs and being tolerant. That is what happens with MUI fatwas, which often depart from a wrong understanding, or from a rigid interpretation of the fiqih. They don't sufficiently take into account the social, cultural and political Indonesian context.

Q: As far as you know, does the government have any cultural program ready to cool down religious tension in this country?

A: I don't think they have. Generally speaking, the government has no firm policy or a clear direction to accomplish a healthier religious life. This is especially evident since a number of religious affairs ministers since the reform movement have said that Ahmadiyah should be banned. That shouldn't be the way to do it. The government is duty bound to protect its citizens. It is perfectly alright for a certain group to say that another group is aberrant, but that is no justification for violence or taking the law into one's own hands. That is where the weakness of two successive governments lies. They don't want to be firm in upholding the law, and so the Ahmadiyah people continue to be targets of violence.

Q: A while ago the Attorney General said that his institution cannot take any action until the MUI has issued its fatwa. What is your comment?

A: That is a good example of an official making a misguided statement. Apart from that he is putting the MUI in a wrong position. The MUI is not an official institution and it is not a government institution, and legally it has never been decided that it is the only one which is authorized to issue fatwas. An according to the fiqih (Islamic law), a fatwa is not binding. It is only one among several legal opinions that can either followed or not. So the Attorney General has made mistakes on several levels. First, Indonesia is not an Islamic state. There is no mufti. We have no ifta' which in Islamic countries has the sole authority to issue binding fatwas. MUI is not a formal institution. It is federation representing several Islamic organizations in Indonesia. In Indonesia, there are several kinds of fatwa, such as those from the Majlis Tarjjih Muhamaddiyah and NU's Bahsul Masa'il, and the ummat is free to decide which one to follow—or to follow none at all.

The EU ban – Djamal’s side of the story

The ban is still on!

As we all are aware, the European Union (EU) has decided to maintain its ban on all of the country’s airlines from flying to its member countries.

This policy, obviously, caught many Indonesian authorities by surprise because before they were quite optimistic that the ban would be lifted in October or November this year.

As it turned out, it was not the case.

Following is a recently published interview conducted by a colleague of mine with Transport Minister Juman Syafii Djamal.

Of course, it reflects the Minister’s side of the story only.

If we want to see things in perspective, probably we should also take the following information into consideration (although it goes without saying that it will be difficult to verify whether this information is accurate or not):

1. The Air Transport Director General was asked to submit a detailed Corrective Action Plan about air transport safety improvements in Indonesia. He, instead, came up with the so-called a Road Map to Zero Accident, which of course was not what EU wanted to see.

2. Even then, the so-called Road Map was submitted later the initially agreed schedule.

3. Finally, there was also a problem of “language barrier.”

Pheew….what a mess!

“Frankly I’m confused myself”

Almost six months since the European Union (EU) announced its ban on Indonesian airlines to fly over Europe the situation has not gotten any better. Initially, there were letters from the EU addressed to the Indonesian authorities, expressing their concerns over a string of air accidents that had happened in Indonesia over the past three years, and asking whether those mishaps were pure accidents, or whether they were caused by systemic errors in our air transportation system.

At that point, the Transport Ministry was in a phase of reorganization, and possibly the Indonesian response did not come fast enough. But as soon as Jusman Syafii Djamal was named Transport Minister, he immediately sent his Director General of Air Transport to Europe to join the annual meeting of the International Air Transportation Association, but the Director General was rejected for unclear reasons.

Following excerpts of a recent interview with Djamal about the latest developments regarding the fly ban.

Q: Why has the EU still not lifted the flying ban?

A: Frankly, I am confused myself, because the ban was issued without their having carried out any audit at all. EU never created a set of procedure for decently barring airlines from flying, and they have no respect for other countries' sovereignty. They announced the ban directly over the Internet, on their website. Other countries would have sent their ambassador to see me in case there were any concerns about flight safety in our country. They always do that. That is the standard procedure in inter-state communication and international cooperation. But EU is different. They just issued their ban on the Internet.

Q: Is that the standard EU procedure or specifically in the case of Indonesia.

A: Specifically in the case of Indonesia, it seems. With other countries they deliver letters, as is usual. And there is also another difference (in treatment). With other countries their ban is applied to the airlines having flights to Europe only. However, with Indonesia it was aimed at all our airline companies, which they said were 51 in number whereas actually we had only 47. And they identified all our airline companies as “unknown airlines.”

Q: Unknown airlines?

A: That was what they said in their first announcement on their website. All of the 51 Indonesian airlines are unknown airlines. That was also what they said in their letter to the president and vice president, delivered through me. That clearly proves that their information is inaccurate—aside from the fact that they are not giving the Indonesian civil aviation authorities to say what they need to say.

Q: And what was your personal reaction as Transport Minister at that time?
A: Actually it's O.K. with me. At first, I thought, maybe we did have some shortcomings, or even faults. Something that happened because we were having a change of Transport Ministers. For that reason, we said we would hold a dialog and cooperate in the process of finding a solution. So we sent a special presidential team led by Chappy Hakim to the EU headquarters to tell them we shared their concerns about air safety. I myself also wrote a letter to the EU official who signed the ban, and that’s why we hoped we could cooperate with the EU. Air safety cannot be improved by bans, it must be done by international cooperation. That’s what we emphasized.

Q: What happened to the special presidential envoy and the team?

A: They were not received with the courtesy that befits a visiting team from a friendly country. They kept telling us this was a technical problem and asked the team members to sign all sorts of forms, just like we do when we want to get our ID cards. We did all that patiently, and finally they understood the situation of the air transportation in Indonesia. They followed that up by sending an audit team to Indonesia from Nov.5-9.

Q: The media made it sound as if their visit went fine.

A: We were very open about whatever they wanted to know. And at the end of their visit, in a letter addressed to me, they didn't indicate that anything was wrong. Other audit teams do it differently—like the American or Australian teams for example, who listed all the points that needed attention. But this team only said that everything had been observed, and that the frequency and intensity of the internal control at those airlines should be improved. So too with their recommendations to the Transport Ministry, in which they asked to step up the supervision over the civil aviation industry in Indonesia. Therefore, we assumed that air safety had sufficiently improved.

Q: And ... ?

A: Last Nov. 19-20 they met and we also were given a chance to speak, although for only for 20 minutes. It was the Director General or Air Transport who spoke. According to the reports we received from our ambassador, everything went well. They lauded the progress that had been made in air safety but asked for time to make sure that the improvements were permanent.

Q: So the latest ban was issued after that meeting that went so well?

A: Yes. They did not sent a letter to me but put the ban on their website. Up to this moment the EU ambassador has not come to see me to deliver a letter. This is uncommon in relations between two friendly states, or in the international air transport community.

Q: What will be our next step?

A: I conveyed all that information to the president, and he asked me for recommendations in my capacity as the Transport Minister. Four points received the president's approval: 1. We would send a letter to the EU to express our disappointment over the extension of the ban. 2. If the EU flight ban was continued, we would call off the talks about an open air policy because we consider it unfair that the EU should be given access to our airspace while we were barred from flying in theirs. 3. We want to learn from them because it could be that their standards are higher than ours, and so we want to exercise our right to carry out ramp checks, checks on the air safety systems on KLM and Lufthansa aircraft landing in Indonesia. For learning purposes, what's the difference between Garuda Indonesia’s and their aircraft. 4. The president will put off his scheduled visit to Europe.