Reverberating Thoughts of Gus Dur

The followers of Gus Dur, the former Indonesia’s President Abdurrahman Wahid, who identify themselves as Gus-Durian has gathered in Jakarta about two weeks ago. No less than five dozen people came from different regions and generations. They held a symposium for three days (16-18 November 2011) to crystallize the ideas of Gus Dur in the context of Indonesia, Islam, and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). The organizer requested Gus Dur’s friends and colleagues to speak in that forum. As a santri or student of Gus Dur, I was also requested to speak about Gus Dur.

My knowledge of Gus Dur is probably not perfect. Many people know Gus Dur better than me because they specifically conduct the researches on Gus Dur’s thoughts and activities. Tens and even hundreds of books have been published on Gus Dur’s thoughts in detail, during his life as well as after his death. Gus Dur has been analyzed from various perspectives and disciplines. In that forum, I just reiterated the most important point in Gus Dur’s thoughts, namely his consistent rejection of Islamic “orthodoxy” and “purification”.

Gus Dur has functioned as a breaker of the frozen thoughts among Muslim society in general and members of Nahdlatul Ulama in particular. He did not close the door of philosophy in Islam. For that reason, he introduced philosophical discourses to the Muslim society in Indonesia. He did not only read the thoughts of al-Ghazali who refuse philosophy, but also swallowed the ideas of Ibn Rushd who accept philosophy. In fact, Gus Dur was enthusiastic in visiting the world of thinkers like al-Kindi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Thufail, ibn Bajah and the Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. He also traveled quite far in reading the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Immanuel Kant and Bonaventure.

With sufficient basis of Islamic knowledge, Gus Dur carried out dynamization of Islamic thought. He also sharply criticized the stagnation of Islamic thought. Gus Dur viewed that ushul fiqh, which is historically a creative process to dynamize the Islamic jurisprudence, has developed into a very normative selection tools that castrates human’s creativity. As a result, Muslims turn to be narrow-minded and very exclusive. Muslims become a burden for the resurgence of Islamic civilization. The legal decision-making (istinbath) cannot take place anymore because the Muslim clerics have been trapped in the old formulation of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). They used to reject various attempts to rearrange the Islamic jurisprudence.

Although he is not widely known as an expert in fiqh, Gus Dur stepped in to restoring the stagnant Islamic Jurisprudence. He demanded reinterpretation of the religious text that seemed to clash the notions of human rights, pluralism and democratic values, such as reflected in the redefinition of the terms apostate (murtad) and unbeliever (kafir). Gus Dur fiercely debated Muslim groups who classify non-Muslims in Indonesia as kafir dhimmi who have inferior status than Muslims and even as kafir harbi whom they are allowed to fight. Gus Dur gave a new interpretation over the concept of al-maqasid al-syar’iyah or al- dlaruriyat al-khams (five basic principles of Islam), particularly that he interpreted the notion of hifdz al-din as the freedom of religion and the notion of hifdz al-aql as the freedom of thought.

Because he realized about the existence of relativism and subjectivism in fiqh, Gus Dur refused any attempt of adopting fiqh into the state’s positive law. Formalization of Islamic jurisprudence in the state’s legislation, according to Gus Dur, is not a solution for the plural Indonesian society. Gus Dur had been sounding the warning bells since a long time ago that someday Muslims would insist the formalization of this particular as well as diverse Islamic jurisprudence. Formalization of a certain school of fiqh means throwing dozens of other schools. That is why Gus Dur would rather submit fiqh in the hands of religious scholars instead of the state authorities. He let fiqh to be a field of intellectual exploration for the Muslim scholars instead of a hegemonizing tool for the state leaders.

According to Gus Dur, all citizens including Muslims must be encouraged to refer to Pancasila and the Constitution 1945 instead of the sacred texts. Despite these scriptures may become an inspiration, they should not become an aspiration. Gus Dur observed that the demand on formalization of Islamic law is sectarian in nature and incompatible with the principle of equality for all citizens. In Indonesia, a person’s primary position is as a citizen of the state and not as an adherent of any religion. All of us are the Indonesian citizens first, and then the adherents of religions (Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Sikhism, Baha’I and etcetera).

In my humble opinion, Gus Dur’s ideas are timeless and should be continually reverberated and circulated among Indonesian public. It is not that we are fanatical about Gus Dur, but because his universal ideas are beneficial for the plural society of Indonesia. It is hard to imagine that Indonesia will continue to exist if the ideas endorsed by Gus Dur, including the human rights, democracy and pluralism, are removed from Indonesian archipelago. []