Author: kenan_admin

Joint Research Meeting “Moderate Islam in Indonesia”
Date: June 18 (Saturday), 2022, 16: 00-18: 00
Venue: Research Building No. 2, 4th Floor, Meeting Room (AA447), Kyoto University (face-to-face and Zoom “hybrid format”)

Report 1

Summary of speech on
“Moderasi Beragama: What, Why, How?”

Oman Fathurahman

(Professor at the Faculty of Adab and Humanities, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta; Host of Ngariksa, Head of Pesantren Al-Hamidiyah Depok, West Java
Visiting Professor at the ASAFAS, Kyoto University, 15 – 28 June 2022)

Moderasi Beragama, or Religious Moderation, is one of the current Indonesian government policies regarding the relation between religion and state. It deals with the effort to build a harmonious, peace, and tolerant religious life among the multicultural Indonesian people. This idea is promoted and conceptualized by the Minister of Religious Affairs (2014-2019), Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, and has been adopted as part of the Jokowi’s National Middle Term Development Plan (Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Menengah/RPJMN) 2020-2024.

Moderasi Beragama is formulated as “Perspective, attitude as well as practice of religion in a social life, emphasizing to apply the essence of religious teachings, which is protecting humanity and building the common good, based on the principles of fairness, balance, and obedience of the constitution as a national agreement”.

For a better understanding of Moderasi Beragama, one should be aware on the empirical fact that Indonesia is a country, whose people are multicultural and religious. Regardless of a non-theocratic country, all matters in Indonesia cannot be separated from religion. The relationship between religion and the state in Indonesia is a symbiotic relationship of mutualism. State and religion need each other. The state needs religion, for the state must be run on the basis of religious values. On the other hand, religion also needs the state, for the application of religious values requires protection and facilitation from the state.

The religious freedom in Indonesia is also protected by constitution/law. The most challenging thing for each citizen is how to balance between the rights to be a religious in one hand, and to be a nationalist at the same time.
Currently, Moderasi Beragama is regarded as a solution to balance between religious dedication and nationhood commitment of Indonesian people. In the perspective of Moderasi Beragama, to practice religion means to be a good citizen, and to be a nationalist means to be a religious. This implies that someone is not allowed to demonstratively provoke the understanding that Pancasila was against religious teachings.

Sadly to say, there are certain limited groups who provoke that paying respect to the national Flag, Merah Putih, is a polytheism (shirk), and singing the national anthem Indonesia Raya is forbidden (haram). Such understanding and various other similar ideologies is clearly against the pillars of nationality and undermined the basic foundations of Indonesia. Such excessive and extreme religious thought and attitude are serious challenge in synchronizing the nationality and religiosity in Indonesia.

There are some misunderstandings about the mission of Moderasi Beragama. Some people wrongly assume that Moderasi Beragama is part of invasion of ideas (ghazw al-fikr) to confuse, to mislead, and even to proselytize the adherents of religion, Muslim in particular. Some others misunderstood Moderasi Beragama as a government program to dissociate people from their religion, to exclude people from religion, to rupture Islamic brotherhood, or even to combat only radicalism.

Accordingly, it is important to highlight here that Moderasi Beragama does not deal with only certain religion, for extremism can be found in any religious traditions. Moderasi Beragama is also not to syncretize different religious teachings, rather to understand religious diversity, and to respect different religious interpretation. Religion itself needs no moderation, since what should be moderated is the ways how people practice religion, in order to prevent them from extremism. The last but not least thing to stress is that Moderasi Beragama is not antithesis of radicalism; the opposite of the word “moderate” is not “radical”, but “extreme” (tatharruf). So, the main idea of Moderasi Beragama is to combat religious extremism, whatever sides and forms of extremism, both “left extreme” (ultra-liberal) and “right extreme” (ultra-conservative).

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Report 2

“Islam Nusantara: To Be Political or to Be Critical? ”
Masaaki Okamoto (Kyoto University)

This presentation focused on the terms of “Nusantara Islam”（Islam Nusantara）and “Progressive Islam” (Islam Berkemajuan), each of which began to be advocated by Indonesia’s two largest Islamic social organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, in the mid-2010s. After the background of the creation of each term and respective definition is provided, I chronologically clarified how many tweets contain each of the terms. For Nusantara Islam, the geographical distribution of tweets was also elucidated. Also, through the analysis of the abstracts of master’s theses related to Nusantara Islam at the university established by NU, I explained the characteristics of the theses produced by the program.

These analyses showed us the following tendencies. First, the number of the tweets containing the word “Nusantara Islam” has been overwhelmingly more than those containing the word “progressive Islam,” and even in the case of the former, there is a noticeable downward trend at the moment compared to 2015. Second, the graduate program of the University of Islam Nusantara overemphasizes the perspective of Islam as harmoniously permeating local cultures, therefore unvisualizes the processes of the conflict and compromise between Islamic and local cultural actors, and it also lacks the critical perspectives on government-recommended projects related to Nusantara Islam.

The joint seminar was held by face-to-face (venue: Research Building No. 2, 4th Floor, Meeting Room [AA447], Kyoto University) and Zoom “hybrid format” on August 2 (Tuesday).

After the self-introduction of the participants, the first speaker TONAGA Yasushi of Kyoto University made his presentation titled “Islam Integrated with Local Societies: Is There Also ‘Japanese Islam’?” He introduced his own recent other joint researches within the framework of A. cultural coexistence, B. moderate Islam, and C. how to understand Sufism, which shall be bases for his research in this joint research. He also introduced the moderate Islam observed in Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey, which emphasizes their own cultural tradition. Here “vernacular Islam” has a positive meaning contrary to the general dichotomous understanding between “vernacularized marginal Islam,” which is nearly equal with “corrupted Islam,” and “Arab Islam,” which is nearly equal with “genuine Islam.” Then he examined the idea of “Japanese Islam” which may be equivalent with “Indonesian Islam (Islam Nusantara).” In the past there were such an idea like Ariga Bumpachiro’s “Japanese Islam (Nippon Isuramukyo)” and Abe Haruo’s “Mahayana Islam (Daijo Isuramu).” In the end he pointed out that we find nether such a claim nor the Sufism-based understanding of Islam in the contemporary Japan.

The next speaker, Hirofumi Okai, presented a report entitled “The Function and Design of Japanese Masjids: Considering ‘Multicultural Conviviality’ within and outside Religious Institutions from the Discourse on ‘Design’.”He examined the discourse surrounding the ‘desirable design’ of Japanese mosques. Through this procedure, he aimed to explore the possibility of an approach that picks up on the diverse ‘desirability’ of the design of Japanese mosques and the factors associated with these diverse ‘desirability’.
In his presentation, he first referred to the functions of European mosques, showing that some of the functions arise in relation to the wider society and that design could be seen as a part of the function.
He then provided a brief analysis of the preliminary research. “‘Multicultural coexistence’ within a religious organization” and “‘Multicultural coexistence’ outside a religious organization” (Takahashi Norihito (2015) were used as the analytical framework.
The results revealed the existence of diverse ‘desirable designs’, such as an emphasis on foreign cultures, a fusion of the cultures of origin of local Muslims, and a fusion of Japanese and Islamic cultures. It was suggested that individual ‘desirable designs’ are deeply related to individual attributes (e.g. generation, gender, roots, majority/minority in the organization etc.) and life paths. These factors also generated negotiations, tensions, exclusions, agreements etc. between members when considering the design of the mosque. The narratives also suggested that the design of the mosque and the individual’s idea of ‘desirable design’ is influenced by factors that arise in the relationship with the wider society (e.g. ideas about the role of the mosque in the local community, non-Muslim residents’ attitudes towards Islam and mosques). Based on the above, it was pointed out that through discussions on the ‘desirable’ design of mosques as conceived by individuals/groups, it may be possible to capture part of the process of the integration of Islam in Japan.

In the general discussion after the three presentations, such questions as (1) which of theoretical and material levels should be pursued with more focus, (2) how the locality of Islam should be understood in the comparison with its globality, and (3) what does the concept of something “Japanese” means, were discussed

Reference
Takahashi, Norihito, 2015, Gendai Nihon no Tabunkakyosei to Shukyo: Konngo ni Muketa Kenkyudoko no Kento, The Bulletin of Faculty of Sociology,Toyo University, 52(2), 73-85,

The First Joint Research Meeting “Religious Facilities and its Fusion with Urban Spaces: Coexistence of Mosque-gathering Muslims with Japanese Society” was held by face-to-face and Zoom “hybrid format”

Date: August 2 (Tuesday), 14:00-18:00
Venue: Research Building No. 2, 4th Floor, Meeting Room (AA447), Kyoto University

Program:
TONAGA Yasushi “Islam Integrated with Local Societies: Is There Also ‘Japanese Islam’?”

OKAI Hirofumi “Function and Appearance of al-Masjid: Thinking from the History of Establishment”

General Discussion

→ Report