Religion in Nation-State Architecture
There is a simple question, but it is not easy to answer: how to explain the correlation between the strong role of religion on the one hand and the low quality of public life on the other hand?
This question is not only relevant for Indonesia, but has also become a phenomenon in many countries where the majority of its citizens consider the role of religion in the public sphere important but do not have a good quality of life.
Referring to the Pew Research Center survey results (2020), Indonesia, along with the Philippines, ranked as the highest as a country where the majority of the population (96 percent) place religion as an important factor in public life. This is followed by Kenya (95 percent), Nigeria (93 percent), South Africa (84 percent), Tunisia (84 percent), Brazil (84 percent).
In the middle position, there are Mexico (55 percent), Argentina (55 percent), Ukraine (50 percent), Bulgaria (50 percent), Greece (53 percent), the United States (44 percent), Israel (48 percent), South Korea (45 percent) and Slovakia (45 percent). The bottom position is occupied by a number of developed countries, which are secular, such as Sweden (9 percent), United Kingdom (20 percent), France (15 percent), Australia (19 percent), Netherlands (22 percent), Germany (37 percent), Japan (39 percent), Spain (22 percent), Canada (26 percent) and so on.
Not yet contributing
What can we get from the data above? First, it turns out that there is no correlation between the level of progress of a country and the strength or weakness of the role of religion in the country in question.
Except for the US, which is in the middle position, almost all secular countries dominate the list of developed countries. With this data, secular countries become more confident in their decision to remove religion from the public sphere.
Yet this data could be used as a weapon to "scapegoat" religion as a hindering factor for the progress of a nation.
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> Freedom and Religious Maturity
Just take a number of national development indicators, such as the corruption perception index. Referring to the results of the Transparency International 2022 survey, Indonesia and Brazil ranked 96th out of 180 countries. The Philippines was ranked 117th, Kenya 128th, Nigeria 154th, South Africa and Tunisia – still better – at 70th. At the top were a number of secular-developed countries, such as Denmark, Finland, New Zealand (all three were ranked first), Sweden at fourth, the UK 11th, France 22nd, Australia 18th and Canada 13th.
What about development in other sectors such as the human development index? Based on data released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), again, religious countries rank in the bottom-middle positions of a total of 191 countries; Indonesia is ranked 114th, Philippines 116th, Kenya 152th, Nigeria 189th and so on. On the other hand, again, a number of secular countries topped the ranking: Switzerland at no. one, Norway ranked second, Iceland third, Australia fifth, Denmark sixth, Sweden seventh, Germany ninth and the Netherlands 10th. A number of countries controlled by totalitarian regimes even rank at the bottom, such as Afghanistan 180th and South Sudan 191th.
The data above only concerns two indicators of nation-building, excluding other indicators such as the happiness index, life expectancy, malnutrition and longevity, maternal mortality rates, early marriage and so on. If we examine it more closely, the results will reinforce the assumption that religion does not give a maximum contribution in boosting the quality index of public life. Unlike in many secular countries, religion in these countries still struggles with various problems of decadence in public life.
The only sector of public life that gets a lot of religious touch is politics. However, the touch of religion here works more at the symbolic level than the substantive. As a result, religion is used as a political tool to win elections. This is where identity politics is widely exploited by political brokers to win electoral battles.
According to Indonesian Political Indicator data, 59.1 percent of our voters considered religion an important factor in the 2019 election. In the 2017 Jakarta regional elections, the use of religion as an electoral political weapon was even more "lethal". The 212 Movement was the product. This movement succeeded in gathering up to 500,000 people at the Monas square. The excesses of the regional elections continued in the 2019 presidential election, which also divided society on the basis of religious identity.
Dichotomous narrative
Besides the absence of a link between religion and public life, the second factor is the strong dichotomous narrative in our society that religion only deals with worship and the afterlife – that religion has nothing to do with worldly life. The strength of this kind of dichotomous narrative seems to emphasize Indonesia's secularity, at least isolating religion from public affairs.
In this context, religion is forced to be aware of its position so as not to intervene in various public policies, such as improving nutrition, reducing health and poverty, mitigating disasters and especially sports and the arts!
Religion is considered to have no relevance and authority to solve various national problems. Religion can only "play" in the private space of citizens of the nation, such as worship, marriage-divorce, inheritance disputes and the like.
The problem is that Indonesia is a religious country where the majority of the population (87 percent) adheres to Islam. How is it possible that the religion embraced by the majority of its citizens is left idle in improving the quality of life of the nation-state? Why is religion allowed to only take care of private and ukhrawi (afterlife)? This is an absurd way of thinking that must end if we do not want religion to be only a symbolic entity in the midst of the complexities of nation-state life.
Also read:
> Freedom and Religious Maturity
Of course, secularism as the path of many developed countries is not the right choice for countries that adhere to this "no-nonsense state" principle. The choice is to make religion relevant so that it becomes an important contributor in improving public life. The way is to explore the transformative energy of religious values that are in line with public policy issues such as health and nutrition improvement, human development, economy, happiness and welfare (state of well-being) and the like.
On the other hand, we need to reduce the involvement of religion in the world of practical politics. We must become an intelligent nation to learn from the experience of when religion was dragged too far into practical politics. Our society has become sensitive, easily provoked by trivial things and trapped in the fragmentation of identity politics and hatred. What should be further developed from the involvement of religion in the political world is the politics of democracy, nationality, statehood and humanity. Beyond that, practical religious and political narratives have proven to be very toxic to our society. The productive energy of religion is wasted.
Road map
In order for religion to be able to relate itself to the needs of the nation, there is no other choice but to reposition religion as an enabling factor for social transformation to occur (Muslim Abdurrahman, Transformative Islam, 1995). This nation is lucky to have the Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, which are helping with national development programs. However, both of these organizations have limitations in accessing and executing social transformation programs due to regulatory issues and public policy nomenclature.
What the two largest mass organizations actually do is to translate and convert religious norms or doctrines in the form of empowerment programs in various fields; social, education, health, economy and so on. In the future, empowerment work needs to be justified by more extensive and authoritative religious interpretations.
The Family Planning Program (KB) during the New Order era was actually one of the best examples of the relevance of religion to nation-state development. Through reciprocal synergy between government agencies (BKKBN) and a number of community leaders and religious leaders (MUI), the family planning program could be properly disseminated to the public.
Taking the fire of Islam, not its ashes, to do transformative and empowering works.
Unfortunately, the involvement of religion in the family planning program was seen as the use of religion for New Order political interests. Apart from that, there were a number of internal parties who reject the family planning policy on the pretext of religion (too!).
In this context, a measurable and structured road map is needed on the involvement of religion in the development of a number of public policies. Our ministries can identify programs that have strong overtones with religion in order to accelerate the achievement of these programs. Of course, the Religious Affairs Ministry has the potential to become a leading sector for orchestrating transformative work.
If religion is still considered to be relevant to improving the quality of public life, we must take its transformative energy, not its symbolic politics. This is what Sir Muhammad Iqbal wanted in his work which has become a classic, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1989), as taking the fire of Islam, not its ashes, to do transformative and empowering works.
MASDAR HILMY
Masdar Hilmy, professor and postgraduate director at the State Islamic University (UIN) of Sunan Ampel Surabaya
This article was translated by Hendarsyah Tarmizi.
