Preparing for the Nobel Peace Prize

Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, the two largest Muslim organizations in Indonesia, were nominated on Jan. 31, 2019 by authorized parties (governments, educational institutions or past Nobel laureates) for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

It is undeniable that this comes amid domestic and international conditions that have been heating up. The government, through the Foreign Ministry, is striving for diplomatic support. We have big hopes that the efforts for the Nobel Peace Prize nomination will proceed smoothly.

Beyond the nomination of NU and Muhammadiyah, we sincerely hope that the Nobel Peace Prize will not be a mere prize. As we know, several Nobel Peace laureates have been awarded for their potentials to create peace. Former US president Barack H. Obama was bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people” – despite this being a self-fulfilling prophecy, as he was awarded the prize in his first year as US president.

Surely, many other Nobel Peace laureates have been awarded the prize for their actual contributions to world peace through their work.

Among them are Bangladesh’s Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank, who defined peace as a bottom-up socioeconomic development effort. It is in this regard that we believe NU and Muhammadiyah can make invaluable contributions to world peace.

Creative synthesis

From the perspective of contemporary Islamic movement and ideology, Indonesia’s two largest Muslim organizations are equal to the global Muslim organizations that emerged in the early 20th century.

Despite the two organizations having different intellectual roots, their founders were highly educated, whether in Java or Mecca. Muhammadiyah founder Ahmad Dahlan and NU founder Hasyim Asy’ary were both prominent men of letters in their time who continued the academic traditions of the Islamic republic that emerged in the late 16th and 17th centuries through global constellations, long before the Dutch colonial government introduced modern education to the East Indies in the late 19th century.

Intellectuals say that, without colonialism, universities in the Indonesian archipelago would have emerged from the womb of traditional pesantren (Islamic boarding schools), similar to how the Christian traditions of education and charitable donations grew into the great universities in the West today.

The separate intellectual roots of Islamic modernism and traditionalism drove Ahmad Dahlan and Hasyim Asy’ari in establishing their respective movements. One adopted the Western method; the other spent some time adjusting to the West. We also know that, in their infancy, NU and Muhammadiyah saw fierce conflict in society due to their different approaches in theology, law and state politics.

However, as time went by, the two organizations have been able to nurture creative synthesis. We can no longer view them exclusively as being purely progressive or purely traditionalist. Until the 1980s, NU was viewed as strictly traditionalist in its modernist logic. Under Abdurrahman Wahid’s leadership, however, such views eroded. Furthermore, the younger members of the two organizations generally do not represent their dated ideas.

Both organizations have a creative minority at the top that can respond to contemporary challenges.

Furthermore, beyond the leadership of the organizational structure, each has an independent culture that is generally independent of the central board.

Building synergy

Among the excellent traits of NU and Muhammadiyah is their individual resilience, which has helped them survive for around a century. Muhammadiyah has passed this milestone and NU will soon follow. Muhammadiyah used “progress” as the theme of their centennial commemoration, while NU has proposed “Islam Nusantara” (Islam for the archipelago) – a theme that has become controversial due to a deliberate misunderstanding disseminated by those who dislike the work and ideas of NU. Many hope that the two themes will be combined synergistically into “progressive-archipelagic Islam” that will hopefully benefit our lives socially and economically.

It is this synergy that must continually be active. Realizing social and economic justice in a diverse Indonesia is a daunting task. This is a concrete problem, especially among the Nahdliyin (followers of NU), most of who are smallholder farmers, laborers and traders.

Transforming them into modern workers will take a long time; on the other hand, these people have no independent means of production. If the premise is to use Muhammad Yunus as a model, then true peace can be built only by realizing justice through bottom-up socioeconomic development.

Such economic measures should be directed to curb or minimize Salafi-Wahhabi capitalist logic and movement, which combines religious piety and the urban middle-class lifestyle into a form of late capitalism. This includes the hijra phenomenon that, in recent years, has transformed into a dominant new discourse of practicing Islam among celebrities, marked by a bold and fragmented articulation of piety.

We have been warned of the dangers of two forms of fundamentalism – economic and religious – since the mid-2000s. Perhaps a combination of the two has revealed itself in recent years, infiltrating digital spaces and social media. In this way, the uninformed public are easily charmed and influenced.

NU and Muhammadiyah have a duty to work together in fostering unique modes of religiosity that remains rooted within our cultural and social traditions, but can still continue to form new ideas. If strong commitment to nationalism has become the flesh and blood of the two organizations and civil values have shaped our nation into a moderate democracy, then two challenges lie ahead.

First, in terms of “software”, the culture of progressive-archipelagic Islam must be disseminated through easily understandable language to increase the nation’s sense of inclusion, both on Java and in other islands. The spread of Salafism in the Dieng Highlands, as a prominent Yogyakartan university has studied, is proof that the influence of NU and Muhammadiyah has a short reach, even at the heart of the Javanese Islamic tradition.

The primary goal is not merely to distribute membership cards to as many people possible; rather, it should be to nurture collective values in the hearts of as many Muslims as possible.

Future dimension

Second, in terms of the more visible “hardware”, institutional cooperation should be fostered in education, health and business (alongside ecology and gender) towards becoming an independent maritime nation. Muhammadiyah is almost perfect in some of these aspects, but NU still needs time to develop, especially in the first three aspects – despite being active in them in the early years, as evidenced in eye-opening archival documents.

If these two challenges are addressed concurrently, it is not impossible that this year will be filled with not only retrospection, but also ideas for a better future for a new Indonesia that will stand as the “Emerald of the Equator”. Therefore, NU and Muhammadiyah, in their latest mission of spreading Islam as rahmatan lil alamin (blessing for all mankind), will continue to blossom in the global civilization (beyond Indonesia) while still maintaining its roots in Indonesian culture, as told in Ibrahim 14:24 of the Quran. (ZACKY KHAIRUL UMAM, PhD Candidate, Islamic History, Freie Universitaet Berlin; Associate Fellow, Abdurrahman Wahid Center for Inter-Faith Dialogue and Peace, University of Indonesia)