Challenge on Demoralization and secularization in modern era (religious vs secular peacebuilding)
By Hatib Abdul Kadir
The idea of secularization in Indonesia faced with many challenging, that came from since in the beginning of the establishment of this country. There were several insurgents, for example, DI/TII that lead by Kartosuwirjo, since the rejection of Jakarta Charter by some nationalists and religious liberalists. The military had slowly expanded its power to doing battle against to what it called forces of the “extreme right”. The regional rebellions of the late 1950 had allowed the armed to forces to purge themselves of officers shympathetic to Islamic causes.
They assume that the separation between religion and state is not known in Islamic values. It is a Christian notion and Western tradition that separated between religion, state, and governmental system. For DI/TII the notion of secularization is equal to the individual freedom, capitalism, Christian enlightenment, and westernization. Kartosuwirjo did not agree with the people like Sjahrir. For Kartosuwirjo people like Syahrir has the rationality and negotiable self interest that required religious ideology be removed from public politics so as to become very private. Muhammad Natsir, also enforces the idea of Islamic state. He had skillfully argued that Islam has their own meaning of the democracy. He emphasized that Islamic democracy could not allow everything to be subject to the will of the people, because the ultimate sovereignty just lies with God, and the ethical imperatives provided by God in Shariah that must take precedence over man-made legislation.
Since the Old Order, the islamists who want to enforce Negara Islam has many troubles with the legal government. Therefore, to prevent the usurpations, secularization also conducted by the New Order regime. This regime assaulted on the party system and effort to depoliticize Islam. President of Soeharto also restricted some Islamic parties to fuse to one party that is Partai Persatuan Pembangunan. In the early New Order’s policy on Islam was buffeted by contrary winds. In the next chapter, the period from 1973 to 1985 was the low point in Muslim-government relations.
The different ideas between secularization and Islamic state have happened since this country was established. For some fundamentalist Islam, secularization cannot solve the entire problem in this world. Economic crises that occurred in 1997-1998 was considered as the failure of the secularization. To make it real, several Islamic organizations like Hizbut Tahrir, Majelis Mujahiddin and Islamic political party like Partai Keadilan try to establish the Islamic state. This organization, actually do the democratic way to go their aim. Nevertheless, there is also some individuals and organizations that try to do terror to establish an Islamic State. We can see in the Bali bombing that happened in 2002, a bombing in the Australian Embassy in Central Jakarta and Marriot Hotel in South Jakarta. In these terrorists mind, they are living in the wartime. They assume that their life is like in Muhammad Era, when he lived in Mecca, try to abolish, diminished, and eradicated Kaum Jahilliyah through the force way. Therefore they do the aggression to the people that assumed have no moral, secular and non-Muslim.
The notion of secularization has almost failed to be implemented in several Muslim developing countries, like Indonesia. After reformation 1998 (step down of Soeharto), some Islam radical groups criticized the idea of democratization for more than 50 year, since the independent of Indonesia. Islam as the religion cannot be depoliticized, since this religion assumes that has the values and systems to rule the daily activities, trading, social interaction, and political interests. Therefore, the idea of Islam cannot be domesticated, just in private sphere. Islam must be at the center of social life.
There have been many riots and rebellions because of the difference ideas, whether enforce the Islamic state or keep on the democratic track that is secularization. These occurrences mean that the notion of secularization sometimes does not compatible with the religious background in Muslim developing country, for instance Indonesia. The idea of democracy and secularization just fixed the Western societies, who have the Christian background as the dominant adherent.
