INDONESIAN ISLAM AND NAHDLATUL ULAMA WITHOUT CAMOUFLAGE

Robert Small's American Thinker essay on the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Indonesian Islam (“The True Story of Moderate Islam”¹) reads more like a “Just So Story”² than a “True Story.”

As per article 2 of the founding NU Statutes of 1926, the goals of this association were,

To uphold one of the schools of (Islamic) law of the four Imams, Imam Muhammad bin Idris As-Shafi, Imam Malik bin Anas, Imam Abu Hanifa or Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal—and to do everything beneficial to Islam.³

A 1952 “update” of these founding principles reiterated these goals:

To uphold the law of Islam, in accordance with one of the four schools of

law: Shafii, Maliki, Hanafi, and Hanbali

To bring about the application of the precepts of Islam in society⁴

The contemporary Netherlands scholar of Indonesian Islam, J.

Over against the modernists (ahli bidah), they (i.e., the NU) liked to call themselves the ahli sunnah wal djamaah, that is, the people who keep to the sunna (usage) of the Prophet, in community with the one great umma or djamaa, in short the orthodox.. [A]ccording to article 1 of the by-laws of the NU, membership was dependent on the recognition of the authority of one of the four schools of law. This meant that the reformists or modernists who advocated a return to the Qur’an and Tradition in order to study these sources in an independent way (the so-called “new idjtihad”) could strictly speaking not become members of the NU.⁵

Indeed the NU played a major role in the religious incitement of the mass killings of at least one hundred thousand non-Muslim ethnic Chinese—all of whom were deliberately conflated with Communist insurgents during the mid-1960s.

This religious duty is not only recommended, but obligatory, even an individual obligation.. And because this action and this struggle must be carried out by consolidating all our strength—mental, physical, and material—therefore this action and this struggle are nothing less than a HOLY WAR (JIHAD) [caps in original]. This Holy War, according to religious law, is not (only) recommended, but obligatory.⁷

Events of the intervening decades, since 1965, which included a period of direct governance of Indonesia by Robert Small's much-ballyhooed Abdurrahman Wahid,⁸ provide no evidence that he, or the NU, were successful “moderating” influences:

• During the mid to late 1970s, a frankly genocidal jihad was waged by the Indonesian government against the Christians of East Timor, leaving hundreds of thousands dead.⁹ And even after the brutal massacres of the 1970s, Bishop Belo, then East Timorese Apostolic administrator, provided these observations about “tolerant” Indonesian Islam during a September 8, 1993, interview— prior to the eventual independence of East Timor from Indonesian Muslim military occupation (which East Timor achieved, advancing from self­rule in 1999, to full sovereign status in 2002):

Q—Have you tried complaining about this lack of freedom for Church activities?

Bishop Belo—This [i.e., Indonesia supposedly promoting religious freedom] is the theory, but in practice it is very difficult because they are intent on Islamization. I heard yesterday that there are about 400 [East Timorese] boys [who have been] taken to Java to attend the Islamic centers of studies..

• Moreover, for at least the past decade, there have been intermittent Indonesian jihadist pogroms against the Christians of the Moluccas which have also killed thousands.¹¹

• The Indonesian government released the jihadist leader Bashir after a trivial sentence despite his role in the Bali bombings. This popular Muslim thug wants Indonesia to become, officially, a theocratic “Allah-cracy.” Moreover, during a state- sanctioned visit to Indonesia, Iranian president Ahmadinejad was welcomed by throngs of adoring Muslim Indonesian college students.¹²

• World Opinion Dynamics/University of Maryland polling data collected late 2006/early 2007 revealed that about 50 percent of the Indonesians surveyed desired both strict application the sharia and the (re-)creation of a global Islamic Caliphate.¹³

• The female genital-mutilation rate among Indonesian women persists at well over 90 percent in Indonesia (97 percent in Jakarta according to a 2001 UN report), and the NU opposes the banning of this misogynistic barbarity.¹⁴

And for some five centuries ongoing, Aceh has been a hotbed of irredentist jihadism. Here is what the great Dutch scholar C. Snouck Hurgronje (who lived in Aceh and was a sympathetic, but thoroughly honest student of Acehnese culture) wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century (1906) about Aceh:

From Mohammedanism (which for centuries she [i.e., Aceh] is reputed to have accepted) she really only learnt a large number of dogmas relating to hatred of the infidel without any of their mitigating concomitants; so the Acehnese made a regular business of piracy and man­hunting at the expense of the neighboring non­Mohammedan countries and islands, and considered that they were justified in any act of treachery or violence to European (and latterly to American) traders who came in search of pepper, the staple product of the country.

Finally with regard to Indonesia, in present-day Aceh, where sharia law officially prevails, during September 2006, Muslim mobs razed a church in response to a forged (i.e., by a Muslim) advertisement inviting Muslims to a Christian revival service. Here is a published account of what transpired:

Witnesses said there were over 100 [Muslim] men present, many of them carrying swords. The mob poured gasoline over the building and set fire to it; they also attempted to burn a second building that was used as a church kindergarten. Some of the attackers came looking for Saragih and Netty at their home, which is nearby. The couple escaped into the nearby jungle and stayed hidden in the undergrowth. Many thought the couple had been consumed in the flames of the church buildings, but a friend found them at around 4 a.m. Christians in a neighboring province have provided shelter for Saragih [the pastor of the Mission Church which was attacked] and his wife, following reports that local police and Muslim leaders are still searching for the couple. It is uncertain when—or if—they will be free to return home.¹⁶

Despite Robert Small's uninformed and heavily redacted apologetics,¹⁷ Indonesia's living legacy of Islam is hardly an advertisement for the so-called peace-loving efforts of the NU.

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