Indonesia’s Moderate Islam is Slowly Crumbling

Krithika Varagur, foreignpolicy.com [original article contains links]

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Excerpt:

In the struggle against Islamic extremism, few groups have been fighting for longer than Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the Sunni organization that has become the global face of Indonesia’s pluralistic Islam. Founded in 1926 to prevent Saudi Arabia’s bitterly intolerant Wahhabism from taking root in Indonesia, it’s a cultural touchstone for Indonesians proud of their heritage of religious tolerance — and a symbol of moderate Islam worldwide. ...

But NU’s work seems to be collapsing at home. The national conversation of the last five months has been monopolized by a far-right Islamist group called the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). FPI has around 200,000 members; NU — somewhat dubiously — claims 50 million worldwide. But it’s the extremists who are setting the pace in Indonesia and threatening to transform NU in the process. ...

And NU’s own efforts in the international battle against extremism may also be hampering it at home. NU’s biggest overture against Salafi encroachment was its annual congress in 2015, in which, as Margaret Scott wrote, NU leaders affirmed that “Indonesian Islam is nationalist, pluralist, moderate, and democratic … as a way to fight Salafis and Saudi influence.” The congress is part of a packed calendar of outward-facing NU meetings and conferences, which, according to French political scientist Delphine Alles, springs from NU’s unofficial role as an international ambassador for Indonesia’s moderate image. ...

Alles recounts how Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has promoted staging “international forums of inter-religious dialogue, a popular theme since the middle of the 2000s.” Indonesia’s director for information and public diplomacy has been “financially and logistically supporting” NU’s International Conference of Islamic Scholars since 2006. But it is a “notorious fact,” writes Alles, that “the declarations of intentions that these forums pronounce often leave their observers with a sense of frustration” because they fail to address any real points of contention. ...