Current Issues in Indonesian Islam: Analysing the 2005 Council of Indonesian Ulama Fatwa No. 7 Opposing Pluralism, Liberalism and Secularism

Indonesia’s highest council of ulama, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) recently issued a controversial fatwa opposing pluralism, liberalism and religious secularism that seemed at odds with traditions of Indonesian Islamic thought. The paper argues that this fatwa was a predictable if clumsy, attempt by the MUI to further demarcate a role more aligned to developments within the Indonesian umma that followed the demise of President Suharto in 1998. Through an analysis of both the recent developments in Indonesian Islamic thought and the wider societal efflorescence in Indonesia post-Suharto, the paper demonstrates that the MUI fatwa came about as the result of three interrelated factors: firstly, an effort by the MUI to redefine its role in a rapidly changing environment, secondly, an attempt to arrest the slide in relevance that the MUI were experiencing, and thirdly, as a fatwa born of the frustration with a quarter century of the dominance of neo-modernist Islamic thought in Indonesia. In the conclusion the paper notes that MUI’s challenge for greater legitimacy will continue into the future, given that Indonesia remains, in John Bowen’s terms, a nation ‘criss-crossed’ by competing claims about how people ought to live and what kind of society Indonesia ought to become.