Indonesia’s Progressive Form of Islam Is Not Something That Thailand Needs to Fear

For too long, Muslims in the Middle East, both the Arabs and the Persians, have dominated the international scene in defining what Islam is and what Islam should be.

As the world's largest Muslim country and a key member in Asean, Indonesia needs to reconsider its place in the international arena and strive to live up to its full potential.

Observers say Indonesia, which embraces a more progressive form of Islam, should play a more active role in Muslim communities in Southeast Asia.

While some see it as a moral obligation that Indonesia has for other fellow Muslims, others think it's only a matter of time and practicality before the world's largest Muslim country takes up the responsibility that comes with its sheer size and status.

Indonesia's input could help mend fences - in Malay-speaking southern Thailand, where 1,200 people have been killed since January 2004, or the southern Philippines, where decades-old separatist violence continues.

In a recent interview with The Nation, a leading Indonesian scholar of Islam, Dr Jamhari (who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name), called for more dialogue among Muslim communities within the region.

As the director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Society at the State Islamic University in Jakarta, Jamhari praised plans to open a private Indonesian Islamic school in southern Thailand.

He said that active alumni from this institution, Pondok Gontor, which has more than 200 schools across Indonesia, would help pave the way for more educational exchange, understanding and tolerance between communities and states.

Like most institutions in Indonesia, Pondok Gontor teaches a moderate form of Islam and embraces an Islamic jurisprudence that is compatible with both the Malay and Indonesian ways of life, he said.

Jamhari dismissed as a "romantic notion" that somehow Islamic scholarship in the Middle East is superior to what is available in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. He said Islam in Indonesia was very compatible with Islam in southern Thailand, and of course, people in the two regions speak a similar language.

At a seminar at Chulalongkorn University earlier this week, the rector of State Islamic University, Professor Azyumardi Azra, said Thais should be happy when Thai Muslim students choose Indonesia as a place to study, because their experience will expose them to a very progressive and liberal form of Islam. Part of this model includes a particular relationship between religion and the democratic process.

Azyumardi described the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as a "period of consolidation for Indonesia" in which the state, civil society, non-government organisations and other stakeholders are coming together as "a pillar of democracy".

Besides the push for moderation, Islam in Southeast Asia must also be understood in the context of the ongoing development of person-to-person links among Muslim communities in the region.

Because schools in Malaysia employ the Roman text, more Malaysian Muslim students are turning to traditional pondoks in southern Thailand to maintain their knowledge of yawi, the Malay language written in Arabic text.

And as Thailand begins to teach standard Bahasa Malayu in public schools, teachers from Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia can be recruited to help with instruction.

Indeed, there is no stopping person-to-person contacts, and states must learn to live with this situation - in fact, they should encourage and facilitate these arrangements.

Southeast Asian countries should understand that the political borders of their respective countries were not drawn in stone; these lines on the map are a legacy of the colonial past.

The state should also let go of the age-old fear that stronger Muslim communities in the region would somehow challenge the progress made by nation-states.

Malays in southern Thailand and Moros in the southern Philippines have taken up arms against their respective states, but, with the exception of the underground Jemaah Islamiyah organisation, there is no indication that these two regions are planning to export their fights to neighbouring countries. The fact that violence is confined to political borders suggests that both groups understand that any settlement must be reached within the nation-state.

Therefore, what is needed is freedom of movement, with the understanding that person-to-person contacts will strengthen local Muslim communities and give them a sense of pride and dignity that they enjoyed prior to the arrival of their colonial "masters".

While extra precaution is understandable in these times of trouble, officials must carry out their duties with common sense.