NU, Muhammadiyah seen as losing their influence

Bambang Muryanto     
The Jakarta Post  
Jakarta   /   Fri, January 20 2017   /  12:23 am

The two major rallies led by hard-line Islamic groups in Jakarta late last year reflected the declining influence of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, the nation’s largest Islamic organizations, among Indonesian Muslims, analysts say.

The face of Indonesian Islam has changed with the rise of hard-line groups like the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), which spearheaded the rallies on Nov. 4 and Dec. 2 that saw hundreds of thousands of Muslims fill the streets of Jakarta to demand the prosecution of the city’s governor, alleging he had committed blasphemy.

“NU and Muhammadiyah are still seen as influential organizations in the fields of education and health care, but they are no longer seen as the main reference for religious issues,” Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) researcher Ahmad Najib Burhani said during a discussion organized by the Maarif Institute at Muhammadiyah’s headquarters in Yogyakarta on Thursday.

The two organizations had failed to dissuade their followers from taking part in the sectarian rallies against Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who has been accused of insulting the Quran, Ahmad said.

Instead, NU and Muhammadiyah followers listened to the calls made by other Islamic groups, including the FPI, he added.

The fact that members of the two organizations, who have long been touted by foreign observers as the face of moderate Islam in Indonesia, lend their support to groups like the FPI and its ilk has been seen as alarming.

The rallies came following intense campaigns by the FPI against Ahok, a Christian of Chinese descent, who is seeking a new term through the Feb. 15 gubernatorial election.

Ahok had topped many surveys before he was charged with blasphemy, which he said had been orchestrated by his enemies to block his election bid.

The allegations stemmed from a comment he made during a visit to the Thousand Islands regency in September when he criticized people he said had abused a Quranic verse to prevent Muslims from electing a non-Muslim.

Ahok, who is now standing trial at the North Jakarta District Court, insisted that he did not commit blasphemy against Islam.

“The ‘Defend Islam’ rallies should be used as a yardstick to decide whether or not one has a moderate view of religion,” Ahmad said.

He argued that he had seen a trend in which Muhammadiyah and NU followers had become less moderate and more intolerant. A few years ago, he said, NU members took part in expelling minority Shia followers from Sampang, Madura. While the high-level members of Muhammadiyah championed pluralism, its grassroots members did not, he added.

The landscape of Indonesian Islam is definitely changing, Iqbal Ahnaf of the Center for Religious and Cross Cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University said, adding that the government should quickly address the issue.

Muhammadiyah executive Zuly Qodir admitted that his organization had lost its clout in the political sphere and that the hard-line groups were filling the void. As a result, it had been slow in responding to national issues and the actions of political leaders, he said.

It is hard to determine the exact number of NU and Muhammadiyah followers in the country, but the organizations often claim to have about 70 million and 40 million, respectively.

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