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Muslim
Aversion to Non-Muslim Rule and the Jakarta Riots
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Originally published under the title "Violent Protests in
Indonesia Blow an Ill Will for Religious Tolerance."
Hardline
Islamists assemble around a poster reading "Ahok should be
jailed" at a protest in Jakarta on November 4.
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Violence between protesters and police in Jakarta broke out Friday
night, November 4, 2016, when an estimated 200,000 Muslims emerged from
Friday prayers in mosques to rally outside the Indonesian president's
palace. Clashes with police led to tear gas being used on demonstrators,
and Indonesia's president, Joko Widodo, had to postpone his planned visit
to Australia to deal with the crisis.
The crowd was calling for the arrest of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known
as Ahok, the ethnic Chinese Christian governor of Jakarta, which is
Indonesia's capital and the largest city in the world's fourth most
populous nation.
A video had gone viral showing Ahok referring in a speech to chapter
5, verse 51 of the Qur'an. He warned his listeners not to give credence
to those who might try to deceive them with this verse or others like it.
Ahok has faced criticism before from hardline Muslims, who objected
when he stood as deputy governor of Jakarta in 2012. Yet Ahok is very
popular, and seems set to win the next gubernatorial election in February
2017. He previously took office as governor in 2014 after Joko Widodo
resigned his position as Jarkarta mayor to take up the presidency of the
nation.
Muslims opposed to Ahok had been citing verse 5:51 from the Qur'an to
try to delegitimize his candidacy. The verse reads:
You who believe! Do not take the
Jews and Christians as allies. They are allies of each other. Whoever of
you takes them as allies is already one of them. Surely Allah does not
guide the people who are evildoers. (5:51)
The word translated here as allies (Arabic) awliya, is
ambiguous. It can mean "allies," but also "patrons"
or "guardians." The rejection of dependence upon disbelievers
is emphasized repeatedly in the Qur'an (e.g. in verses 3:28 and 4:141,
144). In Indonesian translations of the verse 5:51 is rendered "do
not take Jews and Christians as your leaders (pemimpin-pemimpinmu)."
Ibn Kathir, an authoritative medieval commentator on the Qur'an,
explained this verse as follows:
Allah forbids his believing servants
from having Jews and Christians as allies or patrons, because they are
the enemies of Islam and its people, may Allah curse them.
The immediately preceding verse, 5:50, urges Muslims not to seek the
"judgment of the time of ignorance." In explaining this, Ibn
Kathir denounces anyone who follows man-made laws instead of laws
revealed by Allah. Such a person:
is a disbeliever who deserves to be
fought against (i.e. to be killed), until he reverts to Allah's and His
Messenger's decisions, so that no law, minor or major, is referred to
except by His Law.
Ibn Kathir is insisting that the only valid form of legislation is the
Islamic sharia, that only Muslims can rule, and any Muslim who looks to
non-Muslims for political or legal direction is an infidel.
According to verse 5:51, such a person is already "one of
them": in other words, they have to be considered an infidel too,
and have apostatized from Islam, for which the penalty is death.
The admonition to Muslims not to take non-Muslims, and especially
Christians or Jews, as allies or leaders is orthodox, mainstream Islamic
teaching.
In the light of this, it is disappointing that the Australian Age
newspaper's Indonesian correspondent, Jewel Topsfield, offers the
following gloss:
Some interpret [verse 5:51] as
prohibiting Muslims from living under the leadership of a non-Muslim.
Others say the scripture should be understood in its context — a time of
war — and not interpreted literally.
It may be true that a few contemporary moderate voices may say this
verse should not be taken literally, but this is certainly not the
mainstream view of centuries of Islamic jurisprudence.
The Muslim aversion to non-Muslim political leadership has many
outworkings around the world.
In Egypt, Christians make up around 10% of the population, but less
than 1.5% of the parliament is Christian. For decades there had been no
Christian governors for any of Egypt's 27 governorates, until Mubarak
appointed Major General Emad Mikhail as governor over Qena.
Tens
of thousands of Egyptians responded to a call by Islamist groups for a
rally in Qena against Christian governor Emad Mikhail in April 2011.
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However, massive protests broke out after imams preached sermons in
Qena mosques teaching that God does not permit Christians to have
authority over Muslims. Demonstrators marched the streets crying, "A
Muslim governor in a Muslim country" and "There is no god but
Allah and Christians are the enemies of Allah." The protests led to
the governor's appointment being temporarily suspended in order to
reestablish the order.
Ahok's position is difficult. Since his opponents were unable to
discredit him politically for being a Christian, they are now upping the
ante by accusing him of blasphemy instead, demanding that the state
launch legal proceedings against him. In Ahok's speech, he had brushed
aside those who were citing 5:51 against him, saying they were telling
lies. In fact, he made no comment on the Qur'an itself, apart from
implying that a particular interpretation was false. His offense was to
criticize the misuse of the text by others for political purposes. Yet
this gave enough leeway for a vast crowd to be inflamed against him.
There is a famous hadith or tradition of Muhammad, which
states:
Whoever sees an evil, let him change
it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then with his tongue;
and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart — and that is the
weakest of faith.
This is interpreted by many to mean that a Muslim must use the highest
level of force available to remove something evil. The protesters in
Jakarta were exercising their religious duty by speaking out against a
Christian being in political authority over a 95% Muslim city, using his
alleged blasphemy as a trigger point. Some went further than just words,
threatening action "with the hand": former terrorist Nasir
Abas, turned police consultant, carried a sign saying "Punish Ahok
or our bullets will."
Pakistani
Imam Maulana Yusuf Qureshi (left) offered $6,000 to anyone who would
murder Asia Bibi (right) for alleged blasphemy in 2010.
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The phenomenon of Muslims taking political or legal processes into
their own hands is widespread. An example was the offer made by Pakistani
Imam Maulana Yusuf Qureshi of a bounty of $6,000 to anyone who would
murder Asia Bibi, a young Christian woman on death row for a trumped-up
blasphemy offense. Recently Muslim activists have been conducting mass
public protests across Pakistan calling for Bibi to be lynched. "It
will be a war if accursed Asia escapes," said Mukhtar, one of the
protesters in Lahore.
Another example comes from the UK in 2009, when Geert Wilders was
invited to a private meeting at the House of Lords in London. In response
Lord Nazir Ahmed, a Muslim peer, threatened to personally mobilize 10,000
Muslim protesters to physically prevent Wilders from entering the House.
Muslims taking the law into their own hands to act against non-Muslims
who rise to high political office is not a new phenomenon. Egypt's only
Christian Prime Minister was Boutros Ghali, who served from 1908. He was
the grandfather of the former UN Secretary General, Boutros
Boutros-Ghali. He was assassinated in 1910 by a European-educated
Egyptian Muslim, Ibrahim Nassif Boutros Ghali -Wardani.
An example from further back in history was the crucifixion of Joseph
Ibn Naghrela, vizier of Granada, by a Muslim mob in 1066, as well as a
pogrom against the Jewish population. Although Joseph had been appointed
to his high office by a Muslim king, Badis al-Muzaffar, local Muslims
resented having a Jew in authority over them. The Muslim jurist Abu Ishaq
wrote a diatribe to incite the violence, arguing that non-Muslims' blood
was no longer protected under the terms of their covenant (of surrender),
since they had risen to a position of authority over Muslims:
Do not consider it a breach of faith
to kill them — the breach would be to let them carry on. They have
violated our covenant with them, so how can you be held guilty against
the violators? How can they have any pact when we are obscure and they
are prominent.
Indonesia is often held up as a model of a moderate Muslim-majority
nation. Its constitution is not Islamic and many Indonesian Muslims
espouse moderate views. However the global Islamist movement has
nevertheless made strong inroads in this the most populous Muslim nation.
Undoubtedly it will be a landmark test for Indonesia's tolerance whether
Ahok is permitted to continue in office. Those Muslims who are raising
both their voices and their hands to protest against him will not be
easily silenced.
This outbreak of intolerance bodes ill for Indonesia's future.
Governor Ahok is being supported by significant Muslim leaders. GP Ansor,
the former chairman of the largest Indonesian Youth organization called
the complaints a "hoax," and politician Nusron Wahid stated
that Ahok had said nothing to insult Islam. For his part, Governor Ahok
has apologized to Muslims, saying, "To Muslims who felt insulted, I
apologize. I had no intention to insult Islam." He stated that
"Religion is a very personal matter and should not be mixed up with
public discourse." However his Muslim opponents clearly hold a
different view about the place of Islam in public life!
Ahok is being questioned this week by the police, pending a possible
charge of blasphemy. The thought that an Indonesian court might find Ahok
guilty of such a charge is troubling. To do so would require proof that
Ahok intended to incite hatred against Muslims, defame Islam or incite
apostasy. The prosecution might argue that in pooh-poohing the legitimate
and well-established Islamic prohibition against non-Muslims taking
authority over Muslims, he was denigrating the religion. Even if no
charges are laid, Ahok will certainly come under very great political pressure
to withdraw his candidacy.
In Indonesia today it is apparently unacceptable to some Muslims that
a prominent Christian might express an opinion about what the Qur'an
says. Yet the same Muslims claim the right to stridently disallow this
Christian candidacy for political office, based on the very same Quranic
passage.
Does Islamic sharia permit
non-Muslims to live alongside Muslims as equals?
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This is supremacist reasoning, which incites hatred while denying the
object of hatred any voice in the matter. If this intolerance is given
credence by the Indonesian police and courts, it bodes very ill indeed
for the nation's future.
Yet the greater concern is a question for us all: Does the Islamic
sharia permit non-Muslims to live alongside Muslims as equals in one
world? This is a crucial question, not just for Indonesia, but for
Europe, for America, indeed for every nation with more than a tiny
minority of Muslim citizens. According to the hundreds of thousands
protesting in the streets of Jakarta this week, the answer to this
question is a resolute and loud "No!"
Mark Durie is the pastor of an
Anglican church, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and
Founder of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness.
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