International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 188
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
The FIQH Paradigm and the Moderate Theory of Secularization:
Abdurrahman Wahid on Islam, Democracy and the Republic of Indonesia
Saefur Rochmat
Biodata: Saefur Rochmat is a lecturer at the History Department of the Faculty of Social
Sciences, Yogyakarta State University (UNY). His research interests are Islamic groups and
parties, religious studies, and Indonesian politic. His contact email is [email protected].
Abstract
This paper examines Abdurrahman Wahid’s thought on the interface of Islam and the
Republic of Indonesia, culminating in his affirmation of the liberal democracy. It was to
resolve antagonism between the followers of the secular and Islamic aspirations by
persuading them to accept liberal democracy as the common issue to deal with. By so doing,
he developed a political approach, concerned more with the democratic relationship
between the ruler and the people, rather than with an Islamic state. Indeed, he has
departed from a legal formal approach advocated by the followers of Islamic ideological
paradigm and argues that democracy is a kind of quasi-norm which should be respected by
both the regime and the people, namely Muslims. In this regard, he has developed the Fiqh
paradigm adopted by Nahdlatul ulama (NU) which has justified the existence of the
Republic of Indonesia. By doing so, he was able to provide a counter discourse to the
monolithic interpretation of Pancasila by the autocratic Soeharto regime which had tried to
marginalize the role of NU.
Key words: Abdurrahman Wahid, Islam, liberal democracy, quasi-norm, and Indonesia.
Introduction
Abdurrahman Wahid developed his religious political thought in the context of an autocratic
Soeharto regime with the obsession of supporting the establishment of a democratic state
in Indonesia, considered as the implementation of the principles of syuro (deliberation). As a
traditionalist Muslim, he understood that the earlier traditionalist Muslim leaders such as
from NU, Perti, and Jami’atul Wasyilah, had supported the establishment of the Republic of
Indonesia as the political reality, and he evaluated that they had failed to halt the rise of
autocratic regimes, namely the old and new order regimes, because they were not able to
develop cooperation with the secular nationalists who tended to support the regimes
because of ideological preference. It was not surprising that the traditionalist Muslims and
the secular nationalists came from different knowledge systems. In this regard, Wahid, by
means of the Fiqh paradigm, tried to incorporate a modern knowledge system in order to
provide the traditionalist Muslims with the philosophical foundation of a modern political
system. By so doing, the traditionalist Muslims would be able to develop cooperation with
the secular nationalists for the purpose of controlling the regime in order to run the state
democratically. In other words, Wahid’s thought of liberal democracy was designed as a
188 | P a g e