Islam’s middle path Ummah Wasat has fostered moderate and democratic Indonesia that embraces social, cultural, and religious pluralism rooted in Muslim heritage best represented by the Quran’s emphasis on diversity, tolerance, and mutual recognition
Orientalist stereotypes, tropes, and generalizations dominate the discourse surrounding Islam, democracy, and pluralism. It is perhaps partly why Indonesia hardly ever features in such a discourse. Far from being incompatible, Indonesia exemplifies how Islam, democracy, and pluralism can coexist. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, is also one of the most religiously and culturally diverse countries. With over 17,000 islands, 500 languages, and multiple religions, Indonesians are bound together by the founding philosophy, Pancasila, which complements Islamic concepts such as Ummah Wasat or Ummatan Wasatan.
The term ummatan wasatan comes from the Quran (2:143) and literally means ‘the middle community.’ It conveys the idea of a moderate, balanced community with universal and inclusive characteristics. In Indonesia, wasatiyah (religious moderation) is among the government’s key priorities. The Indonesian government promotes it among prospective brides and grooms through premarital counseling programs, activists, students, teachers, and religious leaders. The methodology of Islamic studies in Indonesia has a special emphasis on critical thinking, mysticism, Islamic cultural history, and reform. In 2009, Gagasan 1Malaysia (1Malaysia Concept) was introduced in neighbouring Malaysia to foster harmony based on wasatiyyah for mutual respect, acceptance, and social justice in a multi-ethnic country.
Pancasila: The Foundation of Indonesia’s Religious Pluralism
For Boston University professor Robert W Hefner, whose research has focused on the politics and ethics of pluralist co-existence in the Muslim-majority world, a few areas of the non-Western world illustrate the legacy of cultural pluralism in a manner more striking than in Southeast Asia. Indonesia best represents Hefner’s description of Southeast Asia, home to about 25% of the world’s Muslims, often described as the Muslim archipelago.
As many as 87.21% of Indonesians are Muslims, 6.04% Protestants, 3.58% Catholics, and 1.83% Hindus. They speak over 525 languages and dialects, but largely live in peaceful coexistence. Pancasila, comprising five principles including humanism, democracy, and social justice, was enshrined in the Indonesian Constitution in 1945 to institutionalize this coexistence. Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, proposed Pancasila. Muslim leaders accepted its compatibility with Islamic teachings. Secular nationalists, too, backed it for the country, which has almost as many Muslims as in the Middle East and North Africa combined. The world’s largest Hindu sculpture and Buddhist temple (Borobudur) are in Indonesia. A statue of the Hindu Goddess Saraswati stands outside the Indonesian embassy in Washington, honouring the Indonesian Hindu minority.
In an influential paper on Islam and pluralism, Indonesian public intellectual Azyumardi Azra (1955-2022) called acceptance of Pancasila one of the most important illustrations of the Islamic roots of pluralism in Indonesia. He wrote that Pancasila is in line with the Quran, which says: ‘O the people of the Book [ahl al-kitab; the Jews and Christians]; come to common terms between you and us; that we worship none but God, that we associate partners with him, that we erect not, from ourselves, lords and patrons, other than God…’
Quranic Foundations of Religious Pluralism
Azra, who taught history at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta, underlined that the Quran speaks positively of the diversity of tribes, sects, nations, peoples, races, and languages. He argued the Quran acknowledges the natural differences in human intellectual and physical capabilities and views different ways of living as a natural and even divine aspect of creation.
Azra wrote that the Quran does not call for a forcible unification. He cites Quranic verses offering a distinctly modern perspective on tolerance, pluralism, and mutual recognition in a multiethnic, multicultural, and multi-community world. For instance, the Quran says: ‘To each among you, We have ordained a law and assigned a path. Had God pleased, He could have made you one nation, but His will is to test you by what He has given you; so compete in goodness.’ Another verse emphasizes: ‘Had your Lord willed, He would have made mankind one nation, but they will not cease differing.’
Azra cited another verse emphasizing pluralism: ‘O mankind, We created you from a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another.’ He added that pluralism among Muslims is also related to their different historical, social, cultural, political, and economic conditions.
Islamic Pluralism: From the Medina Charter to Pancasila
Azra cited at least eight cultural realms of the Muslim world with distinctive cultures—Arab, Persian, Turkic, Sudanic (Africa), the Indian subcontinent, Malay-Indonesian, Sino-Islamic, and Western— and wrote that they reflect pluralism. He argued that Muslims are not monolithic, as they are often portrayed, and pluralism is a fact of life for them.
Indonesian diplomat-politician Adam Malik (1917–1984) likened Pancasila to the modus vivendi the Prophet Muhammad established through Mithaq al-Madinah, or the Medina Charter, in the seventh century. He called the charter a formula for a state based on social and religious pluralism. The charter recognised all groups of Medina, including Jews, as one nation (ummah) together with Muslims, with the same rights and duties.
For American sociologist Robert N Bellah, the state of Medina is the root of Islamic modernity and pluralism. Bellah argued that Islam in the seventh century was ‘remarkably modern’ for its time and place, ‘in the high degree of commitment, involvement, and participation expected from the rank-and-file members of the community’. He wrote that Pancasila was part of an effort by modern Indonesian Muslims to depict the early community as the very type of equalitarian participant nationalism, which is by no means entirely an unhistorical ideological participation.
Indonesia, Islam, and Promotion of Democracy and Pluralism
Azra wrote that it is reasonable to expect that Islam, as the single largest religion in Indonesia, and Muslims have played a greater and more positive role in the development and enhancement of a democratic and multicultural Indonesia. He linked it to the Indonesian experience with Ummah Wasat, which Muslims in Southeast Asia have long adopted.
Civil society organizations Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah have nurtured the moderate path. A bulk of Indonesians are associated with these organizations that have played a key role in promoting Indonesian pluralism, democracy, human rights, justice, gender equality, modernity, and democracy. These organisations have been in constant dialogue with Christian and other non-Muslim organisations locally and at the international level against the backdrop of increased conflict post-9/11 attacks and the wars that followed.
Scholars such as Azra have suggested recognition of social, cultural, and religious pluralism among peoples and nations, which Islam recognises, as a way forward. The recognition could advance inclusiveness among competing claims to religious truth in religiously and culturally heterogeneous societies. George Mason University professor Aziz Sachedina has emphasized that recognition of religious pluralism encourages active engagement rather than simple tolerance. Religious pluralism has the potential to foster social pluralism for people of diverse religious backgrounds to become a community of global citizens.
While the Koran may not call for forcible unification, most expansive religions have, over the centuries, indeed forcibly changed rulers. In the case of Indonesia, Kutai Kartanegara Muslim rulers had overthrown the Kutai Martadipura Hindu Kingdom in the 17th century.
I considerably agree with the example of ummah wasat; however, even in Indonesia, there is the strident difference in the practice of Islam in Aceh; as well as over 100 sects within the approved faiths throughout the provinces, belated acceptance of aliran kepercayaan, and continuing resistance from certain subnational governments to some of the Pancasila elements. Thus I would say that while it is nonetheless a valuable concept, it remains a work in progress.
That said, I concur that inclusiveness, religious acceptance and pluralism are ideal. We should also admit that many religions have adherents who dislike or provoke those of other faiths, or are imbued with the need for aggression versus others. From this perspective, it seems improper to single out the current horrendous events in Israel and Gaza, when there have been and continue to be dozens of other catastrophes on most continents about which relatively little is discussed in the news.