By Sameer Arshad Khatlani
The 1920s were one of the most consequential decades in Islamic history. Abdulaziz ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, conquered Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, in 1924. The following year, he took over Medina, the second holiest, in the run-up to Saudi Arabia’s formation in 1932. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk dissolved the Caliphate, ending what many regarded as the symbol of a unified polity for over 1,200 years, in the year Ibn Saud took over Mecca. The dissolution ended nearly 600 years of Ottoman rule over much of the Islamic World, and created what many believed was a political, theological, and civilizational vacuum.
In January 1926, heirs of the Wali Songo, or Nine Saints, credited with propagating Islam in Java, the heartland of the Indo-Malayan Archipelago (modern-day Indonesia), established Nahdlatul Ulama (The Awakening of Islamic Scholars), or NU, in response to the two consequential events in the Muslim world in that decade—Ibn Saud’s conquest of Islam’s holiest cities and the Ottoman collapse. NU founders anticipated changes in the post-First World War international order, the collapse, and the end of empires.
Classical Islamic law, or fiqh, on how a Muslim state should be governed and how it managed international affairs evolved over the course of centuries in the age of empires. Some of its elements lost relevance in the post-Second World War nation-states. The Indo-Malayan Archipelago was better equipped to deal with the changes. It had embraced the best elements of foreign cultures and civilizations thanks to its location at the crossroads of international trade routes for thousands of years.
Ijtihad and Indonesian Islam
Large numbers of Muslims from the archipelago had begun visiting Mecca and Medina for pilgrimage with improved means of transportation over the 19th century. Many of them stayed in Arabia for years before returning with a better understanding of Islam and classical Islamic law. This led to the emergence of a scholarship closer to that within the Ottoman Caliphate. It fused with contextually appropriate responses of local religious scholars (kyais) to the needs of their followers since the 15th century.
The kyais were long engaged in ijtihad, the independent or original interpretation of issues not precisely covered in the Quran or the Prophet Muhammad’s traditions (Hadith). They created new norms. Sunan Kalijogo, one of the nine Wali Songo, for instance, used local cultural expressions such as shadow puppet theater and an orchestra playing brass gongs to teach Islam’s spiritual message.
Ijtihad made Islam in the archipelago more adaptive to the changing needs. It prepared it better to deal with the shockwaves that the Caliphate’s abolition and the transformation of the global order created. The sudden abolition and the new order triggered anxiety, confusion, and chaos across the Muslim World, contributing to an ideological environment that led to the emergence of movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and later Jamaat-e-Islami. Pan-Arabism gained influence among Arab intellectuals. Socialism and Communism elsewhere attracted some Muslims.
Nahdlatul Ulama and Pluralist Indonesia
The NU founders factored in these changing realities while forming what is now the world’s largest Muslim organisation with 90 million members, which is more than Germany’s population of about 84–85 million. NU’s young adults movement, Gerakan Pemuda Ansor, has five million members, roughly equivalent to the population of Ireland or New Zealand.
NU’s founding generation prepared their subsequent generations to face the challenges and changes that followed the First and Second World Wars. NU made decisions, taking into account contemporary realities and the welfare of all Indonesians, irrespective of their religious background. It backed the founding of a multi-religious and pluralistic Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation and home to one in every eighth Muslim globally. NU accepted the nation-state as it promised harmonious inter-civilizational relations and the end of religious conflicts, although many Muslims viewed it as a colonial imposition.
NU recognised Indonesia’s cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity and worked closely with secular scholars, with whom it shared a nationalist and anti-colonial vision. It backed Pancasila, or the Five Principles of Indonesia’s state ideology, as reflecting the values of Indonesia’s Nusantara civilization and the essence of Islamic shari‘ah. NU likens Pancasila to the Medina Charter, the basis of a multi-religious state under the Prophet Muhammad.
Gus Dur’s Vision for Humanitarian Islam
The late former Indonesian president Haji Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), who led NU for 15 years (1984-1999), called for opposing hardline movements to restore Islam’s honour and respect and to preserve Pancasila and the Republic of Indonesia. Wahid co-authored The Illusion of an Islamic State (Ilusi Negara Islam) to raise awareness of the dangers of extremism. Gus Dur, who played a leading role in transforming Indonesia into the world’s third-largest democracy as the first president after Suharto’s 32-year dictatorial regime, argued that Pancasila reflects the essence of shari‘a. He said it transforms Islam into a true blessing for all creation.
Gus Dur wrote that victory in the struggle against extremists will restore the majesty of Islam as rahmatan lil-âlamîn (blessing for all creation), a foundational Islamic concept. The nine stars and a rope with 99 segments, encircling the globe, in NU’s logo reflect this concept. The logo represents a civilizational mission and religious mandate to ‘consolidate the universe’ by manifesting love and compassion for all sentient beings and every aspect of creation.
The rope in the NU logo symbolizes al-asma ul-husna (God’s 99 names) and the imperative to ensure the welfare of humanity by maintaining a vertical tie with God and a horizontal one with fellow human beings. The nine stars symbolise the Wali Songo, whose teachings inspired NU’s founding and serve as a chain of transmission to the Prophet Muhammad. They also represent the Prophet, the Khulafa Rashidun, his four righteously guided successors, and the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence.
Nahdlatul Ulama’s Global Islamic Vision
A traditional Sunni Muslim organization, NU follows Asharī and Maturīdī theology, which validate the use of human intellect for understanding revelation. NU embraces tasawwuf, or Islamic mysticism. Its foundational documents cite the teachings of mystic Junayd al-Bagdadi (830-910), Islamic Golden Age Muslim scholar and polymath Muhammad al-Ghazali (1058-1111), and Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (1078-1166), the founder of Qadiriyya, the largest Sufi order. NU followers study Sufi masters, such as Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273).
NU, which helped overcome opposition to a pluralistic nation state and backed the Indonesian government in defeating the Darul Islam (Abode of Islam) insurrection (1949-1962), has taken on obsolete ideas misused for violence in Islam’s name in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings and 9/11 attacks. NU has sought to protect Indonesia’s pluralism and understanding of Islam against the threats of extremism. It has recontextualized Islamic teachings to reflect the true essence as rahmatan lil-âlamîn (blessing for all creation). NU has propagated Humanitarian Islam as a global movement to restore the Islamic idea of rahmah (universal love and compassion) as Islam’s primary message. NU emphasises Qur’an 21:107: ‘And We sent you [Muhammad] for no purpose other than to be a blessing for all creation.’
In 2016, NU hosted Islamic scholars from 33 countries and issued a declaration calling for a global consensus against politicising Islam and marginalising those who exploit it to harm others. NU resolved to strive to consolidate the global Sunni Muslim community to bring about a world in which Islam and Muslims are truly beneficent and contribute to the well-being of all humanity.
Nahdlatul Ulama and Human Fraternity
In 2021, NU embraced a global agenda for peace at its 34th Congress. Two years earlier, it published a volume with a decree from religious scholars declaring that there can be no legal category of infidel (kafir). The decree said there are only fellow citizens and asked Muslims to obey the laws of the place where they live. It said Muslims have a religious obligation to foster peace rather than wage war on behalf of their co-religionists whenever conflict erupts between Muslims and non-Muslims.
The decree declared that there is no theological basis for Muslims to foster enmity or perpetrate acts of violence against non-Muslims. In 2019, NU endorsed the Document on Human Fraternity that Pope Francis and the Egyptian Islamic scholar Ahmed al-Tayyeb signed in Abu Dhabi, saying it reflected the concept of fraternity it has long embraced. It said NU’s concept of universal fraternity inspires its efforts to resolve conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims and to promote world peace.
Yet NU’s legacy faces one of its greatest tests with an internal conflict miring it and its chief, Kiai Yahya Cholil Staquf, commonly known as Gus Yahya. There have been attempts to remove Gus Yahya over accusations of his pro-Israeli sympathies amid the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza and mismanagement of NU’s finances. Disagreement over who should operate an NU coal mine in East Kalimantan has loomed behind the conflict, damaging NU’s century-long standing. But NU remains among the most consequential Islamic organisations to have emerged from the upheavals of the 1920s, regardless of the controversy.
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