Nurfika Osman & Sally Piri – Following a busy weekend of deciding whether smoking, yoga, not voting and other issues were right or wrong for the country's Muslims, the Indonesian Council of Ulema, or MUI, came under fire on Monday for issuing edicts that Islamic scholars said were not only unnecessary and unconstitutional, but threatened national unity and pluralism.
"The edicts kill the country's democracy and plurality as they want to apply the fatwas [edicts] to all citizens of Indonesia, regardless of their religion," said Fadjroel Rachman, a political analyst and activist who was once jailed during the New Order regime.
"The MUI will just taint their name if they keep on issuing fatwas and people just ignore them," added Fadjroel, chairman of the Indonesian Democracy and Welfare State Studies.
Around 700 Muslim leaders gathered in Padang Panjang, West Sumatra Province, from Friday through Monday to discuss a number of contentious issues, ultimately issuing rulings on smoking, voting, yoga and abortion.
On smoking, the religious leaders moderated their stance by declaring it makruh, which means it's bad and it's better to quit, but shied away from declaring it haram, or forbidden, in a country of tens of millions of smokers. They did, however, declare it haram to smoke in public and forbade smoking by MUI council members, children and pregnant women.
"We took this decision as smoking is harmful to your health," Umar Shihab, the chairman of the MUI, said on Monday.
Azyumardi Azra, a prominent Muslim scholar, said the edicts issued during the weekend were unnecessary, noting that they were nonbinding and would likely be ignored by the public – just like many MUI edicts.
"The fact is that a fatwa is not legally binding. People can choose to follow it or just ignore it," he said.
The MUI has previously issued controversial edicts banning interfaith prayer, interfaith marriage, interfaith inheritance and religious pluralism, liberalism and secularism, but the rulings are to this day widely ignored.
"MUI is just a religious adviser in the country, no more than that," Azyumardi said.
Prior to the weekend meetings, some Muslim leaders had sought a complete ban on smoking, citing its health risks and public health costs. But given the strength of the country's tobacco lobby, and the fact that the edict would be largely ignored, the MUI apparently sought a middle path.
But there was no such compromise on voting, as the conference decided to ban Muslims from abstaining from voting as the country prepares for legislative and presidential elections this year.
Former President Abdurrahman Wahid, who is in a power struggle within his National Awakening Party, has called on his supporters to stay away from the polls as a means of protest.
"As long as there is a candidate that is Muslim, honest, intelligent and ready to fight for the Indonesian people, it is 'haram' for Muslims to abstain from voting," Umar said. "[But] it is forbidden for Muslims to vote for a non-Muslim."
Diving into the issue after Malaysian clerics last year banned yoga as un-Islamic, the MUI ruled that the exercise is haram for Indonesian Muslims only if they engage in Hindu religious rituals at the same time.
"If it is purely a physical exercise or sport, it is not considered haram," Umar said. "We are afraid that chanting could weaken their Islamic faith."
The meeting also agreed that women who have been raped and become pregnant can morally seek an abortion, or if the mother's life is at risk due to medical complications.
Fadjroel said banning Muslims from not voting was an affront to the Constitution. "To decide whether to vote is a basic right and it is protected by the Constitution," he said, adding that the MUI could not supersede the laws of the country by issuing a fatwa because Indonesia was not an Islamic state.
Hasyim Muzadi, chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest Muslim group, also criticized labeling nonvoters as haram, but supported the stance against smoking.
"For the NU, smoking is just makruh because of its relative threat, and it is not going to be at the level of haram," said Hasyim, whose NU once famously declared "infotainment" gossip TV shows as haram – and was promptly ignored by the public.