A'an Suryana and Syafiq Hasyim – Whether they were made use of or knew what they were doing, the actions of five young Nadhlatul Ulama members during their recent trip to Israel have stirred up a hornet's nest.
Nadhlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, made media headlines recently, for controversial reasons. First, it was criticised for being unethical after its officials announced that NU would ask the government to issue it a license to manage mining areas. The public argued that a religious organisation like NU was supposed to confine itself to promoting moral and religious norms, not to operate mines, which is outside its expertise.
The mining controversy had not died down fully when NU was hit with another controversy a few weeks ago, after five youth cadres from NU's Jakarta and Banten chapters, and other organisations affiliated with NU, visited Israel. The five met Israeli President Isaac Herzog on 3 July, an action many in Indonesia lambasted, especially when many governments and communities across the world have condemned Israel for its atrocities in Palestine, including Gaza.
Why did their visit materialise despite this sensitive time?
The answer lies in the youth officials' lack of social and political acumen. It was not the first time that NU figures visited Israel. The late former president Abdurrahman Wahid, as then NU chairman, visited Israel in 1994. Yahya Cholil Staquf, NU's current chairman, visited the country in 2018 when he was NU's secretary general. However, the circumstances of both leaders' visits were different. During Wahid's visit, made at the Israeli government's invitation to witness the country's peace deal with Jordan, a positive phase of the Palestine-Israel relationship prevailed. In 1993, their leaders had struck a deal in Oslo to initiate peace talks. Wahid thus accepted Israel's invitation as a gesture of support for peace in the Middle East.
Yahya Staquf accepted the invitation by the American Jewish Community (AJC) to speak at a seminar in Israel on 14 June 2018. He and his NU entourage met then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yahya later claimed his visit was meant to promote peace between Palestine and Israel. In that year, violence occurred in the form of rocket attacks on Israeli soil by Hamas and air strikes by Israel on Gaza, but the level of violence was much lower compared to today's war between Israel and Hamas.
This latest visit by the five young NU officials occurred after Israel killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and destroyed their homes. The youth officials would have understood that it was a sensitive time to visit Israel. The five were invited by Itrek, an Israeli non-governmental organisation (NGO) that aims to promote people-to-people contact.
One of the five released an Instagram post, arguing that instead of joining street protests or performing boycotts against Israel-related goods or services, he preferred dialogue. This post by Zainul Maarif, released before the controversy went public, implied that he understood the visit would be controversial as he presumably released it to justify his visit. Zainul is one of the officials at NU's Jakarta provincial chapter's Bathsul Masail section, which is responsible for issuing fatwa (organising and proposing social or legal solutions), including edict proposals, for problems facing NU and Muslims in general in the Jakarta region. He is also a domestic research manager at the Ibrahim Heritage Study Center for Peace (Rahim), a Jakarta-based NGO that promotes peace among the three Abrahamic religions, with several NU officials on its board of executives.
However, the five did not expect that the backlash to their posing for a photograph with Herzog would be so severe that it not only drew public condemnation but also stern backlash from NU's national board of executives and various chapters. The NU Jakarta chapter has fired Zainul Maarif. Nurul Barul Ulum and Izza Anafisa Dania resigned from NU's women's organisation (Fatayat NU) on 20 and 21 July respectively, most likely due to pressure from NU's central board of executives. The Acting Regent of Kudus regency in Central Java, Muhammad Hasan Chabibie, fired Munawir Azis who was Chabibie's special staff until last week, "in line with the direction of NU central board of executives." Munawir Azis is an official at Pagar Nusa, NU's martial arts organisation.
The fifth NU cadre was Syukron Makmun, whom an official in NU's Banten chapter, Amas Tajudin, said had already resigned from his official position in June 2024, prior to the Israel trip.
Top officials on NU's central board of executives, and in its Jakarta and Banten chapters, respectively claimed that the five cadres had neither notified nor sought permission prior to the visit. Yahya Staquf has distanced NU from the visit, claiming that the cadres who visited Israel did not understand geopolitics. He also argued the younger NU generation was exploited by the Israeli government to burnish their image amidst their atrocities in Palestinian lands.
Internally, this brouhaha might not result in a split within NU, given that all the five cadres are junior figures. The NU grassroots will be satisfied with their quick firings and firm punishment by NU's national board. Hence, the damage that this incident has brought to NU's organisational structure and its followers' loyalty is limited.
Nevertheless, the incident and its fallout will likely further damage NU's public reputation. Even in less charged times, NU had been on the hot seat after Wahid's and Yahya Staquf's visits to Israel. This latest visit, made when many are outraged against Israel's ongoing atrocities in Gaza, will strengthen the perception, at least among NU adversaries, that NU is a friend of Israel or can be labelled as such. Indonesian netizens are poking fun at NU, disparaging the NU logo as "Netanyahu United".
It will be up to the NU leadership to restore the Indonesian public's trust in it as a moderate Muslim organisation capable of right-minded guidance for its millions of members, in light of these two recent controversies.
[A'an Suryana is a Visiting Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and is a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia. Syafiq Hasyim is a Visiting Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore, and Lecturer and Director of Library and Culture at the Indonesian International Islamic University.]