After withdrawing as a presidential contender for Golkar Party, Muslim intellectual Nurcholish Madjid seems to have run out of room to move in his efforts to seek a strong political party as a vehicle.
Several political parties have yet to give him a positive sign as their candidate. Among them is the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI), a splinter group of Golkar led by former Defense Minister and Armed Forces Commander Edi Sudrajat, which has only named him as one of five possible candidates.
PKPI, a grouping of former Golkar figures opposed to Akbar Tanjung's leadership of Suharto's former political machine, has also named Siswono Yudohusodo, Agum Gumelar, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Meutia Hatta, the oldest daughter of founding Vice President Mohammad Hatta. Madjid also has yet to receive any positive signals from the Muslim-based parties. At a Halal bil Halal on December 18, he met the top leaders of the Crescent Star Party (PBB), the Muslim-based party which is ideologically committed to the establishment of an Islamic state and the ideological offspring of the old Masyumi Party.
PBB seems keener to nominate its general chairman, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, currently Minister of Justice and Human Rights, who is more respected and trusted than Madjid as the torch-bearer of the principles of Masyumi.
Just two and half hours after meeting PBB's central executive board, Madjid visited the Marhaenis Indonesian National Party (PNI Marhaenism), the party which led by Sukmawati, the youngest sister of incumbent President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
This suggested that Madjid is trying to win sympathy from the secular nationalist camp and the Sukarno family in particular. This, most analysts accept, will be difficult to achieve because of Madjid's former collaboration with the New Order regime under Suharto, even though he is seen as untainted by corruption, collusion and nepotism.
Madjid's move to become Golkar;s candidate alienated the pro democracy movement and independent intellectuals, and led him to be seen as an opportunistic. This trait reminded many of his behavior during the early years of the New Order.
In 1968, Madjid, as general chairman of the Muslim Student Association (HMI), was considered a conservative modernist Muslim ideologically close to Masyumi patron Muhammad Natsir.
The theme of an essay by Madjid written in 1968, "Modernization is Rationalization not Westernization," brought Madjid to the attention of conservative modernist Muslim circles.
As this group gained confidence in Madjid, he was increasingly referred to as "young Natsir", and it was hoped that he could lead a new generation of Muslim activists to victory in the political realm. Natsir himself regarded Madjid as his apprentice.
But the views of the conservative modernists toward Madjid changed drastically after January 3, 1970.
In another essay, "The Necessity to innovate Islamic Thought and Integrative Matters of the Community", he suggested the need for the Islamic community to implement secularization as a form of liberalization and to release themselves from established erroneous views.
Madjid asked why the Muslim community was not attracted to Islamic parties or organizations at a time when the community was experiencing rapid progress. The problem, he said, lay in the "absolutely fossilized" ideas of Islamic thought.
He argued that innovation must begin with two closely related steps, to free oneself from traditional values and to find values oriented towards the future. Further, he wrote, a process of liberalization was needed in Islamic teachings and views, with secularization presenting the opportunity for the liberation of thought and attitude.
In justifying his paradigm shift, Madjid wrote: "Secularization implies every form of liberating development. [A] liberating process is needed because the Muslim community can no longer distinguish values that are perceived as Islamic; which ones are transcendental and which are temporal."
Due to the lack of fresh ideas, Muslims had lost their psychological cutting edge because of the lack of a liberal institution that could focus its attention on urgent demands of developing social conditions.
The political implication of his new Islamic ideas disturbed the conservative modernist Muslims. They saw his popular slogan "Islam yes, Islamic party no" as a political justification for the Suharto regime, which at the time had been moving to emasculate all opposition political parties, including the Muslim parties.
Madjid himself later admitted the damage to his reputation among the Muslim community as soon as his paper was published by daily newspapers. "I became a big question mark in the Muslim community, which became very suspicious of me and my friends."
"It was rumored," he added, "that I was part of a conspiracy against the Muslim community, a conspiracy organized by PSI [Socialist Party of Indonesia] which had always been considered an advocate of westernization and secularization," (See Nurcholish Madjid, The Issue of Modernization Among Muslims in Indonesia: A Participant's Point of View).
The critics were aided by the fact that the paper was first published by Indonesia Raya, the newspaper of socialist journalist Mochtar Lubis. Despite this, Madjid's perceived leaning to PSI was less significant than his view of the relationship between HMI and its elder patrons in Masyumi.
Seen from his reports of his activities during the Suharto era and his own writing, Madjid seems to have used the widening gap between the Muslim older generation of Masyumi and the younger generation of HMI as justification for abandoning the conservative modernist Muslim camp.
Madjid tried to give the impression that his ideological shift from his patrons in Masyumi was merely part of his effort to preserve the independence of HMI from Masyumi party.
But the political setting in the early 1970s was effectively under the control of the military regime which tended to be authoritarian and nationalist in nature.
The hidden agenda of the Suharto regime was to cripple opposition forces, be they right-wing religious groups or leftist Marxist ones. Parties using Islamic slogans were considered as more threatening to the sustainability of the Suharto regime.
The left-wing forces became insignificant following the collapse of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in September 1965.
In the light of this political setting, Madjid's provocative ideas were considered as the birth of innovative Islamic thought, and in terms of political practices, as part of a process of disconnecting political institutions such as political parties or mass organizations from the Muslim base.
This political situation created a climate in which Islamic organizations including Muslim parties became elitist and isolated from Muslim constituents like the modernist Muhammadiyah and traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama (NU).
The political setting of the New Order regime gave little room for maneuver by the political parties, and co-opted social and political organizations like HMI and its alumni KAHMI, became more effective as channels of expression for the interests of Muslim politicians.
The KAHMI alumni succeeded in penetrating and dominating the bureaucracy at the highest levels of all strategic departments and of Golkar itself.
As a result, organizations like HMI became accountable to high-ranking government officials at the palace or ministries rather than to their grass-root supporters.
Madjid as the godfather of KAHMI, whether deliberately or not, gave moral blessing to the efforts of members of the group to gain access to the locus of power centering on Suharto's inner circle in the presidential palace.
Madjid necessarily finds it difficult to transform himself from a creature of top-down rule to a situation where everything must be determined from below.
Ironically, as a source close to Muslim circles told Laksamana.Net, in his effort to be nominated as a presidential candidate on behalf of Muslim parties, Madjid is now dependent on Muslim parties like PBB and the Justice Welfare Party (PKS) and militant Muslim organizations that he had attacked in the past, describing them as inflexible and dogmatic.
In the coming 2004 general elections where a strategic alliance between secular nationalists and the Muslim camp is urgently needed to create stable government, Masyumi-inspired modernist Muslim politicians have become as important as NU-inspired traditional Muslims.
The conservative modernist Muslim movement is essentially urban-based, with access to middle class Muslims like merchants, professionals, intellectuals and university students. NU, on the other hand, wins most support from rural Muslim clerics, farmers, small merchants and fishermen.
In such a situation, each Muslim party now has to display its Muslim credentials rather than hiding them, as they were forced to do under Suharto.
Muslim politicians from Muslim-based parties and from mainly nationalist parties such as the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Golkar, are dominated by militant Muslim activists who suffered from oppression under the Suharto regime.
Madjid's track record is considered as out of touch with mainstream Muslim constituents and, as such, few are likely to want to combine with him as a presidential candidate.