INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES SPRING 2016
he considers , would hinder the development of religious communities playing the role of civil society .
Sub-ordination of Shari ’ a into national law Wahid admits that the Republic of Indonesia is a kind of a secular state and this has been justified by the NU , the traditional Muslim organization . Indeed , he continued the legacy of the NU and considered the previous NU leaders had pursued correct responses to the existing political system . Wahid argues that the theory of secularization has similarity with the Fiqh paradigm which recognizes Islam and the state as having different identities . It is not surprising that he already develops the idea of sub-ordination of the Shari ’ a to the national law in 1975 . Indeed , the Fiqh paradigm is a theory of a moderate secularization as it provides a religious justification for the secular state .
Based on the Fiqh paradigm , Wahid does not agree with the authoritarian secular Soekarno and Soeharto regimes which tried to incorporate culture into the state bureaucratization in the guise of a theory of an integralistic state , firstly introduced by Prof . Mr . Soepomo . Wahid argued that culture should be independent of the state ’ s intervention as the former functions as the sources of values as well as the standard of conduct of the state . As one of the value sources , Islam also should function to provide the standard of conduct of the state and accordingly , he challenged ICMI ’ s efforts of subordinating Islam to the state in the form of bureaucratization of Islam to the state .
Wahid developed the Fiqh paradigm into the Fiqh-plus paradigm as he incorporated the development of modern science into the Islamic tradition , namely the Fiqh paradigm . By so doing , he interprets Islamic tradition in the light of modern knowledge . In line with this , he understands liberal democracy as the modern implementation of syuro . Accordingly , he does not hesitate about justifying the Republic of Indonesia with Pancasila as its national ideology . Furthermore , he proposes to sub-ordinate Shari ’ a into the national law , as he no longer believes in legal formal Shari ’ a , but in the substantive Shari ’ a . By so doing , he argues that democracy is a kind of the substantive Shari ’ a which should be implemented in the societal system , including the political system . This is due to his scepticism about the idea of an Islamic state in which the rulers often rule autocratically . That is why he proposes democracy as a quasi-norm which should be respected by those who hold political authority . Wahid ’ s thought on democracy was his response to the Soeharto autocratic regime which did not tolerate different ideologies . It was also to revitalize Islam from its marginal role in the Indonesian national political system as well as to resolve the existing conflict between secular and Islamic aspirations ( Abdurrahman Wahid , 1999b , p . 101 ).
His thought on democracy was also a response to ICMI ’ s sectarian understanding of democracy which pursued the dominant role for Islam ( Leppenas , 1983 , p . 34 ) and , moreover , to implement Islamic law ( Shari ’ a ) ( Feener , 2007 , p . 112 ). ICMI was established in the late 1990 and signified the success of the
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