International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 197

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES SPRING 2016 institutionalization (Bahar, 1999, p. 83). Spirituality plays a moral function in life, while in his approach secularity becomes a tool for experiencing spirituality. This is contrary to the modernist Muslims who try to Islamize the state so that it will not be a secular state, a strategy designed with the purpose of challenging world ideologies such liberalism and communism. Wahid considers this kind of thought as a legal formal approach that uses the state for implementing a legal formal Shari’a. Wahid also commits to Shari’a, but not in the form of legal formal; rather he believes that democracy is the manifestation of the substance of Shari’a. By so doing, he tries to avoid the confrontation between Islam and other ideologies. Wahid does not want to treat Islam as a kind of ideo logy because this is contrary to the Islamic tradition, as embodied in the Fiqh paradigm. It is not surprising that Qur’an, as the core of Islamic teachings and doctrines, is not a book on politics and only provides some moral ethics in order for the state to run effectively. He also believes that the state is a worldly affair, such as other kinds of social systems. He is also sceptical of the ruler’s ability to uphold democracy as one of the goals of Shari’a. Moreover, power tends to corrupt so that a ruler prefers to maintain the status quo by all means. Accordingly, it is likely for the ruler to be oppressive of followers of different understandings of Islam. Last but not least, an Islamic state tends to lead the politicization of Islam as well as the sacralisation of politics so that it endangers a healthy political system. Wahid tried to employ democracy as the criteria for public reasoning in political affairs. In this regard, religion, namely Islam, is to tame the nature of politics which tends to rest on hard power. This is carried out by either a personal involvement in political processes to direct the run of the state within Islamic principles or an inclusion of substantive Islamic values in the political sphere. In other words, Wahid tries to infuse substantive Islamic values into public spheres and accordingly, religion enters into the public sphere. It is not meant to implement Islamic law (Shari’a) into government regulations formally, but it is to introduce the substantial meaning of Islamic laws, namely, universal values with the ambition of halting the secular trend of the modern era. For that purpose, the clergy and Islamic scholars are challenged to keep track of the development of Western sciences, especially social sciences, so that they are able to find out the truth in the context of the modern era so that they can understand theology in the new perspective. Wahid’s thought on democracy could be considered as a theology of Islamic democracy as he developed his thought based on the Fiqh paradigm which considers worldly life from a religious point of view. Wahid considers Fiqh as not just the practical religious law, but also the philosophical foundation of the religious law, in line with Imam Abu Hanifah and Imam Syafi’i, the founding fathers of the school of Islamic jurisprudence. For that purpose, he turned to modern science and philosophy in order to revitalize Islam in the modern era. What Wahid had done with his concept of democracy was his effort of 197 | P a g e