Quo-Vadis Islam Moderat Indonesia

Abstract

This paper tries to unravel the “myth” of Indonesia’s moderate Islam by analyzing two mainstream religious organizations which have long enjoyed their reputation as the champion of moderate Islam: Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah. The questions put forward are: first, whether the religious worldviews of the two organizations are moderate in nature; second, whether there is such thing as typically Indonesian moderate Islam; and third, how to construct a viable and workable blue-print of Indonesia’s moderate Islam. This paper reveals that the moderate theology of both organizations is no longer sufficient in accommodating the challenges of this modern era. Although the achievement of both organizations deserve appreciation as a pioneering attempt at making a more detailed but visible formulation of Islamic moderate in Indonesia, they need to construct a more established argument for moderate vision “from within.”