The Lasting Legacy of Indonesia's Nurcholish Madjid and its Parallels in Modern Turkey

On Monday 29 August 2005 the world lost one of the great Islamic intellectuals of the modern period. His name is not yet well known in Turkey but there is every reason to believe that it will be in the years to come. A student of the late Pakistani-American, University of Chicago scholar, Fazlur Rahman, Nurcholish Madjid was as well known in his native Indonesia as Fethullah Gülen is in Turkey. In fact both men are remarkably similar in their thinking, their character and their broad social influence. They even belong to the same generation - Nurcholish was born in Jombang, East Java on the 17^th of March 1939.

The passing of Nurcholish Madjid after a long struggle with Hepatitis has been noted not only across Indonesia but also around the world. Nevertheless it is fair to say that it has not been 'really big news'. Nurcholish was an intellectual not a politician or a noisy activist and although he was fluent in English almost everything that he wrote was in Indonesian. Moreover, despite his prowess in public speaking he was a very shy and private man. Had he wanted to make himself better known and more widely influential he could easily have done so. Had he sought to strut the international stage and weigh-in on world affairs the door was open for him. But his heart's desire was to write books that moved his fellow Indonesian's to constructively engage in the modern world as better Muslims and better citizens. Consequently, although his passing is being mourned by not just his countrymen but by scholars and diplomats around the world it has gone unrecognized in many quarters, not least in those accustomed to reading about Islam only in bad-news stories.

In the decades to come, however, unlike most public figures, Nurcholish's reputation and influence will steadily grow rather than slowly diminish. Once his best writings are edited, translated and published in English, Arabic and Turkish he will come to be properly recognized and understood across the Muslim world, particularly, I suspect, in Turkey, for reasons I will attempt to make clear below.

At this moment, Nurcholish is best remembered by many even in his own country as the man who helped bring down Soeharto, as the respected scholar who calmly walked into an audience with the steely, authoritarian, great survivor and boldly, but politely, told the old man that his time was up. That moment, however, will not be his lasting legacy. Nurcholish's true legacy will be his powerful ideas eloquently set forth in hundreds of thousands of words of lucid prose.

I first met Nurcholish in 1989 when I was researching a PhD on the emergence of progressive Islamic thought in Indonesia. I found a man remarkably gracious and warm. He was very generous with his time and open with his thoughts to an odd and rather gauche postgraduate student who was Christian, foreign, unknown and more than a little ignorant. In short, I came to know a man whom I can only describe as being truly saintly.

By this point the parallels between Nurcholish Madjid Fethullah Gülen should be becoming clearer. I have yet to meet Hodjafendi, as his friends know him, but I have been reading his writings (though only in translation, unfortunately) and some of his friends have become my friends. My strong impression is that both men see in the person of the Prophet Muhammad an inspirational example of the characteristics and qualities of what God values most in human beings: compassion, respect for others whatever their station in life, integrity, a thirst for knowledge (especially knowledge of God), patience, humility, the absence of pretension and a heart overflowing with love. And that both try to model their characters around this example, with significant success.

For the many who knew and loved Nurcholish the holy day of Miraj (on which Muslims commemorate the 'night journey' of the prophet Muhammad into heaven and the presence of God) which fell the day after Nurcholish's body was interned in a state funeral at the Kalibata National Heroes cemetery in Jakarta, was filled with thoughts of the passing of this saintly man. My wife and I, for example, but a couple from the many thousands whose lives he touched were filled with melancholy thoughts about the untimely loss of this gracious and unassuming man who had several times graced our home, and invited us into his, and made us feel like valued friends despite our different faiths.

It is tempting to say that it is for his godly character that we should remember Nurcholish, and this is, in large part, true. But what is most true is that neither Nurcholish's public activism nor his remarkable personality fully represent his enduring legacy to the world. His true legacy lies in the way he has shown Muslims and non-Muslims alike that religion need not be represented by political parties and defended by political campaigns for it to shape the character of a nation. His legacy lies in his deeply original and significant contribution to our understanding of how best religious faith (I do not limit this to Islam because I am aware that I for one have been forced to think much about the relationship between my own Christian faith and modernity as a result of Nurcholish's ideas) can contribute to our very plural modern world. And it seems to me that the very same things can be said of Fethullah Gülen.

Future comparative studies of the writings of Fethullah Gülen and Nurcholish Madjid will note the many similarities in the their thought. In particular, it will be noted as significant that both men, although trained in madrasah as ulama, transcend the boundaries of that intellectual tradition and successfully combine traditional Islamic scholarship, with its deep knowledge of the Qur'an and of hadith texts, of Qur'anic commentaries, of fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence and of tassawuf, or Sufi mysticism, with critical modern thought. For both men this produced a creative synthesis well able to employ modern approaches to hermeneutics to produce consistently fruitful ijtihad, or the interpretation of Qur'an and Sunnah, in a manner that brings forth the core teachings of Islam and reveals how they should best be applied in this modern age, congruent with, but not limited by, fiqh and traditional understandings of Shari'a, or Islamic law. As a result both scholars came to the conviction that true godliness, in an individual and in a nation, comes from inner transformation not from external force or imposition of law. Consequently they reject as mistaken the conviction of modern Islamists that Islamist parties, and the imposition of Shari'a via state legislation, hold the key to achieving societies and states that are more truly Islamic. Instead they argue for, and put into practice, the power of education to transform the individual, and through them the world around them. And they include as central to their understanding of education and the pursuit of knowledge the role of dialogue and open exchange both within the Islamic ummah and between ummah, or religious communities, including between the 'Muslim world' and 'the west' and between Muslims and followers of other faiths.

By now we should be well aware of how the power of religious ideas and religious thinkers can impact very concretely on society. But we continue to downplay the role or thinkers and writers, or if we do give them consideration think only of the negative examples that trouble the world today such as Sayyid Qutb and his modern disciples in al-Qaeda and elsewhere, and their embracing of what Huntington famously dubbed a clash of civilizations. What we don't yet properly recognize, but will increasingly come to do so is that it is progressive Islamic intellectuals such as Nurcholish Madjid and Fethullah Gülen who have already persuaded many, directly and indirectly, of a different, less materialistic, less political and wholly more peaceful understanding of how faith can change the world. Such thinking is key to the future of the Muslim world. Nurcholish Madjid's influence and lasting service has not ended with his passing, rather it is only just beginning.

Dr Greg Barton is Associate Professor in Politics at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and is author of Abdurrahman Wahid: Muslim Democrat, Indonesian President, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002; and Indonesia's Struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah and the soul of Islam, UNSW Press, 2004. He is currently writing a book examining progressive Islamic thought in Indonesia and Turkey. He can be contacted at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.