Indonesian progressive Muslims and the discourse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace: Soekarno's, Abdurrahman Wahid's and Ahmad Syafii Maarif's thoughts

Authors

  • Hasnan Bachtiar Faculty of Islamic Studies, the University of Muhammadiyah Malang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5304-9065
  • Muneerah Razak Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS)
  • Soni Zakaria Faculty of Islamic Studies, University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21831/jss.v17i1.34843

Keywords:

Israel-Palestine conflict, Soekarno, Abdurrahman Wahid, Ahmad Syafii Maarif

Abstract

Indonesia, as one of the largest majority Muslim countries, has had a consistent stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict since its inception. Despite the general pro-Palestinian stance, this article explores the discourse of three significant leaders of the Indonesian people - Soekarno, Abdurrahman Wahid and Ahmad Syafii Maarif. As presidents of Indonesia of different time periods of Indonesia, Soekarno and Wahid tended to be pragmatic in their articulation of their political stances, though it is articulated in different ways. Maarif, as the leader of Muhammadiyah, a popular non-governmental organisation on the ground, was more idealistic and concerned with anti-Zionism. This article highlights that the different nuances of the three leaders is due to their different capacities as leaders, their social and political contexts, and the intellectual leanings and experiences.

Author Biography

Hasnan Bachtiar, Faculty of Islamic Studies, the University of Muhammadiyah Malang

Hasnan Bachtiar is an associate lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Islamic Studies, University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM). August 24, 2009 – August 24, 2016, he had become a research assistant at the Centre for the Study of Islam and Philosophy and a program officer at the Centre for the Study of Religion and Multiculturalism, the Postgraduate School of UMM. Currently, he has worked on the GREASE project, European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy. In the project, Hasnan is an assistant to Dr Pradana Boy, a primary investigator of the research on relationship between state and religion in Indonesia, and the phenomenon of religious-inspired radicalism. He is responsible for collecting data in Southeast Asia. He hold a LLB with specialism in philosophy of Islamic law (UMM 2009) and an Advanced Master in the field of law of war and international relations from the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Australia in 2018. He submitted his advanced thesis on DÄr al-"˜Ahd wa al-ShahÄdah: Muhammadiyah's Contemporary IjtihÄd of Siyar and Pancasila, in the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS), ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS), ANU.

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Published

2021-03-31

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2021): Journal of Social Studies (JSS)

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Articles

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