Ali Jafar | CRCS | Wednesday Forum Report
Maurisa, a CRCS alumna from the batch of 2011, presented her award-winning paper in Wednesday forum of CRCS-ICRS in 11^th November 2015. Her paper entitled “The Rupture of Brotherhood, Understanding JI-Affiliated Group Over ISIS”, was awarded as best paper in IACIS (International Conference on Islamic Studies) in Manado, September. Maurisa was glad to share her paper with her younger batch. To all the audiences, Maurisa told that winning as best paper was not her high expectation, and it makes her proud.
The presentation began with Maurisa’s statement that the issue of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) are quite to understand in relation to modern terrorism, because we always misread them and sometime we cannot differentiate between ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Maurisa continues her explanation that there are many groups in Iraq and Syria struggling for their power, terrorism is not single but many. ISIS also has supporters in Indonesia such as Jemaah Islamiyyah (JI-Islamic Group) which is considered as a big terrorist organization in Southeast Asia. This group (JI) has disappears from public consciousness, but actually its members have been spreading out. The most fascinating thing that she found is that JI in Indonesia. JI was separated into two, Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI) and Jama’ah Anshar at-Tauhid (JAT), and surprisingly JAT itself has internal conflict and divided into two; JAT and JAS (Jama’ah Anshar as Syari’ah).
Maurisa’s paper focused on questions about how does the conflict in Syria resonates with Jihadists in Indonesia, and how does political struggle within MMI show belief in a master narrative. Maurisa used Juergensmeyer’s perspective about cosmic war and the logic of religious violence. In the Juergensmeyer perspective, an ordinary conflict could become religious conflict when it is raised into cosmic level. One of the ways is demonization or Satan-ization of the enemy. In the context of Syria, the demon is Shia group which is blamed for chaotic situation within Sunni community. The master narrative was also about the same language. It is about sadness, it is about the sad feeling of being discriminated and persecuted by Shia.
According to Maurisa, not all jihadist groups support ISIS, indeed MMI was supporting Jabhat an-Nusra. The rupture of this affiliation was based on their differences in the perspective of takfirism (Apostasy). JAT and MMI have different perspectives in defining  what Takfir Am (general apostasy) and takfir Muayyan (specific apostasy) is.
In seeing terrorist movements, although Maurisa saw that Jihad-ism is not monolithic, she revelas that there are five elements which are related each other. There are ideological resonance, strategic calculus, terrorist patron, escalation of conflict and the last is charismatic leadership. Terrorists also use social media, such as Facebook, Youtube and so on, to promote their propaganda, and as soft approach to other Muslims. Based on Maurisa’s research there are 50000 social media accounts to spread ISIS propaganda, but only 2000 are used to spread out propaganda. The most popular social media is Twitter, because a message can be retwited..
In the discussion session, Nida, a CRCS student asked about the current issues in which governments have banning Shi’a celebration in Indonesia, and whether there is any relation with ISIS, and how an Indonesian can be involved in the terrorism. Maurisa answered the question by explaining that Indonesia is about to change. It can be seen in Islamization created room for Islam in the public sphere. Indonesia is vulnerable since Wahabis and Iran have their political goals here and both want to establish their domination to spread out their agenda. Cases in Sampang, Madura, Pakistan and so on cannot be separated from international case. There are long story for transformation of Saudi and Iran. Our country is like something too.  In talking about the entrance gate, Turkey is good entrance from Indonesia to go to Syria. If we see Turkey’s position is also questionable. They deny Isis, but they also support Isis.
Subandri also asked about the ways we interpret jihad are accessible. Therefore there are many interpretations of Jihad. That is what looks like for young Muslim now. Along with Subandri, Ruby also asked about the genealogy of Indonesian Jihadist movement. Like the connection between Indonesia and middle east that coming and potential realignment and the effect of JAT over ISIS.
In seeing connection and global phenomena, a relation between Islam and Middle East, Maurisa explained that in the United State for instance, there is relation if you wear jilbab, you are Muslim, and when you are Muslim, you are ISIS.  “Here we can see the idea about securitization is like Islamophobia”, said Maurisa with showing slide about relation between Indonesia and Middle East. As she explained again “If we look at voice of Islam, we can see that there are solidarities for Syria. It is reported that medical mission in Indonesia, they have collected 1.6 million. For Syria suggesting support for the movement of mujahidin”. Maurisa also explained that globalization is the most responsible for this case. For example many Indonesia Muslims have easy access to Saudi, Iranian, Jihadist web, because of technology and so on. Young Indonesian have a lot of curiosity and they don’t ask to other.
In responding the interpretation of jihad, Maurisa gives a feedback, how do we interpret this? What makes cosmic war happen? And how to deal with them?. Maurisa began her explanation that in Islam, although there are many verses for killing, but it not necessary to do in violence. We have many steps in interpretation. There are many reasons for what make Muhammad approve of killing and in what context he did so. There are many possibilities to interpret jihad and there are many verses of good thing about Jihad. In talking about cosmic war, she said that “as long as we consider our enemy as Satan, or evil, meaning it is cosmic war”. At the end of discussion session, Maurisa concluded that the factor of jihad is not monolithic; there are many factors, even in ISIS and Al-Qaeda have different perspectives about jihad.
(Editor: Gregory Vanderbilt)

Azis Anwar Fachrudin | CRCS | Article
As the Islamic State (IS) organization destroyed ancient statues aged thousands of years at the Mosul museum in Iraq last month, almost at the same time some Muslims demanded that the Jayandaru statues in the Sidoarjo town square in East Java should be torn down too. Their reasons were similar: They regarded the statues as idols being worshipped and idolatry is considered part of polytheism or shirk, the biggest and most unforgivable sin in Islam. Sadly, the demands in Sidoarjo were primarily supported by GP Ansor, the youth wing of the supposedly “moderate” Nahdlatul Ulama (NU).
NU is often associated with being against “purification” (a literal interpretation of Islam) and it usually would be in the forefront of safeguarding “holy graves” against the threat of destruction, particularly the graves where those considered Muslim saints are buried. The NU highly condemns IS, including its blasting of holy shrines like the tomb of the Prophet Jonah (Yunus) in Iraq, and the actions of al-Nusra, such as its destruction of the grave of the leading imam an-Nawawi in Syria.
In fact, the embryo of NU in the early 20th century was a movement protesting the destruction of tombs of respected Muslim figures and sites that had historic importance for Muslims in Saudi Arabia (named Hijaz at that time). The destruction was carried out under the convictions of Wahhabism that regarded those shrines as sources of shirk.
What we are now dealing with is here, however, are statues, which is different from the contentious status of holy tombs. Many Muslims still visit graves of the holy figures; there is no clear prohibition of such a practice in primary Islamic sources of teachings. Yet there are several explicit prohibitions based on hadiths or prophetic traditions (which are secondary sources) of making full-figured statues or images of living creatures, either human or animal.
IS justifies its actions with those hadiths, relying also on the narrated story that the Prophet Muhammad commanded the destruction of statues (or, to be precise, idols) surrounding the Ka’ba in the eighth year following his conquest of Mecca.
The same justification was employed also by Afghanistan’s Taliban when in 2001 they blew up the two giant statues of Buddha in Bamiyan made in the 6th century — without knowing that there is no concept of a personal God in Buddhism, which is a non-theistic religion, and the statues of Shakyamuni Buddha are not subject to worship in the sense understood by monotheists.
That is it. Without denying the possibility of the political or economic factors in the aforementioned cases, the question here is whether Islam promotes iconoclasm or the destruction of idols. Iconoclasm is not unique to Islam (or, to be exact, Muslims); Judaism and Christianity also share history or scriptural teachings of iconoclasm. The story of the golden statue of a calf in the time of Moses is shared by the three religions. Iconoclasm was commanded by Hezekiah, the king of Judah (Two Kings 18:4) and King Josiah (Two Kings 23:1-20).
It appears also in the rabbinical Midrash, the story of Abraham as the iconoclast destroying idols made by his father. In Christianity, disputes over iconoclasm occurred in the Byzantine and Protestant Reformation era.
That is what is narrated in the scripture or “history”. As for Islam, while the Prophet Abraham is reported in the Koran to be destroying idols (asnam) of his people (Koran 21:52-67), the holy book says of King Solomon, considered a prophet by Muslims, that “they [the jinns] made for him [i.e. Solomon] what he willed: synagogues and statues [tamathil], basins like wells and boilers built into the ground.”
The Koranic terminology appears to differentiate between a mere statue (timthal) and an idol or statue being worshipped (sanam).
Muslim scholars all agree that it is prohibited for Muslims to worship statues because it makes them idolatrous. But that distinction between timthal and sanam matters very much when it comes to the contentious status of statues that are not worshipped.
Some Muslim scholars, such as the leading reformer Muhammad Abdul, Jadul-Haq (a former Grandsheikh of al-Azhar), and Muhammad Imarah (a renowned Muslim thinker), argued that it is allowed to have statues as long as they are not worshipped.
And in the fundamentals of Islamic jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh), “rulings are based on their raison d’etre [‘illah al-hukm]; when the raison d’etre disappears, the rulings do not prevail.”
That argument is supported by historical evidence of the early Muslim generations. The companions of the Prophet (such as Amr ibn al-Ash in Egypt and Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas in Iraq) led conquests in many places, but did not destroy the ancient statues they found, because those statues were no longer worshipped.
Sphinxes still exist in Egypt. Those Mesopotamian statues had been there for centuries before being demolished by IS. The Bamiyan Buddha statues were there before being attacked by the Taliban.
In fact, when the Taliban were under Mullah Mohammed Omar, he once issued a decree in favor of the preservation of the Bamiyan statues by arguing that, besides the fact that a Buddhist population no longer existed in Afghanistan, the statues could be a potential major source of tourism income for Afghanistan.
Statues in the Borobudur Buddhist temple are also still there, although nine stupas were damaged during the 1985 Borobudur bombing. In general, most Muslims, either as a minority like in India or as a majority like in Indonesia, have no problem with statues, unlike those who prefer a literal interpretation of the Prophet’s sayings, or hadiths. Scripturalism is the very problem of IS-like Muslims; it denies the imperative that scripture must be contextualized with surrounding circumstances and contrasted with historical evidence.
Furthermore, in the heart of the holiest site for Muslims — the Ka’ba — there is a black stone (al-hajar al-aswad), that was venerated in the pre-Islamic pagan era and is kissed by Muslims while doing pilgrimage. That stone is considered sacred by many Muslims; some of them touch it to get sort of blessing or expiation of sins. And in regard to this practice, the second caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab has frequently been quoted as saying, “I know that you are a stone and can neither harm nor benefit anyone. Had I not seen the Messenger kissing you, I would not have kissed you.” That is, it is not statues, images, or stones that matter; it is Muslim minds that do.
For some nahdliyin (NU members), then, can we regard those statues in Sidoarjo as merely statues or stones that are not worshipped?

CRCS offers following courses during the second semester of 2015/2016 academic year. Those courses are open for graduate students (S2/MA and S3/PhD) of humanities and social science, but subject to availability of seats. Non CRCS students interested to enroll for a course(s) should contact Lina Pary (lina_pary@yahoo.com). All courses will begin the first week of February 2016 and continue for 14 weeks.