Abdurrahman Wahid on the Public Role of Islam and Theory of Secularization

As a cleric, Abdurrahman Wahid, the former president of Indonesia, was well versed with both the Islamic and the West civilization. Accordingly, he tried to synergize Islam with the development of modern era. In line with this, he tried to modify the theory of secularization to suit with the context of Indonesia in which Islam constitutes one of the major social political forces. The contextualization of Islam was not something new for the Muslims in their efforts to adjust to social system, including its political system. For that purpose Wahid employed the fiqh paradigm which is not ideological to the form of the state. In line with this he developed a mutual legitimacy between Islam and the Pancasila state that both should develop democracy as basic principle of modern state as well as the manifestation of the principles of syuro at modern era. In this regard, democracy constitutes an overlapping consensus between the state and the religion. Wahid considered it as substantive Syari’ah, as contrary to the legal formal Syari’ah. In line with this, religious communities take on a role in civil society which would provide checks and balances to the state.