Religion, as faith and identity, is significant for politics. By the dint of this significance, political parties that should contribute to democratization, often highlight their religious brand. But regarding the ethical issue of using religion in politics, it depends on the extent to which politicians utilize religion.
Religion should occupy the heavenly or spiritual realm, rather than being involved in the mundane sphere which is far more potentially “sinful”. Even one may intentionally use or otherwise, prohibit political games that instrumentalize religion.
Mosques and Friday sermons, for example, have become objects of contestation of religious-political discourse. While some insist to instrumentalize the Islamic holy pulpit at large to support their narrow political end, others intensely condemn it.
The kind of open debate once invited prominent intellectuals such as Nurcholish Madjid and Emha Ainun Najib to engage with the issue of religion in politics. In 1970s, Madjid advocated the idea of “Islam Yes, Islamic Party No”. He argued for the very idea of proportional separation of religious role from the worldly political matters.
However, Emha Ainun Najib defended the opposite direction. He argued that “Islam Yes, Islamic Party Yes” to show his standpoint that Islam as a powerful identity politics is crucial. His argument relates to his resistance to the domination of the ruling party under the New Order regime.
Interestingly, foremost religious leaders such as Professor Haedar Nashir and KH Yahya Cholil Staquf, to welcome the 2024 Indonesian Election, have agreed to minimalize the role of identity politics and excessive instrumentalization of religion in the electoral politics. Those central figures of Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama aim to avoid cleavages of ummah due to politics.
Religion’s Attraction
The question is, why is religion so attractive to politics? From more positive perspective, religion is considered to have moral values which are expected to paint political colours. According to functionalist point of view, however, religion is a powerful political instrument especially in countries where the population adheres to certain religions.
José Pedro Zúquete (2017) suggests that religion can be either the booster of moral transformation (high politics) in society or the strong engine for mobilising political voters (electoralism). Accordingly, religion is crucial due to involvement of its adherents. They can contribute significantly to the certain political process.
In the United States, Evangelist Christian voters are important to provide political support for Donald Trump. In Latin America, Left Catholic masses are needed by charismatic leaders to help their populist programs. In Europe, various Judeo-Christian identitarian communities are considered valuable especially for right wing parties those who anti-Muslim-immigrants to ensure their wins of elections.
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In Turkey, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKV) has been supported by Islamist anti-Kemalist masses. In India, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has mobilized many Hindu voters to guarantee its political continuity. In Egypt and Pakistan, Morsi and Imran Khan respectively enjoyed supports from Islamist populist groups, although they were overthrown by military regime.
Practices of political instrumentalization of religion around the world depict that the role of religion in the political contestation cannot be denied. However, Jocelyne Cesari (2022) argues that the undue use of religion for political pragmatism may provide larger chances for the “iron fist” to drive politics with religious robe.
In the same boat, Ihsan Yilmaz (2022) foresees the further impact of instrumentalization of religion to democracy. Religiously nuanced politics, he argues, is not only to legitimate authoritarianism that is deleterious for democracy, but also to spread an outbreak of religious conservatism for supposedly moderate ummah.
Welcoming 2024 Election
In Indonesia, we experienced the political instrumentalization of religion both in Gubernatorial Election of Jakarta in 2017 and Presidential Election in 2019. To gain electoral victory, the instrumentalization strategy succeeded in the local level but failed in the national level.
At the local level, “religious voters” tend to be homogenous. Meanwhile nationally, although majority people are Muslims, Indonesia is a country that socially and culturally diverse. Its diversity clarifies that Muslims are highly heterogenous.
Accordingly, it seems to be difficult to mobilize very diverse people using such uniformed religious symbols, narratives, and rhetoric. Islam as the religion that is adhered by the majority, although it has the same core values (tauhid), in terms of interpretation and manifestation it is highly diverse.
The use of identity politics in terms of homogenization of religion and politics, uniformity of political aspirations, and intensification of primordial sentiments (exaggerating identity of certain groups) is ineffective. In addition, people have political maturity and aware of the practice of political instrumentalization of religion.
Nonetheless, is there a more positive identity politics? If the identity politics means that we have a combination of representative and deliberative democracy that listens and appreciates minority voices, it counts for a politics with virtues. Then, what remains from different identities (politics and religions) is vitality to develop the nation and civilization.
Therefore, it may be right that Professor Haedar and KH Yahya forging their ummah to aware of identity politics. So far, the instrumentalization of religion has gained little interest to buyers and it is likely that in the 2024 Election, our electoral contestation will increasingly lead to a substantive process of democratization. This sign is likely promising.
Editor: Soleh
