Conservative Muslim leaders are not stopping with edicts forbidding
Muslims from wishing Christians a Merry Christmas. Now they want the
President not to attend any observation of the holiday in an official or
personal capacity.
A representative of the Indonesia Ulema
Council (MUI) renewed on Sunday an edict (fatwa) forbidding Muslims from
extending holiday greetings to Christians and said that President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had to skip a national Christmas celebration
scheduled for Dec. 27.
“If you talk about the MUI edict, it
forbids attendance at the [Christmas] rituals. A Muslim should not
attend the ritual, because it is a part of worship activities that
should only be attended by Christians,” Ma’ruf Amin, the council’s
deputy chairman, told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Ma’ruf said
that Yudhoyono, as a Muslim, should not attend the national Christmas
celebration, which he said would contain a Christian religious element.
Yudhoyono
and Vice President Boediono, who is also a Muslim, are among the top
officials who are scheduled to attend the national Christmas
celebration. Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali joined the
President and Vice President during a similar national observance in
2011.
Several Muslim organizations have echoed the MUI’s call.
The United Indonesian Muslims (Persis), for example, said that it was
inappropriate for the President to attend the national Christmas
celebration.
“Even though they are the country’s leaders, they
are forbidden to attend such Christmas celebrations,” Persis chairman
Maman Abdurrahman said, as quoted by the website of conservative Muslim
organization Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia’s (HTI).
Maman said that
Yudhoyono and Boediono should instead order officials from the Religious
Ministry’s Protestant and Catholic directorate to come to attend the
event on their behalf.
Separately, the infamous hard-line Islam
Defenders Front (FPI) said that Yudhoyono and Boediono would “undermine”
Islam if they decided to attend the celebration.
Muchsin Ahmad
Alatas, the head of the FPI’s campaign division, advised the President
and Vice President not to attend the celebration. “They decided to
attend the program because they don’t have sufficient understanding of
Islam,” Muchsin said. “They should have consulted with people who
understand Islam better before making their decision.”
Muchsin
said that Yudhoyono should ignore Christians in favor of the nation’s
Muslims. “People will understand his decision, because he will have
respected the feelings of the [nation’s] majority-Muslim population.”
“If the President shows up, it means that state affairs take precedence over his faith,” he said.
However, representatives of several moderate Muslim groups have disagreed with the conservative groups.
“Wishing
Christians a merry Christmas is one form of tolerance between people of
different faiths,” Salahuddin Wahid, a noted leader of Nahdlatul Ulama
(NU), the nation’s largest Muslim social organization, said as quoted
tempo.co.
Salahuddin said that an interfaith exchange of
Christmas greetings was similar to saying “Happy Birthday” or “Happy New
Year” — neither of which was forbidden by Islam, according to
Salahuddin.
Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of Muhammadiyah, the
nation’s second-largest Muslim social organization, agreed, previously
saying that he regularly exchanged Christmas wishes with Christian
friends, which he considered only greetings.
While conservative
Muslims in Indonesia have attempted to make interfaith Christmas
greetings an issue for several years, Muslims in other nations no longer
have such concerns.
In some parts of the Islamic world, Muslims
say “Merry Christmas” and join celebrations. Some Muslim political
leaders have even attended Christmas services to strengthen interfaith
ties.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, for instance,
regularly joins annual Christmas services in Bethlehem, while the
leaders and the rank-and-file members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood
joined annual Christmas services at a Coptic Christian church in Cairo
in 2011.
Ma’aruf, however, said that Indonesian Muslims should
not say Merry Christmas. “It is still a debate. They would be better of
not doing that.