Vatican City, Sep 27, 2019 / 01:03 am (CNA).- The leader of the largest independent Muslim organization in the world met Pope Francis this week to present his vision for a more peaceful future and greater human fraternity.
Sheikh Yahya Cholil Staquf leads the 50 million member Nahdlatul Ulama movement, which calls for a reformed “humanitarian Islam” and has developed a theological framework for Islam that rejects the concepts of caliphate, Sharia law, and “kafir” (infidels).
The Indonesian Sunni leader told CNA that he was “thrilled and excited” when Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed el-Tayeb signed in February the Abu Dhabi declaration on “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” because it expresses the vision of “compassionate Islam” his organization has advocated for for decades.
The sheikh has specific recommendations for concrete steps to achieve the pope’s aspirations of peace and human fraternity. He came to Rome to share them with the pope.
Staquf said that Abu Dhabi declaration requires “decisive follow-up” with actions, not just words.
Just weeks after the Abu Dhabi declaration, Nahdlatul Ulama hosted a conference in Indonesia with over 20,000 Muslim scholars in attendance. At this conference, Muslim clerics and scholars issued an “ijtihad” stating their theological reasoning for prohibting the term “kafir” meaning “infidel” to describe one’s fellow citizens.
“We cannot just pretend that there are no problems in Islamic views. There are problems there. You need to acknowledge that so that we can work for the solution. If you do not acknowledge the problem, you cannot resolve it,” Staquf told CNA.
“In Muslim-majority societies, you can see more attitudes of discrimination and persecution toward minorities … so the Islamic world needs to develop the whole religious system that will integrate the Islamic world harmoniously with the rest of the world,” he said.
Central to these proposed changes to Islamic theology is how Muslims are called to interact with non-Muslims, Staquf explained.
“We need for Muslims to view others as a fellow human being, fellow brothers in humanity. We should not attack on the basis of different identities,” he said.
Staquf met Pope Francis after the general audience on Sept. 25. He presented the pope with a letter and several documents from Nahdlatul Ulama, containing recommendations as to how Muslims scholars have sought to address “problematic elements within Islamic orthodoxy” to create a more harmonious world order with “respect for equal rights and dignity of every human being.”
“When you think about global harmony, global security, global stability, we see four centers of concern related to Islamic orthodoxy,” Staquf said.
Within the documents presented to the pope, NU lays out “a practical road map” to achieve the aspirations expressed in pope’s Document on Human Fraternity: “prohibiting use of the term kafir (infidel) to describe one’s fellow citizens; affirming the legitimacy of the nation state and laws created through modern political processes; committing Muslims to strive for peace as a religious obligation; and providing a detailed framework for bringing Islamic orthodoxy into alignment with 21st century norms.”
“My hope is that these documents will be examined seriously by the Vatican so that the Vatican can make decisions to engage with us and work together with this,” Staquf said.
The Muslim leader also brought a delegation of Indonesian Catholics and young Muslims practicing “humanitarian Islam” with him to Rome to attend the general audience with the pope. Together they asked Pope Francis to visit Indonesia to continue his interreligious dialogue.
Indonesia is a Muslim-majority country historically known for its ethnic diversity and peaceful religious pluralism, which has seen an increase in religious-based violence and radical groups in recent years.
“They explained to the pope that we stand for the harmony of Indonesia, so that when we [Nahdlatul Ulama Muslims] see threats toward our fellow Indonesian Christians, we protect them,” Staquf said.
“I mentioned to His Holiness that we believe Humanitarian Islam is in alignment with noble values of Christian humanism … It was received very well,” he said.
Archbishop Agustinus Agus of Pontianak, who accompanied Staquf on the trip, facilitated the Sunni sheikh’s meetings with the pope and members of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
Archbishop Agus told CNA that when Sheikh Staquf expressed that he wanted to come to the Vatican to give the pope Nahdlatul Ulama’s response to the Abu Dhabi declaration, he knew it was “the right time … for one of the great leaders of the Muslims to meet the pope.”
“I feel that I have a responsibility for the future of Indonesia,” Agus said.
Staquf stressed that the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries around the world must end. He said that when looking at the rise of the Islamic State and other radical groups, one cannot ignore the theological underpinnings that allow their radicalism and violence to spread.
“Let’s look at why these problematic views can spread effectively everywhere in the Islamic world in these Muslims communities because it is supported by … what is considered to be authoritative elements of the orthodoxy. So we need to change that so that people cannot use that elements to make troubles, to make problems,” he said.
“We have a network of hundreds of thousands of clerics and Muslim scholars in Indonesia. So we all know what is in the teachings of Islam,” he said. “We know that there are some elements that do not encourage harmony and even can be potential obstacles to harmony.”
One of the areas Nahdlatul Ulama is working to reform is religious education for Muslim youth. They are constructing a curriculum for teaching Islamic history that places less of an emphasis on the violence of the past, and more on spirituality.
“We want to create materials for education which contains more about the character of the prophet, the compassionate character of the prophet, rather than these records of conflicts and wars,” Staquf said.
“We use a creed for this movement, the global movement of humanitarian Islam. Our creed is: ‘We choose rahma’ … ‘We choose compassion,” he said.
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Pope Leo and everyone else just need to relax. It was an accident. If you doubt that, you’re an anti-Semite.
If you doubt such sarcasm is antisemitic, you’re antisemitic.
WOW, 🤯 that was blunt!!! It’s possible to love the Jews but condemn the State of Israel! And many Jews do it!
Tony W. Arn’t you open to a dissenting opinion?
Because we know that shrapnel never causes collateral damage…
I can assure you that I am not an antisemite and having a missile strike a Catholic church full of innocent people is not acceptable. What kind of people have we become when we can shrug off this type of collateral damage as “an accident.”
Shrapnel does not a missile make.
How many churches were damaged by the allies during WW2? War is heck.
So Netanyahu called Pope Leo, eh?
Would it be too much trouble to let us know what Netanyahu said to him?
Yes, bineyman, it’s reported that a call was made but then tells us nothing of substance. A waste of precious ink.
I wonder why Leo XIV doesn’t ask Netanyahu to send his foreign minister to Castelgondolfo for a meeting with the leader of Hamas to end the ighting? Leo should invite the leader of Hamas.
“Fragments of a projectile”? Looks like a direct hit. The Church is completely destroyed. Well they’ve been itching to get rid of it since the war started. Never mind, There’s probably somebody sheltering there who might say something rude about Tel Aviv in the future. Prevention is better than cure, eh? Come to think of it, there’s probably people in Tierra del Fuego or Timbuctu who might also say rude things. Perhaps they need a few bombs too. Words are so hard to bear. Oh dear.
Yes, it was a direct hit from an explosive (i.e. shrapnel-filled) tank shell.
Israel is employing its usual diabolical sophistry (“the unaimed shrapnel did it!”) to excuse itself.
Diabolical?
If the problem that developed in Nigeria is because of a direct deliberate withholding of intelligence by Israelis, noticing it as it becomes apparent would not be from “hating Israel” or from being a “hate Israel firster”. If the US also has been withholding it doesn’t mean reacting against that is being hateful of the US.
I am skeptical of Israel’s explanation of the attack being an “accident”. They gave the same excuse, when they deliberately and intentionally attacked the USS Liberty and killed our sailors.
Why does the American media give so little coverage to these all
too frequent “mistakes” by the Israeli military forces”?
The Judophobia is strong in this comment section.
Pius XII did say we were all spiritual Semites, but he rejected Zionism, and Tel Aviv’s jurisdiction over Jerusalem, which remain the Church’s positions to this day. The Church began diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv a few decades ago (as did the Palestinians), but only as recognition of a political situation on the ground, not as a Jewish state per se. Catholics (unlike certain evangelical groups) ought to keep to the Church’s official, constant position on this issue; it’s based on faith, not politics. The Church has supported a two state solution (outside Jerusalem) ever since it became an option. The continuation of the war in Gaza for years after Gaza’s foray outside itself was defeated, has only one purpose – to make a two state solution impossible. But a just war does not entitle even an aggrieved party to annihilate another nation by ethnic cleansing.
But the main question the Christian West should be asking is: what about our sacred places? What about the Christians in Palestine? That should be the focus of our tears and anger.
I do not particularly care to embrace the political positions of any pontiff, as they are far outside the realm of his infallibility and are frequently outside the realm of good sense.
(Incidentally, you are thinking of Pius XI, not XII, as the pontiff of “spiritually we are all Semites”.)
In a word, “the Church’s” (really “the Vatican’s”) position on Zionism and the two-state solution and jurisdiction over Jerusalem is not authoritative for Catholics and enjoys all the sense of the Vatican’s position on the United Nations. A two-state solution was feasible eighty years ago and was rejected by the Arabs. The idea that it will work now is pure geopolitical folly. Israel has a better historical claim to Judea and Samaria than it does to the Mediterranean coast, and any Palestinian state would unquestionably be either a state sponsor of terror or ineffective in stopping it.
You parrot the common blood libel of “ethnic cleansing” (and it is blood libel), blissfully ignorant of the requirements of urban warfare and apparently of the large Arab Israeli population.
The war in Gaza is to destroy one of the most notorious terror organizations in the world. It is every bit as jest as the Allied crusade against Nazism or Japanese militarism.
It is furthermore fallacious to claim that the war in Gaza has or will make a two-state solution impossible. Hamas made it impossible by showing what a Palestinian state would do.
Thank you Spiritual Semite for stating the facts of the matter with brevity and clarity. Hamas, by their shocking actions over many years now have clearly demonstrated with hideous clarity that the ‘2 state solution’ is an absolute impossibility. A lot of contributors to this thread need to ask themselves why it is that to this day no Arab state has taken in a single refugee from Gaza.
Good post, Mr. Cervantes, an excellent summary.
There is no ethnic cleansing taking place, and it’s inappropriate to make that false accusation. The Palestinians have consistently rejected a two state solution, so their situation is largely their own doing.
It almost never fails.
Let’s not call it a phobia, but what it is: hatred.
It’s a disorder I believe. Scapegoats provide a rationalization for our failures. It’s easier to blame others for life’s disappointments and our own weaknesses.
I had a family member who ended up like that. Everything wrong with the world became the fault of Jews and immigrants. It’s sad.
I really hope the pope will also urge the release of Israeli civilian hostages.
I stand corrected. Saying a two-state solution is impossible because of the regime in the smaller part of Palestine, Gaza, is Luke saying that a German star was forever impossible because of the Nazi regime. Hamas was defeated is conventional warfare a few weeks into the conflict. That it is still able to conduct guerilla warfare is no teaspn the ethnically cleanse Gaza. If you affirm this, then you affirm that the English would have been right to ethnically cleanse the Irish, who continued for many generations to conduct rather deadly guerilla campaigns against the occupation and its local allies. These campaigns repeatedly killed far more than the 400 civilians and 300 soldiers Hamas did three years ago, and which you seem to consider a kind of Year Zero.
The Catholic Church’s position on Zionism and Zionism’s jurisdiction over Jerusalem isn’t politics, as you claim. Catholicism can’t identify the OT people with a Mitteleuropan political movement based on secular nationalism. Nor would it identify the OT state with contemporary Orthodox Judaism. The only claim Tel Aviv can have is its might is right notion, which the Vatican accommodates with its support for a two-state solution. This solution is politics, yes, and leaves untouched the Church’s position on Zionism and jurisdiction over Jerusalem.
Your second paragraph is risible bunk. The Church has no authority whatever to declaim on a geopolitical solution to the Zionist question. If anything, she can only affirm the special relationship of the Jewish nation to its land.
Your first paragraph repeats again the malicious lie that Israel is interested in “ethnically cleansing” Gaza, then compounds this with the military nonsense that counterinsurgency must under my view necessitate or justify such “cleansing.” This is preposterous. Military operations can and do, however, often necessitate urban warfare to uproot an entrenched enemy. You ought to familiarize yourself with military history.
“Catholicism can’t identify the OT people with a Mitteleuropan political movement based on secular nationalism. Nor would it identify the OT state with contemporary Orthodox Judaism. ”
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I don’t think Israelis are over-concerned about what some Catholics may believe about this. Attempting to assimilate & placate the prevailing class is what doomed many German Jews. It was a fool’s errand. Jews have always been the perfect scapegoat & Israel has been the only place they can feel relatively safe. Even there they still have to watch their backs.
The discussion with the other writer only concerned Catholic views on the issue. We are allowed to have views and discuss them? Thanks there.
The Vatican is a sovereign state which recognise other states if it chooses.The Church can and must try to intervene in secular affairs when higher principles are seriously violated by civil societies. It always has.
Netanyahoo’s Deight at Trump’s proposal to deport Gaza’s population only confirmed what his policies on the ground are doing. Do you agree that the removal of Gaza’s population to other countries would be immoral?
I can’t tell who your question is addressed to Mr Cervantes, but I personally believe Gaza should be completely evacuated. It’s unsafe for human habitation. To keep civilians there in harm’s way is immoral. But every civilian death scores Hamas propaganda points so they have no incentive to encourage the people to leave.
It’s unlikely any people would consent to being ethnically cleansed. The bravery of the Palestinians is incredible.
Jews have survived a very long history of attempts to exterminate and “ethnically cleanse ” them. They’ve know the reality of those words. Not the political invention.
Gaza needs to be evacuated ASAP and the hostages released. But Hamas has no incentive to do that because their sources of revenue would dry up.
The incredibly brave Palestinians of Gaza don’t need to be ethnically cleansed.
To call the Palestinians “brave” is, in the main, a despicable misuse of the word. The true bravery lies with the Israeli people and their righteous war.
The voluntary emigration of Palestinians from Gaza is certainly not immoral and would be excellent politics.
If you seriously believe their exit would be voluntary, there’s little point discussing the issue. But do you believe the removal of Gaza’s population to other countries would be moral? Last chance to give a straight answer.