MUHAMMADIYAH.OR.ID, JAKARTA – Muhammadiyah views religious regimentation issues are crucial to cope with. The religious regimentation refers to adopting certain religious understanding as the official view of a country.
The Secretary General of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) Dr. H. Amirsya Tambunan, M.A., the religious regimentation may bring positive and negative impacts.
“The regimentation may generate positive impacts if religion becomes the foundation of ethics in society and the nation. On the other hand, it will have negative impacts if religion is used as an instrument to govern or to apply authoritarianism,” Amirsyah said at the discussion on the program of Dialektiva TvMu on Saturday (10/12).
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According to Amirsyah, the religious regimentation in a pluralistic country as Indonesia may lead to negative positions because it can undermine values of Pancasila and democracy.
“The religious regimentation of brings religion into the public sphere which leads to the a regime negating democratic values. This is not in line with the democracy we aspire to build, which is from the people and for the people, for the people’s welfare, not the other way around to make the people miserable, poor, and helpless,” Amirsyah mentioned.
Even though he considered that the state must be neutral and reject any religious regimes, Amirsyah believed that religion must exist in the life of the nation as a source of values and morals to bring mutual benefit. In this case, he believed that the maslahah state concept by Imam Ghazali is suitable for a country as Indonesia.
“According to Imam Ghazali, a maslahah state attempts to build a balance relations between religion and a state to yield a symbiosis of mutualism,” Amirsyah said.
“Religion can be a source of ethics and moral values to protect religious people, and so can the state be to protect all Indonesian people. Thus, religion and the state is indivisible,” Amirsyah said.
