The “Ashoka Approach” and Indonesian Leadership in the Movement for Pluralist Re-Awakening in South and Southeast Asia

Abstract

Leaders of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim organization, are working to consolidate South and Southeast Asia as an alternate pillar of support for a rules-based international order founded upon respect for the equal rights and dignity of every human being. Integral to this effort is a regional strategy called the “Ashoka Approach,” which seeks to reawaken the ancient spiritual, cultural, and socio-political heritage of the Indianized cultural sphere, or “Indosphere”—a civilizational zone that pioneered, long before the West, key concepts and practices of religious pluralism and tolerance.

Keywords:

• Ashoka
• India
• Indonesia
• Indosphere
• Islam
• Nahdlatul Ulama
• religious freedom

Notes

1 European political parties affiliated with CDI (previously known as Christian Democrat International) played a key role in establishing the rules-based international order and the European Union. NU leaders have also established the “Humanitarian Islam/World Evangelical Alliance Joint Working Group.” The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is one of the most prominent world-wide Christian bodies, representing over 600 million Evangelical Protestants in some 140 countries. See Bayt ar-Rahmah 2020.

2 Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf, General Secretary of the Nahdlatul Ulama Supreme Council, as conveyed to C. Holland Taylor.

3 The Indonesia Religious Freedom Landscape Report by Shah et al (Shah et al. 2020) was produced under the auspices of a three-and-a-half-year (2017–2020) project—funded by Templeton Religion Trust and led by Timothy Shah and Rebecca Shah—designed to analyze and advance religious freedom in South and Southeast Asia.

4 Holland Taylor contributed significantly to the drafting of this article.

5 Magadhi Prakrit (Māgadhī) or Magadhan was a vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan language, replacing earlier Vedic Sanskrit in parts of the Indian subcontinent. It was spoken in present-day Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. It is believed to be the language spoken by Gautama Buddha and was also the language of the Maurya Empire. Many of the Edicts of Ashoka were composed in Magadhi.

6 “The literal meaning of shari‘a is ‘water path,’ or river. Water flows in a spontaneous manner along this path in keeping with its nature, and will continue flowing until it reaches the sea, which is both its source and destination. According to this fundamental understanding of shari‘a, all who follow a path correctly will reach their Source and Destination (al-Awal wal-Akhir), although not everyone is aware of their Origin and Divinely-intended Goal” (Wahid 2011, 128). The volume’s first Indonesian edition, Ilusi Negara Islam, appeared in 2009.

7 Translation by Timothy S. Shah and C. Holland Taylor, drawing heavily upon the transliterated original text and word-by-word translation available through the University of Oslo’s Bibliotheca Polyglotta website, which includes Ashoka’s Major Rock Edicts. See University of Oslo n.d.

8 The original French edition was published in 1964 by Editions de Boccard, Paris. The first English edition was published by East-West Center Press in 1968.

9 To understand China’s pivotal role in the Islamization of the Malay Archipelago—including Kublai Khan’s punitive expedition to Java and the Ming dynasty’s foreign policy—see Taylor 2018, 36–51. From 1999–2003, Holland Taylor conducted extensive research into the Islamization of Java in the 15th and 16th centuries, consulting primary sources including the 17th century Javanese epic Babad Tanah Jawi (History of the Land of Java). This research led to the establishment in 2003 of LibForAll Foundation by Holland Taylor and H.E. Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, former Indonesian president and long-time chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama. LibForAll and its sister organizations—Bayt ar-Rahmah, the Institute for Humanitarian Islam and the Center for Shared Civilizational Values—are directly linked to the 500-year-old traditions of Islam Nusantara, and draw extensively upon strategies developed within that tradition to block the political weaponization of Islam. See also Sen 2009.

10 Some, but not all, of these epithets appear in Florida 1995, 176–177.

11 He made this remark to the second author of this article, C. Holland Taylor.

12 Some of these cultural narratives and motifs may be seen in the film Rahmat Islam Nusantara/The Divine Grace of East Indies Islam (© 2015 LibForAll Foundation), which was a direct output of a 3-year project funded by Templeton Religion Trust. A November 26, 2015 story in the New York Times—“From Indonesia, a Muslim Challenge to the Ideology of the Islamic State”—described the film as “a relentless, religious repudiation of the Islamic State and the opening salvo in a global campaign by the world’s largest Muslim group to challenge its ideology head-on” (Cochrane 2015).

13 A companion piece authored by C. Holland Taylor appeared in the same issue of Strategic Review (Taylor 2018). Portions of the present article, particularly our account of historical developments in Java, draw heavily upon Taylor’s piece.

14 This was a central finding of a two-year research project undertaken by the Templeton-funded Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University, culminating in several volumes, including Shah and Hertzke 2016 and Wilken 2019.

15 Mpu Tantular here employs the Sanskrit term dharma in the sense of Absolute Truth, while also stating that different religious paths lead to the same goal.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timothy Samuel Shah

Timothy Samuel Shah is Director of Strategic Initiatives of the Center for Shared Civilizational Values and Distinguished Research Scholar in Politics at the University of Dallas.

C. Holland Taylor

C. Holland Taylor is co-founder of Humanitarian Islam and the Movement for Shared Civilizational Values. He serves as Emissary to the UN, Americas, and Europe for Gerakan Pemuda Ansor, Nahdlatul Ulama’s 5-million-member young adults organization.