Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (Vintage International) (4 page)

Imaduddin said, “I discovered at that time that this country needs human resource development rather than high technology. I realized that the problem of the country was not technology. Technology can be bought if you have the money. But you cannot buy human resources who are dedicated to doing things for their country. You cannot expect Americans to
come here to do things for this country. As secretary-general of IIFSO I traveled a lot. And one day in 1978, when I was in Saudi Arabia, I saw that they had established a very modern hospital, the King Faisal Hospital, but all the doctors, even the nurses, were non-Arab. The doctors were Americans, the nurses were Filipinos and Indians and Pakistanis. Saudi Arabia can buy AWACS, but the pilots are Americans.”

“You hadn’t thought of that before?”

“Not really. But approaching it.”

Though I half knew that the scientific-sounding words Imaduddin was using would have a religious twist, I had also given them a half-scientific interpretation. I thought he was speaking as a scientist and was saying, very broadly, that technology without the supporting science was useless, and I thought he was using Saudi Arabia as an example of technological dependence. But the very next thing he said made me feel I had missed the true line of his argument.

He said, “When I applied for the scholarship from Saudi Arabia I was thinking of shifting from electrical engineering. I thought there must be something more important than technology.”

I had lost him for a while. He appeared to be saying that in order to develop technology it was necessary to give it up. I cast my mind back over what had been said. He talked on, and it was a little time before I saw that he was not speaking with detachment, laying down the principles of technological advance for Indonesia, but was speaking more personally, of his career, and of the intuitive stages by which he had given up electrical engineering, given up naked technology, and become a full-time preacher and missionary, and how, through this apparent professional surrender, he had reached the heights: the Association of Muslim Intellectuals, Habibie, the splendors of the N-250, and, indirectly, the president himself. In his mind there was no disjointedness or lack of logic. There was only clarity. A country could develop only if its human resources were developed: if the people, that is, became devout and good.

My questions would not always have been to the point. He handled them civilly, but as interruptions; and, like the seasoned politician or preacher, always went back to his main story without losing his way.

He said, “With the Saudi grant I shifted to industrial engineering. In electrical engineering we study just engineering. No human being is concerned. Except, when you study high voltage, of course you must think of safety. In industrial engineering you combine industrial system and human system, and management. I did this in Iowa. I met a very nice professor
who is an expert in human behavior. I asked this professor to be my major professor, and he very gladly agreed. Starting from this I concentrated my resources on behavioral approach.”

He had no trouble giving up his old subject. “I am interested in something only when I am learning about it. Once I know everything about it I don’t like it anymore. It’s one of my weaknesses or bad behaviors. An example. Show me any motor or electrical machine. I can tell you about the behavior of this machine. An induction motor is an induction motor. It doesn’t matter where it comes from. I can tell you about it completely. When I get my two babies, each baby has its own individual behavior. You cannot treat them like machines. Human beings are always enigmatic to me, always interesting.”

Just outside the office wall, the bright light yellowed, turning the dust and smoke into gold: the hot afternoon on the turn, moving now towards dusk, the traffic as hectic as ever, full of event but (like a fountain seen from a distance) constant. Against this, but from within the office, no doubt from the carpeted and rumpled open space at the end of the corridor, hesitant scraping sounds developed into a shy chant.

Imaduddin heard: it showed in his eyes. But, with the same kind of courtesy that had made him tell us earlier that it was not necessary to take off our shoes in the corridor, he appeared not to notice. He didn’t interrupt his story.

After four years at Iowa he finished his course in industrial engineering. He received a letter from some friends in Indonesia advising him not to come back just then. He showed the letter to the American immigration people—he had to leave the country as soon as he had graduated—and they gave him an extension. He also showed the letter to his professor. The professor knew that Imaduddin’s Saudi grant had stopped with his graduation, and he offered Imaduddin a teaching job. Imaduddin taught at Iowa for two years.

I said, “People have shown you a lot of kindness.”

I was trying to make a point about people in Iowa, unbelievers. I believe Imaduddin understood. He said with a mischievous smile, “God loves me very much.”

The chanting from the corridor became more confident. It couldn’t be denied now. I could see that Imaduddin wanted to be out there, with the chanters and the prayers. For a while longer, though, he stayed where he was and continued with his story.

In 1986 an Indonesian friend, well placed, in fact a minister in the cabinet, made a plea to the Indonesian government on Imaduddin’s behalf. He
gave a personal guarantee that Imaduddin would do no harm to the state. It was because of this that, after six years of exile, Imaduddin was allowed to go back home. He went to Bandung. He thought he still had his lecturing job at the Institute of Technology, but when he reported to the dean the dean told him he was dismissed. So—though Imaduddin didn’t make the point—it was just as well that he had turned away from electrical engineering.

The chanting now filled the corridor. It was authoritative. It recalled Imaduddin from his narrative of times past. And now he couldn’t be held back. He rose with suddenness from his office chair, said in a businesslike way that he would be with us again in a few minutes, and went out towards the chanting.

The room felt bereft. Without the man himself—his curious simplicity and openness, his love of speech, his humor—all his missionary paraphernalia felt oppressive: something being made out of nothing. It was only someone like Imaduddin who could give point and life to the electric blue Egyptian paperbacks on the glass-topped desk.

When he came back he had lost his restlessness. The prayers, the assuaging of habit, had set him up for the happiest part of his story. This was the part that dealt with the success—still with him—that had come after nearly a decade of jail and exile and being on the run.

The success had followed on his coming to Jakarta, the capital, after the humiliation of Bandung. In Jakarta he was closer than he had been to the sources of power. For the first time he could act on the principles of Javanese statecraft he had heard about from Dr. Subandrio eight to nine years before in the jail. They were simple but vital principles: knowing your place in the society and your relationship to authority; knowing what could or couldn’t be said; understanding the art of reverence.

He said, “From 1987 I started to be active in Jakarta life. I learned very fast.”

“What did you learn?”

“The geopolitics of Indonesia. The rules of the game Suharto is playing.”

Still, for all his new tact, he had a nasty stumble. It happened in his second year in Jakarta. He was working in a tentative way on his human resources idea.

“I started collecting some friends to start a new organization to be called Muslim Intellectuals Association—or something. We met at a small hotel in Yogyakarta. This was in January 1989. Four policemen came and dismissed the meeting. My name was still considered dirty. Suharto was still under the influence of the intelligence people.”

The intelligence people, he was to tell me later, were under the influence of the Catholics, and they were nervous of the Muslim movement. The incident showed him that though the society was completely controlled, it wasn’t always easy to read. It would be full of ambushes like this. He saw that it was wrong for him to think—as his Sumatran upbringing and American training encouraged him to think—that he could act on his own. He needed a patron.

“I learned more about the political situation. I read about Professor Habibie. I read cover stories in two magazines. I tried to learn more about him. I asked my friend”—perhaps the minister who had made it possible for Imaduddin to come back to Indonesia—“to introduce us. I was accepted by Habibie in 1990.”

“What actually happened?”

“I sent a letter by a student to Professor Habibie. Then I went to his office, accompanied by the students, three of whom I had made my ‘pilots.’ I met him on the twenty-third of August, 1990.”

A full year, that is, after the police had broken up the meeting of intellectuals in the Yogyakarta hotel. Habibie agreed to be the chairman of the new body.

“Why did you choose Habibie?”

“Because he is very close to Suharto, and nothing can be done in this country without the approval of the first man. Habibie told me that I had to write a proposal, and that this had to be supported by at least twenty signatures of Ph.D.s all over the country. So I came back and for a fortnight went to work on the computer. I got forty-nine people to sign the letter. They were mostly university people. Habibie showed this letter to Suharto on the second of September 1990, and Suharto gave his approval immediately. He said to Habibie, “This is the first time the Muslim intellectuals have united. I want you to lead these intellectuals to build this country.’ Of course this letter will become a national document.”

At this point Imaduddin’s career took off. “After coming back from the meeting with Suharto, Habibie established a committee to prepare a conference. The Association of Muslim Intellectuals was established by the beginning of December 1990. Suharto committed himself to opening the conference.” And there was a further sign of presidential forgiveness. “When Suharto through Habibie wanted to find a name for the paper for ICME, Habibie asked me to find a name. I gave him three choices:
Res Publica, Republik, Republika.
Suharto chose
Republika.
After that I began to gain my freedom. I can talk anywhere I like. When I came back in 1986 I wasn’t allowed to give any public lectures. So things have changed completely
in Indonesia. Of course there has been opposition. Non-Islamic, Catholics.”

“Why did Suharto change his mind?”

“I don’t know. A puzzle to me. Maybe God changed his mind. In 1991 he went on hajj to Mecca—the pilgrimage. His name now is Hajji Mohammed Suharto. Before that he had no first name. He was just Suharto.” And Imaduddin became a busy man. “Since 1991 I have been assigned by Habibie. He called me one day and said, ‘I would like you to do just one thing. Train these people. Make them become devout Muslims.’ ”

“So you’ve given up engineering?”

“Completely. Since 1991 I have been every year to European countries, United States, Australia, just to meet these students, especially those getting scholarships from Habibie. I train them to become good Muslims, good Indonesians. Next week, as I told you, I go to visit Canada and the United States. I will be there for two months. I will visit twelve campuses.”

It was possible to see the political—or “geopolitical”—purpose of his work. The students were already dependent on Habibie and the government. Imaduddin’s mental training, taken to the students at their universities, would bind them even closer.

He said of the students abroad, “When they become devout Muslims and good leaders of Indonesia they will not think about revolution but about accelerated evolution.” It sounded like a slogan, something worked over, words, to be projected as part of the program: development, but with minds somehow tethered. “We have to overcome our backwardness and become one of the new industrial countries by 2020.”

So, starting from the point that in Indonesia there was something more important than technology, we had zigzagged back—through the human resources idea, which was the religious idea—to the need for technological advance. A special kind of advance, with the mind religiously controlled.

This zigzag had followed the line of Imaduddin’s own career, from his troubles at Bandung to his importance in the Habibie program. And in his mind there would have been no disjointedness. The most important thing in the world was the faith, and his first duty was to serve it. In 1979 he had had to express his opposition to the government. It was different now. The government served the faith; he could serve the government. The faith was large; he could fit it to the government’s needs. He had not moved to the government; rather, the government had moved towards him.

“I felt in 1979 that the religion was under threat. The intelligence group at that time was under the influence of the Catholics, who were afraid of Islamic development here. They have what is called in psychology projection.
They think that because they are a minority they will be treated like they treated the Muslims in other countries. Now I have my friends in the cabinet. It’s God’s will.”

The Javanese way of reverence was now easy for him. He said of Habibie, his patron, “He’s a genius. He got summa cum laude in both master’s and doctorate in Germany, in Aachen. His second and third degrees were in aeronautical engineering. He’s an honest person. He’s never missed a prayer. Five times a day, and he also fasts twice a week, Monday and Thursday. Habibie’s son is smarter than his father. He went to Munich.” And Imaduddin had also arrived at an awed understanding of President Suharto’s position as father of the nation. When Habibie had shown the president Imaduddin’s first letter about the Association of Muslim Intellectuals, the president, running his eye down the forty-nine signatures, had stopped at Imaduddin’s name and said in a matter-of-fact way, “He’s been in prison.” Habibie reported this to Imaduddin, and Imaduddin was wonderstruck.

He said to me, “One name. When you think of the hundreds of thousands who have been to jail here …” He left the sentence unfinished.