By: Nabila Az-zahra *)
Born in Kresek, Tangerang, and a great-grandson of a Grand Priest of the Grand Mosque, Kiai Haji Ma’ruf Amin is widely known as a cleric and prominent Indonesian politician. As Chair of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and Rais’ Aam Syuriah, the Executive Board of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) has greatly influenced Muslim scholars because of his understanding of the breadth of knowledge in the field of jurisprudence and Islamic sharia.
In the course of his career, he has had a great deal of influence in the determination of policies or fatwas which have been the opposition of religious people. Ma’ruf Amin highly upholds the attitude of tolerance between people both in terms of religion and belief as well as social societies. One of the fatwa of the MUI which he believed was to shape the tolerance of the Ummah was a group of followers of the sect of faith, which has now received official recognition in 2017. The results of the Constitutional Court’s decision that the state must guarantee that every lawyer can write his or her beliefs on the KTP or on the Family Card. The ruling gave fresh air to the followers of ancestral beliefs who had been forced to write one of the six official religions on their ID cards.
In the world of education, Kiai Ma’ruf is recognized as a Muslim scholar with the depth and breadth of knowledge in the field of jurisprudence and Islamic sharia, especially in the field of Islamic economics. After being appointed as a pair of Vice-President candidates with Jokowi, Kiai Ma’ruf immediately presented his ideas on Indonesia’s economic development strategy going forward and named the idea with the ‘New Flow of Indonesian Economy’ or Ma’rufnomics for the future. Based on his explanation, Ma’rufnomics is based on the 5th Sila Pancasila, which is a form of social justice that is socially just. The point of emphasis is by leveling the gap between the rich and the poor, the strong with the weak, between regions and between local and global products. And, building the weak is not weakening the strong, especially by banging the weak with the strong. So that the output is welfare for all people to realize a just democratic economy.
Not surprisingly, he was asked as a candidate for Vice-President to accompany President Joko Widodo’s detention, even though he was not a cadre of one of the Jokowi bearers’ coalition parties. The figure of Ma’ruf Amin as a charismatic cleric and his abilities and capacities in the field of populist economy would certainly be one of the important points to answer the current problems of the Indonesian people who are struggling with liberal economic issues.
Ma’ruf Amin is actually not a new name in the national political arena. A cleric who is very capable so that he can protect a very pluraristic society in Indonesia. Choosing a cleric as a leader is a good deed that God willing will be full of faith and blessing. Let us pray for our nation, pray for our president and scholars to get great blessings from Allah SWT to build our nation
*) Student of Islamic Studies at the State University of Jakarta