Abdurrahman Wahid's Concept of Pluralism in the Qur'anic Perspective: Justice, Religious Freedom, and Freedom of Opinion as Human Rights

Abstract

Religious diversity constitutes one of Indonesia's most enduring social realities and one of its most contested political challenges. Sectarian conflicts rooted in religious difference have periodically erupted across the archipelago, from Poso and Ambon in the early 2000s to more diffuse instances of intolerance documented by the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) in subsequent years. Amidst this landscape, the thought of Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur)—Islamic scholar, former Chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama, and fourth President of the Republic of Indonesia—stands as the most prominent and intellectually sustained advocacy for religious pluralism in modern Indonesian Islam. This article examines the meaning of pluralism as articulated by Abdurrahman Wahid and situates it within a Qur'anic framework, with particular attention to three dimensions: justice ('adl), freedom of religion (hurriyyat al-dīn), and freedom of opinion as fundamental human rights. Employing a qualitative-descriptive methodology grounded in library research and thematic (mawdū'ī) Qur'anic analysis, the study draws on Wahid's major works alongside classical and contemporary tafsir literature. The findings reveal that Wahid's pluralism is not the theological relativism condemned by the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) in its 2005 fatwa, but a substantive commitment to the equal dignity of all human beings as affirmed by the Qur'an itself—most clearly in QS. al-Baqarah [2]:256, QS. al-Ḥujurāt [49]:13, and QS. al-Kāfirūn [109]:6—and exemplified by the Prophet's Madinah Charter. The article contributes to the scholarly understanding of progressive Islamic thought in Indonesia and to global debates on Islam and human rights.