About religions destroying the earth
David Efendi
On 30 May 2024, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) signed Government Decree (PP) Number 25/ 2024. This allows religious organisations to manage a mine. The offer led to a big debate within Indonesia. David Efendi is an academic and environmental activist within Muhammadiyah. Here he explains the damage this decree has wreaked on Indonesia's environmental movement. (Editor)
It seems the state is afraid of being the one that destroys the planet upon which its citizens depend for their life. Politicians and the owners of capital are aware that Indonesian society still has a relatively high respect for religious values and culture. Not wanting to be accused of being the sole perpetrators of ecocide, they are ‘forcibly’ dragging in civil society organisations, under the pretext that doing so will create welfare, distribute sources of financing, promote the independence of civil society, and support ‘environmentally friendly’ mining. Jokowi and his operators thought of giving social organisations serving the public a mining concession, on the grounds that sharing the goods was constitutional and a democratisation of natural resources.
Unfortunately for him, more religious organisations refused than agreed to drool over these crumbs of left-over mines the government was offering. When the two largest Islamic organisations did accept, the public began to question what they had heard them say in the past about ‘moderation,’ and saw it as part of the drama of ecocide playing out in the country. Until the present day, the state is still seriously attempting to lure other prominent civil society actors into mining, because they don’t want to go to hell alone for the business of the ‘stones from hell’ (read: coal).
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah are the keys to civil society. They have enjoyed privileges ever since Jokowi’s first term, so that when the mining concessions became politicised these two organisations seemed reluctant to say no. They reasoned that a large organisations needs a lot of money for its operations (NU), or to develop its public service (Muhammadiyah). Anyway, they said, a business that had hitherto looked dark and destructive could by their involvement become more just (Sharia) – producing ‘clean and green mining.’ Of course, any pretext can be manufactured at will.
Cooptation
As a result, the public began increasingly to question the critical capacities and the autonomy of these two wings of civil society. Even more so when seen in the context of growing militarisation (the TNI law being revised in March 2025) and other populist issues such as the threatening ‘Indonesia Emergency Warning’ posters on TV (‘Peringatan Indonesia Darurat’), the end of direct elections of local government heads (Pemilukada), political ‘dynasties,’ and a weakening economy. That they were being coopted became even clearer when these organisations did not join in the growing public criticism.
The cooptation also weakened the environmental movement that had been growing within the two organisations. Instead of pursuing the growth of the kind of faith-based ‘deep ecology’ that Anna Gade so appreciated in her book Muslim Environmentalisms (2019), their stepping into the political trap has produced ‘shallow ecology.’ Young environmental activists within them – right down to the local community level - feel crushed by these extractive politics. What Tania Li in the title of her 2007 book called The Will to Improve - technical organisational and economic rationality – here meets the mining concessions business and produces sins that will continue to haunt them.
Jokowi’s state efforts to coopt religious organisations by handing out coal-mining concessions have been continued by Prabowo. Three organisations – all Islamic note well! – accepted the offer. NU was first off the mark. Muhammadiyah had a process of ‘thinking’ and ‘consulting.’ Persis, the Islamic Union, has not revealed its internal dynamics. Local mosque boards and so on have also been keen to get their ‘share.’ More recently, even university campuses have been offered a concession. Some, very few, of the latter have spoken out against it on the grounds it could hamper intellectual-academic freedom.
Justifications
While the explanations organisations give appear to make rational sense, the impression that they are ‘caving in’ to the politics of weakly regulated mining concessions makes the more critical groups think outside the box. They are beginning to talk of democracy without civil society organisations. They are even thinking of Indonesia as a post-organisational society. When the state was ‘weak,’ the organisations looked like super-powers with real clout. But now that we are in the grip of economic-political oligarchs wearing a state uniform, people are leaving the organisation behind as a force for democracy. ‘Digital citizenship’ is taking its place, as a political space without conventional political parties and religious organisations.
Of course there is a strong note of disappointment here. Just as a tsunami of environmental crises with their associated injustices, inequalities, and human-made disasters is washing over us, the religious organisations are not there. Any thoughtful person will know this is the consequence of a regime that bows down to growth and the extractive economy, while risking the entire planet. Religious leaders taken in by the myth of ‘mining for welfare’ should read E. F. Schumacher’s famous Small is Beautiful, Joseph Stiglitz et al on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, and Lorenzo Fioramonti’s Gross Domestic Problem: the politics behind the world's most powerful number. They should also read the Indonesian series Bacaan Bumi (Earth Readings).
NU chief Yahya Cholil Staquf justified accepting the offer by saying NU needs the money for its many programs. Persis chair KH Jeje Zaenudin praised the government policy as ‘positive.’ Many within Muhammadiyah hoped that their organisation would reject the mining offer. They know the Earth is not OK. They know about Freeport, they know about Busang. They remember that Muhammadiyah leader M. Amien Rais once said that the extractive economy ‘tore up the social justice conscience’, that it completely contradicted ‘social tawhid‘ – the Islamic liberation theology based on the 107th surah of the Quran called Al-Ma’un.
In today’s language, the practices of the mining oligarchs are an assault on ‘Green Al-Ma’un’ theology. The injustices of the mining business not only directly affect local societies and the workers, but nature itself.
When Muhammadiyah leaders eventually agreed to the offer contained in Decree 25/2024, they went beyond simple acceptance. They expressed appreciation for the government’s intention to improve popular welfare through the social organisations. The decision came after ‘comprehensive’ research, they said – even though I have seen very very little of that from the perspective of the victims. Interestingly, they included a conditional clause allowing for cancellation:
Should it be found eventually that the mining causes more damage (mafsadat), meaning ill effects on the social and ecological environment and so on, Muhammadiyah agrees to return the licence.
Be that as it may, we do need to discuss whether the acceptance is a political thing, an economic matter, or some second-hand stuff masquerading behind a myth of welfare in a time of anthropogenic climate crisis.
Myth of welfare
If welfare is measured by access to education, health, and happiness, then a recent Celios study has shown that precisely these indicators are the lowest in those areas affected by mining. Maybe our intellectuals need to think again. Perhaps they have been taken in by a myth that approaches heresy when in reality they are facing a ‘resource curse,’ nothing less than the curse of capitalism that exacerbates the climate crisis and increases the risk of poverty. For those taken in by the myth, it will be relevant to read the Tempo editorial entitled ‘Repent, religious organisations.’ This urged them to return to their true religious orientation instead of siding with those ruining the earth on the pretext of economic growth and popular welfare.
Making a crisis look like no crisis
Accepting the mining offer represents for these organisations the pinnacle of a political crisis. It started already with their approval of a law that downgraded the Anti-Corruption Agency KPK in 2019, then of one to reduce protection for workers (Omnibus Law, 2020), and climaxed with their supporting one that granted coal mining licences to universities (UU Minerba, February 2025). The state appears to be having trouble facing down the growing social-ecological movement based in academia and the NGOs. It labels them ‘foreign,’ left, anarchic, and so, but these movements keep getting stronger. Linking arms with mainstream religious movements as partners with government and business is a potent move to dominate the narrative and push back the opposition. If the trap works, these organisations will be sitting at one dining table with state and corporate coal businesses. And then democracy itself will be at stake.
Social organisations seen as close to the popular voice of conscience can either help prevent harm or legitimate continued ecocide in the name of ‘democratising natural resources.’ There are lots of stories of them doing the latter – protecting ‘black’ mining operations, either with thugs or with a taxation logic. This is how crises are made to appear not as crises but as normal. The climate crisis is said to be not real, still far in the future, and floods caused by deforestation and strip-mining are said to be natural events.
Religious organisations can act to control greed and ecological injustice, and promote ecological civilisation by working towards a common platform of preserving life. Or they can continue business as usual and thereby normalise the crisis, making worse a situation already critical. Whenever mining generates yet another emergency, the state tends to normalise it by treating it as a technical problem. Wherever a new mine is opened, it creates more victims among the vulnerable – which is of course a great sin, undoing decades of good work. Islam as blessing for the world (Islam rahmatan lil ‘alamin) becomes Islam a disaster for the world; liberation theology is changed into a theology of oppression; ecosocialism into ecofascism.
Green Islam fades before it grows
At its 47th annual congress in Makassar in 2015, Muhammadiyah created a strong precedent by responding to the global climate crisis. Its leaders petitioned President Jokowi and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to make 2050 the target for 100% renewable energy, in view of climate change. Chairman Din Syamsuddin appealed for international collaboration between faith-based organisations and states to ‘suspend’ the approaching ecological disaster, especially since the most powerful seemed not to care for global environmental degradation.
All the religious organisations now accepting mines – NU, Muhammadiyah, and Persis – have in the past issued numerous statements about the environment, about water, plastic, ‘river schools,’ the energy transition, agraria, and more. They have joined the Islamic peak body MUI in publishing rulings (fatwa) on mining and renewable energy. These always say that Islam prioritises the avoidance of disaster (mudharat) over profit. Yet now that they are playing in the coal-mining orchestra – what a shame! – they are making positivistic sounds, looking at the profits to be made while forgetting all the disasters of the last 30 years.
Instead of only half-heartedly pursuing ‘Green Islam’ (as one researcher recently concluded), religious leaders could be an ecological compass for their followers. Indonesia ranks 162 out of 180 states in the global Environmental Performance Index. One in five Indonesians still believe either that climate change is not real, or that humans are not responsible, according to a 2020 YouGov poll. This is the highest in the world – followed by world champion climate-denialists, the United States.
Clearly it is not that these organisations do not understand the harm done by coal-mining. But they are making a trade-off between environmental theology and maintaining good relations with a hegemonic powerholder. Now it is up to the environmental activists within these organisations to resist, on the inside and the outside. NU has its young ecosocialists FNKSDA; Muhammadiyah has its Green Cadres (Kader Hijau, KHM). The latter have been particularly vocal in rejecting mining. The environmental movement of which they are a part must not only build coalitions with humans, but a permanent coalition with nature.
Can religious leaders think?
Why did only the Islamic religious organisations accept the offer, the others not? Can we think about that a moment?
A civil society organisation clearly does not have unlimited power. But to be independent in the middle of a moral political crisis and a moral ecological crisis is a noble choice. So is the choice to work for a civilised world at a moment when Indonesia is ‘dark.’ It is a darkness that could also be caused by the dirty polluting energy business – polluting the sacred in all its diversity, and simultaneously polluting democracy. A healthy organisation should base itself on healthy business. As the American Green Islamic environmentalist Ibrahim Abdul-Matin writes in his book Green Deen (2010), coal is ‘energy from hell.’ It should be shunned by all religious people so long as there is a clean business alternative.
Civil society can build three kinds of moral character to oppose those forces out to destroy the environment and our food sovereignty.
- First, moral economy. Prioritising conservation and a balance in resource use does not mean delegitimising welfare but asking, What is the meaning of welfare that leaves behind an unlivable nature? What does it mean for an organisation to have a skyscraper if it stands in the middle of floods?
- Second, moral ecology. This means strengthening an ethical imperative to uphold balance. The earth has given humans everything to live well – we humans must take care of her in return, as the Quran teaches. While taking from her, we must never be disobedient (durhaka) towards nature. Treating the earth as a sacred mosque is a noble act in the midst of massive ecological destruction. To realise moral ecology requires quite radical political action.
- So, third, moral politics. This means no longer treating the earth as an object for greedy technology, something no religious teaching condones. It means building a pro-environmental democracy that affirms the rights of nature, the forests, rivers. This requires working at a structural and a cultural level. It can take place within the system, working for change in formal ways. But we can also work outside the system, as pro-active pressure groups participating in the struggle for ecological liberation from the power of the oligarchs. A key condition for faith-based civil society organisations is not to become trapped in cooptative political concessions.
Organisations that accept mines are creating business conditions that are friendly to the organisation, but hostile to society and the environment. Doing this destroys the critical strength of civil society – its ability to seize the narrative and to radicalise the politics of renewable energy, which is after all energy from heaven.
In the midst of the oligarchic grip on state and society, the organisations must face the political turbulence by linking up with other social movements – those that are more inclusive and independent. They must always display their political strength by continually voicing healthy and objective public aspirations. Always be out in front when resource management problems occur. Correcting the course has been the moral political responsibility of civil society organisations from the beginning until now. It should be maintained with all the strength and creative advocacy at its disposal.
Ecological civilisation
Today that means presenting a clear vision on ecological civilisation. That can start with greening the theology of Al-Ma’un – so that it does not deal only with helping orphans and other marginal groups but extends to saving the environment, on the basis of an eco-theology of liberation. Exploiting the earth without limits for the sake of capitalist growth will give rise to new poverty, new orphans, and incalculable, long-lasting, moral-spiritual ruin. The real mining hole in the ground is the hole in the faith of those who belong to religion.
It is crucial to engage with conviction and militancy in witnessing (dakwah) to the political world in order to avoid worse environmental disasters in the future. I propose that the dominant interpretation of rahmatan lil ‘alamin (Islam as blessing to the world) should be transformed into a movement for bringing blessing to the earth, and to build a concept of ‘earth citizenship’ that far exceeds the bounds of cooptation by the state. With the strength of an Al-Ma’un liberation theology that becomes ever greener, the organisations will be able to welcome a new chapter in ecological civilisation. The only condition being this: since accepting the mines is clearly harmful (mafsadat), repentance is an inevitability.
David Efendi (defendi83@gmail.com) adalah dosen Fisipol di Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta.
