While Indonesian Muslims, generally, have a very positive view of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi ambassador to Indonesia set off a virtual firestorm last week, including calls for him to leave the country, after a tweet from his official Twitter account seemed to all but accuse Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country’s biggest Islamic organization, of being “heretical”.
Ambassador Osama bin Mohammed Abdullah Al Shuaib left Indonesia shortly after posting the tweet on December 2 (not due to the criticism but because of an already scheduled trip) and thus has not been present to personally respond to the controversy. However, a voice message of him addressing the scandal has recently been shared online. In it, he claims that the controversy was due to “somebody” trying to destroy his relationship with NU.
The message, which was widely distributed via various NU and Muslim organizations’ social media channels, was generally accompanied by a caption saying” “This is a voice recording of the Saudi Ambassador asking forgiveness to followers of NU via Mbak Yenny Wahid” (Yenny Wahid is the daughter of NU founder and former president Abdurrahman Wahid aka Gus Dur).
Despite the caption, the recording does not (as Detik pointed out) seem to include any actual words of apology from the ambassador. Instead, in the short message, spoken mostly in English, Ambassador Osama says: “I love the Indonesian people, and I like NU, Muhammadiyah and all Islamic organizations. But somebody is trying to destroy the relation between me and Nahdlatul Ulama, between me and the Indonesian people. Send my regards to my sister and inshallah I’ll be back next week and everything will be fixed, inshallah.”
Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, the head of NU’s Youth Movement (GP Ansor), posted the recording to his official Facebook page with the caption “We forgive. We forgive each other. This is what religion teaches. This is exemplified by the esteemed Prophet Muhammad SAW.”
It’s a far cry from the tone of last week when NU’s Executive Board officially asked the Indonesian government “to submit a directive to the Saudi government to repatriate Osama as sanction for his acts of recklessness by interfering with the Indonesian state’s political affairs”.
The controversy started with a tweet, now deleted, from Osama’s official Twitter account in support of the 212 anniversary rally that took place in Jakarta on December 2. The tweet featured pictures of the Islamist hardliner organized rally, along with the caption: “The act of millions of Muslims as a reaction to the burning of a flag carrying the tauhid text by a heretical organization.”
The tweet was inaccurate in a few ways. First, reliable estimates put the number of participants at the so-called “212 Grand Reunion” somewhere between 40,000 to 100,000. Second, the rally was, first and foremost, a commemoration of the 2nd anniversary of the December 2, 2016 protests against former Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama over highly politicized charges that he had committed blasphemy against Islam and not about the infamous tauhid flag burning incident Osama is referring to.
That incident concerns the most incendiary aspect of the ambassador’s tweet, the last part in which he says the flag burning was done be a “heretical” organization. The organization he was assumed to be referring to was NU.
In October, a video went viral showing members of GP Ansor burning a flag they believed belonged to the banned Islamist organization Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI)— a black flag that contained the tauhid, Islam’s sacred monotheistic declaration. The video led to mass protests in Jakarta declaring the flag burning blasphemous and demanding the perpetrators be punished — even though the flag burners had already been arrested and were eventually sentenced to prison.
In addition to earning the anger of NU officials, the implication that the ambassador had defamed the influential organization by accusing it of religious deviancy led many Indonesian netizens to call for Osama to be sent home with the hashtag #PulangkanOsamahSuaibi (which translates to “Send Osama Suaibi home”).
However, the ambassador’s new so-called “apology” seems to imply that the unnamed “somebody”, who is supposedly trying to ruin his relationship with NU, either posted the tweet without his permission or gave him false information regarding the organization behind the flag burning incident.
In either case, it still seems like a massive diplomatic error that requires a much more thorough apology and explanation than has been shared with NU’s followers thus far. Hopefully, Ambassador Osama will be able to do provide that once he returns to Jakarta.
Some online have questioned whether Ambassador Osama might be not-so surreptitiously supporting forces opposed to President Joko Widodo’s administration. When infamous firebrand cleric and 212 figurehead Rizieq Shihab, who is currently avoiding legal troubles in Indonesia by residing in Saudi Arabia, was questioned by authorities in the Middle Eastern kingdom for a tauhid flag that was hung on the wall outside his home (authorities believed it might be the flag of ISIS, which is banned in Saudi Arabia), the ambassador defended Rizieq and said he was being treated very well by officials in his country.
Also, while this doesn’t really prove anything, some have also noted that the only Indonesian figure that Ambassador Osama follows on Twitter is Prabowo Subianto, who is challenging Joko Widodo in the 2019 presidential election and spoke at Sunday’s 212 reunion rally.
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