Education Quote by Abdurrahman Wahid

Wahid is doing something riskier than sermonizing about tolerance: he is repossessing Islam from those who wield it as a badge of dominance. The line pivots on an uncomfortable admission - the problem is not simply “misunderstanding,” but a failure of grasp, a lived incapacity that shows up in how power gets exercised over neighbors, minorities, and dissenters. By framing leniency and cross-cultural understanding as Islam’s own internal teachings, he denies hard-liners the convenient claim that pluralism is a Western import. Tolerance isn’t a concession; it’s fidelity.

The key phrase is “value systems,” a deliberately modern, sociological term that widens the target beyond interfaith relations. Wahid is signaling that Islam can coexist not only with other religions, but with different moral vocabularies, customs, and political preferences. That matters in Indonesia, where he governed amid sectarian pressures and the post-Suharto scramble to define national identity. His language reads like a statesman’s preemptive strike: he’s trying to build a civic floor under a diverse nation by insisting the religious ceiling is higher than people think.

Subtext: Islamic legitimacy can be argued without coercion. “Tolerated by Islam” is carefully chosen; it implies boundaries, yes, but it also implies restraint - a refusal to turn theological disagreement into social punishment. Wahid’s intent is both pastoral and political: to shame exclusionary piety and to give ordinary Muslims permission to practice a confident, non-defensive Islam that can live with difference without needing to defeat it.