Faith & Spirit Quote by Abdurrahman Wahid

Wahid is selling restraint as both strategy and theology, and he does it with the calm certainty of someone who’s had to keep a fragile country from tearing itself apart. The line turns “pressure” into a civic virtue: protest, organizing, argument, persistence. Not the romance of revolution, but the slow grind of legitimacy. He’s speaking to students, the demographic most tempted by purity tests and dramatic rupture, and he’s deliberately rerouting that energy into a method that can survive contact with power.

The subtext is a double bind that Wahid tries to loosen. In late-authoritarian or newly post-authoritarian settings, the state often wants violence: it justifies crackdowns, delegitimizes opponents, and fractures coalitions. By insisting on nonviolence, Wahid denies the regime its favorite script and keeps the opposition’s moral high ground intact. “Move towards democracy without violence” also quietly rebukes the idea that democracy is born through cleansing force; it’s a warning that the habits of violence don’t disappear when the flag changes.

Then comes the most culturally savvy move: “God will allow it.” This isn’t fatalism; it’s political translation. Wahid, a Muslim intellectual with deep authority in Indonesia’s religious sphere, frames democratic change as morally licit, not a foreign import or a secular threat. He’s giving students permission - religious permission - to want democracy, and conditioning that permission on means as much as ends. Democracy, in his telling, isn’t just a destination. It’s a discipline.