NU, Agama-Agama, dan Telikungan Zionisme Global: Kesadaran Geopolitik sebagai Kewajiban Aswaja

Abstract

This article examines the position of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) in the geopolitical struggle over narratives of Palestine, Islamophobia, and global Zionism. Taking as its point of departure the late Gus Im’s warning about the “entanglement of global capitalism,” the article argues that global Zionism operates not only through military power, state diplomacy, pro-Israel lobbying, and Western support, but also through the colonization of religious narratives. Islam is constructed as a threat; solidarity with Palestine is suspected as extremism; criticism of Israel is equated with antisemitism; and religious moderation is redirected into a soft—indeed silent—posture in the face of colonialism and genocide. The article examines the post-Cold War securitization of Islam, hasbara, the normalization of violence in Gaza and Lebanon, the demonization of Iran, Christian Zionism, Sunni-Shi‘a sectarianization, and the internalization of epistemic Islamophobia within Muslim communities themselves. Its central argument is that NU must reclaim Aswaja as an ethic of justice, geopolitical consciousness, anticolonial responsibility, and defense of the mustad‘afin—not as a brand of moderation that is safe for an unequal global order. Aswaja rahmatan lil ’alamin must be distinguished from imperial moderation: the former defends victims, while the latter normalizes settler colonialism, apartheid, blockade, and genocide. The article also argues that defending Palestine is not a departure from NU’s history, but a continuation of the geopolitical instinct of its founding scholars, who since 1938 had already made Palestine part of Islamic, communal, and anticolonial consciousness.