The Role of Muhammadiyah in Fostering Interfaith Dialogue and Religious Tolerance

Abstract

This article examines how Muhammadiyah fosters interfaith dialogue and religious tolerance in Indonesia through ideas, institutions, leadership networks, and public-service practices. Using qualitative document analysis, it compares organizational statements, congress decisions, leadership discourses, educational and humanitarian initiatives, and relevant scholarly accounts published no later than 2023. The findings identify three interconnected modes of engagement. First, Muhammadiyah frames religious difference through progressive Islam, civic responsibility, non-coercion, and competition in public virtue. Second, it develops elite and transnational dialogue through prominent leaders and inter-civilizational networks. Third, its schools, universities, hospitals, disaster programs, and minority-region institutions create practical encounters in which tolerance is performed through equal service rather than discussed only as doctrine. These contributions, however, remain uneven. Central commitments do not automatically eliminate exclusivist attitudes, local resistance, or ambiguity toward minority Muslim groups and controversial questions of religious freedom. Muhammadiyah is therefore best understood not as uniformly liberal, but as a large religious civil-society organization that institutionalizes a pragmatic, theologically bounded, and socially productive form of tolerance.