Dr. Muchamad Ali Safa'at

Indonesia is neither a secular state nor a religious state. This sentence is often used to describe the relationship between state and religion in Indonesia based on Pancasila. On one hand, there has been a real process of secularization. Starting from the formation of the state organs that different and separate from religious institutions to the political realities that were desacralized. The creation of public law is not religious institution’s authority but secular state’s authority. On the other hand, Pancasila’s first value and article 29 of the 1945 Constitution clearly state that the State is based on Belief in One Supreme God. This constitutional framework has legal implication that some of the religious law (substance of the Sharia) become state law. Secularity is a product of dynamic interaction between secular and religious social forces. The process of interaction is assumed more dynamic in countries that declare neither as secular nor religious state. Secularization could be occurred for different reasons and purposes that create different secularities between regions, countries, and cultures, so called “multiple secularities”. This research is related to the first and third themes of the concept of "multiple secularities", that are, firstly, to know the historical background and the process of nation state formation as a path of secularization. Secondly, to explain the different forms of institutionalization of secularity and to explain the model of Indonesian secularity. The phenomenons that will be analyzed to know the dynamic interaction are the socio-political background, the constitutional framework, and state law and institution concerning religions. There are two principal functions of the law and legal process. First, Integrative, law as a government mechanism to manages conflict and facilitates social order. Second, transformative, perceiving law as a vehicle to express values and to change social and political condition.