PBNU Kemelut Memanas, AS Hikam: All Kubos Must 'Welcoming' And Return To Islah

JAKARTA Internal conflict of the Nahdlatul Ulama (PBNU) Executive Board is heating up again. After the Rais Aam PBNU camp KH Miftachul Akhyar held a plenary meeting at the Sultan Hotel Jakarta on Tuesday (9/12/2025), the Tanfidziyah camp under the General Chairperson of PBNU Yahya Cholil Staquf following holding a plenary session at the PBNU Jakarta Office on Thursday (12/12/2025). This situation reflects the tension between the two camps that have not subsided.

Political observer and NU figure, Prof. Dr. AS Hikam, MA, APU, emphasized that all parties must exercise restraint and avoid steps that make things worse. According to him, if conflict is allowed, problems can lead to the realm of law and make the situation even more complex.

"The solution is, yes. All parties hold back and sit together to find a way out," said Hikam to VOI.

The Senior Lecturer of the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Humanities, President University emphasized that islah can only happen if each party has the sincere intention to resolve the root of the problem. He reminded the camps at PBNU not to be trapped in the act of firing each other which actually made the conflict even more tangled.

"Both of them must want to go first. Not fire each other or reposition the management. It will only make things more complicated," he said.

Hikam asked for the energy of each camp to focus on identifying internal issues that had triggered tensions. Starting from financial matters, clarity of decrees (SK), to mining issues that have been mentioned several times in the PBNU polemic.

"All problems are inventoried, solutions are found. If all parties want to exercise restraint, nothing cannot be resolved," he said.

According to Hikam, NU is an organization with unique characteristics because it upholds the elder clerics. However, he also reminded that in modern organizations, the articles of association (AD) and household budgets (ART) must still be used as the main guidelines.

Not only internal factors, Hikam also suspects that there is external intervention that tries to take advantage of the conflict situation in PBNU. He considered that there were certain actors, both from within and outside, who were consciously or not having become pawns in the interests of other parties.

"They may not be aware that external forces have been used," he said.

Hikam, who once served as Minister of State for Research and Technology in the era of President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), invited all parties to return to zero and start a dialogue islah.

"God willing, not to win or beat the opponent, but to find a common solution," he said.