Don’t know much about Kyai Hussein Muhammad by repute a respected Muslim scholar who runs a religious school in Indonesia except the genral position that he articulates that there is a need to question versions of Islamic teaching used to codify Sharia laws inconsistent with justice and equality (one part of which is between the sexes) because ultimately justice and equality is what Islam is all about.

Zainah Anwar therefore makes a good point : why should a leader harps on rational and progressive Islam that is open to reinterpretation to meet the challenge of change (Islam Hadari) and yet by action ban Kyai Hussein Muhammad’s progressive view?

There will always be people who will doubt what a leader says but they will start believing when they see him actually does it. Nothing demoralises more than not only mere inaction but more so contradictory acts.

That belief of people is eesential. Otherwise people will not be inspired and motivated to follow what a leader says, and he can no longer lead since he demonstrates greater inclination to follow!

Yet a leader must also sometimes follow. Wasn’t it Franklin D. Roosevelt who said a leader can’t get too far ahead of his followers? Follow in the sense that he has to embody the concious values and the unconscious, sublimal impulses and prejudices of the community that he leads and if he goes too far ahead and divergent from their mores and values, they’ll boot him out. So that is relapolitik consideration of political survival.

On the other hand, it is also the higher calling and duty of the leader to guide his followers away from their prejudices, to lift their level of thinking, visions and aspirations beyond their normal limitations and prejudices to a higher organisation beneficial for the god of the community and the nation, present extending to the future.

This requires him to put his foot down, where it needs to be done!
He should not shirk from doing right just because a small faction of demagogues or religious conservatives exert pressure disproportionate to their size against enlightened change and in voices stentorian shout him down, costing him votes and support and even earning him enmity from some quarters dedicated to his overthrow.

So Life is not easy even for a top leader.

Leadership involves then a delicate balance juggling between what and when to follow and what and when to lead at the right time, depending on the manifold circumstances as they unfold and the unique challenges they pose in each instance of time.

The knowledge of a leader of this difference of what is right and when to fight for it and when to temporise and delay it is the measuring cast that distingishes between the good and savvy from the ordinary or poor leader.

Inconsistencies of policies, talk and actions of a leader per se will not by themselves doom him – he is not expected to be consistent all the time, as only expected given he needs to juggle the ebb and flows of power around him – as long as between the shifts, to and fro, he is always mindful that when he takes one step backward in reforms, it is always in order to pave the way for 2 steps forward, guided by the consistent, unflinching, dominating and overarching course of always pressing forward to bring his people collectively to a higher organisation of thinking, visions and aspirations beneficial for the country. That is the ultimate benchmark that determines his mark as a leader and his legacy. The main element then is always sincerity and consistency of this sincerity.

Sorry typo error – beneficial for the “good” (not god) of the community