Julia Suryakusuma , Jakarta | Wed, 06/18/2008 10:44 AM | Opinion
I had a shock on my early morning walk a few days ago. As I rounded a corner, I saw a huge kangaroo lying dead in the road ahead of me.
My God, I thought, how could there be a dead kangaroo in a suburban Jakarta housing complex? Quite apart from the fact that kangaroos are not native to Indonesia (so what was it doing here anyway?), the massive animal would soon start to rot, flies and maggots would come, pestilence and disease would spread, And the stench! Ugh! It would be unimaginably horrible and disgusting!
With heart pounding, I approached the carcass to examine it, and, low and behold, the "dead kangaroo" turned out to be, ahem, a big stone, a sack of dirt, an old tire and bamboo sticks (the spindly legs of the "kangaroo"!) that someone had put in the street to cover a big hole. From a distance, the contours of this arrangement of objects somehow resembled a dead kangaroo. Silly me. My eyes and my overactive writer's imagination were playing tricks on me.
And then I thought, perhaps the minds of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) and other Muslim hard-liners work in much the same way. No, they don't see dead marsupials lurking in our streets (so far as I know!), but they do imagine other harmless things to be equally repulsive and threatening -- like the tiny Islamic sect, Jamaah Ahmadiyah, which they denounce as deviant.
The difference is that the FPI's delusions are way more dangerous than my optical illusions. They are calling for Indonesian Ahmadis to be killed and have led violent attacks on the sect and those who call for it to be tolerated, thus polarizing Indonesian Islam.
There are now three broad trends in Muslim attitudes toward the Ahmadis. The first trend includes the extreme right, who demand a violent purging of what they consider to be the source of a horrible "disease" -- their "dead kangaroo". If the state won't act, then they will launch a private, armed jihad. As we all should know, settling differences with hatred and violence is simply not on; it's wrong, according to both democracy and Islam (which says clearly that you should respect differences "as a sign of the bounty of God").
The second trend covers conservatives who agree with the hard-liners that Ahmadiyah must be purged. This group also wants the state to ban the sect, but it condemns physical violence. The danger is that although this group eschews violence, it ends up implicitly condoning and supporting the hard-liners.
The third trend covers mainstream "secular Muslims". They also see Ahmadiyah as theologically mistaken in believing that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1839-1908), and not Muhammad, was the last prophet of Islam, but are basically tolerant, believing that "deviants" -- even atheists -- are entitled to their (non-) beliefs. They also believe that the state should not interfere in matters of faith, let alone ban groups with different religious interpretations.
Like most Indonesian Muslims, the National Alliance for Cultural and Religious Diversity (AKKBB), of which I'm a member, the group that was attacked by hard-liners at the National Monument (Monas), on June 1, would probably fall into this third trend.
Historically, there have always been tensions between religious and secular groups in Indonesia, especially since the obligation to follow Islamic law included in the first draft of the 1945 Constitution (the so-called "Jakarta Charter") was deleted that same year. During Soeharto's New Order regime, the military (and the state) dominated and repressed political Islam. In the current reformasi era, however, Muslim hard-liners are allowed political space to be their authoritarian selves -- ironic, given that Indonesia is trying to democratize.
Well, that's the risk of being a rights-based pluralistic democracy: you guarantee that the enemies of rights and pluralism have the right to be heard. Unfortunately, they forget that the same rights are also guaranteed to others.
More unfortunate still, the government seems to have forgotten that it is the one that does the guaranteeing! It should step in decisively and stress that we are now a plural society, but Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration is paralyzed in the face of FPI and the "dark side" of civil society. Ahmadiyah is the scapegoat targeted by the hard-liners today, but if the government fails to be firm now, other minorities will be next.
And if the government thinks that containing the current tensions is difficult, wait until it has to contain a civil war, which could happen if Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) decides to release its Ansor youth against the FPI. When mass organizations in Indonesia mobilize their paramilitary youth wings, long-established historical patterns tell us real trouble is on the way!
If the government keeps turning a blind eye to hard-line violence, then it might not be a government for long. Politicians may fear having the Islam card played against them, but they forget that there's also a democracy card now. Hard-liners only ever represent a minority of voters and their explicit aim is to end secular government, so why is Yudhoyono pandering to them by issuing the joint ministerial decree curtailing Ahmadiyah activities?
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," as Marcellus says in Hamlet, and there is something rotten in Indonesia too. And it's not my illusory "dead kangaroo", not the nutty but harmless Ahmadis, but instead -- surprise, surprise -- FPI and their ilk, bashing, abusing and calling for murder with seeming impunity. It's time we all stopped calling them "Islamic". It's time our government came out and denounced them for what they are: murderous, intolerant thugs.
I am not a devout Muslim, but the reprehensible way the FPI behaves offends me as a Muslim, and I am sure it offends many other "secular Muslims". And we are the majority, which should count for a lot in a democracy that has elections next year.
The writer is the author of Sex, Power and Nation. She can be reached at jsuryakusuma@gmail.com [1].
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[1] mailto:jsuryakusuma@gmail.com
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