Soekarno tentang Ahmadiyah

Indonesian-Ahmadiyya Studies: Soekarno tentang Ahmadiyah: Sinar Islam bulan Nubuwwah 1356 HS/Nopember tahun 1977) No.11 – Th XLVI Soekarno tentang Ahmadiyah oleh Syafi R. Batuah S ebagaimana pa...

Indonesia, Islam and democracy: A perspective

Published on The Jakarta Post (http://www.thejakartapost.com)

The Jakarta Post | Fri, 02/05/2010 5:36 PM | Opinion

Blake Respini and Herdi Sahrasad

There are currently hundreds moderate Muslim organizations in Indonesia, many of them set up following the fall of President Soeharto in May 1998. The nurturing of these civic organizations may be as important to the future of Indonesia’s democracy as is the curtailment of extremists.

Furthermore, simple political maturity, such as developing true parties with accountability and that stand for something beyond personality as well the development of an educated and experienced electorate should protect and stabilize Indonesia’s democracy.

However, a critical component of Indonesia’s democratic future involves recognition of the special role of Islam in the state.

As most Indonesian Muslims want their government to respect Islamic customs even if they do not support the creation of an Islamic state, the line between support for and opposition to sharia is often blurred.

Many Indonesians, including those who are only nominally Muslims, hold conservative values and support strict moral laws without necessarily seeing them as purely religious- or sharia-based.

It is easy to mistake support for a conservative moral law as support for Islamism when it is more simply a reflection of basic conservative values.

By the same token, many Muslims in Indonesia reject some social arrangements and norms that are commonly associated with democracy in the West, including our pluralism and secularism. But this too neither makes them theocrats nor anti-democratic.

While the political debate is often framed by pitting Islamists against non-Islamists, the lines are really much more subtle than this and democratic negotiation will require all parties to recognize this so that they can find common ground.

In this regard, Ahmad Shboul (2005) reminds us that keeping religion out of politics is not the same as keeping it out of society in general and that aside from the communists, even the most secular governments of the Western world have not attempted to do this.

Shboul suggests that the US attempts to secularize Arab politics may have even resulted in a backlash that has contributed to the growth of political Islam. Westerners would do well to remember that there is not only one form democratic society can take.

In fact, we do well to remember that even in the West, notions over what accruements democracy must have remains in flux and have changed over time.

As Hefner points out, whereas family was once seen as the central base of Western culture, today individual freedom is often elevated above family unity.

Additionally, the very notion of family is being redefined as Ame-ricans consider a variety of arrangements including domestic partnerships, civil unions, and gay marriage.

Despite our consensus on many central values there is constant stress in Western societies over the proper balance of individual right and needs of the community, equality and freedom, and even the pro-per role of religion and morality in politics.

Just as various Western democratic societies define each of these somewhat differently, Muslim democracies are likely to have their own brand of pluralism.

The debate over the passage of sharia-based legislation reflects that that Indonesia continues to map out the most central questions concerning the basic shape of its democracy.

The debate is less a debate about whether sharia is good or bad, but more about the proper meaning of sharia and its relationship to the state and thus its relationship to the national ideology of Pancasila.

Ultimately, it reflects a deep debate over the very meaning of the Indonesian nation and what it means to be Indonesian.

All of us have multiple identities. We may define ourselves as students, scholars, husbands, wives, athletes, musicians from an array of images that form our composite selves.

However, for a nation state to succeed it is essential that one of the imbedded images that a country’s inhabitants hold of themselves is that of their national identity.

But it is not enough to simply be an American, German, Indonesian or Turk, for a nation to function it is necessary that one’s national identity represent some share sense of community, and thus shared values.

Most nations form out of a long history that creates a shared past. In most of Western Europe these shared histories have been bound together by common languages, religions and cultural norms.

Thus, while the Italians and French were both Catholics, the growing awareness of their differences became an expression of nationalism.

Indonesians similarly may share Islam with others across the globe, but Islam can fulfill only part of the nationalist vision. Of course this is especially true in light of the tens of millions of Indonesians who are not Muslims.

The challenge for Indonesia is to find a place for sharia that neither subverts the uniqueness of Indonesia from rest of the Islam nor undermines non-Muslim Indonesians.

Indonesian Islamic scholarship has long and deep ties to the Middle East that form a strong bond with the rest of the Muslim world and recent decades have seen what is often called the Islamization or sometimes even the Arabization of Indonesia.

It would thus be a mistake to dismiss Indonesia as a worthy example of what the type of democratic society that Islam has produced even if it would be a mistake to assume that what can work in Indonesia could be exported to rest of the Islamic world.


Blake Respini is a graduate of Stanford University, USA, and lecturer at the Department of Political Science, San Francisco State University, USA. Herdi Sahrasad is associate director at Center for Islam and State Studies, Paramadina University, Jakarta, and PhD candidate at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Yogyakarta

— JP

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God, Sex and Love on American Campuses

The Huffington Post June 17, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-friedland/hey-god-is-that-you-in-my_b_588161.html

Roger Friedland
Professor of Cultural Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
Posted: May 24, 2010 11:54 PM

God, Sex and Love on American Campuses

Read More: Christianity And Sex , Christianity And Sexuality , Christianity Sex , Christianity Sexuality , Evangelicals And Sex , Evangelicals And Sexuality , Evangelicals Sex , Evangelicals Sexuality , God And Sex , God And Sexuality , God Sex , God Sexuality , Religion And Sex , Religion And Sexuality , Religion Sex , Religion Sexuality , Sex , Sexuality , Religion News

The sex is hot, but the heart is cold. Undergraduate men today have more "fuck buddies" than dates. A college date is a rare phenomenon, not unlike seeing a California condor in the 1980s.

I now know who does what sexually to whom among university students, and under what relational conditions. It was not by chance that I started investigating students' erotic world in the same year my twin daughters began to menstruate. Forty years ago I had sampled the pleasures of flesh in the first flush of the sexual revolution, stoned encounters in strange beds and on forest floors with girls whom I didn't know very well. But when I looked around at the adolescent world my daughters were entering, I felt that something had changed.

My generation took love for granted; sex was the great uncertainty, the adventure. This new generation has reversed the equation. For them, sex has become ordinary; what is uncertain, frightening, and for an increasing number of them unbelievable, is love.

Much to my daughters' chagrin I started my research on Facebook. Normally you have to pay kids to take surveys. Working with Paolo Gardinali, the head of our university's survey research center, I didn't have much money.

All we could muster was a knowing invitation. Our first banner ad in Facebook ran as follows: "When was the last time you got laid? Prayed? Said I love you? Tell us about it."

In a couple of weeks, more than a thousand students took the survey, a quarter of whom wanted to be interviewed personally about it. We have now surveyed many thousands of students both through Facebook and in large classes at the University of California, Santa Barbara where I teach, a place known both for the Nobel prizes won by its scientists and the sexual abandon practiced beachside by its students. My campus is a hot house for brilliant brains and beautiful flesh.

We asked students to tell us about their last sexual encounter. Who touched what body part? Was it a boyfriend/girlfriend, a hook-up, a booty call, friends with benefits? Did you love her or him? And she/he you?

We now have a huge sample of sex acts. More than half of all sex takes place in relations stripped of any romantic intent or possibility. That's for everybody. If you break out the guys, two thirds of their sex takes place in loveless, non-romantic -- typically first-time -- encounters. While some girls are playing by Sex and the City rules, most hope a relationship is going to flare up out of these first frictions.

American evangelicals and fundamentalists reached for political power in response to my generation's sex, what they saw as a horrible debauchery. Jerry Falwell began his Moral Majority after stumbling into a stoned, orgiastic Led Zeppelin concert. For three decades now, there has been a religious political obsession with what goes on in young people's underpants.

I am not so concerned with young people's sex. It's their love lives that have me worried. Students don't exactly believe in it anymore. The majority suspect love might be a fiction invented to keep women down. They don't expect their own romantic bondings to last. Indeed a fair proportion don't even want them to last.

So who loves? Nobody, except for J.K. Rowling, seems to be worried about that. The religious right has been preoccupied with young people's sexual abandon, pushing through abstinence-only forms of sexual education, which made it once again into President Obama's recent health reform bill in 2009. Sex outside a sacramental marriage is a sin, they say. Only a return to God can contain our lusts.

Does God matter? A huge amount of research has now been conducted on whether religious belief and practice constrain the onset and promiscuity of young people's sexuality. American sociologists have found that really religious young people have intercourse a bit later and with fewer partners. But the more people have looked, the less religion seems to matter.

Just as in the case of Representative Mark Souder, the Congressional cheerleader for abstinence-only sex education who had sex with his staffer and was recently forced to resign, God does not do a good job guarding their private parts. We found that belief in God has no impact on young people's sex lives. College virgins are no more likely to believe in God than non-virgins. Even those who took a virginity pledge are not sexually different from those who didn't, except they have had a little more oral experience.

Researchers have been looking in the wrong place. God is not working in people's underpants. But God, it turns out, does matter to young people's love lives. A student's belief in God is strongly associated with whether he or she conjoins sex and love. When compared to those who don't believe in anything beyond the physical world, young people who definitely believe in God are twice as likely to make love, as opposed to just having sex. Those who believe in God, and even more so a loving God, it turns out, are much more likely to have romantic sex and to find it difficult to separate out sex and love. If you want a lover, one of the best places to look is among those who believe in God.

Why does belief in God promote the making of love? There are various possibilities. The first is that our monotheisms make love into a sacred value. People who believe in God learn to value love. The second is that religion makes sex into a guilty pleasure. The religious need to love to justify their sex. But I think there is third reason, one that points to love as a structure of faith central to the making of our world. A relation with the divine is one in which you acknowledge your lack of sovereignty and self-control; admit that you are not your own basis, your own source; and depend on an other for your being whom you will never really understand or control. Religiosity and real romance are parallel orders of experience.

Whether religious faith is a template for loving or loving is the ground out of which we imagined our one God, romantic love is a historical achievement, one of the critical ways we moderns constitute ourselves as individuals. The desire to give oneself to another, to be entrusted with another's being, to hear the call and respond, is a font from which social solidarity, equality, and justice all derive. Love is an unlikely, even impossible, life course, but nonetheless an essential driver of much that is great in our world. Love is the prerequisite of our kind of history. When we no longer believe in it, we cripple our capacity to make it.

To me, it is more frightening that there are increasing numbers of young people who doubt the existence of love than that of God. It may be that God doesn't want us fornicating, but love's vulnerability to decay is ultimately more threatening to our political union than which sexual acts are objects of prohibitive legislation.

We need to be less concerned with how and when our sons and daughters cover their genitals, and much more with whether they can uncover their hearts. That it has become easier for a lot of young women to put a man's penis in their mouths than to hold his hand is the real obscenity. God's presence in our underpants is the least of our worries.

FIFA Tells Brazil’s Superstars ’Keep God Out Of Football’

Online link - http://www.churchnewssite.com/portal/p=15406

FIFA Tells Brazil’s Superstars ’Keep God Out Of Football’

April 19, 2010 at 5:46 pm

The soccer world’s governing body — FIFA (The Fédération Internationale de Football Association) — has sparked controversy after disciplining the Brazilian team for overt displays of Christianity during a match, reports Michael Ireland, chief correspondent, ASSIST News Service.

Stars including £56 million pounds sterling ($91.5 million USD) Real Madrid forward Kaka and captain Lucio revealed T-shirts with devout slogans such as ‘I Belong to Jesus’ and ‘I Love God’ during the Confederations Cup final last month.

According to Daniel King, writing for Britain’s ‘Daily Mail’ newspaper, FIFA has now risked accusations of being ‘anti-religious’ by reminding Brazil of its guidelines banning players from making displays of a personal, religious or political nature on the football pitch.

King reports that a warning letter was sent to the Brazilian football federation ‘to remind them of the relevant regulations, so that such incidents do not recur in the future.’

The newspaper reports that Brazilian players, and Kaka in particular, are well-known for their strong religious beliefs and the squad and backroom staff formed a large circle and sank to their knees in prayer after the victory over the US at the end of last month.

In the subsequent team photographs, many players were wearing the Christian T-shirts, with captain Lucio prominent as he lifted the trophy, the newspaper said.

In his article, King says: “But Brazil’s display of faith had an extra element of controversy because most of the players are Pentecostalists, whose leaders have been accused of violating religious freedom by attacking those of other faiths.

“In the light of Brazil’s high-profile display of faith, seen around the world by millions of television viewers, the head of football in Denmark wants all religious statements banned from football.”

Jim Stjerne Hansen, secretary general of the Danish football association, said: “Just as we reject political manifestations, we should also say no to religious ones. There are too many risks involved in clubs, for example, with people of different religious faiths.”

King explains that FIFA rules specifically ban the use of T-shirts or other undergarments, but there is nothing that outlaws prayer or other displays of religious belief. Law 4, which deals with players’ equipment, reads: “Players must not reveal undergarments showing slogans or advertising. The basic compulsory equipment must not have any political, religious or personal statements.”

Brazil has escaped sanction, just as they did following a similar display of T-shirts after their 2005 Confederations Cup win, but football has made its intention clear to keep religion, as well as politics, out of sport, King reported.

According to its website, FIFA is an association governed by Swiss law founded in 1904 and based in Zurich. It has 208 member associations and its goal, enshrined in its Statutes, is the constant improvement of football.

FIFA employs some 310 people from over 35 nations and is composed of a Congress (legislative body), Executive Committee (executive body), General Secretariat (administrative body) and committees (assisting the Executive Committee).

In Search of Islamic Constitutionalism

Hosen, N. 2004. "In Search of Islamic Constitutionalism". The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. 21: 1-24.

Abstract
This article examines the question of whether the Shari`ah is compatible with the principle and procedural form of western constitutionalism. The article will answer this question by looking at the arguments put forth by opponents of Islamic constitutional law and various counter-aguments. Using the substantive approach, I assert that the Shari`ah is compatible with constitutionalism. This position rejects both the fundamentalists’ and the secularists’ views on this subject. The Shari`ah’s principles can be a formal source or an inspiration to a constitution.

Secularization, R.I.P.

Stark, Rodney. 1999. "Secularization, R.I.P." Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3: 249.

Abstract

From the beginning, social scientists have celebrated the secularization thesis despite the fact that it never was consistent with empirical reality. More than 150 years ago Tocqueville pointed out that "the facts by no means accord with (the secularization theory ," and this lack of accord has grown far worse since then. Indeed, the only shred of credibility for the notion that secularization has been taking place has depended on contrasts between now and a bygone Age of Faith. In this essay I assemble the work of many recent historians who are unanimous that the Age of Faith is pure nostalgia -- that lack of religious participation was, if anything, even more widespread in medieval times than now. Next, I demonstrate that there have been no recent religious changes in Christendom that are consistent with the secularization thesis -- not even among scientists. I also expand assessment of the secularization doctrine to non-Christian societies shouting that not even the highly magical "folk religions" in Asia have shown the slightest declines in response to quite rapid modernization. Final words are offered as secularization is laid to rest.

Sekularisme: Ketika Kaum Muslimin Terkotak-kotak (Analisis Terhadap Perempuan Berkalung Sorban)

Oleh Nur Alfa Rahmah

Harus diakui. Sebagai sebuah karya sastra popular, film Perempuan Berkalung Sorban memang patut diacungi jempol. Pengambilan gambar, penokohan, setting diksi, serta instrumen-instrumen pendukung lainnya memang bisa dibilang sempurna. Dibandingkan dengan Ayat-ayat Cinta, buah karya Hanung Bramantyo yang satu ini jauh lebih natural dan memuaskan. Jika Ayat-ayat Cinta terkesan masih kasar, minim referensi dan terkadang maksa, maka film yang satu ini terkesan sangat matang, penuh referensi dan cukup relevan dengan fakta.

Keunikan yang paling menonjol dari film Perempuan Berkalung Sorban adalah pengangkatan fenomena pondok pesantren, sebuah komunitas yang meskipun menjamur di seluruh Indonesia, namun cerita tentang segala lika-likunya masih jarang terjamah oleh masyarakat luas. Kebanyakan, masyarakat hanya tahu bahwa anak lulusan pondok pesantren itu meskipun paham agama tapi kolot, kuper, polos, dan buta akan dunia luar. Pada sebagian kasus, hal ini mungkin benar, tetapi sungguh tidak bijak jika kasus yang kasuistik ini digeneralisir pada seluruh pondok pesantren. Sebab, tiap pondok pesantren memiliki sistem pengelolaan yang berbeda-beda, sehingga kemajuannya pun tentu berbeda. Fenomena pondok pesantren yang diceritakan dalam Perempuan Berkalung Sorban mungkin memang ada, tapi kita juga tidak boleh lupa kalau itu cerita fiksi. Dan fiksi, meskipun berlatarkan kisah nyata, tetap tidak meninggalkan bumbu-bumbu tragedi sebagai pemanis, yang seringkali hanya imajinasi penulis atau sutradara.

Terlepas dari apakah film ini bertujuan untuk meciptakan citra negatif tentang Islam atau tidak, ada suatu kebenaran penting yang perlu menjadi perhatian bersama—atau justru keprihatinan—yang ditunjukkan dalam film ini, yaitu adanya gap antara pondok pesantren dengan masyarakat umum. Bagi dunia pesantren, masyarakat umum adalah dunia luar yang penuh dengan kemaksiatan, sebuah pintu yang terlarang untuk dimasuki. Lalu bagaimana dunia luar memandang pesantren? Nampaknya istilah ‘penjara suci’ cukup tepat mewakilinya. Istilah ini tidak hanya diakui baik oleh komunitas masyarakat awam, tapi juga oleh komunitas pesantren itu sendiri, terutama para santrinya.

Gap yang terjadi ini tentunya sangat memprihatinkan. Gap ini semakin memperjelas bukti betapa sekularisme telah mengakar begitu dalam di negeri kita, yang notabene dihuni oleh mayoritas kaum muslimin. Gap antara pondok pesantren dan masyarakat awam seakan menguatkan stigma bahwa agama benar-benar terpisah dari duniawi. Dikotomi antara kaum ulama, politikus, saintis, dan sastrawan pun semakin nyata. Coba perhatikan bagaimana respon pengasuh pondok Al-Huda ketika menemukan buku-buku sastra yang dibawa Annisa ke pondok tersebut. Suatu hal yang ironis.

Betapapun buruknya masyarakat kita sekarang, penutupan diri kaum pondok pesantren terhadap dunia luar tidak bisa dibilang memberi solusi. Sebab, para santri yang notabene berada pada masa pubertas masih labil dalam berpikir dan menentukan sikap. Proses pencarian jati diri mereka seringkali tidak terakomodir dengan baik oleh pihak pondok, yang akhirnya menuntut mereka untuk mencari pemuasan intelektual dan emosional dari pihak-pihak lain di luar pondok. Di sinilah kekhawatiran terbesar yang patut disikapi dengan bijak.

Ada satu analogi bagus yang perlu direnungkan pihak pondok pesantren. Ketika seorang ibu menemukan anaknya tenggelam di sungai, ia dihadapkan pada dua pilihan: menyelamatkan anaknya lalu melakukan segala cara agar sang anak selalu berada jauh dari sungai, atau justru mengajarinya berenang. Apa yang dilakukan pondok pesantren sejauh ini seringkali adalah yang pilihan pertama. Memang benar, ketika santri berada dalam lindungan dan pengawasan pondok, ia akan selamat dari hal-hal yang tidak diinginkan. Tapi pondok hanyalah partikel kecil dari dunia dan masa di pondok hanyalah sepersekian bagian dari umur seorang anak Adam. Cepat atau lambat, santri akan berhadapan dunia luar yang menawarkan sejuta pilihan hidup beserta konsekuensinya. Apa yang harus dilakukan pondok bukanlah mendoktrin, menghukum, dan memenjara hingga santri dewasa, tapi memberi pemahaman dan pola berpikir yang shahih serta jawaban atas segala kebimbangan mereka agar mereka siap menghadapi dunia luar yang tak kenal ampun.

Retrieved from: http://liandcy.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/sekularisme-ketika-kaum-muslimin-terkotak-kotak-analisis-terhadap-film-perempuan-berkalung-sorban/ (May 30, 2010)