[Kabar-indonesia] JP: Promoting tolerant nationalism, beyond religious versus secular

[Joyo at aol.com]

also: To kill or not to kill: Ethical and legal
debate; and Learning from conservatism in Malaysia

The Jakarta Post 
September 1, 2006

Opinion

Promoting tolerant nationalism, beyond religious
versus secular

Muhamad Ali, Manoa, Hawaii

The commemoration of Independence Day every Aug. 17
may leave certain crucial questions unanswered,
despite all the underlying spirit, surrounding symbols
and colorful celebrations. One such question is
whether Indonesian nationalism was and continues to be
secular or religious.

Scholars have attempted to provide answers to this
delicate and complex question, but most of them are
trapped in a dichotomous opposition between the
religious and the secular. In fact, for many
Indonesian Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and
Confucians, nationalism is both secular and religious.
Pancasila has become the ambiguous yet accepted
ideology of Indonesia's nationalism. But what can we,
as a nation, gain from it?

Most Western literature on Indonesian nationalism
argues that historically the emergence of nationalism
was attributed to the rise of secular leaders such as
Sukarno and Hatta (both being graduates of the Dutch
educational system) and a secular print media,
including Budi Utomo and the Indonesian National Party
of Sukarno. Nationalism is believed to be a Western
import, and it was secularly educated leaders who
introduced this concept to this new country.

This argument has been challenged by many. Michael
Francis Laffan, in his Islamic Nationalism and
Colonial Indonesia (2003), argues that Islam played a
crucial role in the rise of Indonesian nationalism.
According to him, it was Muslim scholars and leaders,
influenced by Islamic reform movements in Mecca-Medina
and then Egypt, through their religious organizations
(such as Syarikat Islam, Nahdlatul Ulama and
Muhammadiyah), publications and activism, who worked
in anti-colonial movements during the early 20th
century. These two arguments stand upon their own
emphasis of certain movements and individuals in
selected moments of history.

The essence of nationalism is patriotism, or love of
the native land. This love of the native land has very
constructive impacts on the life of a nation. By this
spirit of love, all members of a nation are willing to
work hard to build their country into a prosperous and
peaceful one. Also by this spirit, self-determination
arises and can become a strong force in
self-improvement and nation-building.

In interfaith meetings, every religion attempts to
argue that nationalism and patriotism are sanctioned
by their religious beliefs, and their gods teach them
to love their country and to work hard for it. This
may be called religious nationalism, for the absence
of a better term, to suggest that nationalism and
religion are not incompatible in the heart and minds
of many of these religious peoples.

If one says nationalism was and is Islamic, then a
question may arise: Were there only Muslims who fought
against colonialism? They were a majority certainly in
the struggle against colonialism, but were there
Protestants, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians
and non-religious peoples in nationalist movements?

This question leads to the very problem Indonesia has
faced again and again: Is Indonesia truly a
pluralistic nation? To the latter question, many
Islamic political parties and leaders have only one
answer: that it was Muslims who played the main role
in gaining and keeping independence and therefore it
is the Muslims' right to determine the direction of
the nation by their particularistic laws.

It is often claimed that Muslims gave up seven words
of the Jakarta Charter (with the obligation for
Muslims to observe their religious beliefs) and
presented it to non-Muslims of the nation as a gift.
For them, Pancasila was often seen as a gift to the
pluralistic nation, compromising Islamic ambitions to
make the nation-state an Islamic state.

Thus it is hardly present in the minds of the Muslim
majority that Protestants, Hindus, Buddhists,
Confucians and others, whether or not they identified
themselves as such, participated in the struggle
against colonialism, and have long contributed to the
development of the nation.

Pre-independence nationalism was to get rid of the
Japanese and the Dutch, but post-independence
nationalism was to contribute to the development of
the country in all aspects of life. Some
post-independence nationalists argue that nationalism
should today mean anti-neoimperialism, economic
imperialism in the form of capitalism (and its
representative institutions) and so forth.

More recently, some Nahdlatul Ulama leaders issued a
manifesto that criticizes new modes of imperialism in
the form of external forces imperializing Indonesia
economically, politically, culturally and
intellectually. This neo-nationalism is sometimes
linked to particular religious interpretations as
well.

How should we resolve this question? There is no one
answer to this. Nationalism is perhaps neutral in
itself. It is a good thing to love one's country.
Every community in the world today, including the
Muslim world, has accepted nationalism as the best
political ideology.

But we are facing excesses of nationalism: Aggressive
nationalism which tries to impose one's nationalism
onto other nations near and far. Between nations,
tolerant nationalism, either religious or secular,
should be promoted.

Indonesian nationalism, either religiously or
secularly based, can have excesses and extremes as
well. Extreme nationalism, for example, forces
minorities to adopt the overarching political agenda
that they would otherwise reject because it does not
suit their needs and interests.

An extreme nationalism wants to civilize the margins
(indigenous believers, religious sects, new religious
movements, mountain and jungle tribes, and so forth)
by way of imposition without respect for their
particular conditions and needs. Within a nation,
there needs to be a balance between nationalism and
multiculturalism.

Thus, we should now go beyond secular versus religious
nationalism. It is time to promote more substantive
and tolerant nationalism: strong, solid, but
respecting other concepts of nationalism and
nationalities within and without the country. Tolerant
nationalism is a love of one's country manifested in
various aspects of life, but not at the expense of the
destruction of other peoples within and beyond the
constructed boundaries.

Indonesian nationalism should be tolerant in the sense
that, whether religious or secular or mixed according
to different communities, it should respect minorities
and the marginal, and at the same time should respect
other nationalisms outside it. One of the outcomes of
such tolerant nationalism is continued participation
within the nation and peaceful coexistence and
fruitful cooperation outside it.

The writer is a lecturer at State Islamic University,
Jakarta. He is working on his doctoral thesis on
Islamic knowledge and power relations in colonial and
postcolonial Indonesia and Malaysia at the University
of Hawaii at Manoa, under the East-West Center,
Honolulu. He can be reached at muhali74 at hotmail.com.

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The Jakarta Post 
Friday, September 1, 2006

Opinion

To kill or not to kill: Ethical and legal debate

Elizabeth Chandra, Chiba, Japan

When I used to live at the International House in
Berkeley, California, among the many things I
cherished were the communal meals in the beautiful
Spanish-structured dining hall. There, students of
mostly graduate level convene thrice a day, not only
to chomp on dorm-style "ethnic cuisine", but also to
socialize with fellow residents of diverse
backgrounds, talk about school and current events or
catch up on President Bush's latest blunder.

In one of those cross-cultural conversations, I
recall, an Italian student brought up the issue of
capital punishment. What do we -- his non-European
friends -- think of the death penalty?

There was a brief moment of silence, followed by
puzzled looks from the largely Asian congregation. His
inquiry was carefully sidestepped by way of shrewd
switch of subject. The absence of an answer, however,
did not mean a lack of response; the gentle gesture of
non-answer hinted out loud that his question was a bit
too political.

The question of capital punishment is indeed
culturally, if not ideologically, charged.
Encyclopedias will tell you that most democratic and
advanced countries of Europe have abolished the death
penalty; many in Asia and Africa retain it; while
non-democratic states generally implement it.
Democracy, as the cultural fiction goes, champions
human dignity, in which case capital punishment
becomes a violation of human rights. Countries that
retain it are thus perceived to be less democratic, if
not less enlightened.

But is the premise really that simple? Let's look at
the conceptual history of penal systems as offered by
the French historian-philosopher Michel Foucault in
his book, Discipline and Punish.

In old European societies, punitive acts generally
focused on inflicting bodily pain. Flogging, hanging,
dismemberment and quartering were carried out in
public for gruesome display of state violence. The
body of the condemned person was subject to extended
but calculated torture so as to inflict maximum pain
prior to the eventual killing. Intense physical pain
was to carry the message that the state was capable of
returning injuries to the offender with equal, if not
more, violence. It served simultaneously as a
deterrent force on the spectators.

As society and its penal systems evolved, torture came
to be seen as "inhumane." The old style festival-like
torture became a marker of "barbarity". Executions
disappeared from public view, while punishment shifted
from the infliction of pain to the confiscation of
rights. A convicted person's rights over his/her body
and freedom were taken away by way of incarceration.
Modern prisons symbolize this new logic of punishment.

Next to abandoning torture and execution, modern
society creates disciplinary institutions that operate
on the human psyche. Such institutions work more to
cultivate self-control than to intimidate. They induce
guilt rather than fear. Economically developed states
generally have effective civic institutions such as
schools, financially sufficient families, social
security, legal protection and reliable law
enforcement. Together these elements produce citizens
who can discipline themselves. Thus if most European
countries today have abolished capital punishment, it
is less because they have a higher regard for human
dignity (as it may appear on the surface) than because
they "can afford" it.

Now, not coincidentally, one finds echoes of the above
arguments in the current debate about the death
penalty concerning the "Poso three" of Fabianus Tibo,
Marianus Riwu and Dominggus da Silva, who were
sentenced to death for the killing of hundreds of
Muslims during the 2000 communal conflict in Poso.

A lack of education was often cited in defense of the
three convicts. Tibo's son, Robert, repeatedly argued
that his father's lack of formal education should
disqualify him from accusations of masterminding the
massacres. His argument, however, inadvertently points
the other way -- it underscores the inaccessibility of
a formal education for poor people like Tibo, which
would have served as a "civilizing" institution that
would have trained them to become responsible members
of society.

The absence of security and the impotence of police
enforcement at the time of the conflict in Poso were
also mentioned as factors that compelled the offenders
into lawless acts. As those in the trio's corner ask,
if the authorities couldn't intervene, can one blame
them for "taking matters into their own hands"?

We learned from Foucault that criminal acts are not
the result of inherent moral defects, but of the
failure of civic institutions to produce law-abiding
citizens. Thus for the government to simply punish the
offenders -- with the death penalty, no less -- would
be to misplace the responsibility. Instead of
recognizing the problem of crime as a failure to
provide integrative institutions, the state chooses to
kill precisely those it has failed.

In addition to the ethical issues surrounding the
death penalty, legal proceedings of the Poso trio have
become more sensitive as they are closely measured
against the case of the "Bali bombers". Defenders of
Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Gufron -- on death row
for the bombings in Bali in 2002 -- have argued that
their executions cannot be carried out prior to those
of the Poso three.

To be fair, the Bali trio would not be the first
Muslims killed for anarchism. In the past 10 months,
Dr. Azahari Husin and four other Jamaah Islamiyah
suspects were shot or blown up (allegedly in suicide)
in confrontations with Indonesian police. There were
no trials for the presumed "terrorists," no lawyers,
no legal verdict. Not even courtesy protests from
rights groups. They were made guilty by police reports
that had come to shape public opinion.

It would have been fair, definitely more credible, had
those today clamoring for the abolition of the death
penalty voiced similar protests over the death
sentences of the Bali trio and the killings of the
Jamaah Islamiyah suspects. Representatives of churches
and other Christian organizations can rightly argue
about the cruelty of capital punishment. But didn't
the offenders in the Poso and Bali cases claim to have
acted in the name of God and religion? Thus any
responsibility and reform should begin from the
religious quarters.

The writer holds a doctorate from the University of
California, Berkeley. She can be reached at
elizabeth.chandra at gmail.com

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The Jakarta Post 
Friday, September 1, 2006

Opinion

Learning from conservatism in Malaysia

Arif Maftuhin, Jakarta

A Malaysian friend, an activist with a feminist NGO,
Sisters in Islam (SIS), e-mailed me recently about how
difficult it is to get support for feminist
interpretations of religious texts in Malaysia as
compared to Indonesia.

In an increasingly conservative Malaysia, where Islam
is considered monolithic, challenging clerics'
interpretations could be considered a sin. She
received, for her part, verbal attacks when she
criticized a fatwa that isolates people living with
HIV on an island.

The growing conservatism in Malaysia is also
represented in its politics. There is seemingly no
significant difference between the ruling Barisan
Nasional -- a supposedly secular party -- and its
opposition Partai Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), in their
campaign for the Islamization of Malaysia. In response
to PAS' promotion of Islamic law and the relative
success of the party in Kelantan, UMNO follows in its
footstep in a bid to maintain its hegemonic position.

These days, there is much controversy surrounding the
case of a Muslim woman who converted to Christianity.
Azlina Jailani, a Malay of Javanese blood converted to
Christianity in 1998 and adopted a new name, Lina Joy,
as a symbol of her new identity as a Christian. She
first applied for official permission to change her
religion in 2001. However, the judge ruled that "As a
Malay, the plaintiff exists under the tenets of Islam
until her death". Lina Joy then appealed the decision
on the grounds that it contravened Malaysia's
constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. She
lost her appeal in 2005 and is now waiting for another
judgment for her appeal in the Federal Court.

In a seemingly oppressed Islamic world from Chechnya
to southern Thailand, many Muslim Malaysians view such
a case as an attack on Islam. "Why are Muslims being
attacked politically and culturally everywhere?" said
one blogger in an online debate.

But, as a Muslim, allow me to explain, this case is
not an attack.

Can a faith be maintained by a coercive state power?
As far as the Koran is concerned, it says la ikraha fi
al-din (no coercion in religion); and it also clearly
proclaims lakum dinukum wa liy al-din (it is up to you
to embrace your faith and it is up to me to embrace my
faith).

There are some debatable prophetic traditions about
death penalties for those who convert from Islam. The
clear thing, however, is that no single worldly
punishment is stipulated in the Koran. It is more than
enough to argue against those secondary arguments.
After all, Malaysia is not an Islamic state and a
reference to Islamic law would be tricky.

Moreover, how can we force someone to be a Muslim
without her/his consent while Islam requires voluntary
submission? In Abdullah Ahmad al-Naim's words, a
prominent Sudanese scholar, "the coerced believers do
not worship God, but the state who forced them so". To
put it another way, it is a sin to force people to
"worship the state" rather than God -- isn't
worshiping someone other than God the biggest sin a
Muslim could commit?

In this regard, is Indonesia any better than Malaysia?
I would argue yes but only to a small degree, namely,
we do not have any law stipulating an Indonesian must
be a Muslim. Indonesia does force its citizen to
embrace one of six "official" religions. And in a case
similar to Lina Joy, Muslims, women and men alike, are
not allowed to marry non-Muslims.

I don't know if any study has been done on the
implications of such laws for those who converted to
Islam to marry Indonesian Muslim women. I would call
them "coerced Muslims" in a sense that some convert
"formally" to Islam because Indonesian law prevents
them from marrying Muslim women. Involuntarily
converting, they alas do not practice their faith
after marriage. Some marriages end in divorce instead.

In a free society, like the one I have encountered in
the U.S., Islam flourishes as the fastest growing
religion without relying on the coercive state power.
Why should we, Muslims, worry about our
"non-practicing" fellows leaving their Islamic path
then?

Allah once reminded the Prophet that even though he
spent all the money in the world, he would not be able
to change a man's heart. Allah is the only one who
changes the heart, "not you Muhammad". Did we not
learn from Koranic stories about Abraham and his
father, Noah and his son, David and his beloved wife?
Those prophets could not bring their beloved ones to
the path of God, how can we?

I think the best we can do is to practice our faith
and I believe we are all taught these words, "Ya
muqallib al-qulub, tsabbit qulubuna ala dinika", a
prayer to the only one who can change the heart, God
and not the state.

The writer is a lecturer at UIN Sunan Kalijaga. He can
be reached at maftuhin.net

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