Peace quest: The price of being labeled a moderate Muslim

Iyan Nurmansyah ,  East Sussex, UK   |  Fri, 07/04/2008 11:08 AM  |  Opinion

There were two important points raised at the Second World Peace Forum (WPF) recently held by Muhammadiyah and the Cheng Ho Multi Culture Trust.

The first was the statement made by scholars stressing the role of major powers in global violence. The second was the assertion that violence is rarely driven by religious reasons (The Jakarta Post, June 6, 2008).

Some say those who justify violence in the name of religion are simplistic and unsophisticated readers of the holy book.

Conversely, the term moderate is often associated with those who are considered more peace loving.

As much as we are tired and even sick of violence with religious overtones, however, we should be wary of accepting the "moderate" label as well.

What does it take to get labeled a moderate? Does it mean that we are not supposed to be critical of global violence perpetrated by major powers?

Moreover, is there any guarantee that by labeling ourselves as more moderate than others, we are automatically better people?

In Indonesia, some get their moderate label by calling themselves liberal Muslims as if becoming a liberal is the golden ticket to being perfect and peace loving.

Actually, most of the above questions roughly apply to the international realm. For example, does a certain form of government (i.e. liberalism) guarantee a more peaceful foreign policy?

Proponents of liberalism do have lovely ideas about the equality of citizens (Michael W. Doyle), principles of distributive justice (John Rawls) and reasonable society (Charles R. Beitz). Many of them often refer to the classical text of Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace.

However, contemporary liberals sometimes do miss the essence of Kant's writing.

Let us take what the participants of the WPF said about the increased involvement of major powers in arms production and sales to conflict areas (The Jakarta Post, June 26, 2008) as an example.

This investment in violence by major powers proves that in modern liberal states there are sections in society who benefit from war. Worse still, the private actors who do benefit from war are often in government.

The interests of liberals in war is a contradiction to Kant. For Kant, liberal institutions guarantee a more peaceful foreign policy only when citizens did not gain anything from war (see Beate Jahn, 2005, Kant, Mill and Illiberal Legacies in International Affairs).

According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States sold US$7.5 billion of weapons in 2007. This shows how lucrative the violence business can be.

On another point, former Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas said in the forum that major powers lack the political will to reduce global violence. Hoping major powers will have the political will to find solutions to today's world conflicts is like waiting for the impossible to happen.

We have not seen enough evidence of the seriousness of major powers to overcome the security dilemma. Instead, major powers keep reproducing security dilemmas through creating dichotomies. This includes, for example, the dichotomy between the democratic and the non-democratic states, and the dichotomy between moderate Muslims and non-moderate Muslims. The bridge has not been seriously built yet.

Of course we condemn physical and structural violence with religious overtones, such as the violence recently committed by conservative Islamic groups and so-called respectable Islamic institutions in our country.

However, to be fair we should also be critical of many other forms of violence, which often use freedom and equality as camouflage. If the price of being labeled "moderate" means that we have to stop being critical of those who reward us with that label, I do not think that the label is worth it.

"Moderate", "enlightened", "liberal", or whatever title people want to stick next to the word Muslim is actually unimportant. It is just semantics.

At the end of the day, as long as we do not hurt others for any reason, that is what counts.

The writer holds a bachelor's degree in International Relations from the School of Social Science and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex. He can be reached at iyan_nurmansyah@yahoo.com

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