What’s wrong with a man with a blackened forehead and bearded chin. which is at times a little cluttered together with his white thin turban? If he is together with his wife, you will find her wearing a headscarf and loose body covering. Some of the women also wear a face-veil.
Do you directly remember the images of Osama bin Laden or the leaders of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) with their savagery?
It’s now easier to find them in Indonesia as effortless as meeting a well-built man wearing a tight t-shirt or a woman attired in a tank-top and miniskirt. If you are fortunate, you will find such a contrast at a nearby shopping center.
Not to violate “the presumption of innocence”, there is a “joke” (or a stereotype) even among certain Muslims themselves. A blackened forehead and bearded chin is ridiculed as the symbol of aqidah or iman, a sign of “being religiously faithful”.
A headscarf and loose body covering is remarked as an image of a woman faithfully guarding her “honor”.
For certain state functionaries, such as cops, those people should be overseen since the way they represent themselves reminds us of the hard-liners negating Indonesian “unity in diversity” or promoting Islamic state or strict sharia law for Indonesia.
Or else, as we can perceive their closeness with some state officials, they can be easily exploited for some reasons (mostly because of such an illiteracy of peace teachings in Islam).
But can we hence claim that all of them represent pro-violence political views? Can we easily generalize that people with those fashion features grip the anti-human rights ideology?
Can we judge all of them as having cold hearts such as the images everyday seen on television or the Internet as the terrorists?
Some weeks ago, I started my days working at a school labeled by one of my friends as being managed by “Islamic fundamentalists”.
If the characteristic of a fundamentalist man is being bearded, having a blackened forehead, wearing baju koko (Indonesian dress mostly worn for religious activities) or celana ngatung (trousers with legs cut to heel level), you will find many there.
Honestly, I then remembered what I had been told by Asfinawati (2010), an Indonesian human rights activist and former chairwoman of LBH Jakarta, around two weeks afterward.
In the US, she wrote, we can find almost any kind of radicalism, not only ones with religious faces. Being radical is a human right. The way someone would dress up or the political party he would affiliate with is up to him.
Radicalism is a matter when it brings forth violence or whatever generates it. We should carefully differentiate between radicalism when it is in the private domain from the one interfering in the public sphere or the one who violates human rights.
And certain institutions such as the Swiss Red Cross and Singapore Government have been wisely applying this very principle.
After the Tsunami hit Aceh and nearby regions, for example, they have cooperated to establish schools with Fajar Hidayah, an educational NGO easily characterized as a “fundamentalist site” — if we define it narrow-mindedly using the above generalization about radicalism — without a lot of fuss and bother.
How can we then point the finger at the Swiss Red Cross or Singapore Government for being likely to make a mistake?
Have they not shown in the instance of how positive thinking, good will and trust have born advantages?
Furthermore, there is always a possibility of maintaining Indonesian “unity in diversity” even with the presence of any radical religious groups, especially the Islamic ones which are now seen endangering.
John Rawl (as discussed by Andrew F. March, 2007) asserted that a modern democratic state is established on free-standing values: liberty, stability, equality, prosperity and democracy.
If these five values successfully manifest in the life of the people of a state, included the ones with strong bond to their “comprehensive doctrines” (such as Islam), there will be such trust and loyalty to the current form of polity.
In addition, Rawl talked about an “overlapping consensus”, the similar values which are formulated from the comprehensive doctrine itself.
The presence of these values, that might be different from what a religious radical might believe, will endorse him to better look at the fact that a democratic state with the free standing values is congruent with what is “actually” taught in his religious comprehensive doctrines.
If we then agree with John Rawl’s propositions, we can see that the present consecutive religious violence cannot be seen as merely an independent variable perpetrated by individuals or groups without any dependencies on the being of the state. It is very likely that the state has failed to be the representation of a “dreamed polity”.
The violence, when the incumbents are continuously creating scapegoats (of religious radicals or secessionism issues), is actually caused by the inability of the state’s functionaries to meet the people’s needs of liberty, equality, prosperity, stability or democracy.
At the same time, the failure of the religious clerics, especially the Muslim ones (who are busy enough to deal with peripheral matters), is that they have not succeeded in making the people literate enough about the congruency between the universal free-standing values with their religious teachings.
One of the most possible hopes is that there are voluntary movements trying to incorporate the ones commonly “prejudiced” as radicals or hard-liners in an accepted MoU.
The example given by the Swiss Red Cross and Singapore Government in Aceh is somewhat a good instance. And I also believe that there are some other examples that are still unrevealed for one or another cause.
Thus, it is not impossible that the energy of religious radicalism can be changed into something positive and nonviolent with the conviction that the very nature of every human being is to rationally do good deeds.
The writer is currently a researcher at Paramadina Foundation, Jakarta.
