Let’s call her Jenny, a 21-year-old foreign university student who is now enjoying her holiday serving as a volunteer in Indonesia. From Monday to Friday she teaches dozens of classes at almost all levels and tells the students about her country and its ecosystems. Interestingly, she now wears Muslim attire for her teaching activities.
If a foreign woman goes to a Middle Eastern country wearing Muslim attire for her own safety, our Jenny has come to her own conclusions while getting herself used to the attire. But, please note, it is not related to issues of converting her to Islam. She herself told me that it is just to make herself more comfortable being among Muslims and to experience how it feels wearing it.
On a Friday afternoon, after teaching a class for fifth graders, she asked me a common but important question about understanding Islam, especially in an Indonesian context. What would happen if
a Muslim converts to another religion?
I established my answers with a story. My own brother, when he was a university student and was having problems economically, told me someday that he would convert to another religion. He had a girlfriend and some other friends who were helpful. But around one or two years afterward, he stopped going to his campus and started working as a vendor. He made his own money and had the idea of enrolling at another campus.
At the time he conveyed his intention, the thing that came to my mind was how my family, especially my mother, would react. Regarding her traditional background, my mother could be considered as someone democratic.
She, for example, allows any of her children to marry someone from different ethnic backgrounds.
However, I assumed it would be a disaster if she had to see one of us marrying someone from a different religion, or if she had to accept one of her sons converting his belief.
Yet, at the end, I told Jenny my brother is now more religious than I am. He got married and never talks about conversion issues anymore. So, I concluded that it is all about “necessary” or “unnecessary”.
Why should we, for example, sacrifice a good relationship with many people for something that we ourselves are confused or uncertain about? Who can one hundred percent prove that converting to another religion guarantees a better or happier life?
Why should we convert to another religion while the possibility for doing good deeds remains the same? Does God believe that a religion’s name or symbols are everything? Does God blindly negate advantages for someone who is an atheist?
The next question then is, “If a Muslim family or community punishes one who converts to another religion, where are human rights or freedom?”
Here, then, we actually discussed another way to look at the meaning of democracy. While we will find the same answers if we refer to a dictionary to define what democracy is, our diversity leads us actually to different experiences. As Jenny herself told, in Russia people live more like Indonesians with traditional families and ties. But in New Zealand, her current legal country, people are freer and less bound by traditional bonds. In fact, both countries endorse democracy as the way a polity is established and maintained.
In conclusion, democracy can be translated differently in practice. There is always a specific and continuous dialectic in every community or country. Using the Hegelian model, the western-originated democracy concept is not negating the entire concept of a local polity.
What comes out in the incessant dialectic process is an aufhebung, a better concept as a product of accepting certain parts of two theses after eliminating some other unnecessary elements.
In the Indonesian context, therefore, there is a specific concept of harmony. More precisely, at certain times nowadays there has been a kind of harmony together with unique features and requirements.
So, referring to harmony (assumed as it is enabled by “true” democracy) modeled by another country as compared with what is going on in Indonesia in order to, for instance, changes must be chosen very carefully in consideration of compatibility issues.
To answer Jenny’s question, if there is such punishment from a family or community for a convert, it is because of this concept of harmony.
Indonesia, with its traditional features, is in a continuous dialectical process of democracy. In other words, it is just a feature of an unfinished historical process with an unpredictable future.
If it is then asked, “In what environment is life happier and more secure?,” the answer would be, “It depends on the way and pace we adjust ourselves.”
In other words, wherever we live, it is more about how to enjoy what is there and not focusing on what is not there.
That’s why I told Jenny in the end that there is no necessity for her to convert her religion to be accepted in our community.
There has been no problem at all when she teaches English in the mosque to our students.
Conversion becomes an issue when there is not enough cross-cultural understanding.
The writer is a researcher at Paramadina Foundation, Jakarta.
