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Jakarta Post

No religious tolerance with hungry stomachs

It seems clear now that after almost four years of long-standing dispute, the residents of Curug Mekar, Bogor, along with their mayor, Diani Budiarto and the hard-line Muslim groups (including Garis and Forkami) will not change their mind regarding their objection to the utilization of the GKI Yasmin Protestant church building

Sebastian Partogi (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, May 11, 2012

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No religious tolerance with hungry stomachs

I

t seems clear now that after almost four years of long-standing dispute, the residents of Curug Mekar, Bogor, along with their mayor, Diani Budiarto and the hard-line Muslim groups (including Garis and Forkami) will not change their mind regarding their objection to the utilization of the GKI Yasmin Protestant church building.

If the verdict from the Supreme Court — which allows for the functioning of the church — can be neglected, there is little chance that these people will listen to the congregation and its supporters’ voices.

Negotiations after negotiations have been conducted, including the recent round that forwarded a proposal to build a mosque adjacent to the church, but have yielded no results.

It seems clear that the hard-line Muslim groups are dedicated to their rejection of the congregation’s wishes to conduct their Sunday services.

A lot of people have written their views regarding the importance of religious tolerance to overcome such glaring acts of intolerance. But here, I am a pessimist.

I cannot propose a religious tolerance act here in Indonesia because there are some essential aspects that are sine qua non to religious tolerance that is still missing. That essential aspect is social order.

People are troubled because of the chaos in the country in which they live. In Indonesia, the marginalization of poor people, social inequality, gross and rampant corruption, dysfunctional legal system and the mismanagement of public infrastructure are visible to everyone.

Yet amid all these social cancers that are stifling Indonesian people, those in power are shamelessly quarreling among each other over politics, allocating huge budgets for unnecessary overseas trips and office renovations.

All the features of this “autopilot country” have eventually caused people to lose their senses.

Human beings need to cope with this tremendous suffering and chaos in their society. Religion serves as one of the coping tools that human beings can use in time of hardship.

People’s religious identity becomes more salient whenever people have to compete over scarce
resources during times of economic scarcity.

They will do whatever they can in order to secure themselves in this competition, including by building a religious identity to create solidarity and prevent people from other religious affiliations to take a piece of the resource cake.

Actually, this is how religious intolerance happens. The perception of majority-minority in the case of Muslim-Christian relations in Indonesia is used as a justification to keep the minority religion’s hands off the property of the majority.

This kind of intolerance, due to perceived scarcity and competition in society, is seen in the GKI Yasmin case. The minority Christian congregation is not allowed to use their church building precisely because of this perception. The 1,720-square-meter plot is an asset, a resource belonging to the Curug Mekar residents — the Muslim majority.

The majority group depends heavily on the notion of distributive justice — that is, justice based on equal distribution of resources according to number of people.

Obviously, distributive justice cannot always be implemented. In the case of the Christian congregation minority, procedural justice needs to be applied, in which the minority still get their share of the resource because they need it to accomplish a certain function considered essential to them — in this case the right to worship.

It is the concept of distributive justice that led to a proposal to build a mosque in the vicinity of the church. If the minority stands a chance to build a place of worship, the majority obviously has to be granted the same right.

But then obviously this scheme was dropped, and the Bogor residents, represented by the mayor, insisted on the closure of the church building. It becomes apparent that the dispute over the church is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger rivalry for control over public resources.

When the mayor insisted that the church should not get a building permit because it would spark
social unrest, he was not concerned about social unrest but more about the decreased amount of resources that the majority Muslims would enjoy after the arrival of the Christians.

Social envy of the Christians is further reinforced by the stereotype that the minority dominates the business sector and has become wealthy as a result of this dominance.

Interfaith dialogues are definitely important, but religious tolerance will not be achieved any time soon due to the malignant social and economic inequality and hardships that prevail in Indonesia.

Now tell me, how are people going to be tolerant if they are hungry, uncertain about their future and suffering under extraordinarily difficult circumstances?

Religious intolerance that has infringed upon the GKI Yasmin congregation’s rights — among other minority groups — can be reduced if social security and equality is guaranteed here in Indonesia.

The writer is a psychology teacher and school counselor at Gandhi Memorial International School. The opinions expressed are his own and do not reflect the school’s opinion.

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