W

hen I was a kid, I always dreamed of becoming a great jihadist. I grew up in the 1990s when early supporters of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) were considered cool.

That was before I went to college, during which I thought that being a leftist activist carrying Frans Magnis Suseno's Karl Marx and shouting about socialism was even cooler. That was way before I thought skimming through David Foster Wallace's notoriously long and hard-to-read novels on my HTC (iPhone is so mainstream!) on the train was much cooler.

And that was way, way before I cursed myself for secretly being an insufferably pretentious guy and realized that hipsters and members of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) are basically the same.

Yes, I just compared a group of youngsters who brag about how great the latest Efek Rumah Kaca's project is with a group of hard-liners that some people hate with a burning passion. It all began with a simple question: Why am I not a Muslim fundamentalist?

Growing up in the 1990s, I had all the reasons to become an angry Muslim militant. When I was 10 years old, I was horrified by the killings of Bosnian Muslims. The firebrand preachers in my neighborhood told me that Christians were trying to proselytize the country and what was happening then in Bosnia could have happened here. What an effective way to terrorize an adolescent.

My relatives were members of the underground tarbiyah movement, the progeny of the PKS. Some of my friends were Indonesian Islamic State (NII) activists who recruited new followers like pushy salesmen, only scarier and always quoting God's words to freak you out.

I always thought that it was my decision to study at the State Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN), which made me abhor religious bigotry. It was probably great thinkers like Cak Nur, Aldous Huxley or Mohammed Arkoun who destroyed my belief that Islam was a fixed concept and constantly under attack.

It turned out that I was wrong. I realized I was never a bigot even when I was so engrossed in Islamic activism. I was never committed to one Islamic organization simply because I hated most of them.

The Islamic movement has always been fragmented. They are always competing with each other. Most think they are more Islamic than their peers or that the other groups are no different from 'the infidels'.

It was that kind of attitude that stopped me from joining the likes of the FPI. They think they are holier than you. It is not because I oppose their opinions about Islam ' they are entitled to their opinions. I don't care if they believe Tinker Bell is real. I really don't think the Liberal Islam Network (JIL) is more sensible than the PKS either. As long as they're still quoting a 1,500-year-old scripture, I do not expect any of them to be sensible.

The reason why I dislike militants is because they are judgmental and arrogant. Some of my ikhwan and akhwat friends used to label me as ammah, which roughly means layman. It was very annoying.

I have outgrown those militants, only to learn that such an attitude is not exclusive to religious fanatics. This is a disease that corrodes humanity. Bigots, in different forms, are everywhere. Some call (explicitly or implicitly) themselves 'hipsters' and they refer to people who are not like them as 'mainstream' ' which is just another word for ammah.

There is nothing more excruciating than talking to a person who sees you as nothing but a mindless crowd for liking ST12 (now Setia Band) and for not ever having heard Jeff Buckley's rendition of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'. I didn't know that having bad taste was a cardinal sin.

Then you have breastfeeding fathers who scold you for killing your baby with baby formula. Breastfeeding fathers, you ask? If you surf the Internet, you will learn about these fathers who consider themselves responsible for making sure that babies are well breastfed. This is okay, as long they don't say that moms and dads who have to make money and leave their kids with a sitter are psychopaths.

Don't get me started on vegans and the nature-loving middle class who stare at you for taking the elevator. I know, life would be much easier if we just stopped caring about what others think.

I am writing this simply because I need closure and because I know that I can't possibly be the only one with these opinions. Seriously, religious or secular bigotry, they are equally annoying. But I suppose we all have to get used to it.

' Amir Hamzah