TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
View Point: Religion is like a pair of shoes ...
âReligion is like a pair of shoes ⦠find one that fits for you, but donât make me wear yours
Change Size
'Religion is like a pair of shoes '¦ find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear yours.'
I stumbled across this quote not long after I returned from Pakistan, where I spoke at a dialogue on religion and secularism. Hmmm, I thought, the dialogue organizers, the Center for Research and Strategic Studies, could have used these words as their slogan.
In fact, I was surprised that the dialogue was held in Pakistan. After all, 'secularism' is defined in Merriam-Webster as 'the belief that religion should not play a role in government, education or other public parts of society'. Wasn't Pakistan founded on the basis of religion? Isn't its official title 'The Islamic Republic of Pakistan', and isn't it wracked with religious violence?
Yes, all true, but it turns out there is a big 'but', and a quick dose of history is needed to explain it.
In the early years of the republic, there was a clear division between politics and religion, and between public and private Islam. In his inaugural address on Aug. 11, 1947, founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah said that religion was an individual's private affair. Despite the predominance of Muslims (97 percent), he stressed the equality of all religions in his new state ' and the rights of minorities.
The 1971 secession of East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh) changed this. Feeling a need to strengthen the ideological basis of their now way-smaller country, Islamic parties incorporated Islamic injunctions into the 1973 Constitution and declared it Pakistan's state religion.
From 1947 to 1980, religious extremism was relatively contained, but the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Iranian-Saudi rivalry led to religious polarization. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the same year didn't help, producing the 'mujahideen', jihadist fighters funded by Saudi Arabia with the blessing of the US, who used Pakistan as their base and eventually spawned al-Qaeda. By the turn of the century, religious extremism had became commonplace. And here we are today!
It turns out that Pakistan's pluralistic democratic spirit is also reflected in its flag: a dark green field with a crescent moon and five-rayed star at its center, and a vertical white stripe at the hoist side.
If you think that the crescent moon and star symbolizes Islam, you wouldn't be wrong, but they also have other meanings. The crescent means progress and a rising nation, while the star represents light and knowledge.
Light and knowledge? These are not much evident today, given rampant persecution of minorities for their beliefs. If the Pakistani flag were to reflect the current state of affairs, the white of the flag would be red with the blood of Christians, Hindus and Jews ' and Shiites and Ahmadis.
A rising nation? Well, if it weren't for the religious extremism and religion-based persecution and violence holding the nation back, Pakistan would be unstoppable. Even now, it's a rapidly developing economy and ' with Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Turkey, South Korea and Vietnam ' is one of the 'Next Eleven' (N-11). Like the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China ' and since 2010, add South Africa to make BRICS), the N-11 were identified by Goldman Sachs investment banker and economist Terence James O'Neill as potentially becoming among the world's largest economies by the end of this century.
But can Pakistan really make it? Religious violence driven by the intolerance Ali Jinnah sought to avoid may now be the biggest obstacle to the economic and political transformation of his country.
The sad truth is that while Islamic tenets clearly call for religious tolerance, in the real world it is used to justify violence and persecution ' and fighting for an imagined caliphate.
My colleague Izza Rohman, lecturer at Prof. Dr. Hamka Muhammadiyah University (UHAMKA) in Jakarta, went with me to the dialogue. He pointed out we don't have to wait for a caliphate to become good Muslims. We can do it right now, starting with ourselves, creating a good, tolerant Islamic society rather than a hard-line Islamic state that persecutes minorities.
Unfortunately, the supposed 'jihad' is too often just a bloody (literally) and senseless excuse for political violence. Using religion in this way to acquire power is, I believe, a sort of blasphemy.
The secularization thesis ' that religions are becoming weaker and societies more secular ' is common in the social sciences. But history doesn't seem to agree, and it looks as though religion is, in reality, here to stay. If anything, says Ernest Gellner, renowned British-Czech philosopher and social anthropologist, 'In the last hundred years the hold of Islam over Muslims has not diminished but has rather increased ['¦] a striking counter-example to the secularization thesis.'
Why's that? Because for better or for worse, faith has a hold over the human heart. 'Religion is like love, you cannot break it off overnight. It tends to go on tormenting you even if circumstances have frustrated it.'
So, what to do? The solution is not to see this as a zero-sum game, as terrorists always do. Instead, the secularists and the religious should try to walk a while in each other's shoes (or sandals!), and meet each other halfway.
The secret of a successful society is that not everyone has to be the same, or wear the same size, and no one should be shoe-horned into something they don't fit in. There's room for all shapes, styles and fashions in a successful society.
And there's a lesson there for Indonesia to boot!
The writer is the author of Julia's Jihad.
