D

uring the recent Idul Fitri holiday, I visited my hometown of Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau. Reminiscing, my ompu '€“ grandfather in the Batak language'€”told me that when he was a boy, around this time of year he and his friends visited each other.

He recalled that during his youth there was no violence, as is now frequent Indonesia, or even conflict among followers of different faiths. As a young Christian, he would celebrate Idul Fitri with his Muslim friends, and visit his neighbors. Tolerance was a common value and children back then never thought of religion as a problem.

On July 17 in Tolikara, Papua, a mob burned kiosks and disturbed Idul Fitri prayers, and a mosque was burned to the ground. This incident happened only days after a group of people closed a church in Bantul, Yogyakarta. Both incidents targeted minority religious communities. Violence based on religion is unacceptable. The incidents worsened Indonesia'€™s record of religious-based violence, adding to previous occurrences in West Java, West Sumatra and other provinces.

I do not know exactly when religion became a thorn in the flesh of this nation. Indeed, before Indonesia'€™s independence, religion was one of the most debated topics among the founding fathers, and one motivation for separatist forces during the early years of independence.

But the disputes were among the elite, rather than the masses, unlike today. Thus, religion becomes a paradox. On one side, it intends to bring peace and prosperity to mankind, but it is also a cause of unending wars. So how should this country deal with religion?

Ahmet T Kuru in his article Passive and assertive secularism divided countries into four types of state-religion regimes: religious states, states with an established religion, secular states and antireligious states. Religious states base their legislation and judiciaries on religion, while the rest are secular-based. However, the religious states and established religion-based states officially favor one religion, while the secular states favor none, and the antireligious state is hostile to all or some religions.

Theoretically, Indonesia is a state with established religions. We officially favor six religions. And although we admit God in the Pancasila state ideology, we do not officially hold any holy law as the supreme law in the legal hierarchy.

However, in reality we tend to be a religious state since there are laws that are solely based on religion. We even differentiate courts based on religion, and one mandatory requirement for public office is to swear awe of the Almighty God (takwa kepada Tuhan Yang Maha Esa).

Even the private religious life of a state official will be a big matter, not to mention if he or she takes a son/daughter-in-law of a different religion. And, even though we officially recognize six religions, this country tends to be hostile to minority religions and has often been absent when perpetrators of violence belong to majority religious groups.

It is time for the state to take the neutral side when it comes to religion. Instead of favoring one or two or even six of them, it would better to shift to a secular state. There are two kinds of secularism.

One is passive secularism, which requires the state to take a passive role in avoiding the establishment of any religion while allowing the public visibility of religion. The other is assertive secularism where the state plays a more active role to exclude religion from the public sphere and confine religion only to the private domain, according to the American scholar W McClay.

I would not champion the kind of assertive secularism practiced by Turkey and France. Indonesia would be suited to convert to passive secularism. Since passive secularism is actually a pragmatic principle that tries to maintain the state'€™s neutrality toward religions, the state will not promote any religion, but will make its best effort to protect all of its people regardless of their religious preferences.

This shift would eliminate violence based on religious differences. We can eliminate discrimination based on religion and there would be no basis to judge state affairs based on religious conduct; all judicial affairs and legislation would be based solely on the best interests of the people, and not because of their religion. If we stick to today'€™s model, we will only nurture more skeptical attitudes toward religion as we see its failure to bring peace, justice and prosperity to our society. Religion is supposed to bring God nearer to man and not to justify man acting as God.
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The writer is a lawyer at Frans Winarta & Partners law firm in Jakarta. This is a personal view.