I have such a friend, or should I say, “frenemy”? She had not always been like that, besides, I believe she is intrinsically a good-hearted person, and has been a loyal friend in the past. So unwisely, perhaps I put up with her toxic behavior for much longer than I should have.

Eventually it dawned on me that most likely, she has a personality disorder, stemming from her insecurity, feelings of helplessness, and in this COVID era, isolation. So her frequent attempts to try to put me down and lecture me was a way of compensating for her inferiority complex, a term coined by the well-known Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler (1870-1937). Adler calls this compensating “striving for superiority”, which these days we call narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Narcissists exist everywhere around us, in various sectors and fields of life. They are self-righteous control freaks, and constantly seek to boost their self-esteem, often by bullying, discrimination or outright abuse. The overt, grandiose ones are much easier to spot, while the covert vulnerable ones, like my friend, are less apparent.

But did you know that there are also religious narcissists? Like any other type of narcissist, they suffer from an inferiority complex, and therefore often bully adherents of other religions but also their own folk who are subordinate or socially “inferior” to them. This constant need to affirm one’s “self”, “power” and “superiority” is addictive, after all. They are mortally offended by the mere suggestion that all religions are the same, that all lead to God, just through different routes. Oh, no, no! Theirs is the only right religion, and their ultimate goal is to convert everyone, even if it’s only through symbolic means.

According to Christine Hammond in an article called “15 Narcissistic Religious Abuse Tactics” (PsychCentral, May 19, 2015), “a narcissist uses their religious belief to manipulate, control and dominate you through fear. They systematically take the life out of your faith and replace themselves in the center.”

Oooh, we’re seeing a lot of that these days all over the world, aren’t we?

Recently, the case of the forced jilbabization – the compulsory wearing of the jilbab of non-Muslim girls at SMK 2 state vocational high school in Padang, West Sumatra, came to the fore. The parents of one of the students complained to the school officials and secretly filmed the meeting. The video went viral. The 10^th grade student herself wrote a letter to the school, stating her refusal to wear the jilbab, saying it was discriminatory. The headmaster of the school and the head of the regional education office said wearing the jilbab was just an appeal and denied that there was any form of coercion. They would, wouldn’t they?

However, I came across another video of a high school Christian girl who said she had been wearing a jilbab since she enrolled in the school years ago. In the beginning, both she and her parents were pretty unhappy about it, but after a while they got used to it and simply consider it a school uniform.

Yes, a school uniform. Which means the jilbab no longer has any religious significance. Lies Marcoes, a Muslim feminist scholar, wrote a well-argued essay in which she maintained that the compulsory wearing of the jilbab was essentially an act of de-shariatization, stripping the jilbab of any religious meaning, making it just a mundane piece of clothing. This is contrary to the conviction of many Muslims that wearing the jilbab is a religious requirement. It isn’t – there’s nothing in the Quran about it – but identity politics makes it so, and these days, that is what religion is predominantly about.

I reckon that the compulsory wearing of the jilbab is just one of many symptoms of religious narcissism among Muslims. Like my friend, Muslim were not always narcissistic – they certainly didn’t need to be, especially during the Golden Age of Islam (8^th to 13^th century), when science, culture and economic development flourished. Muslim ideas on math, science, astronomy and medicine were incorporated into European ways of thinking, education and practices. What do we call the numbers we use on a daily basis? Yes, those 10 digits! Arabic numerals, right?

So what happened? I came across a book by Ahmet T. Kuru, professor of political science at San Diego State University, called Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge UP, 2019).

In a review by John Waterbury in Foreign Affairs (March/April 2020) he writes that the book is “an ambitious and […] successful analysis of the ills of the authoritarianism, economic backwardness, and religious violence that plague 49 Muslim-majority states”. He says that Islam’s Golden Age “came to an end thanks to the rise of a conservative and anti-intellectual alliance of religious scholars and state officials.”

Wow, as an Indonesian, that rings so true of the situation in this country even now, especially if you add “military” to the mix.

We brought about our own decline and blame it on others – immoral Westerners, liberal democracy, communism (hello?), the Chinese, and anyone else they can point their finger at, and try to control and take it out on religious and ethnic minorities and basically “the Other”, which includes women. Striving for superiority anyone?

The jilbabization phenomenon is just a very small tip of the iceberg of our religious narcissism, which alas is currently our dominant way of being. It will not end well, as it is based on rampant materialism, unethical practices, corruption, disregard of the environment - all under the guise of “Islamic morality”.

Sad (as Trump, the narcissist, would say).

 ***

The writer is the author of Julia’s Jihad.