The name of the menace is religious tribalism bred by political entrepreneurs of a peculiar type. Religious tribalism is a form of populism. Populism is a castrated notion of politics as an elite-vs-masses antagonism. The way it works depends on which tribal sentiments are most ripe to be exploited in particular cultural soils. In India, it is the feelings of Hindu chauvinism, in northern Europe that of anti-immigration, whereas in Indonesia the sentiments are of religious identity. 

But why exploit tribal sentiments? 

It is the need to mobilize voters in electoral races. What is ironic is not that populism discards electoral politics but, rather, that it plays on atavistic pathos that makes electoral politics degenerate into its ugliest state. No example is more conspicuous than the gubernatorial election in Jakarta in 2017, where the race rotted into a war of religious sentiments. 

A shattered aftermath was only to be expected, i.e. a society injured by a climate of heightened distrust, making the scheme of cooperation more difficult. Several months after that race, two spinners of its dark politics came to me to share their shock about the damage brought about by their exploitation of religious sentiments, asking for some ideas on how to heal the wounds and rebuild the bridge of societal cooperation. I could only start with a snap: “You have blood on your hands”. 

It is this breed of unscrupulous political entrepreneurs who have brought this country’s politics to the ugliest low. We will have more of them in the coming months. They are characters whose appetite never goes beyond the sheer grab for power. If this can be done only by tearing up the fabric of the nation and all political decorum, who cares? 

The way they foment religious tribalism is by breeding deceitful fantasies that play to voters’ sense of insecurity and religious identity, without scruple or blushes. With them are the religious zealots whose homicidal tendencies are armed with scriptural quotes or otherworldly precepts. In the realpolitik of populism, religious pathos is always more virulent than other sentiments. Why? No other institutions under the sun have more absolutizing impulse than the religious one, precisely because it is furnished with an ascription to God or other deities. 

Since God is infinite, reference to God has an appearance of absoluteness. The fact that evil often dons a pious face matters little. These shouty tribalists hardly believe in what they themselves say, because what comes out of their mouths is too incredible even for them. Do they believe that the God of life commands the killing of other believers? Or, do they really believe Indonesia will break asunder in the near future? Not in the slightest. 

Still, why do they propagate it? They need gullibility to form a groupthink for the mobilization of voters, and they invent lies and exploit a sense of envy or insecurity loaded with paranoia and conspiracy theories. It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe in their babble, for through groupthink a mere plaything easily becomes an article of faith among the masses. People are ready to dismiss facts that run counter to their beliefs; hence accurate information and analysis do not have a rectifying effect. That is why bigots and populists have the chest-thumping bravado to say anything. 

It is through this that democracy goes downhill. Since electoral democracy is predicated upon voters’ preferences, while preferences are shaped by the groupthink of religious bigotry, electoral preferences reinforce and are reinforced by religious bigotry. When the electoral process elevates the politics of narrow identity above civic values, we know that beneath the veneer of democracy something nasty is lurking.

Many of us try to prevent the downslide by resorting to a strongman’s diktat. Lo, the psyche of the nation is like that of a drunkard, wavering left and right in search of a balance. During the New Order we yearned for a democratic liberty. When we find liberty dizzying rather than dazzling, we yearn for an order reminiscent of autocracy. Religious tribalism in this country precisely plays on the sentiments of this either/or politics. 

The trouble seems to lie not in our belief in democracy, but in the way we value it merely as an instrument rather than a foundation of civilized life. The former is called output legitimacy, in which democracy is justified by results. It is easy to spot the problem. If democracy comes with slow economic growth, corruption or religious tribalism, should we just throw it away? 

The instrumentalist view ignores something deeper. Since a political community is an order whose raw materials are humans, while what is distinctively human is the act of free will, any political order that doesn’t express free will is empty of moral legitimacy. Democracy is the form of government most expressive of human free will, and democratic statecraft is the art of creating a healthy tension between citizens’ liberty and government authority. 

All this needs reminding in anticipation of the upcoming elections. Of course, this is not to ignore the agonies of the pursuit. I have no recipe for dealing with shouty tribalism. The only way is to engage the problem. 

So after relishing the glee that cheered our descent into the closing moments of 2018, let us brace the dawn of 2019 with an ascent to the challenge that soars on the wings of vigilance.

***

The writer is a lecturer in the postgraduate program at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta.

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