By the way ...: A Bible as a `Lebaran' present The Jakarta Post | Sun, 09/18/2011 2:04
A huge smile emanated from the face of my Flores-born housemaid when I gave her a Bible on Idul Fitri day three weeks ago. "This is a lebaran present for you, mbak," I said to the devout Catholic housemaid. To my surprise, she was extremely delighted with the simple present and after that moment she recurrently said terima kasih to me, about four or five times. Coming from a working-class family in Flores, it appears to me that she is so poor that she could not even afford to buy a Bible. As a Muslim, I don't really know why I decided to give her a Bible, but I suspect it's because I come from a pluralist family. My father converted from Protestant to Muslim when he was young, thus I grew up having Christian aunts, uncles and cousins around. I also grew up in Catholic schools. The Bible that I bestowed to my housemaid was actually taken from my high school chapel. Back then, I was obsessed with understanding other religions so obsessed that I eventually decided to keep a bible from the chapel, just for me to read alone at home so I could study more about Catholicism. In fact, I spent six years in Catholic schools (in junior and high school) where only around two or three Muslim students existed inside the 40-student classroom. For me, being a devout Muslim in a school whose Muslim students only accounted for 0.5 percent of total students was really a mind-shaping experience. I found two sides of the experience though, because although both were Catholic schools, my junior-high school treated me differently from my high school. As a minority, I was very frustrated during my junior-high school times, as I was "obliged" by the school to attend activities at the church. "Just do it," my teacher once said. "Sorry, the school's rule disallows leaving the building," said a security guard when I asked him for permission to go outside to attend Islamic Friday prayers. In contrast, I really have fond memories of my senior high school times. I still studied Catholicism in the classroom, but the class taught the religion as nothing more than "knowledge" for non-Catholic students. Unlike the junior high school, my high schools peers had the freedom to either attend Church activities or not. Usually during Church activities the non-Catholic students were assembled in the classroom to hold discussions on various issues. Sometimes my high school teachers even gave Muslim students permission to leave the class early to attend Friday prayers something that I would never receive from my junior high school teachers. How the Catholic community treated me during my teenage years instigated a somewhat different mindset regarding how I should view issues of religious tolerance. First, I learned that religion is not something coercive you could preach and sermonize, but you should not confront or oppress others and persuade them to do what they don't believe. Second, I learned to think there is a tendency that laws and regulations, unfortunately, are enforced against minority interests. This could possibly happen because the rules were initially established by the majority and thus, most of the time, put the concerns of the minority aside. Living as Protestants or Catholics in the world's most populous Muslim country is indeed not easy, and thus it is understandable if those people are bullied and oppressed in Indonesia. Churches are burned down, permits to build churches are revoked, and many other cruel policies are imposed. Islam is not a religion of violence. It even promotes religious tolerance and its view on how Muslims should treat people from different religions is crystal clear: "For you (the non-Muslims) is your religion and for me is my religion [Koran 109:6]." Hence, those who lost family members and colleagues during the 9/11 attacks should not worry. If Osama considers himself a Muslim, then surely Munkar and Nakir (angels in Islam who question and give punishment to the dead in their graves) by now are torturing him while saying, "Did you just say to us that you have completely read the Koran, Sir?" Satria Sambijantoro
