http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4612&Itemid=202
Southeast Asia's Young Muslims Speak Out
Written by Joseph Mayton
Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Nothing to be scared of
The last word on Lady Gaga’s Indonesia cancellation
Those who read the media reports about the cancellation of Lady Gaga’s
concert in Jakarta may imagine Indonesia to be a xenophobic, conservative
country that has no sense of freedom. The reality, however, is quite different.
Last week in Kuala Lumpur I had the chance to sit down with a group of
young Indonesian female activists, who dispelled any notion that Indonesia was
on the verge of becoming an authoritarian state. In fact, they talked about the
need for younger voices to be heard.
“We are big fans of Gaga and it was really disappointing that the clerics
came out so angrily against her”, said Asha Mahammad, an Indonesian university
student in Kuala Lumpur. She feels that the concert’s cancellation gives the
world a distorted reality about the country and the region’s Muslims.
She and her friends, who carry the latest technology gadgets, are hard to
differentiate from young people the world over. While these women do not
necessarily represent Indonesia in its entirety, they deserve to be heard.
They’re young, and their mission now is to bridge the gap between East and West
and tell the world that Indonesia is not anti-Western.
“I have so many friends who were going to go to that concert. We had all
been so excited when we heard Lady Gaga was coming that we started to memorize
all her songs to sing with her”, said Jumana, a 24-year-old master’s degree
student in Jakarta.
Jumana makes the point that there are more viewpoints in Indonesia than
the ones of those who cancelled the concert. There has been a significant group
of Indonesians speaking out on gender issues in recent years, for example, but
“you don’t hear about that in the media. All you hear about is that Lady Gaga
was forced to stop her concert because the sheikhs were angry. It is sad.”
And they are right to lament the struggle between outspoken Islamic
clerics, who claimed Lady Gaga would spread “immorality”, and the youth who are
speaking out for tolerance and understanding, like these students.
Many women told me that young people in the region do not need a concert
or a musician to tell them how to live their lives. They are choosing and
forging their own paths, and for the most part this spans the full spectrum of
social leanings, from liberal to conservative. Lady Gaga, they argue, was an
excuse by clerics to vent their frustrations about the perceived changes in
young people’s actions.
“We have our problems and so do other countries, but what the foreign
media don’t do is address the many sides of our countries so people understand
us and learn about what makes us who we are,” she added.
In Indonesia, the many different religious tendencies make for a diverse
society. Many members of the younger generation, however, liberal or
conservative, believe in the idea of tolerance and building a country that does
not force specific values on citizens.
When Lady Gaga cancelled her concert, she left 52,000 ticket holders in
Jakarta disappointed, frustrated and even angry at how vocal clerics had been
able to influence whether or not the concert was cancelled.
At the heart of the issue, sadly, is that those who speak loudest in
today’s world tend to receive more media attention than the silent majority who
hopes that the world becomes more tolerant and mindful of the many different
aspects of each individual society.
These young Muslim women, who are bucking the trend by speaking out,
don’t believe that one concert would change their belief system. Let us hope
that the world understands that the few loud clerics condemning Lady Gaga do
not overshadow Indonesia’s tolerant and open mainstream society.
(Joseph Mayton is Editor-in-chief of the Egypt-based news website
Bikyamasr.com. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service.)
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