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Last-minute tricks to sway voters smack of New Order
15 June 1999
By Rahayu Ratnaningsih
JAKARTA (JP): As if Indonesia has not disintegrated
enough -- between pro and
anti status-quo, between one ethnic
group and another, between one Muslim
group and another -- the recent fatwa
from the Indonesia Ulemas Council (MUI)
added another dimension to the
polarization.
The fatwa, endorsed by Muhammadiyah
and stating that Muslims should only
vote for Muslim legislative
candidates, pitted Muslims against non-Muslims, or
majority against minority.
On Friday, June 4, and subsequently on
Saturday and Sunday, a very popular
ulema among the working class, K.H.
Zainuddin MZ, appeared on a TV
advertisement.
Apparently, it was specifically made
to add momentum to the electoral process,
calling for Muslims to really know the
religion of their chosen leadership
candidates and only vote for a real
Muslim. It was an obvious insinuation to
Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle chairwoman Megawati's perceived lack of
adherence to the Islamic faith.
Zainuddin formerly sat in the People's
Consultative Assembly (MPR) as Golkar's
representative. He resigned following
Soeharto's downfall.
The dangerous element is that his
imprudent appearance on TV could easily incite
militancy among some fundamentalist
Muslim groups and foster animosity toward
the country's religious minorities.
To make matters worse, the Association
of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI)
also jumped on the bandwagon. On
Saturday June 5, they announced their support
for the fatwa. During Saturday and
Sunday, supposedly rest days from any
political campaigning, MUI repeated
its call rather vigorously through TV and
radio news.
The unsolicited outside interference
in the democratic process did not stop there.
Flyers containing attacks on PDI
Perjuangan's non-Muslim legislative candidacy
were distributed among the public and
big banners with similar messages were
hoisted on Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Rasuna
Said on Sunday.
PDI Perjuangan is an amalgam of
nationalist, Christians and secularist elements.
The obvious trick to discourage
nationalist, democratic party supporters, and PDI
Perjuangan's in particular, is a major
setback to the painstaking effort to educate
Indonesian people about democracy. The
dirty game designed to instill fear among
Muslim supporters of PDI Perjuangan
should not have been allowed to take place
after all the pain the country has
been through in the struggle to create a new
democratic Indonesia.
This last-minute maneuver was akin to
the strategy Golkar used in the past.
Nicknamed the "Dawn Operation", local
Golkar officials who were also the local
bureaucrats would "visit" voters. The
latter were threatened or bribed to vote for
Golkar that day. The fatwa is a
worrying development that could backfire and lead
to more chaos and disintegration.
MUI, which was known as a New Order
ally during Soeharto's reign, is certainly
not without political motivation in
manipulating Indonesian people's strong
religious sentiments. This is the same
institution which issued a fatwa that
Muslims should not greet Christians at
Christmas and suggested lethal injections
for AIDS sufferers. Is this the type
of leadership that Muslim Indonesians, soon to
welcome the third millennium, deserve?
Strangely enough, the very people who
issued and supported this fatwa also
claimed in the same breath that Islam
is inclusive, tolerant and protective toward
the minority, probably expecting them
to nod in cheerful agreement.
It is important to note that MUI also
has shown its hypocrisy since it was basically
the government's (Golkar's) tool to
subdue Muslims in the New Order era while
Golkar itself was not, and still is
not, based on Islam nor did it propose only
Muslim legislative candidates. Why did
it not issue the same fatwa in the previous
undemocratic elections? Why now, after
the supporters of Megawati showed their
relentless and unreserved endorsement
of their leader, have MUI and ICMI made
this declaration?
As for ICMI, everybody knows that it
is behind Habibie or Habibie is behind ICMI,
depending on one's perspective. ICMI
has been accused, by Gus Dur among other
people, of being merely an elitist
political machine. Achmad Tirtosudiro, an ICMI
director, argues that it is only
natural for the Indonesian people to have Muslim
leaders since Muslims make up 90
percent of the population. It would, he said, be
the same everywhere in the world.
If he had done some more research
before making such a hasty and bold claim, he
would immediately become aware that
this is not true. Sonia Gandhi, an Italian-born
Catholic, is now the most prominent
party leader in India. She also has been asked
by her supporters to run for office in
a country whose majority population is
Hindu.
True, there were several strong
objections to her candidacy, but this was due to
her foreign origins, not her religion,
and the majority wants her as their leader.
In 1991 Charles Bilal became America's
first Afro-American Muslim mayor in an
American city, Kountze, Texas. Texas
is a conservative white majority state which
is predominantly Christian. An
Indonesian Islamic magazine very proudly
interviewed him and published his
story. There was no protest or complaint from
majority Christians in Texas, nor from
Muslims in Indonesia or the States as a
nation, that this man might not have
the capacity to represent the aspirations of his
people because he did not share the
majority religion.
Should the existing disproportionate
and irrational suspicion and paranoia toward
non-Muslims, Christians in particular,
be exacerbated by Muslims' own leaders
with a very narrow-minded
understanding of their religion?
MUI in its statement reiterated its
opposition to the secularism that is usually
represented by parties that use
democracy as their platform. One can only suggest
to MUI to sit together with secularist
democrats, set aside the incessant, tiresome
dogmatism and discuss candidly and
reasonably, for a change, why it thinks that
secularist democrats cannot live up to
Islamic moral values.
Can it answer the following questions?
Is it true that non-Muslims cannot be good
people and voice Muslims' concerns?
Are Muslims that different from
non-Muslims to the extent that only
Muslims can represent and lead them?
What are we going to do with Buddhist
Kwik Kian Gie, who apart from his "wrong"
religion, is indisputably a valuable
asset to the country and is a potential key
player in extricating Indonesia,
Muslims or otherwise, from this crisis? What kind
of loss will we have to bear as a
result of this narrow-mindedness? Is it really
against Islamic justice to implement a
reward system based on merit, not religion,
race or gender? Has it really been
carefully examined that only Muslims could lead
this country to its triumph? If so,
then how can we explain our pathetic economic
and social conditions after decades of
being governed by, predominantly,
Muslims?
Is that answer that they are not
"true" Muslims? Precisely, we can never truly
know if one is a true Muslim only
through superficial appearances we know our
high-ranking officials are very good
at making. We can only judge him or her on
the universal and more measurable
values of competence and integrity.
Competence and integrity do not depend
on religious belief. Incidentally, why did
MUI keep quiet about those straying
Muslims when Soeharto was still in power?
If MUI and ICMI were not so
pigeonholed and looked objectively at a
representative sample of some of the
world's countries, it would see Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Afghanistan on one hand
and Japan, Taiwan, Sweden and
Australia on the other. Is MUI
supportive to our aspirations of putting ourselves
on the same level with the latter
group of countries or does it instead expect to lead
us to the type of mindlessness the
former group of countries are undergoing?
Religion has its place, but life is
not only about religion. Too much of one thing
breeds contempt; what Indonesia
desperately needs is sustained focus on the
business of democratic political and
economic leadership as distinct from
oppressive religious dogma.
Despite their numbers, Indonesia is
not only Muslims. If we want to be a
democracy we have to learn to adopt
democratic, egalitarian values which means
rule by the majority without
discriminating against the minority.
Obstructing citizen's opportunities
for political participation based on religion is a
form of discrimination that in any
democratic country is a prosecutable offense.
This offensive, tyrannical and
intolerant call is akin to a movement that seeks to
marginalize and stigmatize minority
groups within the country which, in the end,
will only create and heighten tension
and clashes among members of society,
particularly Muslims and non-Muslims.
When this happens, it is not only
non-Muslims who will lose. If that is
to be the case, then in what way is this reform
era any different to the New Order
era?
Muslims often voice concerns of the
perceived marginalized status of the Muslim
Moro in the Philippines, but that's
exactly what is going to happen to Indonesia's
religious minority if MUI's call is
adhered to by Muslims? Is it a good and Islamic
moral value to defend our own people
from a certain misfortune but allow others,
who are basically our own brethren, to
undergo the same fate? Does this not smack
of a double standard? Then, what is
MUI or Muhammadiyah or ICMI going to say
when Bali or Irian Jaya or Ambon
prefers to be free from Indonesia in the same way
the Moro is demanding freedom? It may
represent a serious test of fairness and
consistency.
This case can be cited as strong
evidence regarding why separation of religion and
state is mandatory to get rid of
religious bodies, such as MUI, who wield their
abstruse and questionable brand of
spirituality like a sword to stifle the creativity,
intellectual progress and freedom of
choice of the people. If we want to lead our
people from ignorance, we have to
liberate their minds from the chains of fear,
threats and guilt. The
holier-than-thou, us-versus-them mentality exemplified
by
these supposedly respectable religious
figures will only stupefy the masses.
Let us hope that there will be more
and more Islamic leaders with open hearts and
minds as we have seen in Gus Dur,
Nurcholis Madjid, Amien Rais, Alwi Shihab and
Sri Bintang Pamungkas, who set
examples to Muslim Indonesians. These people
have shown that being devoted Muslims
does not necessitate being deprived from
progressive and independent thoughts.
We live in the increasingly
cross-cultural, cross-ideological, cross- racial and
cross-border global society in which a
cosmopolitan paradigm is a prerequisite of
meaningful progress.
We need a secure Muslim society
because only when Muslims are secure can
minorities live comfortably. These
leaders play a crucial role in educating the
largely ill-informed Muslim masses who
are easily incited by certain politically
motivated religious figures who use
religious status, icons and sentiments to
manipulate their devotion and inhibit
their freedom of choice.
The writer is director of the Satori
Foundation, a center for the study and
development of human excellence
through training in mind programming and
meditation techniques.
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