IBRAHIM ISA'S SELECTED NEWS AND VIEWS Monday, 25 January 2010
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- *One Foreigner's Appreciation of Gus Dur * *Why Indonesia's book bans should not be shrugged off -----------------------------------------------------------------------------* http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2218&I <http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2218&I> temid=175 *One Foreigner's Appreciation of Gus Dur *Written by Philip Bowring Sunday, 03 January 2010 ImageNot just Indonesia but the Islamic world lost an irreplaceable figure Symbolism matters. By most measures Abdurrahman Wahid - known universally as Gus Dur - was a disaster as Indonesia's president. Even Megawati's years of doing nothing appear an achievement in comparison with Gus Dur's chaotic 21 months in power as Indonesia's fourth leader. Yet is it possible to argue that the almost blind head of the Nahdlatul Ulama, who died on Dec. 30, contributed not just more than anyone to Indonesia's nearly peaceful transition from the Suharto era, of which he was a part, to plural democracy. Even more important, he embodied a tradition of tolerance which is as essential as a common language to the survival of Indonesia, a nation which is not merely multi-religious but harbours a wide variety of interpretations of the religion of the majority. His most obvious contribution as president to inclusiveness and tolerance was his ending of overt discrimination against Chinese people and language. But that was only one aspect of a career built on a profound belief in the importance of common values transcending religious divisions. Despite an unprepossessing physique, he was an effective leader because he combined several elements. He inherited leadership of the NU from his father and grandfather, and hence the quasi-feudal authority that went with the grass roots Muslim organisation. But he added to that true intellectual weight, a profound knowledge not only of Islam but of other religions and philosophies combined with an ability, learned through his years in journalism, to express himself simply and directly. And to those he added an earthiness to which people at large, be they peasants from east Java or politicians in Jakarta could easily relate. The Gus Dur who loved retailing gossip about the sex lives of the first family was the same Gus Dur who was treated with reverence both by his fellow kiai - the religious leaders of Indonesian Muslims - and by attendees at international gatherings. His failings were obvious too and rather typical of one born to high office. To those were added physical decline in the wake of his stroke and what amounted to almost an addiction to politicking which left friends and allies exasperated. If he had been directly elected as president, things might have been different. But he proved temperamentally incapable of the managing the coalition of entrenched interests necessary when the presidency was the gift of the MPR, the country's fractured House of Representatives. His liberal views on separatist issues such as Aceh and Irian Jaya also contributed to his downfall - though in the case of Aceh they paved the way to post-tsunami peace. His failures do not undermine his importance as religious leader and politician in keeping religion and politics separate and ensuring that mainstream Islam in Indonesia remained tolerant and plural, where religion was a matter of private conscience and where the secular state kept out of religious affairs - and vice versa. He also reconciled Islamic teachings with pancasila, Indonesia's amorphous, five-sided state philosophy of belief in one god, humanitarianism, national unity, popular sovereignty and social justice. It was this belief in pluralism which enabled him to be a moderating influence in the latter Suharto years and play a central role in the democratic transition. That a nearly blind cleric who had already suffered strokes was elected president at all was a reflection of his symbolic role in a nation searching for a new basis for harmony. Many Muslim-majority countries (not least Malaysia) could learn much from the liberal intellectual traditions which Gus Dur embodied. Indeed, the physical infirmity of his later years largely prevented him from playing an international role, providing a coherent and good-humored counter to the exclusivism and extremism displayed by religious and political authorities in countries as diverse as Iran, Malaysia and Pakistan. The world, not just Indonesia, needs more Gus Durs. ---------------------- http://www.economist.com/images/blocks/black.gif *Banyan The books of slaughter and forgetting* Jan 21st 2010 *Why Indonesia's book bans should not be shrugged off* THE past, even in Indonesia, is a foreign country: they did things differently there. The downfall in 1998 of the 32-year Suharto New Order regime seemed to mark the border as clearly as would a checkpoint and a queue for immigration. This side of the boundary, Indonesia enjoys liberties, a raucous free-for-all of competing ideas and the luxury of democratic choice. On the other side lurked repression, rigged elections, stifled opinions and a long list of banned books. So it is odd and not a little disturbing, in this last respect, to find the freely elected government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono not doing things differently at all. In December the attorney-generals office banned five books. The government is looking at proscribing a further 20, which might, it frets, prove a threat to national unity. If this is continuity, it is also an attempt to disguise it. Most of the books in question are histories; guidebooks to parts of that foreign country which the government still wants to keep out of bounds. One tackles the mysterious atrocities that still haunt Indonesia: the massacre of hundreds of thousands of alleged communists and others as Suharto consolidated his power in 1965-66. Few horrors have been so unexamined. In Cambodia a flawed judicial process is at last asking questions about the Khmer Rouge terror from 1975-78. Even in China the show-trial of the Gang of Four served to hold a few responsible for the crimes of the many in the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). But in the villages of Java and Bali people still live side-by-side with their parents murderers or their families. And the torrent of bloodshed in which they were bereaved has never been officially acknowledged, let alone subjected to a truth-and-reconciliation commission. Back in 1998 the late Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesias greatest novelist, a prison-camp veteran who was by then a deaf and cantankerous but still eloquent old man, enjoyed a moment of untypical optimism. At last, he believed, the truth about 1965 would come out. He dismissed the usual guess of up to 500,000 deaths, claiming there had been 2m. Now that Suharto had gone, there was no reason the truth had to lie buried with the many dead. Today Pramoedyas books, at least, are unbanned. But had he lived, he would be raging against the incompleteness of reformasi (reformation) and the resilience of censorship. Nor is 1965 the only forbidden territory. Also banned (censors do not do irony) is a book called Lekra Doesnt Burn Books, a reference to a leftist cultural institute, very influential in the early 1960s, to which Pramoedya belonged and which was later demonised by the Suharto regime. Another banned volume covers Indonesias controversial annexation of Papua in 1969. An Australian film has also been banned. Balibo presents the story of the deaths of five Australian journalists during the 1975 invasion of East Timor. The film is flawed as a work of history. José Ramos-Horta, president of what is now Timor-Leste, jokingly grumbled to the director that the actor playing him as a young firebrand was not handsome enough. He can have had few other complaints about his portrayal. But its basic plot is the one Australias courts have decided is true: that the five were murdered by Indonesian soldiers. Few Indonesians have much time for Australian efforts to dig up this bit of their countrys past. And some argue that the fuss the usual civil-libertarian suspects have made over the book bans misses the point. Far from sliding back to the authoritarian ways of the past, Indonesia now has arguably the freest and most vibrant press in South-East Asia. Law number 4, passed in 1963 to sanction fierce censorship, was lifted for the press in 1999. So, though books, pamphlets and posters remain under the censors thumb, newspapers and magazines have proliferated. They report the latest political intrigues involving Mr Yudhoyono with little restraint. The attorney-generals office is reportedly also mulling a ban on a book claiming campaign-finance violations by the president last year. But as soon as this became known hawkers started flogging pirated versions across Jakarta. Indonesia has more than 30m Indonesian internet-users, with access to every fact, theory and guess about their countrys recent past. The censors argumentthe one used by their peers everywhereis that the banned works might divide the nation and lead to bloodshed. That does not hold water, for censorship no longer works. By the same token, it does not seem to matter overmuch that censors try to keep a couple of fingers in the information dyke. The attempt to suppress recent history, however, does have two serious consequences. One is that the same mistakes keep being made: not because they are forgotten, but because there is little public exploration of other options. So the blunders Indonesias occupying soldiers made in East Timorthe dependence on torture, the co-option of unreliable local thugs, the closing-off of the region and refusal to discuss it with foreign countrieshave been repeated elsewhere, in Aceh and now Papua. SBYs new New Order? Second, and more fundamentally, the book bans hint at the identity crisis suffered by the Indonesian political elite. The Yudhoyono regime is rightly proud of its other democratic and liberal credentials. But it is not willing to declare a complete break with the past. The president himself is a New Order general who served in East Timor. Both the main opposing presidential tickets in last years election featured another Suharto-era general (each with a murkier reputation). It is easy to understand why they are unwilling to confront the past. But until they haveand have repudiated parts of itIndonesias democratic transformation will always seem provisional, and the past not so much a foreign country as the place where its leaders still live. * * * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ ======================= Milis Wanita Muslimah Membangun citra wanita muslimah dalam diri, keluarga, maupun masyarakat. 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