Asian governments should work to create a climate where a rational, objective and civil dialogue about religiosity can take place.
By Farish A. Noor, Published The Straits Times, 2 Apr 2014
AS INDONESIA heads to the elections - both legislative and presidential - this year, analysts and scholars have begun to ask if the country's image as a moderate Muslim state will remain unchallenged in the years to come. While it is true that Indonesian Islam has, to some extent, been shaped and defined by the country's two biggest Muslim organisations - the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the Muhammadiyah - for decades, the fact remains that the NU and Muhammadiyah account for at most 70 million followers in a country with more than 200 million Muslims, which in real terms makes them minority voices.
Extremist groups
COMPOUNDING matters for the NU and Muhammadiyah is the emergence of a host of new, smaller yet much more vocal and violent, groups that are also challenging the hegemony of the mainstream Muslim movements in the country. If the NU and Muhammadiyah could once claim to represent the tolerant, pluralist and pragmatic face of Indonesia's "smiling Islam", the same cannot be said today while groups like the Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders' Front) hog the headlines with their sensationalist rhetoric and provocative political campaigns. And it is these smaller groups that seem to be the principal actors who have slowly shifted the centre of Indonesian Islam's discourse from the moderate middle path to a more exclusive, communitarian and at times violent form of religiosity.
The root of the problem here lies not in theology, for the sad fact remains that anyone with vested interests can shift the focus of any religious discourse to serve sectarian ends.
What is happening in Indonesia today is not unique to Indonesia or to Islam: We see similar attempts to utilise the discourse of Buddhism in Myanmar. In that country, vocal Buddhist leaders like Abbot Wirathu have articulated a more exclusive interpretation of Buddhism that conflates it with Burman identity, to serve other, non-religious, ethno-nationalist ends.
The same seems to be the case in some South Asian countries like Sri Lanka and India, where Buddhist and Hindu nationalists have forged new understandings of their respective creeds to serve the goals of narrower ethno-nationalist projects as well.
Even in Europe, we see right-wing extremists turning to the discourse of Christianity to serve the ends of non-religious political projects that re-present Europe as a cultural zone that is fundamentally Christian in character and which deny the multicultural reality of Europe as it is today.
That religious discourses lend themselves to such manipulation is a fact as old as the history of religion itself. It has been made worse in recent years by the fact that many of these new radical groups have emerged under the eye of their respective states, and today utilise the rhetoric of communal self-defence and identity politics. In Indonesia's case, for instance, vocal groups like the Islamic Defenders' Front have always claimed that their confrontational politics is the result of the quietist stance taken by the country's mainstream Muslim movements on issues they regard as important for the preservation of Muslim identity. This can be something as trivial as dangdut music or attempts at a critical re-appraisal of Indonesian history.
The charge levelled against mainstream movements is often the same: that they are "too soft" when it comes to issues like secularism, liberalism, pluralism and such like.
Democratic dilemma
HERE is where advocates of democratic pluralism come face-to-face with a thorny dilemma. On the one hand, advocates of open society wish to see the widening of the public domain where alternative voices may emerge and where a healthy contest of ideas may take place. On the other hand, many of the newly emerging social-political actors on the scene tend to be of the exclusive, even extremist, bent.
Such groups are also claiming a democratic right to speak - even though the sentiments they articulate include xenophobic rantings against foreigners, biased slander against other ethnic or religious communities or demands for narrower religio-communal solidarity among the members of their own faith community.
Worse still, in some countries today, such groups actually thrive with the active collaboration of the state or powerful political actors and patrons who also utilise them for other sinister political objectives, such as eliminating political opponents.
Need for action
WHAT then can be done?
For a start we can re-state the premise that open democracies are not free-for-alls, where any lunatic fringe with a microphone can shout abuse or issue threats towards others - be they minority groups or members of their own faith community. Democracy works, and it can work well indeed, when there is a shared understanding of the rules of participatory democracy and when everyone agrees to the simple principle that democracy cannot be used to undermine its own democratic principles.
This entails the need for states to disentangle themselves from any shady association with radical groups that may be useful to secure some political ends (like silencing opponents) but which in the long run threaten the democratic space of the nation-state itself. Over the past decade, numerous scholars and journalists have unearthed all manner of collaboration between political elites and radical groups in their own countries, from Pakistan to the Philippines.
Local radicals, pressure groups, militias and even private armies have been put on the payroll of political parties and elites which used them to clear their own path to power. The net result has been the creation of uneven public spaces where moderate voices led by critical intellectuals, pacifist activists, liberal-democratic movements and the like have been edged out by violent groups that claim to defend their faith and identity at the point of a gun.
This has created a situation where religious moderates feel themselves under siege and can no longer speak without the threat of violent reprisal hanging over their heads like the proverbial sword of Damocles.
Role of the state
NO STATE can ever legislate rules that create a happy and contented public domain for everyone. Indeed, even the strongest state in the world cannot force its citizens to love one another. But it can create the conditions that would equalise the field of public debate and discussion.
That is one of the main functions of Parliaments: to legislate laws against hate speech, violent rhetoric and the politics of intimidation.
No government should hold back when it comes to the task of creating conditions conducive to sensible discussion about matters religious. Instead, it should work to create a climate where a rational, objective and civil dialogue about religiosity can take place. When faced with a clearly uneven situation, where moderate religious leaders and intellectuals are being threatened with death, the state must shoulder its responsibility to put an end to the culture of violence.
Asia is a post-colonial, post-modern region where globalisation and multiculturalism are a reality. Religiously-inclined intellectuals thus face the challenge of adapting to modern life-conditions, the practical realities of social evolution and the need for dialogue and compromise.
Some debates will be challenging, but they will also be meaningful to those who wish to reconcile their religious beliefs with the challenges of modernity. But the debate has to take place in the context of a society where moderate intellectuals can think and work freely. Moderate religiosity cannot survive the rule of the gun. To expect moderate Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists to thrive under such circumstances would be akin to expecting rice to grow in a desert. That would be expecting faith to deliver one miracle too many.
The writer is associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.
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