“Why do you work among the radicals?” a colleague asked me after I told him that since August 2011 I had been working for an Islamic school which is said to be “managed by radical Muslims”.
But I answered, “What’s wrong with being radical? A liberal is also a radical since he stands on an extreme position of the continuum.”
And many of the teachers I work with are supporters of a leading Islamic party called “radical” by those who are not members. They know that I graduated from an Islamic state university where many reformists have been born, such as the late Nurcholish Madjid, Musdah Mulia etcetera.
To my surprise, I haven’t found any problems. They even can accept the way I express some things, which is more open and straightforward than others usually are.
If I lead a congregational prayer, they join the religious service without reservations. If I read the Koran loudly, they listen to me and smile. We can hold a debate in which we sharply criticize one another about certain Islamic teachings but we then sit at a round table having lunch and laugh.
I can without a doubt tell you that they are kind, warm and highly respectful people with knowledge and skills (ahl al-‘ilm). They are well-educated and can be categorized as a part of the Indonesian middle class.
Most of them are hard-workers, and, for in performing religious-related activities they are extraordinary. One more thing, they are able to live simply; a rare quality amid today’s living styles, as something taken consciously and with perseverance.
Perhaps, that’s why the late Nurcholish frankly admitted that Islamic party PKS was a party with great potential.
Unfortunately, however, there are ideologues too, a small number of people with practically no ability to make decisions and disseminate selective religious teachings.
They are the masters of the puppets but not the target of critical edicts. Theirs is a world of commoditizing followers and engineering stories.
To explain this phenomenon, let’s start with the ma’sum concept, that a religious leader, with his presumed knowledge and qualities is convinced he is protected from making mistakes or doing bad deeds.
Ma’sum itself is usually used to refer to the prophets or God’s angels, and is something conceived as unreachable by any ordinary person.
With this more or less superiority in their hands, religious leaders of an Islamic party, who are usually positioned on the shari’a (religious advisory) board or are top executives, possess abundant power to orchestrate most things.
Fortunately for them this assumed legitimacy might make it easier for them to make applicative decisions on all levels as well as advance their individual agendas.
This structure then potentially creates a great wall of anti-criticism and, to a significant extent, allows the process of making a cult icon out of a religious leader.
At this juncture, despite claims of democratic decision-making within a party, democratization might only become a commoditized symbol with all of its derivatives and features.
Meanwhile, Islamic parties’ ideologues cannot be separated from what we might call the Middle East mind-set — that there are links of ideological thought and influence (or at least inspiration).
Beside many of Indonesian potential youths who study there from time to time, these links are also cemented by donations in the form of zakat, Islamic obligatory alms, or in any other kind of gifts derived from the abundance of petrodollars in the Middle East’s rich countries.
There are possibly no special direct “ideological offers” following the alms. But such cash-flow means so much for an imaging process and the possibility of copying and pasting what is enacted there, in the dominant countries in the Middle East.
An Islamic party activist told me that his party routinely received this kind of cash flow. That money might not be spent on the party itself since something like zakat in Islamic teachings must be used properly for the needy or social aims.
Yet, for instance, the petrodollars left-over can build schools and mosques, which nevertheless contribute to the way that party is comprehended by many Muslims, and therefore is included in its religious teachings which at times are harmful for democracy or social harmony.
For the ideologues themselves, in their reasoning process in the orchestra, there is a melee based on the feeling that Muslims are being suppressed or alienated by the current Indonesian political system.
Muslims as the majority, therefore, must be able to obtain the biggest portion of the pie, including the right to ratify something like shari’a law more symbolically.
However, the incessant fraud in the Middle East have not encouraged them to reassess their ideological reasoning models both on social and political utopia.
There is still a strong tendency to indulge in the glorification of many things that originate from the Middle East, and promote them as better than the more harmonious local traditions.
This situation makes my fellow teachers look so inopportune given that they never change their opinions despite their right to choose what they desire.
The writer is an associate researcher at Paramadina Foundation.
But I answered, “What’s wrong with being radical? A liberal is also a radical since he stands on an extreme position of the continuum.”
And many of the teachers I work with are supporters of a leading Islamic party called “radical” by those who are not members. They know that I graduated from an Islamic state university where many reformists have been born, such as the late Nurcholish Madjid, Musdah Mulia etcetera.
To my surprise, I haven’t found any problems. They even can accept the way I express some things, which is more open and straightforward than others usually are.
If I lead a congregational prayer, they join the religious service without reservations. If I read the Koran loudly, they listen to me and smile. We can hold a debate in which we sharply criticize one another about certain Islamic teachings but we then sit at a round table having lunch and laugh.
I can without a doubt tell you that they are kind, warm and highly respectful people with knowledge and skills (ahl al-‘ilm). They are well-educated and can be categorized as a part of the Indonesian middle class.
Most of them are hard-workers, and, for in performing religious-related activities they are extraordinary. One more thing, they are able to live simply; a rare quality amid today’s living styles, as something taken consciously and with perseverance.
Perhaps, that’s why the late Nurcholish frankly admitted that Islamic party PKS was a party with great potential.
Unfortunately, however, there are ideologues too, a small number of people with practically no ability to make decisions and disseminate selective religious teachings.
They are the masters of the puppets but not the target of critical edicts. Theirs is a world of commoditizing followers and engineering stories.
To explain this phenomenon, let’s start with the ma’sum concept, that a religious leader, with his presumed knowledge and qualities is convinced he is protected from making mistakes or doing bad deeds.
Ma’sum itself is usually used to refer to the prophets or God’s angels, and is something conceived as unreachable by any ordinary person.
With this more or less superiority in their hands, religious leaders of an Islamic party, who are usually positioned on the shari’a (religious advisory) board or are top executives, possess abundant power to orchestrate most things.
Fortunately for them this assumed legitimacy might make it easier for them to make applicative decisions on all levels as well as advance their individual agendas.
This structure then potentially creates a great wall of anti-criticism and, to a significant extent, allows the process of making a cult icon out of a religious leader.
At this juncture, despite claims of democratic decision-making within a party, democratization might only become a commoditized symbol with all of its derivatives and features.
Meanwhile, Islamic parties’ ideologues cannot be separated from what we might call the Middle East mind-set — that there are links of ideological thought and influence (or at least inspiration).
Beside many of Indonesian potential youths who study there from time to time, these links are also cemented by donations in the form of zakat, Islamic obligatory alms, or in any other kind of gifts derived from the abundance of petrodollars in the Middle East’s rich countries.
There are possibly no special direct “ideological offers” following the alms. But such cash-flow means so much for an imaging process and the possibility of copying and pasting what is enacted there, in the dominant countries in the Middle East.
An Islamic party activist told me that his party routinely received this kind of cash flow. That money might not be spent on the party itself since something like zakat in Islamic teachings must be used properly for the needy or social aims.
Yet, for instance, the petrodollars left-over can build schools and mosques, which nevertheless contribute to the way that party is comprehended by many Muslims, and therefore is included in its religious teachings which at times are harmful for democracy or social harmony.
For the ideologues themselves, in their reasoning process in the orchestra, there is a melee based on the feeling that Muslims are being suppressed or alienated by the current Indonesian political system.
Muslims as the majority, therefore, must be able to obtain the biggest portion of the pie, including the right to ratify something like shari’a law more symbolically.
However, the incessant fraud in the Middle East have not encouraged them to reassess their ideological reasoning models both on social and political utopia.
There is still a strong tendency to indulge in the glorification of many things that originate from the Middle East, and promote them as better than the more harmonious local traditions.
This situation makes my fellow teachers look so inopportune given that they never change their opinions despite their right to choose what they desire.
The writer is an associate researcher at Paramadina Foundation.
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