Meaningful discourse on religion in SE Asia suppressed<\/p>\n
Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Sanur, Bali<\/p>\n
A lack of a freedom of expression and a crisis of leadership
\namong religious leaders and institutions is suppressing a
\ndiscourse on religion in Southeast Asia and hampering efforts of
\nsocial and political change, a discussion has concluded.<\/p>\n
Speakers said that particularly after Sept. 11, discourse had
\nbeen highly politicized and limited to the labeling of radicals
\nand progressive liberals, instead of discussing how religion,
\nparticularly Islam, could serve humanity.<\/p>\n
Speakers and participants at an overcrowded panel discussion
\non religion and politics in Southeast Asia here on Saturday, the
\nsecond day of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN)
\nPeople's Assembly, cited conditions in their countries regarding
\nMuslims and the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
\"It was partly ostensibly democratic, but authoritarian
\ngovernments in Southeast Asia contributed to radical
\nconservatism, mainly among Muslims,\" said speaker Farish A. Noor,
\nwho studies Islamic movements in the region.<\/p>\n
\"Conservatives became vocal while liberal progressive
\nMuslims,\" he said, \"were caught in a battle of Muslim souls.\"<\/p>\n
One result was a dependency on the state to which Muslims fled
\nfor protection against hard-liners -- who, because they were
\nformerly hunted by the government, were forced to form their own
\nnetworks, independent of the government, Noor said.<\/p>\n
Participants, including former foreign minister Ali Alatas,
\nsaid there was a lack of courage in leadership among religious
\nleaders to speak up.<\/p>\n
The liberal Muslims, Noor said, had retreated and lost sight
\nof the challenge of how Islam should be used as a powerful tool
\nfor a new form of politics, just as Islam was used by
\nnationalists in the region to fight colonial rule.<\/p>\n
This new form referred to the essence of universal values of
\nhuman rights and democracy in Islam, he said, or how Islam could
\nserve humanity.<\/p>\n
Leaders instead were using Islam for their political
\nexistence, just like Ali Bhutto in the late 1970s in Pakistan
\nwhen he felt he might lose the elections, Noor said.<\/p>\n
However, excluding hard-liners from discourse would make them
\neven more isolated, he said.<\/p>\n
\"It is good that the Malaysian All Islamic Party (PAS) is
\nengaging in a discourse on democracy, while these kinds of
\nparties are also expected to practice what they preach,\" he said,
\nadding that despite the practice of free speech, lynch mobs were
\nassigned in the name of religion to hate campaigns against those
\nconsidered to have dissenting views.<\/p>\n
In Indonesia, the editor of Aksara magazine, Hamid Basyaib,
\nsaid it was more important to retain the original article on
\nreligion in the Constitution, which stresses that the state
\nguarantees the freedom to practice religion among its believers,
\nrather than arguing to maintain a unitary republic, as stressed
\nby the leaders of the country's largest Muslim organizations,
\nNahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah.<\/p>\n
Although calls to adopt sharia in the Constitution failed in
\nthe last amendment, those making the calls have said they will
\ncontinue to try, blaming all the country's problems on the
\nabsence of formally adopting Islamic law.<\/p>\n
Hamid also called on a continued discourse on theology amid
\nthe rise of groups \"who think that complex contemporary problems
\ncan all be solved\" by ancient scriptures, which have yet to be
\nstudied and interpreted further into today's context.<\/p>\n
Speaker Zulkifli Baharudin from Singapore said what was urgent
\nwas the recognition and acceptance of Muslims because of their
\ndiversity.<\/p>\n
\"Since Sept. 11, Singaporeans can only see the problem of
\nMuslims and problematic Muslims and they fail to understand the
\nexpression of spirituality among its Muslim population,\" he said.<\/p>\n
This has led to politicians not understanding the concerns
\nthat minority Muslims in Singapore have for fellow believers in
\nthe Palestine and Bosnia, he said.<\/p>\n
Public awareness of Muslims' expression of spirituality only
\ncaptured the public's attention and concern after Sept. 11, while
\nteenagers going on the haj and religiosity among the affluent had
\noccurred long before Sept. 11, he said.<\/p>\n
\"There is a need to provide more public space for Muslims
\nrather than the mere labeling of them,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Zulkifli and other participants also called for changes in
\ngovernment policies regarding freedom of expression. Governments
\nin Southeast Asia focusing on stability, he said, would surely
\nsee the value in this. But not recognizing this need will be felt
\nin the long run, he said.<\/p>\n
From the Philippines, Father Roberto Reyes cited the crisis of
\nleadership in the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
Apart from the condition of the aging and influential Cardinal
\nSin, he said the church had made the mistake of playing a crucial
\nrole during the first show of the people's power in 1986, then
\nretreating and even resuming close ties with the country's
\npolitically and economically powerful elite, rather than staying
\nconsistent with its pledge to speak for the poor.<\/p>",
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