Prophetic religiosity

Prophetic religiosity

From Media Indonesia

A year ago (Nov. 25, 2003), in his Idul Fitri sermon at Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, General Chairman of the central board of Muhammadiyah, Syafii Ma'arif said, "A religion failing to defend justice is a withering religion, one that has lost is vigor."

This message implies that a vigorous faith is the kind that responds to the demands of justice in the community.

The prophetic echo of this message touches the conscience of religious people and reverberates even to date, a year later, when another Ramadhan has come and gone again. The message remains actual because it strikes to the very core of our withering religiosity.

Religion is this country is withering because it confines us -- whether as individuals, groups or institutions -- in our personal holy space, divorced from the complexity of the reality of our lives as a nation, involving economic, social, political and security aspects.

A religious cognitive perception like this will only give rise to various forms of contradiction. Our religious teachings tell us that we must pray in the morning, before we go to work, and also in the afternoon, after we return from work. In between, there are activities related to our positions and businesses, involving transactions and forged signatures to siphon off the state's money.

Every Friday, Muslims go to the mosque and every Sunday, Christians pray at church. On weekdays, however, people -- be they traffic policemen on patrol or professors at universities or even those in top government positions -- systematically siphon off the state's money, one way or another. In their prayer houses, people read their holy books but once leaving these places, they unsheathe their swords and behead their fellow human beings or mastermind racial/communal rioting.

STEVEN MERE Tokyo