Celebrating Ramadhan and Xmas with religious tolerance

Mochtar Buchori, Educator, Legislator, Jakarta

Do Muslims resent Christians in Indonesia? And conversely, do Christians hate Muslims in Indonesia? On the surface at times it is the way it looks like, but I do not think this feeling of mutual enmity permeates throughout all layers of Islamic and Christian communities in the country.

I do not know precisely how the situation is among Christians, but I know that among Indonesian Muslims there are those who can get along, and even become friends, with Christians, beside those who hate them.

In the eyes of the tolerant Muslims, Christians are fellow Indonesians, fellow human beings, who happen to have a different belief system. In their view, attitudes towards followers of other religions should not be based upon the "otherness" of their religion, but upon their religiosity and their "character"; upon the extent to which they consistently observe the values prescribed by their religion and by society.

A real "good" Christian will, in their view, exhibit a character, a personality that is very much similar to that of a really "good" Muslim.

The attitudes of Muslims in Indonesia towards Christians covers a broad spectrum, ranging all the way from feelings of enmity or hostility to feelings of amity or friendship. Between hatred at the one end of the spectrum and friendship at the other, there are innumerable nuances in the middle.

The general rule in this regard is that whenever a group of Muslims view Christians as a group of a faceless crowd, the sentiment that usually arises is that of encountering an unknown social entity, toward which they cannot foster any feeling of sympathy.

This kind of mindset can easily develop into a feeling of animosity. I know of persons who disliked Christians and Christianity so much that they refused to use words whenever they wanted to refer to Christians as a whole. They just made a cross sign, using their right and left forefingers.

Could you imagine what might happen if these persons meet their "counterparts" from the Christian side, especially when such persons happen to have followers who harbor similar rancor?

This is an important question, because, according to my Christian friends, there are also militant zealots within Christian communities who are always ready to be parts of a violent mob.

What makes tolerant Muslims abandon their animosity against Christians? It is when Muslims begin to perceive Christians as individuals, as human personalities. When you reach this stage of humanity, the feeling of facing an unknown social entity in the face of a group of Christians vanishes, and its place emerges the feeling of facing real individuals, real human beings, who are endowed with positive and negative traits, showing pleasant and less pleasant characteristics.

A case in point was the late Romo J.B. Mangunwijaya, a Catholic priest, architect, novelist, and an ardent defendant of marginalized people. Indonesian Muslims who knew him, myself included, respect him. No one among us hated him. What we saw -- and still see -- in him was first and foremost a great humanist.

We, his Muslim friends, either overlooked or ignored the fact that he was a Catholic priest. In a Catholic church in Yogyakarta, when a requiem mass was held to honor him, many Muslims, friends and admirers of the late priest, attended the service to show their reverence for him.

At the end of this Catholic service, this group of Muslim friends chanted in unison the Islamic verse, "Allaah hu Akbar! Inna lillaah wa innalillahi roji'un!" Great is Allah! From Allah thy come, and to Allah thy shall return." At that moment the line that divides Muslims and Christians vanished. What was hanging in the air was a deep sense of grief, arising from the feeling that a beloved friend had departed.

At this juncture of our history the question is how to eradicate the feeling of mutual hostility and nurture feelings of goodwill among members of these two major religious communities? Failure to do this will certainly thrust this nation into an endless chain of religious conflicts, which ultimately may cause this country to collapse.

What do we have to do to make ourselves move from the present chaotic condition into a more orderly and civilized life? We will be able to chart the path toward this goal only if we understand the origin of animosity, both among Muslims and among Christians.

I often ask myself, "Where do the seeds of this hatred come from among Muslims? Does Islamic education consciously purport to make young Muslims hate Christians?" I do not accept, and refuse to accept the assertion implied in this last question. But somehow this impression persists in my mind.

In my case, I was never told to hate Christians. Yet there was a time in my life when I felt uneasy, inferior and a little bit jealous towards Christians.

In hindsight, I think it was the oft-repeated message that Islam is the only right religion -- meaning that other religions are less right -- that might be the origin of my negative feelings in the past towards Christians and Christianity. This was reinforced by my social experiences during the Dutch colonial time, and at the end my aversion toward Christians and Christianity was shaped.

For five years I harbored the feeling that Indonesian Muslims were treated less favorably by the Netherlands Indies colonial administration. Everything in my personal life stressed my inferior status. My school, of the Muhammadiyah organization, was housed in a shabby rented building, situated next to a Catholic church that looked very mighty in my eyes.

The words Soli Deo Gloria were written with protruded letters above the main gate in an arch form. They are still there today. This church was located on a high ground, while my school's location was at a lower level on the verge of a river.

Every Sunday I felt the pains of being a member of a politically discriminated against group. When I went to school on Sundays -- Muhammadiyah schools were open on Sundays and closed on Fridays, I would see people visiting the church for morning masses, all well dressed. And on my way to my school I had to pass a Christian school that was equally close to the same river near my school, but located in a two-story long building with its name Hollands Inlandse School Met De Bijbel, written with big letters across the long wall of the upper floor.

This kind of daily experience led to a feeling of inferiority. I felt inferior towards my friends who studied at Christian schools. I had the feeling that they received better instruction than I did. One day, when a Catholic friend and I walked and played in a field outside our village, he took a flower and explained to me the anatomy of that flower, explaining the function of each part. I felt so dumb, because we were formally at the same grade level, but enrolled in two different schools.

It took quite a long time for me to overcome these feelings. It was my social experiences in my village community and later in a multi-religious boarding school that softened and finally erased my negative feelings toward Christians.

One of my teachers in the village was a Catholic, and he was a good teacher. My father, known by the population in the entire sub-district as the kyai or religious teacher of the area, got along very well with this Catholic teacher of mine.

It was my father who repeatedly told me to be tolerant, religious and otherwise. He often quoted one quote from the Prophet's saying or the hadits, "Don't look at who is saying what, but listen to what is being said".

This instruction to be tolerant was later repeatedly reinforced in my boarding school. It was there that I learned to respect and to live harmoniously with friends from other religions.

Can we create, in this pluralistic society of ours, opportunities for learning to know each other, for learning to conquer our rancor, and for learning the art of living together peacefully and harmoniously?

May this holy month of Ramadhan and the spirit of the coming Christmas light the fire of tolerance in the hearts of our political leaders, so that they will be able to lead the people towards religious reconciliation that will ensure the survival of this nation. Amien!