Eliminating hatred in our society

By Mohamad Sobary

The following article is based on a paper presented at a discussion on "New Vision" held by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta on Aug. 25, 1998.

JAKARTA: A socially constructed negative image constitutes the heaviest burden in intergroup relationships. This image is shaped through education.

As one generation inherits its predecessor's legacy, the negative image of others is likewise inherited in their private and social perception. This is easily understandable because the evil qualities others are often exposed to in an educational process give prominence to our own virtue, superiority and nobleness.

There is institutionalized social hatred that one group harbors against another in our society. We maintain this institution at whatever cost. If a fresh element of hatred emerges, we will institutionalize it with zest. As a result, these institutions of hatred keep expanding in number.

In this way we will be confronted with the fact that the survival of a certain social system or subsystem is ensured thanks to this mutual hatred. We have therefore secretly allowed ourselves to become the proponents of a system that lives on an accumulation of hatred or is enforced on the basis of this hatred.

A religion, though it formally teaches love and salvation, is helpless amid a social system characterized by mutual hatred. Through religion we even practice mutual hatred and intimidation.

In short, in the context of intergroup relationships, the underlined religious teachings have nothing to do with love and safety but are significantly concerned with hatred and intimidation.

It is often the case that religious symbols and teachings and the development of religious social aspirations are given absolute interpretation by a particular group. The realization that God has handed down religion to man for his own glory has been completely changed into an awareness that man must strive for the glory of religion.

Even within one religious group, this social relationship has often brought about bitterness and a strong feeling of being threatened so that from a social viewpoint, religion, contrary to its basic assumption, is seen as offering more threats than safety.

In such a social system, it is always likely that the minority-majority relationship can lead to numerous tensions. The minority-majority relationship between ethnic groups poses the same amount of difficulty as does this kind of relationship between religions, or even within one particular religion.

Both bring with them hatred and pose a threat to safety.

History has recorded the difficulty underlying the relationships between these groups. These ethnic and religious groups have tried to greet each other and engage themselves in a conversation but, unfortunately, they have different yardsticks and values.

Efforts to create a common ground or a common platform usually come to naught because a particular religious teaching or ideology is usually viewed in an absolute term.

This includes an ideological belief that one particular religion claims the highest level of truth compared with other religions. As a result, different religious idioms will develop. Even the best idioms, if they originate within a certain religious group, cannot be easily accepted as truth by or within other religious groups.

Differences in idioms, which is a secular phenomenon, is considered as having resulted from differences in religious principles. These differences are even thought of as having in them a divine essence.

Here, then, lies the opposition between religious interests and individual or group interests on the one hand, and the interests of the state on the other. This opposition will assume great prominence, especially if considering the interests of a state as a sound entity bringing together and accommodating all the differences.

In this way, religion and ethnicity will alienate us from one another and in this situation we have lost our grasp of a language or idioms to get over this alienation.

However, in a state which accommodates and protects all its citizens, ethnicity and religion constitute a broken mirror which cannot easily reflect our faces clearly and entirely.

If the state pursues its own interests -- the state is not, in this respect, a neutral entity -- the cracks in the broken mirror will deepen. The New Order and the newer order have not only failed to accommodate these existing cracks but have even caused a greater number of and deeper cracks.

Worse still, the state pursues its own interests and in so doing feels obliged to cause new cracks in order that it may successfully pursue its own interests. Even the tiniest crack potential in society will be made use of and exacerbated by means of, strangely enough, the standard idiom of "for the sake of unity and unitariness", one which is taboo to question even at the ideological level.

The state apparatus is made up of groups of people with a strong conviction of the truth, and even the nobleness, of the ideals of the state. They will prohibit any manifestation of a critical attitude leading to an acceptance that personal interests are embedded in the interests of the state.

In the eyes of the state apparatus, the state is a holy institution in which absolute truth is inherent. This belief is particularly strongly rooted in the military, their uniforms aptly symbolizing the uniformity of their way of thinking about other people or groups.

These military people are fundamentalists who are more determined and more radical than fundamentalists -- in their negative connotation -- in the realm of religion.

Unfortunately, other groups are also required to take in this uniformity and anybody and any groups having any dealings with the state will also be required to hold in high esteem the significance of this uniformity.

Uniformity has almost become our way of life. Until today, a discourse on ethnicity and religious affairs has always been in the hands of the state and considered the property of the state, particularly the security apparatus.

Virtuous people with a sound insight shoulder the obligation to take religion out of the mud of hatred so that its pristine teachings will not be polluted by interests which have until now threatened the very being of religion itself.

In the interest of a future characterized by greater democracy and justice, we all shoulder an obligation to seize discourses on religion and ethnicity away from the state to ensure the state no longer has too much freedom to dominate our lives.

The writer is a newspaper columnist and senior researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.