End justifies means?
I am very disheartened to see a "trend" happening now in this country where religion (Islam) is used as a tool to reach political goals of a certain party. This is scary because when laypeople are misinformed, the result will be horrible. A mosque's mighrab (pulpit) is no longer used for building people's spirit of faith; it is, instead, used to build fanaticism.
The people who come to the mosque are not preached to sacrifice for their God, instead they are preached to sacrifice their religion. This is what I referred with "horrible". When people start to sacrifice religion, most often they lose their common sense. The result will be much different when they are "taught" to sacrifice for God. We all know that it is relatively easy to provoke laypeople, mainly those who are neither politically educated nor have good religious backgrounds. These groups can be manipulated and used to reach the political objectives of people who know well how to play politics.
As Muslims comprise the majority of the Indonesian population, they will definitely be used to serve their purposes. Unfortunately, there seems to be no Islamic body that wants to stop this move. On the contrary, these bodies -- one of them is the Indonesian Ulemas Council -- even strongly support this move. One can obviously see this phenomenon. In fact, during 32 years of tyrannical power of the New Order government, the council said little about this tyranny -- although tyranny evidently contradicts Islam.
I don't want to take sides with any parties. I am writing this because I am concerned with the current situation. We lose our common sense for the sake religion, we cannot accept defeat with pride, we cannot even perform fairly in judging matters. The worst is we prefer a hostile situation to peaceful one. They use reductionism to make a conclusion. A certain political party is reduced to a non-Muslim party; a non-Muslim party is then reduced to non-Muslims; non-Muslims are reduced to nonbelievers; nonbelievers are reduced to the enemy. See, how horrible it is. However, this move is allowed to continue and spread. I do not know whether we realize that this is what God wished. Perhaps, those who preach know the answer.
WAHYUNI RIZKIANA KAMAH
Jakarta