Flaws in understanding role of religion in Pancasila?
Flaws in understanding role of religion in Pancasila?
By J. Soedjati Djiwandono
JAKARTA (JP): Recent events show certain fundamental flaws in
understanding religion as related to Pancasila. Unless corrected
once and for all, these flaws may seriously alter the future of
the nation.
One flaw concerns the position of religion in the Pancasila
state. Many people tend to be ambivalent as to whether Indonesia
is a secular or a religious state. The most common answer is that
it is neither. It seems typically Indonesian to come up with a
"neither this nor that" answer to questions of definition or
conceptualization. This, I think, is a characteristic that Dr.
William Liddle has aptly called "inbetweenness and
incompleteness".
It is a well accepted and established in the Pancasila state,
as clearly stipulated in the Constitution, that every citizen has
the right to religious freedom. Yet there seems to be an
unwritten law that every citizen must profess a religion. This
conviction must be seriously challenged. The Marriage Law orders,
for example, that one must marry in accordance with one's
religion. This implies that one without a religion cannot get
married in this country. Worse still, one must profess only one
of the five officially recognized religions.
Religious freedom surely implies the right to choose, not only
which religion one wishes to have but also to change religions at
any time and for any reason whatsoever. Whether or not one really
believes in what one claims to believe, heaven knows. Besides,
who cares? One is free to believe or not to believe anything,
insofar as one does not encroach on the rights of other people or
disturb public order; for which the institution of state has been
designed and created.
Equally important is that religious freedom also entails the
right to choose whether or not one wishes to embrace a religion
at all. To enforce religious adherence is to cultivate hypocrisy.
In fact, to enforce religion is as morally wrong as to ban it.
They are two sides of the same coin.
Religion does not require official recognition by the state.
If the state has the right to recognize a religion, it also has
the right to ban it. This is simple logic. Human rights are God-
given, no power on earth can deprive anyone of those rights.
Moreover, what is the basis for recognition? If it is based on
the first principle of Pancasila, why then is the Judaism, the
oldest monotheist religion, not recognized?
The state has no right, competence, power or obligation to
grant official recognition to any religion. Nor does the state
have the right to determine whether or not a form of worship is a
religion. By the same token, the state, or any institution for
that matter, cannot arrogate the right to judge if any religious
movement deviates from the mainstream. It would be pretentious to
claim a monopoly over divine Truth. If the state intervenes at
all, it must be based on evidence of criminal acts, not because
of what it regards as "religious deviations".
Another fundamental flaw concerns Pancasila as an open
ideology. Contrasted with closed ideologies like Communism or
Nazism, Pancasila has no direct operational value by which to
judge a person's behavior. Any form of indoctrination, which
characterizes a closed ideology, is therefore irrelevant.
Pancasila is the source of state laws. It has been called the
"source of all sources." Thus, Pancasila is to be implemented
through the enactment and enforcement of laws. Therefore, unless
a person is proved guilty of violating any law of the state, they
do not violate Pancasila.
One serious problem is that there is no judicial review system
to judge whether or not a law is correctly based on Pancasila or
the 1945 Constitution that embodies it. If it is not, the law
must be declared unconstitutional.
The writer is a member of board of directors at the Centre for
Strategic and International Studies.