Forbidding pluralism and tolerance

Edwin Arifin, Jakarta

Pluralism has been formally forbidden, according to one of the Indonesian Ulema Council's (MUI) most recent fatwa.

Let us, however, take the MUI genie out of the bottle: What form of pluralism, exactly, is meant by the edict? Pluralism isn't simply an appreciation of diversity but rather an active engagement between different religions. Neither is pluralism merely about tolerance, it is more an active rational communication aimed at producing an understanding.

Most importantly, pluralism is different from and does not necessarily lead to relativism. Pluralism generally does not claim that all religions are absolutely true. Pluralism does not say all truth is relative, but it does accept different responses to truth that are conditioned by history and culture. Truth in pluralism is different from the specific truth claims of the world's religions.

No truth, subjected to human understanding, is perfectly interpreted. The different abilities of people and the labyrinth- like structure of truth are some of the reasons for the many religions in the world. It is through acknowledging these differences that the recognition of religions and their ethical responsibilities to each other can be realized.

MUI's fatwa also seems to contradict the idea that pluralism has consistently been an integral part of Islam and Indonesia. Nothing can be more unambiguous about the persisting pluralism in Islam than the history of the religion's legal experience. In the early centuries of Islam, there were a burgeoning number of legal schools of thought, each one named after its symbolic founder.

Though they later decreased in number, there still prevail an astounding heterogeneity of legal opinions and trends even within each of the surviving Muslim schools worldwide, including in Indonesia. This diversity prevents a particular view becoming a hegemony by stressing the multiple signs of God and a refusal of the institutionalization of truth. No one Muslim should have the right to monopolize an interpretation of a text or the truth when there are so many interpretations.

Further, in socially and culturally diverse Indonesia, plurality -- the reality -- has almost always been connected to pluralism -- the idea. Differences in adat (custom) and religions, as well as their relations to the state, allow a kind of internalized pluralism to take place.

At the core of a society's self-definition is a consciousness of another, different, society. Without this "other", a society would lack its identity. Such plurality is Indonesia's very essence. It is right to say that to deny plurality leads to a shattering of the very core of the country's self-definition as an imagined community. Putting it more simply, this country was formed on the idea of unity in diversity -- even if this concept was often made a mockery of by an authoritarian state.

Of course, pluralism is endangered when power intervenes. Most often, opponents of pluralism are motivated not by the sacred but by more mundane ideas.

If MUI's fatwa is meant to show a determination to win the "war of ideas against liberal Islam", the first casualty in the war has already fallen: Rational communication.

When communication is unilaterally impeded, what hope there is to solve other social problems.

A war of ideas can't be won simply by banning those ideas we don't like. "Creative attitudes among a handful of worshipers" won't be reduced by a prohibition. And the tactlessness of MUI's "firm stance" could well backfire, eroding the council's traditional authority.

In times when Indonesia remains a battleground for ideas, the fight between cultural heterogeny and homogeneity heating up, we are in dire need of more dialog.

Epistemic communities born in an age where liberal and conservative values compete can find themselves part of a global religious resurgence; a movement toward conservatism or fundamentalism; or an extreme God-denying liberalism. It is, however, rather difficult to envisage Indonesia being either completely Islamic or totally secular.

The country will unlikely be taken over by extremists because of its defense mechanisms. Any attempt to dominate ideas in Indonesia will have to transform existing power structures in order to do so. Every expression of domination, however, will likely invite a counteraction. Extreme views, therefore, may gain some currency but are unlikely to become paramount.

Out the dialectics of the two opposing extremes, in which none will emerge as absolute winner or loser, different cultural traditions will likely continue to diffuse and produce even more hybrids. Therefore, Indonesia's religious-political universe will continue along the middle path; the way of moderation.

Simultaneously, fed up to the teeth by religious dialectics, both in the form of conservatism and liberalism, indifference toward religious matters and controversies may consequently become more entrenched among the general public.

Here, in a society where religion derives its chief importance from its function as a symbol of group identity and self esteem, the Indonesian political arena; a mirror of the politics of meaning, will continue to need pluralism.

The writer is a researcher at the Reform Institute, and can be contacted at edwinarifin@yahoo.com. The views expressed here are personal ones.