In Search of religious harmony in Indonesia

In Search of religious harmony in Indonesia

By Harkiman Racheman

MEDAN (JP): Though the all-accommodating Abdurrahman Wahid was
democratically elected as the fourth president of Indonesia, it
has not seemed to help end riots with religious overtones.

Sporadic interreligious riots reflect "social banditry"
traceable to religious feelings, which has shattered the image of
friendly, tolerant Indonesians.

Though considered ordinary crimes triggered by the
socioeconomic gap, those outbursts cannot be divorced from
complex perceptions about each other's religion.

The expression that "all religions teach people to be good"
has now become a statement with multiple interpretations.

A deliberate reinterpretation of collective religious
consciousness, especially that which denies the nation's ethnic,
social, economic, political and cultural diversity, has led to
various upheavals here.

Religious diversity must be reaffirmed and, subsequently,
defective interreligious relations must be readdressed.

Public figures should reeducate the populace to accept
interreligious harmony as the only solution.

Harmonious relationships among followers of diverse creeds
seem to operate merely at a normative level. Interreligious
tolerance is still taken shallowly to mean noninterference,
mutual indifference and a serious lack of reciprocal solidarity.

Such "harmony" will only lead to people withdrawing from
honest, tolerant and productive interaction.

Interreligious harmony, in this restricted sense, is sheer
politicking; it is pretension based on mutual suspicion and fear.
Such skin-deep relations will never generate a real spiritually
enriching experience.

Strangely enough, it is this very paradigm which has been
passed on in a top-down manner to citizens to prevent
interreligious conflict. The policy in Maluku to reconcile the
warring factions, which includes banishing the two parties into
impenetrable seclusion, is a self-explanatory example.

No wonder that tragedies in various parts of Indonesia, often
worsened by interreligious hatred, continue to triumph.

These incidents should teach us the importance of improving
interreligious relationships into ones that are more relevant to
a pluralistic society.

However, it first has to be understood that, unlike in private
circles of respective religious groups, a blasphemous
interpretation of others' faiths cannot be tolerated. Any attempt
to trespass upon others' religiousness would immediately lead to
multireligious disintegration, because different beliefs would
naturally have a vested interest.

However, much can be learned to prevent such disintegration.
The masses, among them the ignorant, can now learn how to respect
and value each other's presence by referring to nationalism.

While fanatical religious teachings preach the priority of the
afterlife, nationalism as an expression of self-sacrificial love
can motivate people to develop the country regardless of
differences.

Nationalism is embodied in the 1945 Constitution and Pancasila
ideology. Harmonious interreligious coexistence must be the
responsibility of a democratically elected powerholder who has
secured the mandate to maintain "unity in diversity".

Authorities have to guarantee that every citizen, of whatever
religious background, shall not be discriminated against for any
reason.

Religious harmony should thus reflect a government-sanctioned
symbiosis between groups of broad-minded nationalistic believers
of different religious values, based on a real sense of
camaraderie.

Religious harmony should reflect everyone's sense of spiritual
maturity, rather than shallow tolerance. Every believer should
realize that the raison d'etre of all religions is to help
heighten spiritual consciousness, bringing one closer to a
private communion with the Ultimate Reality. This understanding
should end attempts to make relations among different believers a
source of animosity, riots and wars.

It is thus essential for the government to impose a code of
ethics for our multireligious society. Such a formalized
agreement would regulate and define acceptable cross-religious
behavior.

A law which stipulates all the do's and don'ts may help people
in the streets demonstrate their obligation toward each other's
religious rights and, more importantly, to warn them against
abusing these rights.

Believers should be able to translate the very essence of
their faith into an all-inclusive social context. This is
essential to help maintain objective law and social order,
allowing the country to function.

The emergence of the world's religions at different times
shows the coexistence between institutionalized religions is
natural. Former minister of religious affairs Tarmizi Taher was
being sensible when he suggested it was a dream to expect a
homogeneous religious society in this century.

The writer graduated from Victoria University in Wellington,
New Zealand. Based in Medan, he currently is a freelance writer
and university lecturer.