Muslims told to focus on ethics not symbols

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Bogor

In the world of Western astrological prophecy, this new millennium is an epoch of enormous change.

It supposedly marks a shift from the Age of Pisces (the fish), where humans must be told what to do by higher powers, to the Age of Aquarius (the water bearer), where humans will be able to think for themselves and learn the "truth".

The previous age depicted a time of fervent religion, while now is a period of enormous ideological shifts, astrologists say.

We are also, it seems from the rash of controversial publications revisiting events in Christianity, in an age where people worldwide have emerged to oppose traditionalist, conservative or patriarchal religious teachings. Sometimes the reactions against the conservative are scholarly, other times they are fanciful, or just downright silly.

Most recently, the release of Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code explores an idea that Brown claims has been circulating for centuries; that Jesus married one of his close confidants, Mary Magdalene, and sired a bloodline, and how a "mysterious" center of political and economic power has tried to hide the truth.

Prominent Catholic figures have attacked the book, calling it anti-Catholic, dangerous, and saying it would only increase the ignorance in non-believers about Jesus.

Meanwhile in the Muslim world, Amina Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at the Virginia Commonwealth University led a mixed Islamic congregation of around 100 men and women at an Anglican church in New York City.

Applauded by liberal Muslims as a breakthrough in the fight for gender equality in Islam, Wadud's act created a stir among conservationists and hard-liners who condemned it as heresy. Earlier bomb threats had meant the ceremony was transferred from its planned setting in a mosque.

These clashes between traditionalists and liberals, believers and non-believers, is part of a wider war over what place religious teachings have in the modern world.

Liberal Muslim scholars in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, have urged a reinterpretation of religion that emphasizes humanitarian ideals.

"In practicing our religion, superficial symbols often overshadow the substance of faith, which then creates ideological differences. What needs to be established is individual religiousness, that one's religion is only for oneself," Muslim scholar Komaruddin Hidayat told a recent workshop on pluralism and cross cultural understanding sponsored by the International Center for Islam and Pluralism (ICIP).

Meanwhile, Islamic jurisprudence researcher and gender expert Siti Musdah Mulia told the meeting that a religion should not encourage discrimination among its followers toward peoples of other faiths and cultures.

"The concept of diversity is somehow misleading. It's not enough that we know we're all different from one another. A pluralistic point of view must be developed to (make worshipers) realize that other religions also have similar concepts," he said.

The problem with much current Islamic teaching was that it emphasized only a narrow "legalistic" interpretation of the faith; the concepts of heaven or hell and what was halal or haram (permitted or forbidden under Islamic law), she said.

"Whereas Islam has many different aspects, such as politics, sufism, arts and culture, but these are hardly ever elaborated on. In the Koran, only around 6 percent out of over 6,000 verses deal with laws. The rest is about religious morality, which is universal because it talks about equality and justice," she said.

The other problem was a lack of intelligent interpretation, she said. A literalization of the Koran ignored the metaphorical interpretations possible and the era when the book was written.

Scholar Moeslim Abdurrahman from Muhammadiyah, the country's second-largest Muslim organization, said if people dealt with religion honestly, they should realize it was a matter of history.

"What remains is the human interpretation, not the words from the holy books. Now, this creates a theological problem -- comprehending that it's not just one's interpretation which is the most absolute." This led to a lack of subjective awareness among believers, he said, and a tendency to dismiss other religious viewpoints and objectify those of other faiths.

This principle of otherness was illustrated in the concept of the kafir (or infidel), which related to government policy on citizenship and in Indonesia translated into interfaith conflict and identity politics.

What was needed, Moeslim said, was the courage to put universal values into humanistic concepts, which went beyond religious identities.

"Dakwah is identical with the notion of spreading religious teachings and converting people to other faiths. It has to be more about teaching humanistic values and fighting the dehumanization that occurs in the poverty trap. Otherwise dakwah would be mere catharsis."

Social responsibility must come first before ritual, he said.

"If only people could detach from their religious identities and see more objective problems such as poverty," he said.