Securalism: Is it that debased?

By Rahayu Ratnaningsih

BOGOR (JP): Is Indonesia a religious or secular state? We are always told that Indonesia is neither. It is a Pancasila state, so we are informed; it does not recognize any religion to be its official religion nor is any particular religious law officially enforced.

However, the belief in one God is instilled as the first and foremost foundation in the state ideology, Pancasila (Five Precepts). It has a ministry that specifically deals with religious affairs as well as the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI). The main function of this government sanctioned body is to issue fatwas regarding matters considered haram (forbidden) or halal (allowed), Islamic or non-Islamic.

In the New Order era, the government ruled that there were only five sanctioned religions in Indonesia: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism. School curriculums have religion as one of the obligatory subjects, along with physical and social sciences. Teachers of the Pancasila subject, also a mandatory subject from elementary school right through university, would tell students that there was no place in Indonesia for those who did not believe in God, or did not have religion, defined and dictated, absurdly enough, by the state. (So in the process, with no apparent thought for consistency of argument, students were told that Confucianism was not a religion.) Thus, what we have are children who grow up taking this unchallenged premise for granted.

Other than all the above, it is safe to say that Indonesia is quite secular and tolerant regarding a secular life style, especially compared to other Muslim countries, such as Malaysia, and particularly those hard-line middle eastern countries.

The debate of secularism versus religion, Islam in this case, has recently been brought to the forefront by the proliferation of Islamic or Islamic-oriented parties, especially during the campaigning season prior to the general election.

Islam is a commodity that is in high demand these days. Whether or not they use Islam as the party's foundation, all Islamic-based parties have declared their allegiance to Islamic principles. The National Awakening Party (PKB), founded by Nahdlatul Ulama's Abdurrahman Wahid, popularly known as Gus Dur, is one of these parties which, despite their indisputably Islamic orientation, established inclusive nationalism and pluralism as its foundation. It has gained wide support from both Muslims and non-Muslims, indigenous and nonindigenous Indonesians.

Gus Dur maintains the need for a separation between religion and the state, which is the philosophy of secularism, without abandoning religion. He purports a version of Islam which is inclusive, friendly, open-minded, protective toward minority groups and secure in its majority status. He strongly believes that true spirituality transcends religious differences and should be the personal matter of each individual citizen without state interference. He argues state interference will only result in religious politicization, which in turn will only bring disaster, as can be seen in many countries adopting this system.

Gus Dur believes this approach will not necessarily eradicate Islamic values from people's lives. He readily admits the most unfortunate fact that many Muslim groups are so narrow in their struggles and in their vision that they ostracize their non- Muslim brethren. The fact that this comes from the most prominent Islamic leader of the most prominent Islamic organization is refreshing. Despite his many opponents who fall short of his level of wisdom, many regard him as the true father of the nation.

On the other hand, the Crescent Star Party (PBB) founded by Yusril Ihza Mahendra, firmly declared Islam as its foundation and its antisecularism philosophy. In its view, secularism is the source of moral degradation of a nation, and thus, unacceptable for a state which is predominantly Muslim. Furthermore, PBB strives for the elimination of secularism from Indonesian society. Though, in a common move shared by all Islamic parties, it stops short of seeking to establish an Islamic state.

Recently The Jakarta Post published a letter from Vleugeuls who, perhaps in a rather insensitive straightforward manner, expounded on the need for Indonesia to have a president who did not have a religion. Not surprisingly, in a society where people are conditioned or indoctrinated to believe that atheists or people with no religion can do all sorts of evil, his probably not too uncommon opinion in the west has sparked emotional reactions from religious Indonesians who cannot fathom what life is like without religion. They accused him of being an evil atheist, generalized that westerners lead an immoral lifestyle, or even called for his deportation from the country on the grounds that his view could corrupt the Indonesian people.

It should be recognized that those who profess religious beliefs, Muslims in particular, generally have a very low opinion of secularism. There is even a tendency to demonize secularism by focusing only on the perceived negative side effects, without taking into account what it really strives to achieve. Secularism, which came into being during the Renaissance period, was an answer to the failure of religious states that had brought Europe into a dark age 500 years earlier. During that time witch hunting was a sport and executions were a just desert for straying. Pre-Renaissance Europe was characterized by incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths and an almost impenetrable mindlessness.

For one thousand years European accomplishments in the realms of science and exploration had been negligible. Throughout the Middle Ages, the vast majority of human intellectual energy and effort was diverted to questions of doctrinal minutiae and "holy" wars.

Secularism does not -- and never did -- promote the total abandonment of religion in people's lives, let alone hostility toward religion or its followers. Securalism seeks something quite opposite: to grant every person their basic freedoms, including freedom of belief -- or its lack thereof -- to the point that in fact in many secular countries religion, even ones not originating from those countries, blossoms and gains a large following over time. Houses of worship from all kinds of denominations are allowed almost unlimited growth, something that ironically would not be found in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

What secularism seeks to establish is that no dogma is too sacred to be analytically and critically questioned and investigated. Secularism promotes freedom of human reason and humanity in general.

The revival of arts, human rights movements, science and technology, human excellence and human dignity, other than the already mentioned religion, are thanks to secularism, for it sees all citizens as equal, despite their color, gender and creed.

True, all of these are not without cost since secularism is not perfect. But all in all, the benefits far surpass the costs. And pray tell, which system is perfect or can perfectly be implemented? It would be extremely tragic to throw the baby out with the bath water.

The fact that materialism abounds, crime rates, alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide rates, divorce rates and sexual crimes are increasing are perhaps some of the side effects that can be cited. However, they are not exclusive problems of secular states, because even in oppressive religious states many of those issues are present.

In those countries with a strong religious bias, the free flow of information (a free press) does not exist so people can easily, and mistakenly, infer that a lack of documentation (statistics) shows a lack of occurrence. Take Indonesia and the Pancasila state -- is it any better than secular India, for example? Is India a more corrupt state? The last time we checked, in terms of corruption, Indonesia still beat India hands down.

To be fair to Muslims, Nurcholish Madjid, the much quoted prominent Muslim thinker, better known as Cak Nur, years ago aired a concept that distinguished secularization from secularism. Perhaps realizing the common negative viewpoint toward secularism among Muslims, he suggested secularization but not secularism. However, what he meant by secularization was not much different than secularism in its essence.

As for the opinion that only those who do not believe in religion or God can resort to evil deeds, it is not difficult to show how superstitious and myopic this is. As our world experience attests, time after time religion, while it has been an eternal fountain of inspiration for many people and great minds, doesn't always make good people. The same precept holds that people without religion can make the most admirable humanists.

Theists and atheists are equally capable of good and bad deeds. Our history attests that at least 500,000 people were massacred in an anticommunist purge led by Soeharto's New Order in 1965. In many other cases, religion can and has shaped the most horrendous human beings, whether or not they really adhere to the true teachings of their religion. The reality still persists that those people believe that what they do is in the name of God, or according to their religious teachings. If religionists abhor the generalization made by nonreligionists that the opiate of religion can dupe people into insanity, they should not fall victim to their own preaching by generalizing that nonreligionists are all prone to evil.

The last point is, there is a distinction between religion, as an organized institution, and spirituality. People can be spiritual without strict affiliation to any particular religion. So in other words, people always have "religion", though outwardly they claim to not profess any belief.

It is high time to be open-minded and receptive to new ideas and courageous enough to challenge, evaluate and test much of the accepted theory, social taboos and dogma of our time. It is the only way that guarantees progress in a society. Great minds ask great questions. It is the time to independently question our childhood indoctrination that only those who share our belief in God are those with respectable morality.

The courage to question accepted truth was the foundation of the Renaissance that gave birth to the era of enlightenment in the west. Truth is never given and "truth" that cannot stand scrutiny and investigation is not worth professing.

Hence, we should perhaps rephrase the question from "Is secularism that debased?" to "Is secularism debased at all?"

The writer is director of the Satori Foundation, a center for the study and development of human excellence through training in mind programming and meditation techniques.