Something Different in the Humanitarian Pulpit of Our WhatsApp Group
Yes, there is something very different. At least for me. I feel that difference. Not through the lens of faith, for this self is merely al-faqir. This is an observation of honesty. Regardless of the direction of struggle we claim: old or new. Humanity in the name of divinity should be above loyalty to a political coalition guaranteed ministerial and deputy ministerial seats.
Friend, observe honestly. In the WhatsApp groups of our circles. The contrast with the era of previous power. This is not about the position of being in opposition or not. That is not urgent. This is about taking sides against injustice; against humans, animals, plants, nature, and the future of our children and descendants.
Friend, there is no story of children who became victims of poisoning. There is no discussion about cooperatives in the name of people’s welfare. There is no talk of empathy mentioning the painful struggle of the people of Aceh after the floods last year.
And still there is no voice reporting how the stomachs of the people of eastern Nusa Tenggara ache. Or the misery of the people exposed to smoke from forest burning.
Our WhatsApp group is quiet. Silent, without any interest in discussing those agendas. There is a different space for thinking and caring between the two political springs. Outside and inside power sufficiently illustrate the meaning of feeling and being felt.
But we look on with certainty that everything is fine. Nothing has changed. Including the leader we defend. In the name of geopolitics, maqashid sharia, and the destroyer of oligarchy. The incantation of our apology is indeed that. And we do not want young people like Bima, Askar, or Fatimah. They who in the past were the imagined greatness of our successors, but are now monstrous villains, foreign stooges of Soros blocking the sacred mantra. Geopolitics-maqashid-anti-oligarchy.
Our group is quieter about caring. Because we have changed the measure. Consciously, as the cost of coalition political affiliation. Our tears are not about people dying, children acutely ill, animals falling. Our tears are about why those clever young people still demonstrate, manipulated by oligarchy. An oligarchy fabricated in the fantasy of our own heads.
And the tears of angels, if they exist, never tire of pouring forth. Pitying the pious people who cry at inverted moments.
Where have the noisy voices demanding justice and truth from years past gone? Where has the emotionally charged discussion gone, born of love for the upholding of legal dignity, but now reluctant to speak? “Oh, we are now inside. Together with power. No need to be critical, but we are also struggling. Different way of playing, brother!” Your argument and that of the others. While chanting the mantra: maqashid sharia, geopolitics, anti-oligarchy. As if the enemy is from outside, when in fact it is he—the leader of the nation—who created that enemy.
If concern resides in the heart, if there is sincere attention to all the children of the nation, if every critical suggestion is viewed as a form of empathy, there is no need to fear the exorcising mantra of “foreign”, londho ireng. All of that is the creation of the leader, and we affirm it in the coalition ranks.
We forget that the station of humanity has meanwhile declined drastically. Because we choose silence for the sake of national stability, for the sake of the Republic’s leader’s slick strategy, for the sake of dignified geopolitics. Forgetting that all of that is mere empty talk.