Women's struggles in the realm of religion

Women's struggles in the realm of religion

Pengalaman Perempuan: Pergulatan Lintas Agama (Women's
Experience: Interfaith Inner Struggle)
Edited by Yanti Mochtar
KaPal Perempuan in cooperation with the Ford Foundation 2000
xix and 155 pp

JAKARTA (JP): Numerous books on subjects previously seen as
taboo have been published since Soeharto's downfall in 1998 but
seldom does a book have such an impact as this one.

Pengalaman Perempuan: Pergulatan Lintas Agama (Women
Experience: Interfaith Inner Struggle) talks about the inner
conflict of five women activists. It is a protest against what
they perceive as flaws in their respective cultural and religious
upbringings.

It is essentially the condensation of years of fathomless
agony suffered by the writers. It is the kind of agony arising
from living with an open heart in a society dogged by suffocating
cultural and religious restrictions.

The writers' frankness in putting their innermost struggle in
the 170-page book is a sign of courage. They are iconoclasts with
critical souls and the book's subject matter still sounds
sensitive even during today's so-called reformasi (political
reform) era.

To most Indonesians who lived during the repressive Soeharto
years the subject violates SARA, the local acronym for any
expression considered to border on racism, ethnicity and
religion. It is still shocking, for example, to read the
confession of a descendant of Prophet Muhammad about her
religious doubts.

"When I was 14 years old I began to doubt the existence of
God," Farha Ciciek, an Indonesian Muslim of Arab descent who
hails from Ambon, disclosed.

A rebel in her family, she managed to escape the tight grip of
her aristocratic Arab community. She went to Yogyakarta and
became totally enthralled as soon as she enrolled in university,
her first encounter with the outside world.

She married a commoner, defying her father's insistence that
she wed a fellow Arab descendant of Prophet Muhammad.

Another activist, Viany Yuanita Prihindraningsih, a former
Catholic nun, recalled when she fought against the temptation of
loneliness when she was in the convent.

"I was often confused and cried when I realized that my body
demanded what I should have gone through in my adulthood.
Although I studied how to overcome this torment by praying and
spiritual exercises, it simply did not work. I was very lonely."

At about the same time, she said, her eyes were opened to the
illicit sexual relationships between priests and nuns, or between
members of the clergy and laymen or laywomen.

She believes celibacy should be on a voluntary basis, giving
the option to those who are truly committed to the practice.
Otherwise, more women and fatherless children will suffer.

She said there was often a double standard, with nuns leaving
the convent to take care of their offspring but the priests who
fathered the children retaining their status.

Viany unraveled the gender bias in her religion and pondered
why it was always men who were extolled in the Catholic
priesthood's hierarchy.

The child of a Chinese Catholic father and a Javanese Muslim
mother, Viany told how she often returned home in tears as a
child after being showered with the slur "Chinese child" by her
playmates.

"Can't we look different? Why should everyone look the same?"
kept on in her mind throughout her childhood.

The life experiences of the other women in the book are no
less unique.

Neng Dara Affiah is a Muslim with a strong pesantren (Islamic
boarding school) upbringing who hails from the West Java town of
Banten.

The title of her work in the book -- "Unraveling the footsteps
of a santri (Muslim scholar): Diary of a rebel" -- refers to her
fight against what she perceives as the absence of critical
discussion in the pesantren .

Judith Liem is a Chinese Indonesian who was born in Central
Java. She studied Christian theology and became a women's
activist. She tells about how she managed to come out of pecinan
(Chinatown) to embrace life in a pluralistic cultural setting.

Iswanti is a Javanese Catholic, a minority in terms of
religion since most Javanese profess Islam. Iswanti rebelled
against the lower status of woman in her Javanese community; her
interest later expanded to the fight against the Catholic
hierarchical tradition and the battle to protect the poor.

The fact that the writers are all women -- who traditionally are
relegated to the second sex in Indonesia's thickly feudal and
patriarchal society -- only enhances the value of the book.
Underpinning the five activists' exposition is a clear rejection
of a male dominated world.

The public may have forgotten that women activists,
increasingly sidelined in the reform movement since 1998, were
among the first who start the ball of the movement rolling.

The writers do not have any pretense to accept things on face
value but tirelessly question matters they perceive as
incompatible. They believe that churches, mosques as well as
tradition are antidemocracy and that democracy will never exist
if gender inequality persists.

Readers will feel personally acquainted with the writers since
what they read is essentially their most intimate feelings and
thoughts.

But the poor book cover design belies the good editing.

The book, a collection of sharing of the faithful, is a must
for those who dream of a pluralistic but peaceful Indonesia. It
is not only helpful for women's movement activists, but an eye-
opener to anyone about how difficult it is to appreciate and
embrace pluralistic values in Indonesian society.

Going beyond one's cultural boundaries is a life experience
not everyone can choose to have, let alone appreciating other
cultures. To some the practice is frowned upon, while others are
simply indifferent to other cultures.

Tradition, parental outlook and education partly constitute
the obstacles to crossing one's cultural boundaries. It is an
irony in a nation endowed with such rich cultural variety that,
as it stands now, cultural communities appear to be merely
cohabitants. There is little, if any, substantial interaction
going on among them.

The book's greatest contribution is that the discussion of
sensitive issues, usually confined to whispers or closed-door
meetings, has been brought into the open, thus inviting further
discourse which is healthy in a democracy.

Had a frank discussion on culture and religion been here 30
years ago, the sectarian conflicts we are now experiencing may
not be as bloody and the threat of disintegration less resolute.

Nevertheless, it is better late than never. The five activists
are clearly opinion leaders in a new Indonesia, and a heavy
workload lies in waiting for them.

One of them is to publish a follow-up book recording their
parents' agony as they themselves went through the torment of the
enlightenment period. Another one of value is to help non-
governmental organizations become less vulnerable to fracture
from internal bickering.

-- Harry Bhaskara

The book is available from KaPal Perempuan (Tel. 797-4181).