Here’s SBY’s bedside read
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| Attack on Ahmadiyah compound (International Crisis Group) |
What sort
of liberty must a good society give to members of minorities whose religion the
majority finds incorrect, or even sinful and bad? What limits could a decent society impose on religious behavior?
These
questions, articulated by American philosopher Martha Nussbaum in The New
Religious Intolerance, confronted settlers in the United States in the 17th
century. Many were escapees from
mainstream religious persecution in the Old World, determined to fashion a
fresh social order.
The issues
surfaced again in 1945 when Soekarno rejected hardliners seeking to impose
Sharia law. He needed the minority
Christians, Hindus and Buddhists on board to launch the new nation in a world
tired of religious conflict, praying for an example of accord.
The
questions remain valid today as the Presidential Palace ponders the right
response to attacks on churchgoers in Bogor and Bekasi. Then there’s
persecution of Shiites and Ahmadiyahs trying to sustain their belief in Chapter
XI of the Constitution - the section guaranteeing religious freedom for
all.
In seeking
solutions to these questions President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his
advisers could enrich their decision-making by reading this book and mull over
its central idea – that fear drives hate, and little will change till this is
understood and confronted.
What sort
of fear? Professor Nussbaum (she teaches law and ethics at the University of
Chicago) includes primitive anxieties about the unknown, and threats of
difference driven by ignorance.
Heading the
list is Islamophobia, the black death of reason and respect, infecting the West
in ways that lead voters and legislators to react irrationally.
In
Switzerland, a nation famed for its prosperity and independence, a referendum
resulted in a ban on mosque minarets.
Only five per cent of the population is Islamic. The restriction was opposed by the
Parliament, Jewish communities and Catholic bishops, but 57 per cent of the population,
stoked by agitators using cartoons that made the minarets look like missiles,
voted to prohibit.
France and
Italy (centers of world fashion) have banned burkas even though only a wisp of
women choose this dress – one estimate is under 3,000.
In the US
and Britain the media immediately assumed that last year’s massacre in Norway
that took 76 lives was the work of Al Qaeda. Later we learned the gunman was a psychopath
hating Muslims.
In the US
there are too many stories to list here of travellers with Islamic names and
‘Middle-Eastern appearance’ being targeted by zealous immigration officials.
Then
there’s the case of Park 51, the Islamic proposal to build a multi-faith
community center close to Ground Zero, the site of the twin towers destroyed in
2001.
It wasn’t a
mosque, though it did include prayer space.
The controversy features heavily in this book as an example of the need
for informed leadership, to comment with care and to never let such debates get
hijacked by demagogues.
At first
people supported the center and saw no harm.
Then a campaign of hate and lies began and what the author calls the
‘cascade’ of hostility, with people rushing to join others who claim to know
the truth.
The
proposers weren’t faultless. Comments Professor Nussbaum: “Park 51 was a set of
good ideas too hastily put forward with too little clarification of goals and
concepts, and much too little consultation with the local community.”
At the
start of the 2010 Ramadhan President Barack Obama, a skilled orator and
wordsmith, said “… I believe that Muslims have the same right to practise their
religion as anyone else in this country.”
However a
day later he “clarified” his position saying he was only commenting on the
constitutional question, not “the wisdom of making the decision to build a mosque
there.” Presidential prevarication
isn’t exclusive to Indonesia.
Two
stand-outs make this book valuable. The
author writes with clarity, rare for an academic. She’s also a moderate, pragmatic
about the need for tough security measures but arguing these must be based on
the unbiased presentation of facts.
Till
recently the FBI taught recruits about Islam using writings varying from the
questionable to the grossly bigoted. Simplistic clichés smothered truths. The difference between Sunni and Shiite was
misrepresented or ignored. So was the
fact that Indonesia and India have the world’s largest populations of
Muslims.
The author
concludes “that the suspicion and mistrust of academic scholarship by the FBI
that began during the McCarthy era have never really ended.”
In the
interfaith business it’s easy to get depressed. Just when imams and bishops
shake hands the warped ones decide that hate is better than harmony. All the fine words are blasted apart and
it’s start-over time again.
The
fearmongers move in with disguised agendas, their half-truths and untruths fill
the hole left by the ditherers, and the rat is off and running. There’s no rest
for the righteous.
The Greek
philosopher Socrates advocated the ‘examined life’ with a democracy “thoughtful
rather than impetuous, deliberative rather than unthinkingly adversarial.”
Sounds
good, but there’s a catch, as the author reveals:
“The
insight that Socrates lacked was that politics and government have no business
telling people what God is or how to find the meaning of life.
“Even if
governments don’t coerce people, the very announcement that a given religion
(or anti-religion) is a preferred view is a kind of insult to people who in all
conscience cannot share this view.
“That’s a
point that Socrates and many philosophers after him, have utterly failed to
understand.”
The New
Religious Intolerance
Martha C
Nussbaum
Harvard
University Press 2012
(First published in The Sunday Post, 22 September 2012)
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