MALANG PREPARES

 

Season’s Fearings

Will it be safe for Christians this Saturday night in Indonesia?  The signs of the festive season used to be plastic mistletoe and corflute Santas in shopping malls.  Now in East Java’s second biggest city it’s armoured cars outside churches.

The angular steel of the ugly green Bushmaster lookalikes clashes with the soft white curves of Our Mary of Mt Carmel towering behind. The Catholic Cathedral has ample space to park war machines because it’s on the crossroads of Ijen Boulevard, the most spacious and richest end of Malang.

The idea is that displays of weaponry deter terrorists – provided they go for big targets.

Yet plenty of lesser-guarded places of worship remain in the metropolis (pop 850,000) which boasts it’s green, smart and accepting – a quality hard to measure, though with a streetscape to impress.

Within 100 metres of the major Protestant church is the Great Mosque of Malang and on the other side of the town square the Catholic Sacred Heart of Jesus.

All the churches are neo-gothic, built more than a century ago and dominating their locales.  During the Second World War, the Japanese occupiers used them to store food and armaments, but they escaped serious damage. 

In July 1947 returning Dutch troops drove into the hilltown to quell militant revolutionaries  who ran a scorched-earth retreat, fire-bombing colonial-era buildings including the Town Hall.  The churches weren’t touched.

Malang fancies itself as different.  When the local authority tried to promote tourism this year by advertising halal (allowed for Muslims) food outlets, huge banners appeared – including on the Town Hall wall - with the slogan in English Malang Tolerant City Not Halal City.

No authorisation but the professional and costly signs carried images of the national flag and were probably made by Jaringan Islam Liberal (JIL). The Liberal Islamic Network champions inter-faith events and has a history of pouncing on hints of division.

Seven years ago hundreds of posters appeared overnight on pillars and trees with the message which translated as:  ‘Good Muslims do not greet Christians with Happy Christmas or celebrate the New Year.’ 

Within two hours they’d all gone, ripped down by JIL members alerted on social media.

 

Other cities haven’t been so willing to bash bigotry with such speed and vigour, though they’ve been targets of hate since the Republic pronounced itself a democracy early this century.

Eight churches in other centres were bombed with coordinated assaults on Christmas Eve 2000.  In May 2018 a family wearing explosive vests targeted three churches in the East Java capital of Surabaya. 

They were reportedly aligned with the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (Helpers of the State Congregation) a terrorist cell linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Concerned Malang residents of all faiths occasionally gather to support the Deklarasi Malang Berdoa (the Declaration of Prayer for Malang) hoping their initiative will spread. Some killers haven’t been deterred. On Palm Sunday last year suicide bombers hit a church in Makassar.

The Malang church guardians this Christmas should know who among the multitude might have evil intentions. 

Intelligence reports aren’t always reliable.  Recent outrages have surprised security agencies arguing ‘lone wolf’ attacks are unpredictable.  The term is a misnomer – wolves are pack animals and terrorists have links that can be giveaways.

Fortunately fanatics are few and aren’t the brightest glow-worms in the gloom of religious bigotry. Otherwise, they’d notice the church protectors spend more time dozing in the cloisters than eyeballing crowds.

If the bombers could muster enough courage to confront superstitions they’d walk with confidence into the places of worship by looking like the people they want to murder and maim.  But dressing like a kaffir (unbeliever) is ironically hateful to those who specialise in hate.

In a culture where sorcery stays strong, the credulous fear close contact with other religions means they’ll get infected and inadvertently commit the sin of apostasy.

On Java where 88 per cent follow Islam, the differences are easy to spot.  Christian women wear knee-length skirts, the men in suits and ties. They clutch Bibles, walk as couples or families and go bareheaded.

Moslems worship most days often in their everyday gear.  On holy Fridays the men wear sarongs and walk to mosques in all-male groups carrying prayer mats.

The more inflexible like the released Bali bomber Umar Patek, show bruised foreheads as marks of piety. The women cover everything in black bar eyes, though this garb is rare.

Wahhabism, an austere version of Islam imported from Saudi Arabia, has reportedly been encouraging dress codes and funding the widespread building of new mosques. 

Not all are happy with what Goenawan Mohamad,  the founder/ editor of Tempo news magazine labels the ‘Arabisation of Indonesia’, undermining his nation’s traditional coexistence with other creeds.

 Islam Nusantara is a home-grown moderate alternative to the rigid Middle East interpretation of Islam.

Although it’s reported that Indonesians are becoming more religiously conservative, the claim’s difficult to quantify.  Polls are useless because the sample sizes are usually minuscule and taken in Jakarta. 

About 75 per cent of Muslim women in Indonesia wear the headscarf according to Human Rights Watch which blames intimidation by schools and zealots; it was only five per cent in the late 1990s. Whether this is more about fashion than godliness is a contentious debate.

Like Christianity, Islam is split into factions.  The largest, boasting a membership of at least 40 million, is Nahdlatul Ulama  (Revival of the Scholars).

NU seems to have a grip on Malang; in the past, its members have been bloody and brutal, but now it’s pushing moderation and inclusiveness, though still anti-Gay.

This week some of its unarmed cadres will patrol streets protecting the smaller churches.  We’ll soon know whether such a piecemeal approach will ensure Christmas doesn’t go with a bang.  Moderates of all callings will pray so.

(The writer lives in Malang.)

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 21 December 2022:https://johnmenadue.com/seasons-fearings/

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SOHEIB BENCHEIKH

ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY CAN CO-EXIST © Duncan Graham

French Muslim scholar Soheib Bencheikh, 45, has been touring Java giving speeches and meeting key people, including the Indonesian Ulemas’ Council (MUI). He was born in Saudi Arabia, lived in Algeria, studied in Egypt and now heads an Islamic teaching institute in Paris.

Bencheikh, the former Grand Mufti of Marseilles, became famous for supporting the ban on Islamic headscarves in France. Before giving a speech in Arabic to staff and students at Surabaya’s State Islamic University he spoke to Duncan Graham:

Isn’t Islam and democracy a contradiction? Doesn’t Islam say only God can be supreme, not the people?

Have you ever heard God speaking to you? He speaks through the people. He’s left a message to us that must be interpreted by us, the people. Men and women have their own understanding of that message.

Those who say Islam and democracy can’t co-exist don’t understand either term. There’s a great lack of knowledge.

To be a thinking person is to always be searching and constantly having doubts. How can an intelligent human have total belief in any faith?

They can’t. The 100 per cent believer doesn’t exist. Nor is there a 100 per cent atheist. Between the extremes of total belief and non-belief there are many positions – and these are constantly changing. Today you may have only a few doubts – tomorrow, many.

The real test for all theologians is to constantly interrogate the self.

Last year the MUI issued an edict against pluralism, liberalism and secularism. What’s your respnse?

They’re going backwards if they think they’re still living in a time when nations were separate and didn’t interact.

The idea that the state should be more Islamic is coming from history, not the holy texts.

A secular state protects minorities. If France didn’t have liacite (the law prohibiting the state recognising religion and now a core value in French culture) then Muslims would be at risk from the Catholic majority. This protects everyone – but many Moslems don’t understand the history of liacite.

A secular state also protects by keeping politics out of religion. Politicians try to use religion to further their personal interests. Without religion, political debate can be rational and free of dogma

Religion without politics attracts only those genuinely interested in faith – it liberates religion from the opportunists.

In Indonesia the majority follow Islam, and the state demands all belong to one of the government-approved religions.

We should not use force, but respect. There should be no pressure on the conscience - people should be free to choose or not choose.

All the more reason for a secular government to protect the minorities. Even here in Indonesia you have to be prepared to recognise that Islam is a minority religion in the world.

The reality is a future where there will be no single majority religion.

How do you respond to those who say the Koran is the word of God and cannot be questioned or tampered with in any way?

The book itself isn’t sacred – it’s the objective ideas within the text. When we talk about the book we have to think about the language that was used, the context, and the culture at the time – even the weather!

In Indonesia we’ve had a preacher jailed for leading prayers in Indonesian.

At the time of the Prophet there was no unified Arab language. The language used in the Koran was that of the Prophet’s tribe. From the very first Muslims were authorised to use their own languages.

Some say that although Muslims in Indonesia are in the majority they suffer from an inferiority complex.

Arab civilisation was once the highest in the world. It helped lead to the Renaissance in Europe. Now everything has moved to the West. Arab civilisation is finished! We need to be part of what’s happening in the West – either that or live in the nostalgia of the past.

It’s always easier to blame others for our problems rather than look into ourselves to see what’s wrong. We have to recognise that we don’t have a monopoly on ethics and morality.

If the light goes out in your room is it best to sit in the darkness, or ask your neighbors if you can share in their illumination, or fix the problem?

Export your Indonesian form of Islam to the world. Don’t try and import from the Arabs.

You have a moderate form of Islam here synthesised with other beliefs. We should not be afraid to express our ideologies, ask questions of ourselves and through such questioning, develop our thinking.

Modern Islam is sweeping away all traditions – that’s too easy and not convincing. The challenge is to go back to the Koranic text and apply new readings that are applicable today.

Islamic culture is brilliant! If you love others you want to share your culture with them – and we want to share.

Muslims were wrong to protest against Danes when cartoonists lampooned the Prophet.

This is what freedom of expression means. Even if people are mocking, at least they’re showing an interest in Islam and starting to recognise it as part of society.

Could you talk like this is Saudi Arabia?

Yes, because I’m not attacking Islam.

But you’re attacking some people’s ideas of Islam.

The people most disturbed by the idea of a secular state are politicians who try to maintain power by using Islam. These legislators are hypocrites. This power is temporal.

Islam is not the property of individuals – it’s a message to the world.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 8 December 06)
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