. Nog extra toevallig is dat je haar op die plaats tegenkwam.Een jaar of vier geleden heb ik Adep en [...]
Theocracies are at odds with tolerance and with individual freedom. They put their suspect truths way beyond decent treatment of fellow human beings.
Two weeks ago Putra Elina, a teenage girl from Langsa, committed suicide. She had been arrested by Aceh’s Shariah Police and been labelled sex worker by local tabloids. An unjustified, unwarranted public humiliation which, she thought, unbearably shamed her family.The only escape she saw was hanging herself. A sad, deplorable but understandable outcome of living in a suffocating Dystopia in my opinion.
A genuine secular democratic state is not just about eating, drinking and shopping what you want when you want and where you want, not just about freely expressing your spiritual affiliation when you want, where you and with whom you want or to choose and define your own moral boundaries. It essentially is about the fundamentals of tolerance.
Officially RI is such a secular state.
However one of the main weaknesses of the present Republic of Indonesia is the conspicuous religious moralization of the state and it’s institutions .The impact of the radical conservatives’ moral code on laws and bylaws is really worrying. Komnas Perembuan discovered as much as over 150 bylaws discriminating women and minorities. The 1965 Blasphemy Law even is a legal bulldozer which is a direct threat to one or two human rights. Ever more the loud and dominant minority is imposing it’s petty opinions and extremely outdated values on other citizens. The legal Shariah police and the conspicuously permitted extra-legal FPI are the extreme manifestations of this aggressive moralization. They persecute and oppress deviant groups.They jeopardize religious freedom and freedom of expression.
Indonesian government is falling seriously short.
In a modern democracy, which by the way is not primarily about majority rule but most of all ought to be about maintaining human rights, the law should not support totalitarian moral systems but protect it’s citizens against them. So it’s a very bad omen to those second rate citizens (cultural, ethnic and religious minorities and women) that, two years after a previous bid for change failed , Indonesia today announces it decided to reject recent United Nations Human Rights Council’s recommendations to modernize laws, bylaws and regulations. It is to be feared the girl from Langsa will not be the last victim.
RI is a semi-secular state for the time being.
Meneer, Indonesia is not in law (and certainly not in practice) a secular state. Indonesia is a multi-confessional state that acknowledges six religions. Why six and not five, seven, twenty-four and all of them is a good question, however.
@ Mauricio: RI claims to be secular democracy. In my opinion it is – though partially and imperfectly. It should be helped by chastising the ruling elites where and when they fail.
What in my opinion happens is that in these times of rapid change – after the iron fist stability of New Order was replaced by the much weaker grip of the Reformasi regime- people desperately look for steady beacons. Traditional Islam promises to offer such eternal holds. Now religion is capable to be not just a spiritual haven but a major force in society which manages to determine the public domain to a large extent. Sometimes, too many times in my view, radical representatives of religion manage to set the political agenda.
My friend, were Indonesia a secular democracy it would provide for civil matrimony. No state that requires a religious ceremony to validate a matrimony can qualify as “secular”. No state that keeps track of the religion of its citizens and lists the information on their identity cards can be considered “secular”. No state that acknowledges that some religions are legitimate and other unrecognized can be considered “secular”.
@ Mauricio: The Netherlands, which officially became a democracy in the sixties of that century, had the Dutch Reformed Church as a state religion well into the nineteenth century. And in my youth, in the fifties of the twentieth century, the state still registered it’s subjects religion. My point is that a young democracy like Indonesia is still in it’s early stages. Like the economy, it’s democracy has to develop ( further).
All these happened because Indonesia is governed by political parties which are using the religion of the majority of people as tool to win the heart of the majority in regional and national elections.
President SBY’s more than 60% electoral vote victory in the 2009 presidential election is a waste because his secular Democrat Party only won 26.4% in the Parliamentary election therefor must heavily rely on support of other parties including Islamic based parties like PKS, PPP, PKB.
@ Harry: No doubt you are right. I do understand the religious or ethnic card can be a trump card in politics ( but not necessarily so as the Jokowi’s victory proves). But I’m just puzzled why the secular parties in parliament, especially SBY’s democrats, made themselves dependable on them. After all the electorate had given a huge majority to secular political parties – they could have capitalized on that confidence vote to update the state of law. But they appear to have done and do the opposite and in many ways bet on political stagnation and conservatism. Which is amazing since at the same time some/many progressive sectors and some/many progressive parts of Indonesia society are in the vanguard of the 21st century.
…then the Netherlands was also not a secular country. Two wrongs still don’t make a right. Plus, you forget that for many, the word “secularism” and “secular” is anathema.
@ Mauricio: I agree: two wrongs don’t make a right. RI Indonesia is not secular in the way it should be (in my opinion). And you’re right again: to manyIndonesians “secular” is ( still) an anathema. But that’s not the end of it. To become secular ( more or less) in Western Europe it took developments of a few centuries. In Indonesia I think ( in my optimistic moods) they can be high speed, 3.0 style. I guess encouragement is the best way to help the process.
One reason that it took the West to make such slow progress on these fronts was because it was charting new ground, the vested interested of monarchical power and the absence of mass media to spread knowledge widely. This is clearly not the case with country’s of today like Indonesia. This argument that country X cannot be expected to progress any more quickly than Western countries did several centuries ago is rather tenous.
@ Mauricio: I do expect Indonesia’s development to be quicker.