Pluralist start to tiger year

Sunday February 21, 2010

Pluralist start to tiger year

Indonesian-Chinese youths take to the stage to create better understanding of their culture.

JAKARTA: On Saturday, just before the Chinese New Year, the sweet sound of modern and traditional Chinese love songs could be heard in every corner of the newly-opened Central Park mall in West Jakarta.

In a room in front of a huge pond on the first floor terrace, a group of young people were busy preparing for a series of shows.

Make-up artists were working their magic on several already stunning youth in that room, defining their brows and lips, while powdering their fair-skinned faces.

Quickly, these young people put on traditional Chinese clothes to cover their casual modern outfits. One of the teenagers was dressed as an emperor, wearing a shining golden robe and a typical Chinese crown, while his partner, an elegant Chinese girl, was dressed in a glowing yellow and red empress gown.

The stunning couple then modelled various traditional Chinese clothes.

Another young man with a long purple traditional Shanghai robe walked past, while his partner modelled a long pink robe.

The last couple wore Chinese traditional clothes from the Han Dynasty.

These young people are members of the Jakarta Koko Cici Society (Ikoci), a group made up of finalists and winners of a beauty pageant for Chinese-Indonesians. They spent a large part of the day modelling for a fashion show as well as performing in a traditional musical Chinese drama to greet the first day of Chinese Year of the Tiger.

The city administration, which started the beauty pageant in 2002, has been holding the event every year since then.

Spokeswoman of Ikoci, Evelyn Hartono, said her organisation’s mission was “to introduce Chinese-Indonesian culture to the society so that others can understand about our culture well enough and we can live side by side in peace.”

Discrimination against Chinese-Indonesians started under the Dutch rule, when the Chinese were separated from other ethnic groups to prevent unity across sections of the society. Chinese-Indonesians were soon seen as a successful business class, which other Indonesians considered as exclusive. This kind of stereotyping continued under the New Order government from 1966 to 1998.

Evelyn voiced hope that no one would ever call Chinese-Indonesians “You cina!” again.

She said she didn’t want another tragedy like the one that unravelled in 1998, where many Chinese-Indonesian women were raped and killed.

The young Chinese woman also explained, “These Koko and Cici are not only judged on their beauty, brain power and behaviour, like in any other beauty pageants, but also on their commitment as Chinese-Indonesians to preserve Chinese culture in Indonesia.”

“I consider myself as an Indonesian rather than a Chinese but I cannot deny my ethnicity,” said 21-year-old Alvin Tjondro, the Koko Jakarta 2009.

The 2009 Cici Jakarta, 19-year-old Vienna Chandra, said Chinese-Indonesians had not chosen their ethnicity.

“I have many friends from different ethnic and social economic backgrounds and I get along well with them,” said Vienna.

She also hoped people would stop discriminating against Chinese-Indonesians as after all, “we are Indonesians even though our ethnicity is Chinese”.

Later in the evening, Ikoci presented a popular traditional Chinese drama titled The White Snake Legend, the story of a white snake that turned into a beautiful lady and fell in love with a handsome young man.

For more than 30 years, Chinese-Indonesians could not celebrate Chinese New Year openly as a result of Soeharto’s rule on religion, beliefs and Chinese culture.

The late president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid revoked the instruction on Jan 17, 2000, allowing Chinese-Indonesians to celebrate their culture openly. - The Jakarta Post

Farewell Gus Dur

Saturday January 16, 2010
Farewell Gus Dur
THINK ASIAN
By ANDREW SHENG



ON Dec 31, 2009, as we bade farewell to 2009, the news broke of the passing of Adburrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia, more popularly known as Gus Dur. My wife and I were in Macassar, the capital of Sulawesi and watched the outpouring of affection and respect for the man who succeeded Presidents Habibie and Suharto at the end of the Suharto era.

We cannot understand Asian thinking without appreciating the passing of this Asian giant.

Gus Dur was only President for less than two years from Oct 20, 1999 to July 23, 2001, having been forced to cede powers to his vice-president, Megawati Soekarnoputri.

During this short but critical period when Indonesia was still suffering from the Asian financial crisis, Gus Dur gave Indonesia the political space necessary to consolidate its transition from an authoritarian regime to one of the most vibrant democracies in Asia.

Indonesia must be one of the most difficult countries in the world to govern, with 240 million people, the fourth largest country in the world in terms of population. With 17,000 islands straddling 5,000 km from east to west, the country is also the largest maritime country in the world, because its geographical coverage is one fifth larger than the United States.

Despite having the largest Muslim population in the world, the country is constitutionally secular, because it is also one of the most culturally diverse, having two hundred different spoken dialect and speech groups.

It is perhaps that Indonesia is so culturally and economically diverse that world-class art, design, literature and new thinking is being created. You only have to visit Bali to find artists of every country trying to find their own inspirations from this melting pot of cultures.

From the early ages, the Moluccas, for example, were the battleground for the Spice trade, in which Portuguese, Dutch, English, Arab, Chinese, Indian and local traders were already competing to bring these valuable condiments to the rest of the world. These economic intrusions left their indelible cultural imprints on Indonesian civilisation.

Gus Dur came to political power from a religious background. He was born into a family of impeccable religious credentials in Jombang, East Java. His grandfather founded the Muslim movement Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest religious organisation in Indonesia with 40 million members and his father was the first Indonesian Minister for Religious Affairs after independence.

He started early by being a teacher in a religious school (Madrasah) in his home town. In 1970, he received a scholarship to study at the University of Al-Azhar in Cairo, but never finished there. Instead, he moved to Baghdad University to complete his higher education.

In 1972, he returned to become a teacher at the University Hasyim Asyhari in his home town, as well as being a journalist and writer. From his direct contact with the Muslim community, he immersed himself in the development of the Muslim religious school movement (Pesantren), rising eventually to become a key leader of Nahdlatul Ulama.

In the 1980s, he came into political prominence because he participated actively in formulating the Pancasila philosophical foundation for Indonesia, namely, Belief in the one and only God, just and civilised humanity, the unity of Indonesia, democracy and social justice.

In 1998, even though he suffered a stroke that partially blinded him, he formed part of the reform movement that contested the 1999 presidential elections. He stood against Megawati and won, and then persuaded Megawati to stand as vice-president for the sake of national unity.

Although by his own admission he was not a great administrator, he made several key decisions that held Indonesia together during the tumultuous period after the Suharto regime. Significantly, he opened up the press, removed restrictions on use of the Chinese language and opened the way for reconciliation in the regional tensions with Irian Jaya (now West Papua) and Aceh.

What struck most people who have met Gus Dur was his humanity and open-mindedness to all issues and social problems. He was reputed to have said that he was less disappointed with the loss of his presidency than the loss of his recordings of Beethoven.

Here was a person well read not only in Islam, but also the philosophies of the West and the East and comfortable that no views were pre-eminent, because he was confident in his own faith and culture. In this sense, no Asian, nor indeed anyone, should feel fearful that his or her own beliefs or views will be drowned or tainted by the West or other beliefs. The world has become too big, too complex and too inter-connected for us to have closed minds.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with closing one’s own mind, because that is one’s own prerogative, but one should not endeavour to close other minds.

All leaders will be judged by history, some rightly, some wrongly. But they will be judged not just by what they achieved in their lifetime, but also by being themselves as human beings. The leaders that I have met and impressed me most were those who touched everyone who met them as sincere humanists, who believed passionately what they wanted to do and also recognised their own failings.

Gus Dur was such a leader. He had a great sense of humour, not failing to laugh at his own limitations. How can one not like the man who said, “Suharto was a New Order president, Habibie was In Order and I am No Order.”

·Andrew Sheng is Adjunct Professor at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur and Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Gus Dur’s immortal legacy

Achmad Munjid , Philadelphia | Fri, 01/08/2010 9:36 AM | Opinion

For most people involved with Islamic boarding schools, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) is not just an organization. NU is a genuine version of ahl sunnah wa al-jama’ah (or aswaja, which means the People of the Prophet’s Traditions and Community, the Sunni).

In this setting, Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid can be categorized as a wali (saint).

A wali in Sufi tradition is a friend of God’s, a moral guardian and protector of other creatures. In our time, what can be more articulate for the true meaning of a wali than Gus Dur’s life?

His life was an extraordinary example of the tireless struggle for freedom, equality and justice for all, deeply rooted in his Islamic faith.

His being literally accessible for everyone made him almost like a crystal to whom every type of group and individual might voice their hope and be assured of human solidarity: human rights activists, politicians, philosophers, clerics, interfaith thinkers, feminists, intellectuals, artists, students, spiritualists, peasants, religious and ethnic minorities, authors, international leaders — you name it.

His simple life was a rare example for more than 30 million NU members, most of them at the grass roots. In 1987, as the NU chairman, Gus Dur still lived in a rented house and frequently used crowded public transportation to get around the city.

For years he toiled in his office in the stifling Jakarta heat, with no air conditioning or even an electric fan.

In almost every aspect, Gus Dur was a giant: social class, intellectual capacity, political talent, religious piety. What made him even more unusual was his tireless schedule traveling around the country for silaturahmi (maintaining and improving social relations), to meet people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to share support and wisdom. He kept doing this even after becoming president, even after suffering for years from strokes, blindness, kidney failure, diabetes, etc., until the last days of his life.

Thanks to this intensive silaturahmi, not only did Gus Dur keep in touch with so many real people and their actual problems around the country, or bring great charismatic clerics such as Abdullah Faqih of Langitan to national attention, but he also gave due recognition and introduced local leaders of remote villages previously unknown, people like Shaikh Mas’ud of Cilacap — a collector of rare books written by classical Indonesian Muslim scholars.

Many other local leaders, values and wisdom from the Islamic boarding schools he discovered for the wider public.

His most frequent practice was probably the ziarah kubur (grave visit), which was also the most misunderstood both by modernist Muslims and secular groups. Regardless of how you may want to understand “the unseen world” — a key principle in Islamic faith — visiting a grave, especially to those of saints, is a very well-known practice of spiritual exercise in Sufism throughout Islamic history.

By performing this exercise properly and sufficiently, the human spirit will be purified and sensitized. It is this purity and sensitivity that enables a Muslim to translate Islamic faith beyond mere orthodoxy and orthopraxy. By way of ziarah — praying, chanting, dzikir, learning the lessons of the saints, deeply contemplating in the right time and psychological mood — one may get spiritual enlightenment that will draw one closer to God and human beings. That is why haul (death anniversary) is a popular part of Islamic boarding school tradition. Haul is not so much about remembering death as it is a celebration of life and its meaning in relation to the spiritual world.

Gus Dur may never remember my name. But I am among the tens of thousands of young NU people from remote Indonesian areas who have traveled to far-off countries to explore new horizons of ideas and realities, thanks to the inspiration he gave and difficult path he walked with sincerity and courage.

I am part of the Islamic boarding school generation, millions in number, born and raised during the Soeharto era. We were an ignored generation under Soeharto. Our attitude toward relations between Islam and modernity was very ambiguous. With no access, we were jealous about the many fascinations of modernity as displayed by Soeharto’s high modernism and development projects. On the other hand, we were so proud of Islamic learning and tradition that was branded backward and irrational, an obstacle to national development and even a potential enemy of the state.

We knew the government was corrupt, unjust and anti-Islamic, but it went unchallenged. We knew Islamic boarding schools were rich and had so much to offer, but we did not know how to unpack it.

We were so powerless and lost.

Thanks to Gus Dur, we learned that students of these schools did have an equally valuable heritage to offer the modern world, and we learned how to present it meaningfully. That Islam is completely compatible with the principles of modernity. That in order for Islam to be rahmatan lil ‘alamin (God’s mercy for the Universe), Muslims should be in sincere dialogue and total engagement with others regardless of their ethnicity, culture, worldview and faith.

At time when most people grow pessimistic about NU, Gus Dur became the loudspeaker who assuaged our optimism. He had unconditional and abundant love for his country, especially NU and more specifically young people.

“No single Muslim organization on Earth has as much potential as NU,” he said repeatedly and confidently to everybody.


The writer is the president of the NU community in North America and a PhD student in religious studies at Temple University, Philadelphia, US.