To drive home the point of why I feel this way, I would especially like my Indonesian readers (of which I have quite a few!) to view this video of three Ahmadis being stoned and clubbed. They're already dead, mind you, the crowd had previously killed them and also beat/cut/assaulted 21 other men in a house owned by an Ahmadi leader. Please take caution with this video, as it is extremely graphic. It's important for us to accept that while we may not believe as these men do, they received no judgment from a court, they received no mercy, and they were killed not in self defense but in cold blooded murder. The insult to injury is that no one has been charged with murder in this incident, and yet a member of the Ahmadiyya was charged with assault for self defense.
Indonesia Ahmadiyah attack: Outrage over victim jailing from the BBC
"The court jailed Ahmadiyah member Deden Sudjana for six months, a heavier term than many of the attackers received.
Three Ahmadiyah members were bludgeoned to death in an attack by a 1,000-strong mob of hardliners in February. No-one was charged with murder."
For what reason was the mob not found complicit in the murder of these men? Because they were "apostates"? Because their religion is not formally recognized in Indonesia?
"US-based Human Rights Watch said Sudjana's sentence was appalling.
"It seems like the Ahmadiyah face blatant discrimination not just from Islamic militant mobs, but also from an Indonesian court," said the group's Elaine Pearson."
Indeed. Either Indonesia is a pluralist state or it isn't. I understand that very few religions are recognized as valid in Indonesia, but the Indonesian constitution also guarantees freedom of religion. It's one or the other. Either Indonesia recognizes the validity of all faiths in the secular sphere or Indonesia is a country with Islam as the state religion.
I'd like to invite my Indonesian readership to comment on this to give some perspective on why this is happening in Indonesia, and how you feel the government should address the matter. From my wife, I have heard that the Ahmadiyya themselves engage in practices against mainstream Muslims. So far though, I have not seen conclusive evidence of discrimination from them. Please let me know if I, as an outsider, do not have the whole story.
From a news story you quoted:
ReplyDelete"Three Ahmadiyah members were bludgeoned to death in an attack by a 1,000-strong mob of hardliners..."
An hour, or a day, or a week before these so-called "hardliners" acted out their Islamically motivated hatred and intolerance, I suspect they would have been assumed to be normally "moderate" "pluralist" "tolerant" Indonesian Muslims; because the baseline template we are inculcated with (if I had a nickle for every time I've seen in a Western news story about some Islamic hatred and/or violence flaring up in Indonesia the so-called reporter feel the spasmodic need to inject into his news story the phrase "but most Indonesian Muslims practice a tolerant pluralistic form of Islam", I'd be as rich as Bill Gates by now) is that most Indonesian Muslims are "moderates". So how is it that in a supposedly majority "moderate" Islamic country, such spontaneous mobs can suddenly appear to act out vicious hatred? Obviously, there is a systemic disease in Indonesia, and it stems directly from the rich tapestry of pathological fibers that constitute the warp and woof of Islam culturally, socially, institutionally, theologically, and psychologically. (And, of course, Indonesia is not special in this regard; the same systemic problem pertains to any Muslim majority region in the world, from the Philippines to Morocco -- and, unfortunately, increasingly within the West.)
For an indication of how systemic is the disease of Islam among Indonesian Muslims:
ReplyDeleteAccording to this Pew poll, 23% of Indonesian Muslims express favorable views of al Qaeda. That's approximately over 46 million Muslims!
And how would we know which 46 million out of the 202 million Muslims in Indonesia happened to have hearts filled with such disease before Pew pollsters bothered to ask them?
That poll also found that 69% of Muslim Indonesians reject suicide bombing -- which means that 31% either favor suicide bombing or refuse to reject it: that's over 60 million Muslims! What sane, normal, decent person would answer the question "Do you support suicide bombing for any reason?" with "No comment" or "I don't know"? Such a person is immediately suspect. The only permissible answer is unequivocally "No."
(There is also the added problem of polls like this, failing to make the crucial distinction in the question, to wit:
"Do you support suicide bombings when the targets are only non-Muslims?"
I.e., the relatively high numbers of rejection of Islamic suicide bombings may have to do with the fact that most of them target Muslims deemed, through the disease of takfir rampant in Islam now and for all its history, to be not "genuine" Muslims or to have somehow "betrayed" their Islam (and thus have become "false" Muslims) -- which is tantamount to killing non-Muslims anyway.
Also, according to the poll, 43% of Indonesian Muslims have a favorable view of Hezbollah -- the same Hezbollah that:
...was responsible for the two explosions in Beirut on October 23, 1983 that killed 241 American Marines and 56 French servicemen sleeping in their barracks.
...
[Hezbollah also perpetrated] multiple bombings in Argentina of Israeli and Jewish community facilities, one in Buenos Aires, March 1992 that killed 29 and another in July 1994 that killed 96. [At the time this last event was one of the worst terrorist attacks ever in the Western hemisphere.]
Also, according to the poll, 39% of Indonesian Muslims have a favorable view of Hamas (I hope I don't need to prove that Hamas is diseased with hatred, intolerance and violence).
Also, according to the poll, 33% (that's 1/3 of over 200 million!) of Indonesian Muslims identify themselves with "fundamentalists" and not with "modernizers".
I could go on and on. I will end with this particularly damning statistic:
According to the poll, 42% of Indonesian Muslims (that's nearly 85 million!!!) support STONING ADULTERERS TO DEATH.
(And 30% -- over 60 million -- support the DEATH PENALTY for apostasy.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/49492208/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Muslim-Report-Public-Support-for-Radical-Islam
From Hesperado's post, "An hour, or a day, or a week before these so-called "hardliners" acted out their Islamically motivated hatred and intolerance, I suspect they would have been assumed to be normally "moderate" "pluralist" "tolerant" Indonesian Muslims"
ReplyDeleteThere's a few different ways to consider this. First is group psychology. Most probably knew as it was happening that what they were doing was wrong, and allowed inhuman actions to take place and indeed even became active participants in the slaughter. A smaller minority may have, in addition to knowing it was wrong, felt that if they didn't comply with the whims of the group they may themselves be targeted for violence from their peers.
This sort of psychology isn't limited to Muslims, of course, we can see various riots, lynchings, and other group motivated attacks around the world. What rings true for me about this attack to be singled out as being uniquely Islamic is the fact that a.) the takbir was being shouted and b.) the likely motivation was the view that the Ahmadiyya are apostates.
The degree to which seemingly normal or tolerant people engage in "SJS" or "Sudden Jihad Syndrome" is a tricky question. It presupposes that Muslims can suddenly turn, like a switch, into bloodthirsty beasts capable of atrocity. Still, we have many cases of people who were described as their peers as being family men, good neighbors, church goers, and other social luminaries suddenly being outed as murderers, rapists, and pedophiles. I feel very strongly that we should separate the elements which are uniquely Muslim (death to apostates/terrorizing non-believers) from what is potentially an abnormal human proclivity for violence.
Hesperado also said, "So how is it that in a supposedly majority "moderate" Islamic country, such spontaneous mobs can suddenly appear to act out vicious hatred? Obviously, there is a systemic disease in Indonesia, and it stems directly from the rich tapestry of pathological fibers that constitute the warp and woof of Islam culturally, socially, institutionally, theologically, and psychologically. "
ReplyDeleteIt's comments like this that have long made me an admirer of your work, even if I don't agree with what you have to say.
The "problem" with Islam, is monotheism. It's a problem it shares with both Christianity and Judaism. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, Islamic cultures have largely not been inculcated with the social values we admire here in the West. Indeed, when many people adopt Islamic attitudes, they patently REJECT the very attitudes that allow Muslims to practice freely here! Shooting themselves in the foot, if you will, or otherwise rejecting our most precious values.
However, I do not feel that Islam by virtue of its texts and beliefs is uniquely incompatible with secularism and its attending values. In this respect, I feel that Muslims are not a lost cause (obviously, since I am one). Islamic monotheism, and all monotheism, is problematic because it accepts that there is no god but God. Therefore, all other deities are false at best or demonic at worst. As a result, monotheism is inherently intolerant and moves toward secular governance are fought tooth and nail by monotheists.
The disease in Indonesia is not Islam so much as it is fanaticism, and I am willing to accept that removed from the protective hedge of secularism nearly any religion can go off the deep end. Still, it begs the question, "why is it almost always Islam that seems to be the problem?"
Concerning the attitudes of Indonesian Muslims toward al-Qaeda, suicide bombing, stoning, death to apostates and so on...
ReplyDeleteSympathy with terrorist organizations, including hizb'Allah and Hamas, is not acceptable. Those organizations lost their "freedom fighter" credentials with the first acts of terrorism they committed. Ideologically, they are committed to a slaughter as well as an unrealistic and unforgivable model of the Middle East as being free of Jews or Christians.
As such, Indonesians (and really, all Muslims)who are opposed to such organizations should be vocal in their opposition without fear of reprisal or being called apostates. Muslims should recognize that there's always going to be a push to be "more Muslim" by fundamentalists. They won't stop until it reaches levels of "Afghanistan proportions", there will always be more harsh, religiously founded punishments to go around.
What would be interesting to see, would be if these attitudes that Indonesians are being polled on are changing. Did the previous generations feel more strongly about shari'a prescribed punishments? Are they moving in the right direction toward accepting a plurality? They have to. Indonesia is a country united by a Malay dialect and a vaguely identified with demonym of "Indonesian". Most people in Indonesia identify readily with distinct ethnic groups and in turn these ethnic differences are largely divided by religion. When civil order breaks down, and it often does, slaughter is the end result. The May 1998 riots are the best example of this.