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Protect minorities to help peace prevail on earth Bramantyo Prijosusilo, Ngawi, East Java Javanese Islam, although Sunni, is very much influenced by Shiite traditions, leading many commentators to speculate that the religion was brought here through peaceful trade by exponents of both camps. Scholars from the Sunni organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), maintain that many verses and prayers from Shiite traditions have become part of their tradition. The same goes for many of the Sufi mystical schools here that trace their sources back to Ali, the first imam of the Shia. This is why the recent violence by Sunni mobs against Shiite communities in East Java, which is a traditional stronghold of the NU, is seen by many as the work of an agent provocateur who, for whatever morbid reason, wishes to import to Indonesia the divisions that exist within Muslim communities in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. Muslim scholars in Indonesia and abroad have recently been moving to reconcile the gap between the Shiite minority and the Sunni majority. The civil war between the two groups in Iraq has even brought Muqtada al Sadr -- dubbed a firebrand Shiite cleric by the Western press -- to offer his hand in friendship to the Iraqi Sunnis in his effort to unite Iraq against the American occupation. However, considering the deep and particularly violent rift between the two groups, it is difficult to imagine that they can unite even against a common enemy. Traditional Muslims are either Sunni or Shia, and the extremists in both camps do not trust each other politically. Of late, they have also become prone to insulting each other's traditions. While Islamic traditions here indicate Shiite influence, the Iranian revolution of 1979 inspired a fresh interest in Shiite thought, and books by Ali Syariati, Murtadha Muthahhari and Ayatollah Khomeini became widely available and popular among activists. As more Sunni youth became frustrated by superpower foreign policy, a significant proportion of university students, inspired by the pluralist scholar Jalaluddin Rakhmat, began to show sympathy toward the Shia. The reaction of the authorities was that the Bandung branch of the Indonesian Ulema Council banned him from speaking publicly in the 1980s. Lately, Jalaluddin's works have been promoting tassawuf, the Islamic mysticism of the Sufis. In the field of Islamic thought, he encourages the study of all traditions, including the Shia. Jalaluddin's development as a religious thinker has always been open and public, but it was only after the changes brought about by the reform movement since 1998 did hitherto underground Shiite communities emerge. In a civilized society, it should be perfectly acceptable for the Shiites to own their own places of worship and have their own beliefs, different as they are from those of their Sunni brethren. Unfortunately, many Shiites in Indonesia must practice taqiyah, which means concealing their faith. For Indonesia's ambition to contribute to peace between the Sunni and Shia around the world to make sense, it is important that the government supports minority groups here, not only the Shia, but also the Sufi, the Ahmadiyah, the Christians, and other belief systems and religions. The idea that the state recognizes a certain number of religions is not even close to reflecting the real situation in our society. If an idea does not reflect the truth is passed as law, it means the law needs to be repealed or amended. To not respect the Shia in Indonesia is nearly as absurd as the past New Order rule that banned the ethnic Chinese from expressing their culture. The government can begin to fulfill its obligation to protect minority groups by cracking down on the mobs that majority groups often employ to intimidate members of society. Think Frankenstein or the Taliban, and U.S. intelligence in the proxy war with Moscow. This type of manipulation must be binned. Violent orators need to be engaged through sound argumentation right from the beginning. It would be prudent to let all groups come out into the open and afford them reliable protection from the state, for when extremist vision is aired in open communication, it naturally tends to soften. It is important that everyone can openly see that minority groups are not going to steal their children for Satan in hell, but rather that members of minority groups are people, much like everybody else. Minority group members are individuals, with ordinary lives. Open and strategically located places of worship for all minority groups should be encouraged, supported and protected by the authorities. Public religious celebrations by minorities should be encouraged, and their arts and cultures should be made available to be enjoyed, and thus loved and respected, by all members of society at large. Without cultural transformation, even a government with political bona fides will not be able to do much to stem the rising tide of imported violence being brought here instantaneously by television news. Cultural transformation needs artists, like the Beatles or Bob Dylan. The creative spirit lives everywhere and where it is strong, extremist and fundamentalist visions die. The writer is a rice farmer and artist living in Ngawi, East Java.
