Now that the long Ramadan/Lebaran holiday is officially over and most of the students and teachers are already back in school, my pesantren life has started to take up a more definite form and has almost immediately fallen into groove--a slow but consistent one. The school and I finally agreed on my teaching schedule, much to my great relief, after spending almost 2 months drifting aimlessly between the three academic units: Madrasah Aliyyah (senior high school), Madrasah Tsanawiyyah (junior high school with 4 additional Islamic subjects and is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Religions) and Sekolah Menengah Pertama or SMP (junior high school without the additional Islamic subjects and is administered under the Department of Education). Technically, this schedule is against the contract the school has drawn up with Fulbright (my sponsor) since I'm only required to teach senior high school, but the three headmasters had asked me to spare some of my time for the junior students in the spirit of fairness. "Mister, we don't want the younger students to be jealous," was what they told me. I reluctantly agreed to this proposition, and I do, to some extent, enjoy teaching the junior students (only Class 3 students; Classes 1 and 2 are almost impossible to teach because their command of English is still extremely weak where they cannot even string a basic sentence). By the way, I ONLY teach conversational English and my job is to get the students to become comfortable and confident in speaking English--by hook or by crook!
My academic extra-curricular activities include reviving the long-dormant English Club, judging the English debate and speech competitions, organizing the English Performance Night, holding twice weekly English tutorial sessions for teachers, translating some official school documents from Bahasa Indonesia to English, and correcting the chronic grammatical and spelling errors in ALL the English textbooks.
I also encourage people to come to my house if they want to practice speaking English. Students and teachers come to my house at all hours and it gets to the point where I have to put up a note on my front door telling them to not come between 2pm and 4pm because it's my siesta time. My reputation as a "native English speaker" has also spread beyond the school compound, helped in no small part by a short profile of me in the local paper. Now I also have university and TEFL students from the surrounding area flocking to my house to practice speaking English. I've set up a twice weekly night meetings for the university and TEFL students at my house (usually about 5-6 of them show up) and we get to discuss and debate about anything and everything under the sun. Well, the topics mostly depend on their grasp of the English language and some topics are obviously much harder to talk about than others, such as politics, philosophy, and religion. In our last meeting we discussed and debated about the current issue du jour in Indonesia right now, besides the news about all the celebs who got caught using drugs: The deviant Islamic sect al-Qiyadah al-Islamiyah.
I expected to inject more debate in our conversation about freedom of religion and the concept of tolerance and diversity in Islam through this whole al-Qiyadah hulabaloo, but they were all completely agreeing with each other, and the mainstream version of the story, for that matter. And I ended up using this opportunity to introduce the English idiom "playing the devil's advocate" in order to ratchet up the heat of the discussion. First, they all get to learn a new idiom--I always teach my students at least one American idiom every day--and second, it forced them to debate the issue with me. The problem was when the substance of the debate got more politically and theologically complex, they started to abandon English and resort to the security and comfort of Bahasa Indonesia. It's a perfectly natural thing for them to do because their main means of articulating their ideas and expressing their emotions is Bahasa Indonesia. In my case it's a bit more complicated because I use both Bahasa Melayu and English to express myself. Intellectually, as much as I hate to admit this, I'm more comfortable in using English due to my academic background and training. At any rate, it was a productive conversation and I even got to continue the discussion in the teachers' lounge today.
By the way, below is the editorial piece in the Jakarta Post regarding this issue. One of the rare cool heads amidst the overwhelming self-righteous vigilantes clamoring for the total destruction of this Islamic sect. Still one of the main questions in the editorial remains unanswered: Why didn't MUI issue a fatwa condemning JI after the spates of suicide bombings? Yes, MUI is an ultra-conservative organization, but by not condemning JI does it mean that it agrees with JI's perverted theology and violent acts? I'd sure like to find the answer to this puzzle and so far there has not been a research done to study the link between MUI and radical Islamic groups such as JI, FPI, MMI, etc.
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Who's playing God?
The Jakarta Post - Editorial 31 Oct. 2007
Consider the different fates of these two organizations. Both are small and both are trying to propagate their own brand of Islamic teachings. The one called Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) is notorious for its violent tactics; the other, going by the name Al Qiyadah al Islamiyah, has no history of violence, at least none that we know of, in spreading its teachings.
No prize for guessing which followers and leaders of these two groups are being persecuted by the authorities, and which are being tolerated. No, the police have not confused Al Qiyadah with al-Qaeda, the international terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden, with which JI has links. When they began arresting the followers of Al Qiyadah last month, the police were pretty sure they had the right group. The Islamic sect, with a few thousand followers, had earlier been condemned as practicing "deviant" teachings by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and creating "restlessness" among Indonesian Muslims. As the umbrella organization for all Islamic organizations in the country, the MUI issued a fatwa (religious edict) pronouncing Al Qiyadah Al Islamiyah a threat to Islam.
One did not hear such fatwas or condemnation when suicide bombers from JI killed hundreds of innocent people in Bali and in Jakarta between 2002 and 2004 in the name of Islam. Obviously the deadly methods deployed by JI to spread its violent version of Islam, by taking innocent lives, are not considered as serious a threat by the MUI. They are not even considered as creating public unrest, which would have prompted the police to take action against the group.
The government has come under strong pressure from some Islamic groups and Islamist political parties to outlaw Al Qiyadah Al Islamiyah, whose existence came to light during the Ramadhan fasting period last month. Under the law, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has the power to declare any organization illegal if it is deemed a threat to the nation. He is apparently considering doing so, as Attorney General Hendarman Soepandji indicated Monday he was still waiting for a presidential ruling banning the group before his office could take any action. National Police chief General Sutanto said he had instructed his men to arrest all the leaders of Al Qiyadah Al Islamiyah even if the presidential decision had yet to be issued. The detention was also for these leaders' own safety, according to Sutanto. At least one Islamic organization has publicly threatened to take the law into its own hands unless the government outlawed Al Qiyadah.
What the MUI, the police, the radical Islamic group threatening to attack Al Qiyadah and, God forbid, the President if he goes ahead with the ban, are doing is depriving a basic human right of all Indonesian citizens. The 1945 Constitution and Pancasila ideology both guarantee freedom of religion and freedom for people to practice their faith. The state, of all the institutions, has the constitutional duty to protect and ensure that this right is observed and protected for all citizens. Instead, the state is putting the heat on Al Qiyadah leaders and followers. This is nothing short of religious persecution by the state.
One is quickly reminded of the Ahmaddiyah group, which suffered the same fate a few years ago. Its hundreds of thousands of followers are currently living in abject conditions in temporary shelters, after their houses and villages were attacked and torched by mobs, without any protection from the police. In the case of Ahmaddiyah, the MUI says the group is free to practice its "deviant" beliefs and teachings as long as it does not use the name Islam. All these incidents raise some questions about the role of the MUI and the government's collaboration in preventing people from practicing their faith. Upon whose authority does the MUI act each time it declares a particular sect "deviant"? Islam, unlike Roman Catholicism, does not have one single authority that decides which teachings are right and which are wrong. And what right does the MUI have to decide which group is more Islamic than the other? Who has the right to use the name Islam or who has the right to issue sanctions if one group is allowed to call itself Islam? Are Al Qiyadah and Ahmaddiyah less Islamic than Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda? Which of these are the bigger threats to Islam? Who makes such judgments?
Islam teaches its followers to respect other people's beliefs, for only then will others respect their faith. La kum di nukum wali yaddin (unto you your religion, unto me my religion) is the clearest verse in the Koran that teaches followers to be tolerant. Another verse teaches Muslims to compete in doing good deeds in this world to win the favor of God, the holder of absolute truth. Someone in this country is obviously trying to play God by claiming to have the absolute truth in their hands. And the state, for some unexplained reason, is part of this conspiracy in violation of the 1945 Constitution and the state ideology Pancasila.
1 comment:
Great work.
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