Khairil Azhar
Around two weeks before 9/11 tragedy, one of my Muslim fellows who lives in the West has been wondering my commitment and attitude as a Muslim related to the long lasting conflicts in the Muslim regions in the Middle East, especially in Palestine, or the more recent one in Uighur, China. Or, if his response had come up after the anti-Muslims protests in England, 9/11/2009, he would have said I was neglecting what happens to Muslims there.
He stated that I am only concerning with the peace in Indonesia in some of my writing at one of English newspaper in Indonesia, and am neglecting the peace for other parts of the Muslim world.
Perhaps, if it could answer his question, I would like to tell him and my western fellows this way.
First of all, it is because I am here living in Indonesia along my life where Muslims are majority. Despite of the purely politicized Islamic issues in the heating political atmosphere and economic frauds as well as some bombing actions by the terrorists to get attentions, we live relatively in peace side by side with non-Muslims.
I am used to sharing many things with my non-Muslims neighbors in the housing complex where I live. Even I and my family feel closer to them at times rather than to my Muslim fellows for some reasons related to societal values.
I also work day to day together with some western fellows, Americans or Europeans, Australians or New Zealanders, and there have never been any sensitive problems occur. We are accustomed to seeing foreigners mingled amid the crowd of high class people or in the ranks and files one with smiling faces.
I therefore wonder about what are actually happening there, in the place where that Muslim fellow lives.
On the other hand, to any extent, despite of the news or views related in the mass media or other sources all over the world about the relation between the Muslims and the Western world and the fact that I have never been abroad, a conflict which transforms into a war or any other forms of violence is unexceptionally a disaster for humanity. Therefore, the conflict deals with the very being of the humans experiencing or seeing the conflict.
If there is a human tragedy in Palestine, where people from different religious backgrounds are in conflicts, it is not only the duty of the people there to overcome the problem but also the duty of any single individual who cares about peace.
So is the conflict in Uighur, where the Muslims reportedly oppressed. It is not only a Muslim should care. Any single person, a Muslim or a Christian, a Chinese or an American, as long as he has empathy, love and affection, would involve himself to help the process of realizing and maintaining the peace and to ensure the process or returning the rights of the oppressed.
It is absolutely improper that a Muslim badly reacts and then blames the others for having not cared about those conflicts.
Moreover, even though I am a Muslim, it is a must that I help my Chinese fellows, for instance, if they are in disasters, without having to look at whether they are Muslims or Christians, Jews or Buddhists. It is a big mistake, however, if there is an obligation that I should help my Muslim fellows at first while there are the others who need my help more.
What a Muslim actually needs then is the hikma or the religious wisdom through which he could positively fruitfully look at what’s going on in front of his eyes. If he uses such wisdom, for example, he would be able to see that even though a conflict is taken into account by many as a conflict dominantly occasioned by religious symbols, it is however something wrong to blindly take it as a religious war and then he emotionally uncontrollably forgets to be wise.
Through the hikma way, a Muslim could realize that the religious symbols utilized in the conflict are factually acting as only the representations of the supra-structure of the decisive conflicting underlying infra-structures such as economic or political interests. He should be fully conscious that the religious symbols are the most visible features of the conflict and therefore are the easiest things to be exploited as the tools for war campaigns or for any other purposes.
In another word, any Muslim who comprehends that religions play the most in a conflict has become the victim of over-simplification point of view. And any kind of simplification over a problem will never address a solution. The most possible end will be negative reactions such as done in the bombing actions or propagation sermons containing hatred and animosity.
Hopefully, the wiser a Muslim looks at what is going on related to those conflicts in the world, whether they are related to Islam or not, the broader the way to diminish the misinterpretations among the others about Muslims and vice versa. At the end, if it happens, peace can be enjoyed by more people in the world.
The writer is currently the International Program Officer at Lazuardi Global Islamic School in Jakarta. He graduated from Sharia Faculty at Sharif Hidayatullah Islamic State University, Jakarta.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
What we do expect for you, our new president
Khairil Azhar
Our beloved Indonesia has been sixty four years on the seventeenth of August 2009. Having achieved this age surely should have made it mature, compared to its younger neighbors such as Vietnam or Brunei and etcetera. With its own maturity, Indonesia should have been able to stand erect in front of any other countries with such a dignity and pride. Our Indonesia, after the long years of maturing process filled with conflicts and many kinds of sacrifice from its people, at least should have got such ability to sustain her people by herself.
If it is the fact, for instance, Indonesia does not have to embarrassingly let many of its citizens to behave as if they were beggars here and there in any other countries anymore. Indonesia does not have to see, for instance, how many of the migrant workers have become the victims of strange violence in the post-slavery era. If the maturing process has been successful, we also would not see anymore how the peasants in Sidoarjo fill their days with protests and demonstration because their lands are now being washed away by the mud.
But have we achieved this maturity with all of its advantages? This is the thing that we wish we could talk to you our next president.
Learning from the previous two long regimes ruled our country, firstly we really would like to say that it is enough to liken this country as merely a loaf of bread. You should manage yourself not to cut it into slices and give each slice to your sons, wife, relatives, friends and whoever has helped you to gain the seat—while at the same time the rest of the people of the country just get the remnants.
Please do not take the people as only your kawula, the servants who serve you with whatever you need and obey whatever you say such as the thing usually happened in the feudalistic era. It is also not anymore an era when a country is inherited by a husband to a wife or from a father to a son or sons as if it were a country with republic system but veiled with monarchial one for the sake of certain family or clan.
We also beg your willingness for not establishing another new sophisticated tyrannical regime with both visible and invisible repression causing mild violence to severe suffering of the people. It is enough to see the already huge pyramid of sacrifice in the past where million of innocent people buried underneath. Please you guarantee that there will be no more victims shot by the soldier or police guns such as the result of domestic conflict happened in Poso and Aceh.
From the bottom of our heart, our next president, we wish we could say enough to everyday look at millions of people living in poverty while you enjoy all luxurious things in the palace with your people. It is the time to more realistically realize the presence of the lost generation born and grown up because of lack of proper nutrition in many places of the country such as in the remote villages in Nusa Tenggara or along the streets of Jakarta.
And it is certainly so disturbing us, our next president, that at the same time so lot of foods and drinks are thrown out without feeling guilty at your houses or palaces because of the trivial reason such as how the wastefulness is just because you do not like the food or drink anymore.
Please try to look, mister president, at how most of the people of your country need nowadays not more than just three plates of rice and some glasses of water? Even for a single person, Sir, a humble man only needs less then a millionth of your expensive everyday living cost.
We also demand you to be honest our president. Please explain to us how your officially released wealth could afford the expensive campaign cost in your and your family member political careers. How did you finance your son’s success in the previous legislative election, for example, when your wealth was reportedly only a third of the cost? Where did you get the money for the current presidential campaign that the total is many times over the amount of the money you have?
And if you are financially supported by other parties, what did you say to the donators in return of what they have spent? How many percent of this country resource have you promised to be shared with them? Did you remind yourself that the thing you do to make you become the president has many consequences that more or less actually are burdened onto the shoulders of common people instead of onto the ones who are flattering you everyday?
Do not get upset, Sir. This is our right to ask the questions.
When we saw your campaigns and debates on TV screen, many of us actually felt very disappointed. You talk about the crops the peasants have harvested but for more than three years you seem to be not caring with more than a thousand acres of the paddy fields become the sea of mud in Sidoarjo. You also talk about the agricultural success when you let one of your people to cheat the peasants with the super paddy seeds but they then failed entirely to harvest.
You talked in your commercial about peace and freedom from Sabang to Merauke but you seem to not realize that too many of the minorities nowadays are in fear of having to do many things differently from what they are taught by their religious teachings or culturally inherited from their ancestors.
We are on the sideline of majority tyranny, Sir, where diversity has been gradually rhetoric and talk and the dominance is to show off the dangerous symbols and to repress alike.
Still on TV screen, Sir, in one of your commercials, we watch you enjoying the green and wide yard in your palace when at the same time fire is roasting thousands of acres of turf and forest from Sumatra to Papua islands. Many species have been killed this way while thousands of them are then in danger because they do not enjoy the greenery and freedom as before. Millions of the next generation would only enjoy the stories of the so-called green carpet of equator while at the same time they painstakingly live in the drying and heating up world.
You also should stop taking advantage of the rank and file constituents after your victory, Sir. Too many of us have used our wits only for a short-term purpose because of the daily basic need is more powerful dictating us in making our decision. Please remember that a large number of us have chosen you based not only on the huge expectation for something better but also on being unknowledgeable situation or because we have been in the even greater bitterness of life.
If you take your victory as the result of your right choice of political consultants and advisors you should remind yourself that both the amount of money and the seats you promise them are actually making the life of people still the same or even worse. Be careful please, our president, there are cunning foxes everywhere in the world, and there are very likely some surrounding you while you unconsciously do not realize them.
We are also actually questioning the free schooling you promise on TV screen everyday, Sir. We know that the commercial is not for free. Millions or even billions is the cost certainly. Where is the money from? Is it from the required 20 percent national budget for education? If it is, why did you allow the educational ministry spent the huge amount of money for that widely known unnecessary commercial? Why did not you ask him to wisely build more schools or to train the teachers to be better educators with that money? And why has the commercial been started since the early time of the national election, Sir?
We do hope you are really as willing as a humble man when you thank the peasants for their crops. We ask you herewith to care with the victims of the consecutive transportation accidents and not only care with the supports from the allegedly actors behind the tragedies.
There are too many hopes, Sir. But we do believe you understand all of them if you are really close to all of us. That’s why we plead you for doing something and not remaining still and quiet. We have seen enough of your charming and elegant style to attract our attention because it eventually does not change anything.
Perhaps many of us are still bewitched, but please complete your enchantment with real works or someday we may betray you. We need a working leader who is able to make a decision regardless how critical the situation is immediately. If you are still doubtful in deciding something because you have to consider the shares of the people surrounding you let us work hand in hand to struggle for the rights of the people only and leave them alone with their dirty businesses.
We are on your side, Sir, if you listen to what we wish. Not much. Each of us only need likely a millionth of your expensive living cost plus a peaceful atmosphere to our own faith and cultures. Thank you for reading this, Sir.
The writer is a teacher.
Our beloved Indonesia has been sixty four years on the seventeenth of August 2009. Having achieved this age surely should have made it mature, compared to its younger neighbors such as Vietnam or Brunei and etcetera. With its own maturity, Indonesia should have been able to stand erect in front of any other countries with such a dignity and pride. Our Indonesia, after the long years of maturing process filled with conflicts and many kinds of sacrifice from its people, at least should have got such ability to sustain her people by herself.
If it is the fact, for instance, Indonesia does not have to embarrassingly let many of its citizens to behave as if they were beggars here and there in any other countries anymore. Indonesia does not have to see, for instance, how many of the migrant workers have become the victims of strange violence in the post-slavery era. If the maturing process has been successful, we also would not see anymore how the peasants in Sidoarjo fill their days with protests and demonstration because their lands are now being washed away by the mud.
But have we achieved this maturity with all of its advantages? This is the thing that we wish we could talk to you our next president.
Learning from the previous two long regimes ruled our country, firstly we really would like to say that it is enough to liken this country as merely a loaf of bread. You should manage yourself not to cut it into slices and give each slice to your sons, wife, relatives, friends and whoever has helped you to gain the seat—while at the same time the rest of the people of the country just get the remnants.
Please do not take the people as only your kawula, the servants who serve you with whatever you need and obey whatever you say such as the thing usually happened in the feudalistic era. It is also not anymore an era when a country is inherited by a husband to a wife or from a father to a son or sons as if it were a country with republic system but veiled with monarchial one for the sake of certain family or clan.
We also beg your willingness for not establishing another new sophisticated tyrannical regime with both visible and invisible repression causing mild violence to severe suffering of the people. It is enough to see the already huge pyramid of sacrifice in the past where million of innocent people buried underneath. Please you guarantee that there will be no more victims shot by the soldier or police guns such as the result of domestic conflict happened in Poso and Aceh.
From the bottom of our heart, our next president, we wish we could say enough to everyday look at millions of people living in poverty while you enjoy all luxurious things in the palace with your people. It is the time to more realistically realize the presence of the lost generation born and grown up because of lack of proper nutrition in many places of the country such as in the remote villages in Nusa Tenggara or along the streets of Jakarta.
And it is certainly so disturbing us, our next president, that at the same time so lot of foods and drinks are thrown out without feeling guilty at your houses or palaces because of the trivial reason such as how the wastefulness is just because you do not like the food or drink anymore.
Please try to look, mister president, at how most of the people of your country need nowadays not more than just three plates of rice and some glasses of water? Even for a single person, Sir, a humble man only needs less then a millionth of your expensive everyday living cost.
We also demand you to be honest our president. Please explain to us how your officially released wealth could afford the expensive campaign cost in your and your family member political careers. How did you finance your son’s success in the previous legislative election, for example, when your wealth was reportedly only a third of the cost? Where did you get the money for the current presidential campaign that the total is many times over the amount of the money you have?
And if you are financially supported by other parties, what did you say to the donators in return of what they have spent? How many percent of this country resource have you promised to be shared with them? Did you remind yourself that the thing you do to make you become the president has many consequences that more or less actually are burdened onto the shoulders of common people instead of onto the ones who are flattering you everyday?
Do not get upset, Sir. This is our right to ask the questions.
When we saw your campaigns and debates on TV screen, many of us actually felt very disappointed. You talk about the crops the peasants have harvested but for more than three years you seem to be not caring with more than a thousand acres of the paddy fields become the sea of mud in Sidoarjo. You also talk about the agricultural success when you let one of your people to cheat the peasants with the super paddy seeds but they then failed entirely to harvest.
You talked in your commercial about peace and freedom from Sabang to Merauke but you seem to not realize that too many of the minorities nowadays are in fear of having to do many things differently from what they are taught by their religious teachings or culturally inherited from their ancestors.
We are on the sideline of majority tyranny, Sir, where diversity has been gradually rhetoric and talk and the dominance is to show off the dangerous symbols and to repress alike.
Still on TV screen, Sir, in one of your commercials, we watch you enjoying the green and wide yard in your palace when at the same time fire is roasting thousands of acres of turf and forest from Sumatra to Papua islands. Many species have been killed this way while thousands of them are then in danger because they do not enjoy the greenery and freedom as before. Millions of the next generation would only enjoy the stories of the so-called green carpet of equator while at the same time they painstakingly live in the drying and heating up world.
You also should stop taking advantage of the rank and file constituents after your victory, Sir. Too many of us have used our wits only for a short-term purpose because of the daily basic need is more powerful dictating us in making our decision. Please remember that a large number of us have chosen you based not only on the huge expectation for something better but also on being unknowledgeable situation or because we have been in the even greater bitterness of life.
If you take your victory as the result of your right choice of political consultants and advisors you should remind yourself that both the amount of money and the seats you promise them are actually making the life of people still the same or even worse. Be careful please, our president, there are cunning foxes everywhere in the world, and there are very likely some surrounding you while you unconsciously do not realize them.
We are also actually questioning the free schooling you promise on TV screen everyday, Sir. We know that the commercial is not for free. Millions or even billions is the cost certainly. Where is the money from? Is it from the required 20 percent national budget for education? If it is, why did you allow the educational ministry spent the huge amount of money for that widely known unnecessary commercial? Why did not you ask him to wisely build more schools or to train the teachers to be better educators with that money? And why has the commercial been started since the early time of the national election, Sir?
We do hope you are really as willing as a humble man when you thank the peasants for their crops. We ask you herewith to care with the victims of the consecutive transportation accidents and not only care with the supports from the allegedly actors behind the tragedies.
There are too many hopes, Sir. But we do believe you understand all of them if you are really close to all of us. That’s why we plead you for doing something and not remaining still and quiet. We have seen enough of your charming and elegant style to attract our attention because it eventually does not change anything.
Perhaps many of us are still bewitched, but please complete your enchantment with real works or someday we may betray you. We need a working leader who is able to make a decision regardless how critical the situation is immediately. If you are still doubtful in deciding something because you have to consider the shares of the people surrounding you let us work hand in hand to struggle for the rights of the people only and leave them alone with their dirty businesses.
We are on your side, Sir, if you listen to what we wish. Not much. Each of us only need likely a millionth of your expensive living cost plus a peaceful atmosphere to our own faith and cultures. Thank you for reading this, Sir.
The writer is a teacher.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
National exams: Irrelevant, waste of time, money
The Jakarta Post
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Wed, 04/29/2009 1:26 PM | Opinion
Around one year ago, in the May edition of our school bulletin, one of the ninth graders wrote, "In previous years, when I was in grade seven and eight, I felt how warm and kind my teachers were. Learning was usually something fun and enjoyable.
Read the article:http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/04/29/national-exams-irrelevant-waste-time-money.html
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Wed, 04/29/2009 1:26 PM | Opinion
Around one year ago, in the May edition of our school bulletin, one of the ninth graders wrote, "In previous years, when I was in grade seven and eight, I felt how warm and kind my teachers were. Learning was usually something fun and enjoyable.
Read the article:http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/04/29/national-exams-irrelevant-waste-time-money.html
What does democracy mean to Islamic parties?
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Sun, 05/24/2009 10:38 AM | Opinion
The leaders of Islamic parties immediately reacted negatively to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's (SBY) choice of Boediono as his vice-presidential running mate.
Read the article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/05/24/what-does-democracy-mean-islamic-parties.html
The leaders of Islamic parties immediately reacted negatively to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's (SBY) choice of Boediono as his vice-presidential running mate.
Read the article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/05/24/what-does-democracy-mean-islamic-parties.html
Barcelona's victory and our presidential contest
The Jakarta Post
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Fri, 05/29/2009 11:51 AM | Opinion
Barcelona won the 2008-2009 European Champions League, but if you are a supporter or fan of MU, please get over your sadness and sorrow. Despite the Barca players' tricky delays to waste game time, and MU players' dangerous tackles and elbowing, in general we saw fair play.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/05/29/barcelona039s-victory-and-our-presidential-contest.html
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Fri, 05/29/2009 11:51 AM | Opinion
Barcelona won the 2008-2009 European Champions League, but if you are a supporter or fan of MU, please get over your sadness and sorrow. Despite the Barca players' tricky delays to waste game time, and MU players' dangerous tackles and elbowing, in general we saw fair play.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/05/29/barcelona039s-victory-and-our-presidential-contest.html
Pancasila: RI's oft-forgotten backbone
The Jakarta Post
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Tue, 06/09/2009 10:47 AM | Opinion
Pancasila, the five basic principles of the Republic of Indonesia, have come under threat recently. Amid the contemporary political fraud and economic downturn, these principles - comprising the belief in one God; a humanity that is just and civilized; the unity of Indonesia; democracy guided by the wisdom of representative deliberation; and social justice for all Indonesians - seem to have been forgotten by the nation.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/06/09/pancasila-ri039s-oftforgotten-backbone.html
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Tue, 06/09/2009 10:47 AM | Opinion
Pancasila, the five basic principles of the Republic of Indonesia, have come under threat recently. Amid the contemporary political fraud and economic downturn, these principles - comprising the belief in one God; a humanity that is just and civilized; the unity of Indonesia; democracy guided by the wisdom of representative deliberation; and social justice for all Indonesians - seem to have been forgotten by the nation.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/06/09/pancasila-ri039s-oftforgotten-backbone.html
Its high-time that we talked old brother
The Jakarta Post
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Sat, 06/20/2009 12:10 PM | Opinion
Fortunately, I have mostly fond memories of all things Malaysian. Since my childhood I have had positive experiences and heard wonderful stories - from both Indonesian's and Malaysian's - that are in stark contrast to the current perception held by many of our neighbor to the north.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/06/20/its-hightime-we-talked-old-brother.html
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Sat, 06/20/2009 12:10 PM | Opinion
Fortunately, I have mostly fond memories of all things Malaysian. Since my childhood I have had positive experiences and heard wonderful stories - from both Indonesian's and Malaysian's - that are in stark contrast to the current perception held by many of our neighbor to the north.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/06/20/its-hightime-we-talked-old-brother.html
Hard-liners, communal wish and state leadership
The Jakarta Post
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Thu, 07/02/2009 1:34 PM | Opinion
In my senior high years in a madrasa or pesantren, from 1991 to 1994, some of my friends were voluntarily involved in an Islamic youth organization which had a strong desire to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/07/02/hardliners-communal-wish-and-state-leadership.html
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Thu, 07/02/2009 1:34 PM | Opinion
In my senior high years in a madrasa or pesantren, from 1991 to 1994, some of my friends were voluntarily involved in an Islamic youth organization which had a strong desire to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/07/02/hardliners-communal-wish-and-state-leadership.html
A friendly chat with Geert Wilders
Khairil Azhar , JAKARTA | Fri, 05/15/2009 12:17 PM | Opinion
I wish I could directly talk to Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who severely scolded the Netherlands Ambassador for Indonesia Nikolaos van Dam for writing a very balanced article on Islam, an excerpt of which also appeared in The Jakarta Post on May 1, 2009.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/05/15/a-friendly-chat-with-geert-wilders.html
I wish I could directly talk to Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who severely scolded the Netherlands Ambassador for Indonesia Nikolaos van Dam for writing a very balanced article on Islam, an excerpt of which also appeared in The Jakarta Post on May 1, 2009.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/05/15/a-friendly-chat-with-geert-wilders.html
Why should there be sharia law in Indonesia?
The Jakarta Post
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Fri, 08/28/2009 9:33 AM | Opinion
It is argued that the enactment of sharia law would end terrorist bombings. But would that not create a new threat to peace? Because there is no guarantee that enacting sharia law would create a more just society. An old proverb says “because of an over-expectation that rain will come, the water in the bucket is wasted”?
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/08/28/why-should-there-be-sharia-law-indonesia.html
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Fri, 08/28/2009 9:33 AM | Opinion
It is argued that the enactment of sharia law would end terrorist bombings. But would that not create a new threat to peace? Because there is no guarantee that enacting sharia law would create a more just society. An old proverb says “because of an over-expectation that rain will come, the water in the bucket is wasted”?
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/08/28/why-should-there-be-sharia-law-indonesia.html
The roots of terrorism in Indonesia
The Jakarta Post
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Thu, 07/30/2009 12:41 PM | Opinion
Several scholars have expressed concerns over the rising of Puritanism and fundamentalism among young Muslims in Indonesia. Some have even come to the conclusion that many young Muslims have received misinterpretations of Islam. The confession of captured terrorists is often shocking for mainstream Muslims, who believe the criminals' faith deviates from Islamic teachings.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/07/30/the-roots-terrorism-indonesia.html
Khairil Azhar , Jakarta | Thu, 07/30/2009 12:41 PM | Opinion
Several scholars have expressed concerns over the rising of Puritanism and fundamentalism among young Muslims in Indonesia. Some have even come to the conclusion that many young Muslims have received misinterpretations of Islam. The confession of captured terrorists is often shocking for mainstream Muslims, who believe the criminals' faith deviates from Islamic teachings.
Read the complete article at http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/07/30/the-roots-terrorism-indonesia.html
Clerics, edicts and trust
Khairil Azhar
The simple and low profile Islamic figure, after listening to a question, usually did not answer it directly, especially when the question was related to sensitive problem or disputable. Even he often took a day or two or three before answering it. He always said, “Let me think first. I need to learn it as well as possible. Hastiness makes us closer to the wrong path.” And the figure was Sheikh Ibrahim Musa, an Islamic leading expert from Minangkabau in the beginning of the 20th century.
This attitude actually was practiced by most of the prominent figures in Islamic clerical history. Imam Shafi’i, for example, the founder of the school of thought mostly embraced in Indonesia, spent most of his time learning and examining each issue came up carefully and delivered an edict with his famous saying, “This is my opinion. Please check and confirm it as well as possible. Perhaps there is another better solution….”
Nowadays, as if the clerics were smart machines. They pretend to know every thing. Take a look at the religious service delivered on a TV show for example or how most of them preach on Fridays. Many of the services at the end exactly raise up fear and anxiety instead of peacefulness and happiness. Similarly, instead of becoming more informed and knowledgeable, the listeners or viewers are put into an obscurity and made to be pretending being enlightened while in fact they get nothing but a short-moment relief.
Or the services may end up with tears and cries, while these expressions are taken for granted by some, symbolizing the quality of faith. And to the questionable assumption and phenomenon, the religious figure Jalaluddin Rahmat once responded when he was talking about what is so-called spiritual quotient. “If all of the other intelligences found so far, especially the ones verified by Howard Gardner, have their accurate means for measurement, this quotient impressively has its own measure in Indonesia. Someone with better spiritual quality with this instrument will have more tears spilled from his eyes. The more cries and tears, the more spiritual quotient he has.”
In the same tone with the above narrowness is of course related to how the services given by some of the clerics actually make the world smaller with new rules and restrictions for the people. Edicts contrarily have been instruments to shackling the supposed hurriyya (freedom) provided by the God Himself. And the reason behind this repression is never explained clearly to the level of haq al-yaqin, definitely authenticated based on reliable evidences.
As the first resulting consequences of this narrow-mindedness surely are confusion and insecurity in the heart of the people, it is somehow then opposing the grand idea of how Islam has been revealed to appease and bless all creatures in the universe (rahmatalli’alamin). Instead of gaining better consciousness through the religious teachings, the people on the other way intentionally or unintentionally position themselves in such a distance from the religion itself. That is why, for example, many Moslems decide to stay being abangan, not adhering strictly to the precepts of their nominal religion, rather than becoming santri or strictly adherent.
On the other end of the continuum, religious edicts latently may derail the people into the abyss of excessiveness if not extremism. The clerics, officially or unofficially, potentially stiffen the flexibility of what is so-called hablumminannas, human or communal relationship aspects of the Moslems, and make them easily in a friction with the other groups in the society. They then will find themselves more different from the others and identify their own group extremely tightly.
It is then not the first controversial problem issued conservatively by the clerics in the story “Indonesian Clerics Want Rules for Facebook” appeared at The Jakarta Post, Friday, 22 May 2009 and some following stories. Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), for example, have also released edict to the prohibition of practicing yoga, whereas many people convince about its advantages for physical and mental health and there is no specified faith foundation evidently harmed.
What the clerics fail so far to show up in front of their followers and the other people is about “trust”. And it is no an easy subject. The edict delivered by MUI about Golput (prohibition not to be participating in the national election) might be the best example of how their credibility was at stake. This semi-official institution decided the edict however could be seen allegedly accommodating Islamic parties interest amid the people confusion of their sinking performances. As it was proven later, that despite of the edict, the “trust” of the people (not to say Moslems) to the Islamic parties as well as the election itself then evidenced lowering, and the edict failed to prove itself weighing an influence onto the people.
This is then about how people actually trust the religious leaders.
Buya Hamka, the first head of MUI, might have shown us what an aspect of trust actually. When he was offered the position, calmly persistently he refused to be salaried by the government or any other institutions which would make him not independent or under pressure. Had this prerequisite been accepted by both sides, Buya Hamka taught us a worth lesson. When he was offered to deliver an edict related to seemingly confused religious practice between Moslems and their non-Moslems counterparts, he barely rejected. As an Islamist as well as a nationalist he could accepted pluralism based on his well-comprehension on the religion, but he refused to lead the people into a dispute related to ritual mixture, albeit this was for the sake of the government program of establishing inter-faith tolerance which was unfittingly launched.
The trust is also about how the clerics choose the needy issues to be solved. Instead of busying themselves with supra-structural issues, which do not touch the most problems the people are facing, they actually potentially could help the them with their edicts and acts and gain recognition and admiration through participating in solving the more real problems such as starvation, malnutrition, illiteracy, underdevelopment, and many other actual problems. The clerics therefore should contribute their social power to leveraging people’s quality of life economically and socially while it is this the foundation of what the holy texts insist to be built as one of the prerequisite of people welfare and justice.
And the last, it is about how trust could become the base of how an edict delivered. Most of controversial edicts so far were based on hesitancy, a quality that is actually required to be considered extremely in Islamic legal philosophy extending from the quality of shak (severe hesitancy) to zhan (light hesitancy). It is then about changing the paradigm of how to take a look at the phenomenon and the people with positive viewpoints rather then with even a slight suspicion. Is not that “al-asl fi al-ashya’ al-ibahat”, every thing naturally is allowed and acceptable? Does not it remind us that positive-minded is the main base and not skepticism?
The God Himself actually has given a good example in this case in the Koran. When the angels hesitated and complained the creation of human being, that they would just do destruction and be in wars, the God wisely assure them that these creatures, as long as they have sound mind and knowledge, will be able to establish welfare and justice (2:30-39). In other words, the God Himself positively has shown us how to consider a problem, not merely on the bad possibilities but proportionally should start from the positive parts.
The writer is currently a teacher and graduated from the Syari’a Faculty of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.
The simple and low profile Islamic figure, after listening to a question, usually did not answer it directly, especially when the question was related to sensitive problem or disputable. Even he often took a day or two or three before answering it. He always said, “Let me think first. I need to learn it as well as possible. Hastiness makes us closer to the wrong path.” And the figure was Sheikh Ibrahim Musa, an Islamic leading expert from Minangkabau in the beginning of the 20th century.
This attitude actually was practiced by most of the prominent figures in Islamic clerical history. Imam Shafi’i, for example, the founder of the school of thought mostly embraced in Indonesia, spent most of his time learning and examining each issue came up carefully and delivered an edict with his famous saying, “This is my opinion. Please check and confirm it as well as possible. Perhaps there is another better solution….”
Nowadays, as if the clerics were smart machines. They pretend to know every thing. Take a look at the religious service delivered on a TV show for example or how most of them preach on Fridays. Many of the services at the end exactly raise up fear and anxiety instead of peacefulness and happiness. Similarly, instead of becoming more informed and knowledgeable, the listeners or viewers are put into an obscurity and made to be pretending being enlightened while in fact they get nothing but a short-moment relief.
Or the services may end up with tears and cries, while these expressions are taken for granted by some, symbolizing the quality of faith. And to the questionable assumption and phenomenon, the religious figure Jalaluddin Rahmat once responded when he was talking about what is so-called spiritual quotient. “If all of the other intelligences found so far, especially the ones verified by Howard Gardner, have their accurate means for measurement, this quotient impressively has its own measure in Indonesia. Someone with better spiritual quality with this instrument will have more tears spilled from his eyes. The more cries and tears, the more spiritual quotient he has.”
In the same tone with the above narrowness is of course related to how the services given by some of the clerics actually make the world smaller with new rules and restrictions for the people. Edicts contrarily have been instruments to shackling the supposed hurriyya (freedom) provided by the God Himself. And the reason behind this repression is never explained clearly to the level of haq al-yaqin, definitely authenticated based on reliable evidences.
As the first resulting consequences of this narrow-mindedness surely are confusion and insecurity in the heart of the people, it is somehow then opposing the grand idea of how Islam has been revealed to appease and bless all creatures in the universe (rahmatalli’alamin). Instead of gaining better consciousness through the religious teachings, the people on the other way intentionally or unintentionally position themselves in such a distance from the religion itself. That is why, for example, many Moslems decide to stay being abangan, not adhering strictly to the precepts of their nominal religion, rather than becoming santri or strictly adherent.
On the other end of the continuum, religious edicts latently may derail the people into the abyss of excessiveness if not extremism. The clerics, officially or unofficially, potentially stiffen the flexibility of what is so-called hablumminannas, human or communal relationship aspects of the Moslems, and make them easily in a friction with the other groups in the society. They then will find themselves more different from the others and identify their own group extremely tightly.
It is then not the first controversial problem issued conservatively by the clerics in the story “Indonesian Clerics Want Rules for Facebook” appeared at The Jakarta Post, Friday, 22 May 2009 and some following stories. Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), for example, have also released edict to the prohibition of practicing yoga, whereas many people convince about its advantages for physical and mental health and there is no specified faith foundation evidently harmed.
What the clerics fail so far to show up in front of their followers and the other people is about “trust”. And it is no an easy subject. The edict delivered by MUI about Golput (prohibition not to be participating in the national election) might be the best example of how their credibility was at stake. This semi-official institution decided the edict however could be seen allegedly accommodating Islamic parties interest amid the people confusion of their sinking performances. As it was proven later, that despite of the edict, the “trust” of the people (not to say Moslems) to the Islamic parties as well as the election itself then evidenced lowering, and the edict failed to prove itself weighing an influence onto the people.
This is then about how people actually trust the religious leaders.
Buya Hamka, the first head of MUI, might have shown us what an aspect of trust actually. When he was offered the position, calmly persistently he refused to be salaried by the government or any other institutions which would make him not independent or under pressure. Had this prerequisite been accepted by both sides, Buya Hamka taught us a worth lesson. When he was offered to deliver an edict related to seemingly confused religious practice between Moslems and their non-Moslems counterparts, he barely rejected. As an Islamist as well as a nationalist he could accepted pluralism based on his well-comprehension on the religion, but he refused to lead the people into a dispute related to ritual mixture, albeit this was for the sake of the government program of establishing inter-faith tolerance which was unfittingly launched.
The trust is also about how the clerics choose the needy issues to be solved. Instead of busying themselves with supra-structural issues, which do not touch the most problems the people are facing, they actually potentially could help the them with their edicts and acts and gain recognition and admiration through participating in solving the more real problems such as starvation, malnutrition, illiteracy, underdevelopment, and many other actual problems. The clerics therefore should contribute their social power to leveraging people’s quality of life economically and socially while it is this the foundation of what the holy texts insist to be built as one of the prerequisite of people welfare and justice.
And the last, it is about how trust could become the base of how an edict delivered. Most of controversial edicts so far were based on hesitancy, a quality that is actually required to be considered extremely in Islamic legal philosophy extending from the quality of shak (severe hesitancy) to zhan (light hesitancy). It is then about changing the paradigm of how to take a look at the phenomenon and the people with positive viewpoints rather then with even a slight suspicion. Is not that “al-asl fi al-ashya’ al-ibahat”, every thing naturally is allowed and acceptable? Does not it remind us that positive-minded is the main base and not skepticism?
The God Himself actually has given a good example in this case in the Koran. When the angels hesitated and complained the creation of human being, that they would just do destruction and be in wars, the God wisely assure them that these creatures, as long as they have sound mind and knowledge, will be able to establish welfare and justice (2:30-39). In other words, the God Himself positively has shown us how to consider a problem, not merely on the bad possibilities but proportionally should start from the positive parts.
The writer is currently a teacher and graduated from the Syari’a Faculty of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.
Politics, faith and truth
Khairil Azhar
Once in a day, Umar bin Khattab, the second caliph after Prophet Muhammad in Islamic political history, received an issue that his governor in Egypt, Amr bin ‘Ash, had condemned a house of a Christian widow for a mosque. The woman with deep sadness painfully went to Madina to meet the caliph seeking for justice because she had heard he was a very just man.
The low profile and humble caliph accepted the woman warmly and coped with her problem as soon as possible. He immediately sent a courier to confirm the dispute to Amr bin ‘Ash and asked him to meet him. After getting all information confirmed, the wise caliph decided to put the woman under his guardianship and asked his Egypt governor to stop the building process of the mosque and return the woman’s property as before without any conditions plus all cost she had spent.
How sweet! And this was not the only true story exampled by the caliph. With his simplicity and humbleness the brave man actually has shown many best examples of how Moslems as a majority have to live side by side and take care of the others.
Unfortunately, this kind of story as well as a tradition has been long sidelined in the mosques and Islamic schools. Since my childhood, I have experienced that the religious sermons delivered by the preachers dealing with the being of the others mostly narrowed into the contrasting viewpoints and positions. And at the present time, with a better awareness of Islamic political practice, I see day to day most of the Moslems leaders fail to show themselves inheriting the positives taught by their early predecessors.
And that was why I had accepted the notion of inconvenience in the tone of Anand Krishna in his writing at the Jakarta Post, 18 May 2009 as well as the ire shown by tens of readers of the same paper. Being a minority or having a concern on the universal human rights sometimes naturally makes someone very sensitive and suffers sadness and sorrow.
But as it was presented by Nikolaus van Dam few weeks ago, we are with the sound mind obliged to try to differentiate between what is Islamic and what is not. Or in my words, to sieve any Islamic labeled issues in order to get the filled-out crops and put aside the hollow ones. Because we are nowadays actually shoppers who are browsing around in a free market of ideas. Why do not we purchase only something interesting and leave the rest? Are not the sellers going to change or better their products in case of failure to sell? And we have seen how some religious labeled political parties dying or fell off.
We also have seen that some accused and jailed corruptors represented clearly how religion labels or symbols for some have been only protective agents to authorize their own missions. And it is not extraordinary for sure because religions for many people have been commodities with lots of advantages. That is why, perhaps, in the al-Quran itself there is an expression, “…and their trade (of acts of hypocrisy) factually gave no advantages (beside the God and sound people) and they were not among who follow the guidance (2:16).
And let me tell another story. Purwacaraka, a Moslem and one of Indonesian leading musicians, was interviewed on a TV station someday in the fasting month. The unforgettable question and answer in my mind was about the supposed relationship between the seasonal piety shown by most Moslems in the fasting month with their moral and behavioral change both individually and socially. Were there the real effects of their sudden awareness of everything related to religious practices and services and looked so pious as well as copious?
The answer surprisingly was something unexpected. Purwacaraka calmly answered that there was no statistics for instance showed the corruption index was decreasing in the fasting month. Even the daily behaviors shown by some Moslems worsened. When the fasting-break time was approaching for example the traffic seemed to be crowded because some or most of the street users suddenly were in a hurry. The similar intolerable thing also happened at night and dawn. The loudspeakers in many places were unstoppable to be noisy.
So, how will we prove the quantified correlation between the form and quality of faith Pak Boediono as a vice president candidate has with his being able to run a good governance for instance? What is the proven guarantee that someone timely prays will act well? Do we have the statistics? If it is said in the al-Quran that prayer prevents someone from disgraceful deeds (29:45), does not it talk about how it should be instead of how it is in fact?
Discussing about this makes me then remember the late Mohammad Hatta, the founding father and former first vice president of Indonesia. It was well-known that he prayed timely and made the prayers as the media to establish his characters and attitude. On the other side he learned Marxism as well as capitalism; he had no resentment to anybody even though he experienced bad things befell onto him even by the people he had ever helped and supported; and he lived a simply life as he had to take a train to go teaching when his former compatriots in the independence fighting days at the same time enjoying luxuries burdened on to the people.
The most interesting fact related to the recent political fraud is that Mohammad Hatta lived side by side without showing any slight harm which would bear anxiety on the part of the others. His piety wonderfully exactly appeased the people surrounding him. Was not his loyal secretary a Christian? Was not Mohammad Hatta himself a good example of how a Moslem politician should do to guarantee true justice to the people?
On the other side, we actually have to realize that democracy itself has a potential weakness in itself: the possibility of majority tyranny. And it might be another cause why Anand Krishna and my other non-Moslem fellows have been frightened. Being a minority also may easily make someone confused and put him into unexpected troubling feeling. And it is an unfortunate for sure that I have not experienced this kind of situation yet.
But the thing I really convince in this case is that we can not clap with only a hand. We need both of them at the same time. The majority anyhow often become inattentive in the slippery areas and burden the others and so does with the minority actually. And we are obliged to remind each other wisely. It seems a cliché for a glance. But it is the only alternative. It is also unfortunate of course that this kind of consciousness more possessed by common people and academicians rather than the politicians.
To this point then I really wonder what the politicians actually seek in their lives? Do they, for example, look for something such happiness? Is the profession called “politician” just like any other jobs to ensure economic requirement of life? If yes, is it true that hypocrisy is common and logic for them? And it is fair then the politicians promising and campaigning better life for “wong cilik” (the disadvantaged) exactly at the same time enjoying all kinds of luxury. It is a naiveté therefore if I imagine a very luxurious car possessed by a politician actually can be bartered to build a school.
Or, if a politician talks about “taqwa”, an Islamic concept which mostly defined as carrying out all goodness obligated and stay away of all wrongdoings prohibited by God, is it really something knowledgeable for him or merely a lip service? Or, has not he become too proud and arbitrarily claimed himself as the owner of the truth and the others have not?
That was probably why Nietsche the philosopher once told us about the difference between the one who continuously seeks the truth and the one who stops and believe in whatever he has got. In Islam actually, the truth is the God himself, which is called “al-Haqq, the true truth. And a Moslem is on the way to reach it till his death and not to claim himself as the truth itself.
Well. I can see surely how the politicians smile broadly in front of the camera or on the stages when they are having political campaigns. But I still wonder whether they are happy and spreading happiness or they are looking for the truth. Because it is hard to understand how someone like Anand Krishna, a spiritualist, showed his inconvenience when he wrote about the recent moves or comments delivered by a politician? Have not the politicians obviously had caused many inconveniences rather then peace in accord with their oaths in the world? Do not they make the peaceful atmosphere become fraudulent so far? Could not they have just a slice of empathy?
The writer graduated from Syari’a Faculty of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah in 1999 majoring Islamic schools of thought. He is currently a teacher at Lazuardi Global Islamic School – Cinere. He can be reached at besoreal@gmail.com.
Once in a day, Umar bin Khattab, the second caliph after Prophet Muhammad in Islamic political history, received an issue that his governor in Egypt, Amr bin ‘Ash, had condemned a house of a Christian widow for a mosque. The woman with deep sadness painfully went to Madina to meet the caliph seeking for justice because she had heard he was a very just man.
The low profile and humble caliph accepted the woman warmly and coped with her problem as soon as possible. He immediately sent a courier to confirm the dispute to Amr bin ‘Ash and asked him to meet him. After getting all information confirmed, the wise caliph decided to put the woman under his guardianship and asked his Egypt governor to stop the building process of the mosque and return the woman’s property as before without any conditions plus all cost she had spent.
How sweet! And this was not the only true story exampled by the caliph. With his simplicity and humbleness the brave man actually has shown many best examples of how Moslems as a majority have to live side by side and take care of the others.
Unfortunately, this kind of story as well as a tradition has been long sidelined in the mosques and Islamic schools. Since my childhood, I have experienced that the religious sermons delivered by the preachers dealing with the being of the others mostly narrowed into the contrasting viewpoints and positions. And at the present time, with a better awareness of Islamic political practice, I see day to day most of the Moslems leaders fail to show themselves inheriting the positives taught by their early predecessors.
And that was why I had accepted the notion of inconvenience in the tone of Anand Krishna in his writing at the Jakarta Post, 18 May 2009 as well as the ire shown by tens of readers of the same paper. Being a minority or having a concern on the universal human rights sometimes naturally makes someone very sensitive and suffers sadness and sorrow.
But as it was presented by Nikolaus van Dam few weeks ago, we are with the sound mind obliged to try to differentiate between what is Islamic and what is not. Or in my words, to sieve any Islamic labeled issues in order to get the filled-out crops and put aside the hollow ones. Because we are nowadays actually shoppers who are browsing around in a free market of ideas. Why do not we purchase only something interesting and leave the rest? Are not the sellers going to change or better their products in case of failure to sell? And we have seen how some religious labeled political parties dying or fell off.
We also have seen that some accused and jailed corruptors represented clearly how religion labels or symbols for some have been only protective agents to authorize their own missions. And it is not extraordinary for sure because religions for many people have been commodities with lots of advantages. That is why, perhaps, in the al-Quran itself there is an expression, “…and their trade (of acts of hypocrisy) factually gave no advantages (beside the God and sound people) and they were not among who follow the guidance (2:16).
And let me tell another story. Purwacaraka, a Moslem and one of Indonesian leading musicians, was interviewed on a TV station someday in the fasting month. The unforgettable question and answer in my mind was about the supposed relationship between the seasonal piety shown by most Moslems in the fasting month with their moral and behavioral change both individually and socially. Were there the real effects of their sudden awareness of everything related to religious practices and services and looked so pious as well as copious?
The answer surprisingly was something unexpected. Purwacaraka calmly answered that there was no statistics for instance showed the corruption index was decreasing in the fasting month. Even the daily behaviors shown by some Moslems worsened. When the fasting-break time was approaching for example the traffic seemed to be crowded because some or most of the street users suddenly were in a hurry. The similar intolerable thing also happened at night and dawn. The loudspeakers in many places were unstoppable to be noisy.
So, how will we prove the quantified correlation between the form and quality of faith Pak Boediono as a vice president candidate has with his being able to run a good governance for instance? What is the proven guarantee that someone timely prays will act well? Do we have the statistics? If it is said in the al-Quran that prayer prevents someone from disgraceful deeds (29:45), does not it talk about how it should be instead of how it is in fact?
Discussing about this makes me then remember the late Mohammad Hatta, the founding father and former first vice president of Indonesia. It was well-known that he prayed timely and made the prayers as the media to establish his characters and attitude. On the other side he learned Marxism as well as capitalism; he had no resentment to anybody even though he experienced bad things befell onto him even by the people he had ever helped and supported; and he lived a simply life as he had to take a train to go teaching when his former compatriots in the independence fighting days at the same time enjoying luxuries burdened on to the people.
The most interesting fact related to the recent political fraud is that Mohammad Hatta lived side by side without showing any slight harm which would bear anxiety on the part of the others. His piety wonderfully exactly appeased the people surrounding him. Was not his loyal secretary a Christian? Was not Mohammad Hatta himself a good example of how a Moslem politician should do to guarantee true justice to the people?
On the other side, we actually have to realize that democracy itself has a potential weakness in itself: the possibility of majority tyranny. And it might be another cause why Anand Krishna and my other non-Moslem fellows have been frightened. Being a minority also may easily make someone confused and put him into unexpected troubling feeling. And it is an unfortunate for sure that I have not experienced this kind of situation yet.
But the thing I really convince in this case is that we can not clap with only a hand. We need both of them at the same time. The majority anyhow often become inattentive in the slippery areas and burden the others and so does with the minority actually. And we are obliged to remind each other wisely. It seems a cliché for a glance. But it is the only alternative. It is also unfortunate of course that this kind of consciousness more possessed by common people and academicians rather than the politicians.
To this point then I really wonder what the politicians actually seek in their lives? Do they, for example, look for something such happiness? Is the profession called “politician” just like any other jobs to ensure economic requirement of life? If yes, is it true that hypocrisy is common and logic for them? And it is fair then the politicians promising and campaigning better life for “wong cilik” (the disadvantaged) exactly at the same time enjoying all kinds of luxury. It is a naiveté therefore if I imagine a very luxurious car possessed by a politician actually can be bartered to build a school.
Or, if a politician talks about “taqwa”, an Islamic concept which mostly defined as carrying out all goodness obligated and stay away of all wrongdoings prohibited by God, is it really something knowledgeable for him or merely a lip service? Or, has not he become too proud and arbitrarily claimed himself as the owner of the truth and the others have not?
That was probably why Nietsche the philosopher once told us about the difference between the one who continuously seeks the truth and the one who stops and believe in whatever he has got. In Islam actually, the truth is the God himself, which is called “al-Haqq, the true truth. And a Moslem is on the way to reach it till his death and not to claim himself as the truth itself.
Well. I can see surely how the politicians smile broadly in front of the camera or on the stages when they are having political campaigns. But I still wonder whether they are happy and spreading happiness or they are looking for the truth. Because it is hard to understand how someone like Anand Krishna, a spiritualist, showed his inconvenience when he wrote about the recent moves or comments delivered by a politician? Have not the politicians obviously had caused many inconveniences rather then peace in accord with their oaths in the world? Do not they make the peaceful atmosphere become fraudulent so far? Could not they have just a slice of empathy?
The writer graduated from Syari’a Faculty of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah in 1999 majoring Islamic schools of thought. He is currently a teacher at Lazuardi Global Islamic School – Cinere. He can be reached at besoreal@gmail.com.
Let's pay attention to education, Mr. President
Khairil Azhar
On Saturday, May 2nd, 2009, I was out to buy some vegetable and fish with my son on my shoulders. On the way to my regular vegetable seller, I found another produce seller not peddling his cart as usual, but standing in a borrowed space waiting for customers to buy his produce.
I stopped by and bought some fish there. I curiously asked him why he now used only a two-shelved table—another seller’s property—instead of his pushcart. As he cleaned my fish he answered with a bit of pride mixed with oppressed sadness and sorrow that the pushcart had been sold to a friend. He really needed money to make his son meet the national exams requirements, like the many and various fees decided by the school. The cost to attend the national exam alone was nine hundred thousand rupiah. All together, he had to pay more than 2 million rupiah within two weeks for just five days of exams.
Most of the two million was earned by borrowing and spending all of his business capital plus, the rest from selling the pushcart. He was only able to continue his business that morning through the generosity of his neighbors and friends.
The thing I really admire about him is his toughness. He told the story without tears and without a single tremble in his voice, which is more than most state officials encountering a problem can do. Perhaps he is used to experiencing bitterness and pushing fear aside, because regardless of the situation, he has to step forward and forget his worries so that he can start another day. A necessary amnesia. He even spoke of the situation with pride because he had been able to give his son the opportunity to sit for the national exams. Hearing this I prayed in my mind, “May the school his son is going to have a “success team” to help him pass, so that his two million will not go to waste.”
On my way back home, I remembered a story told by my friend working for the national education department. He told me that a villa in Puncak for his department has just been finished. When he was inspecting the inside properties, he found that the room for his boss or the General Director was not properly prepared. In his mind, the boss’ level of service and goods should be higher. In the end, the room was reconditioned with all the luxuries afforded and cost in millions.
That is just the tip of the iceberg. But my friend is a good neighbor and not arrogant as some other government employees I have previously met. He cares about his children’s education but sometimes does not have enough time to assist them learning at home, but he has enough money to hire a private teacher or send them to a private learning center without burden. However, to make sure that everything is running well for them, he helps whatever he can do to enable the school his children go to get the aids from the government and so on.
If I count the money to build a luxury villa and compare it with the amount the above peddler spent to get his son to attend the test I just shake my head. My government employee friend might also spent the same amount of money but I am sure was without fear. He just had to call a friend or two in the national exams division or the principal and then sat back in restfully. But my peddler, after spending all his blood and sweat will go on his life with a fear if his son fails and must be waiting for the next episode.
My peddler, as generally planted in common people mind, surely thinks that education will enhance their children future financially and socially. They just know that getting a school certificate means a wider opportunity to get a job, regardless what abilities the children actually have got, while competences mean more and decisive. If I have a connection and I am someone who is important for the connection, how poor my son’s skills are will not matter. But for my peddler, his connections are but his colleagues and people from the same social or economic status, even though some probably are luckier. With his son’s senior high certificate or even a degree one, it is not impossible that he will push the same pushcart if no skills he has as the selling point.
This morning too, arriving at the school where I am an extra lesson teacher, one of my colleagues showed me the Friday, May 1st edition of a newspaper (I usually read newspaper one or two days after its publication). There, as usually happens, is a legislative member from a certain political party voicing that national exams as the only standard to judge the students success will be reviewed again and in the next academic year it is probably going to be the same as what is now known done for primary students (UASBN).
“Thanks God.” That was the first expression of my mind. But I immediately remembered that the presidential election is approaching. There are millions of people, who are active voters and decisive for the next president, in disagreement of the current policy of education. And the legislator however was from a political party having candidates for presidency. When he says “the government” implicitly he is designating the ruling person or party who for the people rejecting national exams are responsible of the fraud.
It is likely a prejudice. But national exams is just an iceberg of what has been happening for a very long time. It is not a top secret anymore that the national educational department can be a money machine directly or indirectly for many persons and groups. If it is not about cash money it deals with many policies issued to help out certain interests. Today’s political need is to calm down the people and the after-election day is another one. It is not going to be really shocking that the pendulum will move as the same it did following a candidate success or failure.
A few years ago, I alternately attended two training programs conducted for English teachers and computers teachers. Both of them were held by the national education department. In the first training I was an active participant as well as critical. I assumed that the trainers had been qualified and well prepared. But my assumption was wrong. As I have attended several seminar and trainings conducted by private institutions, I also assumed that the training would be done as well as the private ones. But I was wrong again.
What really shocked me later was that many employees came to the training center and after a while went to the boarding rooms and slept (it was in fasting month). And when I asked one of the government employees working there, he calmly said, “It is okay, because we have no parts to do. All jobs have been handed to a group of people from a certain company by the head of the training center (to make his own business run or get more bribe money from the private company). What important for us is getting our salary at the end of the month and forget any other things.”
The almost same thing was also happening when I attended a computer training program for Information Technology teachers. I found no sessions were really meeting our needs. Even the compute program designed to help the students learning English did not really work while the program had been installed to almost all computer given by the government to tens of school all over Indonesia. The schedule was also shortened and we went home earlier one day than it should be. And do not ask me about the financial matters of both of the training.
Again, national exams is only an iceberg. Prof. Ahmad Syafi’i Maarif, an Indonesian leading figure in education, one day said, “In Indonesia we have three departments that really deal with the people. Education department deals with our brain, but it corrupts and fails; religious affairs department deals with our hearts but it also corrupts and fails; and the third we have national health department which deals with our body but it corrupts and conversely sickens our body instead of keeps us healthy. What are left right now?”
Now I am really confused as a teacher and a parent. It is not an easy job though. Some of my colleagues take everything easy and save his energy at school. They need it for an after school job: being a private teacher or open a peddle at a sudden market (pasar kaget) and earn more money. So can I trust my children their future to the schools where the teachers themselves are weary of thinking their own interests? And along the day I am thinking of what I can do for my children, their education. If I send them to a school I am afraid that they are learning how to bully instead of how to be a buddy. I experienced many bad things at school and fear the same things happen to them.
“The thorns should be never plucked from the roses,” a saying tells. “Allow the children to experience whatever they face.” But no body will put his children into a hell intentionally. We pay taxes not only to avoid the penalties of law but also to get the return: public facilities with all the best the government can do. And it is not able yet to guarantee that our children will get the education they deserve. On the other way, we still have to pay a lot with our own money and stop thinking about what the taxes can do. Just wait and see while irritatingly some of the taxes nowadays are for political campaigning and financing the elections without any clear audacity of hope for the people.
That is why, my vote is for a president who understands and cares of education. I will choose a president who clearly states that Indonesian children are his children and is responsible for them. My president is someone who is able to cry seeing his son fails and cries louder when he sees a child hanged herself up the ceiling and died because of her failure to pass the national exams. My president is someone who will call the principal of her children’s school and tell him to allow his son experience the thorns of a rose. And it is not an utopia as well as a panacea of course. It is a step of unknown the rest steps.
The writer currently is the International Program Officer at Lazuardi Global Islamic School, Cinere. He can be reached at besoreal@gmail.com
On Saturday, May 2nd, 2009, I was out to buy some vegetable and fish with my son on my shoulders. On the way to my regular vegetable seller, I found another produce seller not peddling his cart as usual, but standing in a borrowed space waiting for customers to buy his produce.
I stopped by and bought some fish there. I curiously asked him why he now used only a two-shelved table—another seller’s property—instead of his pushcart. As he cleaned my fish he answered with a bit of pride mixed with oppressed sadness and sorrow that the pushcart had been sold to a friend. He really needed money to make his son meet the national exams requirements, like the many and various fees decided by the school. The cost to attend the national exam alone was nine hundred thousand rupiah. All together, he had to pay more than 2 million rupiah within two weeks for just five days of exams.
Most of the two million was earned by borrowing and spending all of his business capital plus, the rest from selling the pushcart. He was only able to continue his business that morning through the generosity of his neighbors and friends.
The thing I really admire about him is his toughness. He told the story without tears and without a single tremble in his voice, which is more than most state officials encountering a problem can do. Perhaps he is used to experiencing bitterness and pushing fear aside, because regardless of the situation, he has to step forward and forget his worries so that he can start another day. A necessary amnesia. He even spoke of the situation with pride because he had been able to give his son the opportunity to sit for the national exams. Hearing this I prayed in my mind, “May the school his son is going to have a “success team” to help him pass, so that his two million will not go to waste.”
On my way back home, I remembered a story told by my friend working for the national education department. He told me that a villa in Puncak for his department has just been finished. When he was inspecting the inside properties, he found that the room for his boss or the General Director was not properly prepared. In his mind, the boss’ level of service and goods should be higher. In the end, the room was reconditioned with all the luxuries afforded and cost in millions.
That is just the tip of the iceberg. But my friend is a good neighbor and not arrogant as some other government employees I have previously met. He cares about his children’s education but sometimes does not have enough time to assist them learning at home, but he has enough money to hire a private teacher or send them to a private learning center without burden. However, to make sure that everything is running well for them, he helps whatever he can do to enable the school his children go to get the aids from the government and so on.
If I count the money to build a luxury villa and compare it with the amount the above peddler spent to get his son to attend the test I just shake my head. My government employee friend might also spent the same amount of money but I am sure was without fear. He just had to call a friend or two in the national exams division or the principal and then sat back in restfully. But my peddler, after spending all his blood and sweat will go on his life with a fear if his son fails and must be waiting for the next episode.
My peddler, as generally planted in common people mind, surely thinks that education will enhance their children future financially and socially. They just know that getting a school certificate means a wider opportunity to get a job, regardless what abilities the children actually have got, while competences mean more and decisive. If I have a connection and I am someone who is important for the connection, how poor my son’s skills are will not matter. But for my peddler, his connections are but his colleagues and people from the same social or economic status, even though some probably are luckier. With his son’s senior high certificate or even a degree one, it is not impossible that he will push the same pushcart if no skills he has as the selling point.
This morning too, arriving at the school where I am an extra lesson teacher, one of my colleagues showed me the Friday, May 1st edition of a newspaper (I usually read newspaper one or two days after its publication). There, as usually happens, is a legislative member from a certain political party voicing that national exams as the only standard to judge the students success will be reviewed again and in the next academic year it is probably going to be the same as what is now known done for primary students (UASBN).
“Thanks God.” That was the first expression of my mind. But I immediately remembered that the presidential election is approaching. There are millions of people, who are active voters and decisive for the next president, in disagreement of the current policy of education. And the legislator however was from a political party having candidates for presidency. When he says “the government” implicitly he is designating the ruling person or party who for the people rejecting national exams are responsible of the fraud.
It is likely a prejudice. But national exams is just an iceberg of what has been happening for a very long time. It is not a top secret anymore that the national educational department can be a money machine directly or indirectly for many persons and groups. If it is not about cash money it deals with many policies issued to help out certain interests. Today’s political need is to calm down the people and the after-election day is another one. It is not going to be really shocking that the pendulum will move as the same it did following a candidate success or failure.
A few years ago, I alternately attended two training programs conducted for English teachers and computers teachers. Both of them were held by the national education department. In the first training I was an active participant as well as critical. I assumed that the trainers had been qualified and well prepared. But my assumption was wrong. As I have attended several seminar and trainings conducted by private institutions, I also assumed that the training would be done as well as the private ones. But I was wrong again.
What really shocked me later was that many employees came to the training center and after a while went to the boarding rooms and slept (it was in fasting month). And when I asked one of the government employees working there, he calmly said, “It is okay, because we have no parts to do. All jobs have been handed to a group of people from a certain company by the head of the training center (to make his own business run or get more bribe money from the private company). What important for us is getting our salary at the end of the month and forget any other things.”
The almost same thing was also happening when I attended a computer training program for Information Technology teachers. I found no sessions were really meeting our needs. Even the compute program designed to help the students learning English did not really work while the program had been installed to almost all computer given by the government to tens of school all over Indonesia. The schedule was also shortened and we went home earlier one day than it should be. And do not ask me about the financial matters of both of the training.
Again, national exams is only an iceberg. Prof. Ahmad Syafi’i Maarif, an Indonesian leading figure in education, one day said, “In Indonesia we have three departments that really deal with the people. Education department deals with our brain, but it corrupts and fails; religious affairs department deals with our hearts but it also corrupts and fails; and the third we have national health department which deals with our body but it corrupts and conversely sickens our body instead of keeps us healthy. What are left right now?”
Now I am really confused as a teacher and a parent. It is not an easy job though. Some of my colleagues take everything easy and save his energy at school. They need it for an after school job: being a private teacher or open a peddle at a sudden market (pasar kaget) and earn more money. So can I trust my children their future to the schools where the teachers themselves are weary of thinking their own interests? And along the day I am thinking of what I can do for my children, their education. If I send them to a school I am afraid that they are learning how to bully instead of how to be a buddy. I experienced many bad things at school and fear the same things happen to them.
“The thorns should be never plucked from the roses,” a saying tells. “Allow the children to experience whatever they face.” But no body will put his children into a hell intentionally. We pay taxes not only to avoid the penalties of law but also to get the return: public facilities with all the best the government can do. And it is not able yet to guarantee that our children will get the education they deserve. On the other way, we still have to pay a lot with our own money and stop thinking about what the taxes can do. Just wait and see while irritatingly some of the taxes nowadays are for political campaigning and financing the elections without any clear audacity of hope for the people.
That is why, my vote is for a president who understands and cares of education. I will choose a president who clearly states that Indonesian children are his children and is responsible for them. My president is someone who is able to cry seeing his son fails and cries louder when he sees a child hanged herself up the ceiling and died because of her failure to pass the national exams. My president is someone who will call the principal of her children’s school and tell him to allow his son experience the thorns of a rose. And it is not an utopia as well as a panacea of course. It is a step of unknown the rest steps.
The writer currently is the International Program Officer at Lazuardi Global Islamic School, Cinere. He can be reached at besoreal@gmail.com
Student gang fights, presidential contest, and academic tradition
Khairil Azhar
This country is really full of something comical but tragic as well. But it is logically conceivable if we take a look at what makes a joke tasty. A joke actually tells the truth on one side but comically is intended to invite laughter on the other one. We are touched firstly by the truth it represents but then we laugh at it because it also represents a kind of stupidity with entertaining entity to certain extent.
This comical point of view possibly will make us more relaxed looking at how comical and tragic the heating up presidential contest is, especially when it is mixed or compared with how violence with its varied forms as well as any other tragic events endlessly take place. But to make ourselves focus in this discussion, we only will compare it with the student gang fights. So please sit back and relax.
With less than one month ahead for the presidential election day, the candidates have been so busy in a competition of unveiling the minuses of their opponents. For instance, SBY barely scolded his competitors as businessmen who would be potentially stir up the business affairs with governmental duties as it had been done in the previous regime. According to his sense of view it was this tendency had facilitated and fertilized corruptions and underdevelopments in Soeharto era.
But JK the businessman did not remain in defense calmly and quietly. He immediately reacted with a counter attack telling that doubtful candidate will make the country left behind and fail to make quick and proper decisions. Mega and Prabowo did relatively the same thing. With their people oriented economy jargon, they accused the liberal or neo-liberal approach to political economy would only make the poverty increases and prosperity becomes farther away.
This debat kusir (endless and fruitless debates) style or tendency unsurprisingly has been the similar plot behind the scene of the student gang fights. The students, with their dynamic young blood tried to represent themselves with the quickest—in spite of absurd—way of reacting to any challenges, regardless whether they are potentially heading to physical conflicts or not. Without feeling guilty they then tried to solve their social problem with prejudices and accusations and as we have often seen many of the conflicts turned to be physical challenges and clashes. And in the end actually, the problems remained unfinished and become more rooted, latent and unsolvable. The factual results then just wounded bodies and hearts as well as useless stiffened lying corpses.
And it is also about self-pride and arrogances. The presidential candidates with all they do to raise up themselves in front of the constituents embarrassingly forget their very being of human nature, i.e. their humbleness amid their inabilities to change the quality of life of the people so far with all the opportunities they have already had. Even they do not feel ashamed to exploit “God” in every humiliation they do regarding to their claims of success, when they start with whatever they do in the name of God and end it with the relatively same way.
SBY and his compatriots unhesitatingly claimed significant change has occurred in this four and a half year when actually starvation and malnutritious children are still everywhere in the country both in the cities and remote areas, from the streets of Jakarta to the Nusa Tenggara villages. JK and his teammates claimed that with his quick moves some critical conflicts have been solved because of his initiation and efforts when hardliners actually spread around and freedom is narrower in this country. And Mega-Pro promised the welfare for all the people with proportional state wealth sharing when actually both of them are the richest among the other candidates and they choose luxurious facilities to enjoy themselves.
The similar thing is also occurring among the conflicting students with their youthfully mockery style. Thoughtlessly they claim their campuses are the best and the others are within the lower classes. They thought inconsiderably themselves as the bravest when the others are losers and deserve only humiliations. And a slight and trivial reason is enough to fire up the already dried grass. As their exemplars did, i.e. the candidates of the country leaders, all proofs—whether historically proven or merely counterfeit ones—were collected as the weapons to attack their opponents.
And now let us talk about how all of these eventually need strategy.
As if they were outstanding tacticians, the students usually set up strategies to defeat “their enemies”. Fighting spirits were raised up using any possible ways—which is not really indifferent from what usually done to football players in the dressing rooms. This kind of motivating process is actually mostly intended for the juniors and rank and file in order to finish their “on-job training’ session as well as possible while the seniors or thinkers stood behind them. And in relation to this strategy are also included the financial cost and possible real weapons to be employed.
Back to our presidential candidates, surely with their own teammates, they certainly do the similar things. They definitely focus themselves to the strategies to win the contest and leave the other affairs such as their current duties as incumbents behind. Financial cost is not a problem because it is only about to count how much to spend and note it to make sure the same amount will get back plus its interest later when the contest is over. They also should prepare any possible weapons for sure when at the same time they have to veil as careful as possible the negative parts which probably are likely to cause bad images.
And the story continues that it is of course going to be so long to tell the whole story here.
Now let us see the other side of a comical story—which actually also makes the story more interesting, i.e. the answer of the question about the stupid part and try to find the answer how it should be.
With all what they have presented so far, both the students in gang fights and the presidential candidates, did they present the thing what they are actually for? Have the politicians, for example, who undeniably should be academically competent, showed up their excellences in analyzing economic critical fraud both quantitatively and qualitatively? Why did the students with their higher educational background contrarily sacrifice their time and energy for being criminals rather then true academicians? Did they harm their “imagined opponents” with many kinds of rude weapons because of intellectually accepted concepts which they struggle to establish?
Comically and tragically, the answer is “no”. As we everyday watch on TV, the campaigns unstoppably keep promising heavenly things to the people while at the same time explicitly and implicitly curse the others as incapable and vice versa. Even the debates between the candidates are not as interesting as the ones conducted among the observers who are more academically capable but unfortunately who enjoy themselves in the ivory towers. Even one of my friends said that some of the debates were not more than coffee shop talks or arisan ibu-ibu (housewives talks).
It is of course too luxurious then for instance to hope the same debates occurred among the youths in 1920s which in turn in 1928 born Sumpah Pemuda amid the Dutch colonialism and illiteracy tyranny. It is a daydream to have figures like Mohammad Yamin or Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana come back and heat up more academically the discussions with their nationalism versus internationalism or their traditions versus modernity points of view. Or it is almost impossible to expect someone like Tan Malaka with his mysterious life reborn and author another contemporarily fit political manifesto beside his Naar de Republik which was extremely incredible for his time and recognized by academicians all over the world.
The similar thing is also taking place among the student gang fighters. They are registered and officially pay their occasionally very expensive tuition fee while at the same time they just spend all the cost for the sake of the others. Many of them are remote of lively academic environments and are busy with everything trivial like youth lifestyle or wealth competition. We can count with only fingers the campuses which deliberately facilitate their students with discussions exploring the current or social issues that actually related to their real life. If there are fertile environments found there, most of them are established and maintained by external organizations or groups which are loosely separated from the campuses. And albeit they are definitely effective there are small amount of students only are incorporated and participating.
Most of the campuses, in the end, failed to be democratic sphere where the students actually should learn appropriately the way how to respect the others while at the same time reciprocally are respected in any circumstances. In this context, they schools also failed to facilitate the full of passion youths with the right materials of life learning and just tried to impose dried technical working skills without proper values and consciousness. The students eventually just become one dimensional robots if they are not become the prisoners of their time.
Our current presidential contest more or less is reflecting the similar thing. Their loud yell to democracy has just become a kind of lipstick, a meaningless jargon. Most of their campaign contents seem to be powerless to deal with the current multidimensional crisis while most of them are rhetoric and lack of rigorous analysis. Even their spending of trillions for the two consecutive elections will be like pouring the water into the desert. And tragically the people again have to carry the burden made on their seemingly restless shoulders.
Based on the above comical and tragic stories it is not an exaggeration to say that we are with the sound mind just and only need to do our best, hoping that the student gang fights and the presidential contest are actually only the partial representation of the country which intellectually, academically and morally has degraded into a lower stage. Hopefully, with the end of the election feast next month, new consciousness may come into our minds and enlighten our next steps.
This country is really full of something comical but tragic as well. But it is logically conceivable if we take a look at what makes a joke tasty. A joke actually tells the truth on one side but comically is intended to invite laughter on the other one. We are touched firstly by the truth it represents but then we laugh at it because it also represents a kind of stupidity with entertaining entity to certain extent.
This comical point of view possibly will make us more relaxed looking at how comical and tragic the heating up presidential contest is, especially when it is mixed or compared with how violence with its varied forms as well as any other tragic events endlessly take place. But to make ourselves focus in this discussion, we only will compare it with the student gang fights. So please sit back and relax.
With less than one month ahead for the presidential election day, the candidates have been so busy in a competition of unveiling the minuses of their opponents. For instance, SBY barely scolded his competitors as businessmen who would be potentially stir up the business affairs with governmental duties as it had been done in the previous regime. According to his sense of view it was this tendency had facilitated and fertilized corruptions and underdevelopments in Soeharto era.
But JK the businessman did not remain in defense calmly and quietly. He immediately reacted with a counter attack telling that doubtful candidate will make the country left behind and fail to make quick and proper decisions. Mega and Prabowo did relatively the same thing. With their people oriented economy jargon, they accused the liberal or neo-liberal approach to political economy would only make the poverty increases and prosperity becomes farther away.
This debat kusir (endless and fruitless debates) style or tendency unsurprisingly has been the similar plot behind the scene of the student gang fights. The students, with their dynamic young blood tried to represent themselves with the quickest—in spite of absurd—way of reacting to any challenges, regardless whether they are potentially heading to physical conflicts or not. Without feeling guilty they then tried to solve their social problem with prejudices and accusations and as we have often seen many of the conflicts turned to be physical challenges and clashes. And in the end actually, the problems remained unfinished and become more rooted, latent and unsolvable. The factual results then just wounded bodies and hearts as well as useless stiffened lying corpses.
And it is also about self-pride and arrogances. The presidential candidates with all they do to raise up themselves in front of the constituents embarrassingly forget their very being of human nature, i.e. their humbleness amid their inabilities to change the quality of life of the people so far with all the opportunities they have already had. Even they do not feel ashamed to exploit “God” in every humiliation they do regarding to their claims of success, when they start with whatever they do in the name of God and end it with the relatively same way.
SBY and his compatriots unhesitatingly claimed significant change has occurred in this four and a half year when actually starvation and malnutritious children are still everywhere in the country both in the cities and remote areas, from the streets of Jakarta to the Nusa Tenggara villages. JK and his teammates claimed that with his quick moves some critical conflicts have been solved because of his initiation and efforts when hardliners actually spread around and freedom is narrower in this country. And Mega-Pro promised the welfare for all the people with proportional state wealth sharing when actually both of them are the richest among the other candidates and they choose luxurious facilities to enjoy themselves.
The similar thing is also occurring among the conflicting students with their youthfully mockery style. Thoughtlessly they claim their campuses are the best and the others are within the lower classes. They thought inconsiderably themselves as the bravest when the others are losers and deserve only humiliations. And a slight and trivial reason is enough to fire up the already dried grass. As their exemplars did, i.e. the candidates of the country leaders, all proofs—whether historically proven or merely counterfeit ones—were collected as the weapons to attack their opponents.
And now let us talk about how all of these eventually need strategy.
As if they were outstanding tacticians, the students usually set up strategies to defeat “their enemies”. Fighting spirits were raised up using any possible ways—which is not really indifferent from what usually done to football players in the dressing rooms. This kind of motivating process is actually mostly intended for the juniors and rank and file in order to finish their “on-job training’ session as well as possible while the seniors or thinkers stood behind them. And in relation to this strategy are also included the financial cost and possible real weapons to be employed.
Back to our presidential candidates, surely with their own teammates, they certainly do the similar things. They definitely focus themselves to the strategies to win the contest and leave the other affairs such as their current duties as incumbents behind. Financial cost is not a problem because it is only about to count how much to spend and note it to make sure the same amount will get back plus its interest later when the contest is over. They also should prepare any possible weapons for sure when at the same time they have to veil as careful as possible the negative parts which probably are likely to cause bad images.
And the story continues that it is of course going to be so long to tell the whole story here.
Now let us see the other side of a comical story—which actually also makes the story more interesting, i.e. the answer of the question about the stupid part and try to find the answer how it should be.
With all what they have presented so far, both the students in gang fights and the presidential candidates, did they present the thing what they are actually for? Have the politicians, for example, who undeniably should be academically competent, showed up their excellences in analyzing economic critical fraud both quantitatively and qualitatively? Why did the students with their higher educational background contrarily sacrifice their time and energy for being criminals rather then true academicians? Did they harm their “imagined opponents” with many kinds of rude weapons because of intellectually accepted concepts which they struggle to establish?
Comically and tragically, the answer is “no”. As we everyday watch on TV, the campaigns unstoppably keep promising heavenly things to the people while at the same time explicitly and implicitly curse the others as incapable and vice versa. Even the debates between the candidates are not as interesting as the ones conducted among the observers who are more academically capable but unfortunately who enjoy themselves in the ivory towers. Even one of my friends said that some of the debates were not more than coffee shop talks or arisan ibu-ibu (housewives talks).
It is of course too luxurious then for instance to hope the same debates occurred among the youths in 1920s which in turn in 1928 born Sumpah Pemuda amid the Dutch colonialism and illiteracy tyranny. It is a daydream to have figures like Mohammad Yamin or Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana come back and heat up more academically the discussions with their nationalism versus internationalism or their traditions versus modernity points of view. Or it is almost impossible to expect someone like Tan Malaka with his mysterious life reborn and author another contemporarily fit political manifesto beside his Naar de Republik which was extremely incredible for his time and recognized by academicians all over the world.
The similar thing is also taking place among the student gang fighters. They are registered and officially pay their occasionally very expensive tuition fee while at the same time they just spend all the cost for the sake of the others. Many of them are remote of lively academic environments and are busy with everything trivial like youth lifestyle or wealth competition. We can count with only fingers the campuses which deliberately facilitate their students with discussions exploring the current or social issues that actually related to their real life. If there are fertile environments found there, most of them are established and maintained by external organizations or groups which are loosely separated from the campuses. And albeit they are definitely effective there are small amount of students only are incorporated and participating.
Most of the campuses, in the end, failed to be democratic sphere where the students actually should learn appropriately the way how to respect the others while at the same time reciprocally are respected in any circumstances. In this context, they schools also failed to facilitate the full of passion youths with the right materials of life learning and just tried to impose dried technical working skills without proper values and consciousness. The students eventually just become one dimensional robots if they are not become the prisoners of their time.
Our current presidential contest more or less is reflecting the similar thing. Their loud yell to democracy has just become a kind of lipstick, a meaningless jargon. Most of their campaign contents seem to be powerless to deal with the current multidimensional crisis while most of them are rhetoric and lack of rigorous analysis. Even their spending of trillions for the two consecutive elections will be like pouring the water into the desert. And tragically the people again have to carry the burden made on their seemingly restless shoulders.
Based on the above comical and tragic stories it is not an exaggeration to say that we are with the sound mind just and only need to do our best, hoping that the student gang fights and the presidential contest are actually only the partial representation of the country which intellectually, academically and morally has degraded into a lower stage. Hopefully, with the end of the election feast next month, new consciousness may come into our minds and enlighten our next steps.
Cut down children
Khairil Azhar
“How high does a sycamore grow,
We’ll never know if we cut it down.”
(Vanessa William)
Just call him Ucha. In one year of being third grader he always made the decisive goal to ensure his classmate team wining the match. With a very strong kick for his age and high determination he had been an unchangeable player. Nobody concerned anymore of how he had been a very spoiled and disorganized student in the classroom at the beginning of the academic year. Ucha had been a hero among his classmates and won admiration.
But he was a loser in the eyes of his parents. His mom would let the 8 years old Ucha cross alone in a crowded and dangerous street in Blok M area and copiously paid more attention to his 11 years old brother. Ucha’s birthday is always an ordinary day when his older brother gets what he dreams about. The reason is fairly simple: Ucha never satisfies them with good remarks at school in any subjects. He has just been a burden and no one!
I and my compatriot homeroom teacher painfully tried to persuade his mom to open the possible gateway, to realize the golden side unrevealed of him that he is kinesthetically well built. And it was not once but at any single moment we met each other. There were promises (such as sending him to a football school) and a little effort for a while but till the end of the academic year nothing changed.
And nowadays, at the end of his fourth grade year, Ucha plays poorer and almost sidelined by his classmates. He has been really no one. His kinesthetic talent has been washed away when math, English, or any other “important” subjects in his parents’ mind have made his individual and social behavior more intolerable. “He has been cut down” says Vanessa Williams and no one knows when his raising up comes again.
Ucha is not the only case of course. There are thousands or even a million, based on the latest data given by ISSE, UN or Indonesian education department. The children, who are so-called the ones with special needs, have been abandoned and sidelined.
“But it is not an impossible mission,” said Pak Cipto, a teacher and principal of a school for special need children in Semarang, in a related seminar held for the teachers at Lazuardi School, on Friday, 22 May 2009. And the most important key is about how to make the parents realize the real fact about their children, not only the unfilled part of the glass but also the filled one regardless its amount.
“Take a look at Karisma, a blind-born,” said he. “He has been recorded at MURI (Indonesian Record Museum) for having been able to sing continuously more than 500 songs in five days.” We also have to see Lionel Messi, the Argentine most famous football player nowadays. With averagely smaller body size compared to his compatriots, he has been one of the best in the world and no body looks at how difficult he was in his early childhood anymore.
“The parents,” suggested Pak Cipto, “must leave any possible mind to blame. They must start with thanking the God and do the challenging and most rewarding duty in their lives.” Even hoping and expecting the others is a defeat and makes them powerless. “Please put in mind that the children actually are worthy as their peers. We are the parents who are still deaf and blind.”
And it is possibly about the standard of happiness. Most parents somehow have been dictated to expect a common branded joy, to do what can be called mimicry, to have the same thing what the others have. They then forget the differences and uniqueness, the infinite secret of creation. There should be no worse or better fate. It is actually the way we look will ensure us spotting the hidden diamond.
That is why Pearl S. Buck, the literary Nobel winner, in her The Good Earth, showed eloquently how a helpless daughter of Wang Lung gave him more happiness than his other children when he said, “”Well, and that poor fool of mine brings me more comfort than all the others put together.” His oldest son was busy with his books and luxury image and ask him for more and more things; his second son at the end wanted to sell the good earth he had painfully exerted patch by patch; and his only daughter with a sound mind left him to be at her husband’s house as the tradition required. There then left the poor fool who always smiled at any single moment he looked at her and never demanded anything.
Pearl S. Buck was of course talking about the very extreme of an intolerable condition. But it is probably what the people like to say as wisdom, a view to put everything proportionally. Because in the better facilitated life nowadays, the prevalence of the children with autism, for example, contrarily is increasing with almost a child among a thousand. Please compare it with the condition when Pearl S. Buck did her research in China for the novel almost a hundred years ago!
And it is almost impossible to share some of the burden to the government nowadays. Pak Cipto, for instance, had a good story about this. Although the school where he works is a state-owned school, he had bad experience at once. The school had only received the minimum annual budget and aid before he made it famous and more promising. But after his effort to “sell” the creativity of his mostly lower IQ tested students had become a success, the officials competed to offer helps. But eventually Pak Cipto has still to manage most affairs himself to make sure his three hundred children do their best.
That is why, after all, the parents should move up and make a difference. Or it is the society must do a change. And what a relief when in the first time I worked for an inclusive school, most of the students factually had been endorsed to treat their special need peers as they do to the others. I do believe, it was not only the teachers participating to create this atmosphere, but also the parents did. With better consciousness and being knowledgeable they however have successfully given broader space for the special ones to take part in the world.
Someday, when the time comes for Charita, another special girl, her ability to do use a computer much better than her so-called normal classmates will be appropriately appreciated. Her parents, who still half-believe in the fact and keep looking at the half emptiness of the cup may open their eyes wider to look at what Thomas Alfa Edison did or how Hee Ah Lee hypnotized her audience.
They are also not robots for sure. We are unnecessarily to do what has been done to William James Sidis, one of the most genius American along the time. As if he had been an experimental mouse, Sidis was successfully engineered by his psychologist father to be able writing an anatomy paper in his five; introducing a new algorithm in his eight; and entering Harvard University in his eleven and spoke about the four dimensional organism.
But was he happy in his life? Publicity made him contrarily alienated from himself. Math at the end made him repugnant and left it forever. He did not finish his university degree and ran away. In 1944 he died being jobless, dissocialized and poor. He then has been an anti-climax of what his father wrote in Philistine and Genius, that someone can be formed and engineered psychologically.
Sidis in the end was also a true human being and would be remaining longer as one of the best in case of his father did not cut him down.
The writer is currently a teacher at Lazuardi Global Islamic School – Cinere (an inclusive school). He can be reached at besoreal@gmail.com.
“How high does a sycamore grow,
We’ll never know if we cut it down.”
(Vanessa William)
Just call him Ucha. In one year of being third grader he always made the decisive goal to ensure his classmate team wining the match. With a very strong kick for his age and high determination he had been an unchangeable player. Nobody concerned anymore of how he had been a very spoiled and disorganized student in the classroom at the beginning of the academic year. Ucha had been a hero among his classmates and won admiration.
But he was a loser in the eyes of his parents. His mom would let the 8 years old Ucha cross alone in a crowded and dangerous street in Blok M area and copiously paid more attention to his 11 years old brother. Ucha’s birthday is always an ordinary day when his older brother gets what he dreams about. The reason is fairly simple: Ucha never satisfies them with good remarks at school in any subjects. He has just been a burden and no one!
I and my compatriot homeroom teacher painfully tried to persuade his mom to open the possible gateway, to realize the golden side unrevealed of him that he is kinesthetically well built. And it was not once but at any single moment we met each other. There were promises (such as sending him to a football school) and a little effort for a while but till the end of the academic year nothing changed.
And nowadays, at the end of his fourth grade year, Ucha plays poorer and almost sidelined by his classmates. He has been really no one. His kinesthetic talent has been washed away when math, English, or any other “important” subjects in his parents’ mind have made his individual and social behavior more intolerable. “He has been cut down” says Vanessa Williams and no one knows when his raising up comes again.
Ucha is not the only case of course. There are thousands or even a million, based on the latest data given by ISSE, UN or Indonesian education department. The children, who are so-called the ones with special needs, have been abandoned and sidelined.
“But it is not an impossible mission,” said Pak Cipto, a teacher and principal of a school for special need children in Semarang, in a related seminar held for the teachers at Lazuardi School, on Friday, 22 May 2009. And the most important key is about how to make the parents realize the real fact about their children, not only the unfilled part of the glass but also the filled one regardless its amount.
“Take a look at Karisma, a blind-born,” said he. “He has been recorded at MURI (Indonesian Record Museum) for having been able to sing continuously more than 500 songs in five days.” We also have to see Lionel Messi, the Argentine most famous football player nowadays. With averagely smaller body size compared to his compatriots, he has been one of the best in the world and no body looks at how difficult he was in his early childhood anymore.
“The parents,” suggested Pak Cipto, “must leave any possible mind to blame. They must start with thanking the God and do the challenging and most rewarding duty in their lives.” Even hoping and expecting the others is a defeat and makes them powerless. “Please put in mind that the children actually are worthy as their peers. We are the parents who are still deaf and blind.”
And it is possibly about the standard of happiness. Most parents somehow have been dictated to expect a common branded joy, to do what can be called mimicry, to have the same thing what the others have. They then forget the differences and uniqueness, the infinite secret of creation. There should be no worse or better fate. It is actually the way we look will ensure us spotting the hidden diamond.
That is why Pearl S. Buck, the literary Nobel winner, in her The Good Earth, showed eloquently how a helpless daughter of Wang Lung gave him more happiness than his other children when he said, “”Well, and that poor fool of mine brings me more comfort than all the others put together.” His oldest son was busy with his books and luxury image and ask him for more and more things; his second son at the end wanted to sell the good earth he had painfully exerted patch by patch; and his only daughter with a sound mind left him to be at her husband’s house as the tradition required. There then left the poor fool who always smiled at any single moment he looked at her and never demanded anything.
Pearl S. Buck was of course talking about the very extreme of an intolerable condition. But it is probably what the people like to say as wisdom, a view to put everything proportionally. Because in the better facilitated life nowadays, the prevalence of the children with autism, for example, contrarily is increasing with almost a child among a thousand. Please compare it with the condition when Pearl S. Buck did her research in China for the novel almost a hundred years ago!
And it is almost impossible to share some of the burden to the government nowadays. Pak Cipto, for instance, had a good story about this. Although the school where he works is a state-owned school, he had bad experience at once. The school had only received the minimum annual budget and aid before he made it famous and more promising. But after his effort to “sell” the creativity of his mostly lower IQ tested students had become a success, the officials competed to offer helps. But eventually Pak Cipto has still to manage most affairs himself to make sure his three hundred children do their best.
That is why, after all, the parents should move up and make a difference. Or it is the society must do a change. And what a relief when in the first time I worked for an inclusive school, most of the students factually had been endorsed to treat their special need peers as they do to the others. I do believe, it was not only the teachers participating to create this atmosphere, but also the parents did. With better consciousness and being knowledgeable they however have successfully given broader space for the special ones to take part in the world.
Someday, when the time comes for Charita, another special girl, her ability to do use a computer much better than her so-called normal classmates will be appropriately appreciated. Her parents, who still half-believe in the fact and keep looking at the half emptiness of the cup may open their eyes wider to look at what Thomas Alfa Edison did or how Hee Ah Lee hypnotized her audience.
They are also not robots for sure. We are unnecessarily to do what has been done to William James Sidis, one of the most genius American along the time. As if he had been an experimental mouse, Sidis was successfully engineered by his psychologist father to be able writing an anatomy paper in his five; introducing a new algorithm in his eight; and entering Harvard University in his eleven and spoke about the four dimensional organism.
But was he happy in his life? Publicity made him contrarily alienated from himself. Math at the end made him repugnant and left it forever. He did not finish his university degree and ran away. In 1944 he died being jobless, dissocialized and poor. He then has been an anti-climax of what his father wrote in Philistine and Genius, that someone can be formed and engineered psychologically.
Sidis in the end was also a true human being and would be remaining longer as one of the best in case of his father did not cut him down.
The writer is currently a teacher at Lazuardi Global Islamic School – Cinere (an inclusive school). He can be reached at besoreal@gmail.com.
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