Muslims, conflicts, and wisdom

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.