Honorary Doctorate and Indonesia-Saudi stories

Honorary Doctorate and Indonesia-Saudi stories
Khairil Azhar

Regarding the honorary doctorate for the Saudi King awarded by University of Indonesia, let’s start with a question, “What is Saudi Arabia for Indonesia and what is Indonesia for Saudi Arabia?” We will find that it is more than just the abuse over Indonesian migrant workers.

Before the massive supply of migrant workers, prior to the boom of petrodollars in Mideast in the mid of 20th century, Saudi Arabia was only Mecca and Medina for Indonesian Muslims. First, it was merely related to ritual affairs instead of occupation, political or etcetera. Mecca was simply the direction of facing in performing prayers and the place where haj pilgrimage done while Medina was a religious tourism place with its Islamic historical importance.

Second, Saudi Arabia was the destination for many Indonesian Muslim youth s to learn Islamic traditional disciplines, since many of Islamic great scholars with different schools of thought lived and taught in Masjid ‘l-Haram, Mecca. Even some of the scholars were originally from Indonesia such as the famous Sheikh Ahmad Khatib al-Minangkabawi. These scholars hence were not only acting as the intellectual references but also the determinant chains of Islamic link.

Third, amidst the struggle against colonialism, the role of Mecca as the meeting point of Muslims who performed haj pilgrimage as well as the site where progressive intellectualism might develop played a very pivotal role. Mecca became a home for the exchanges of thoughts and to significant extent the center for the dissemination of anti-colonialism.

That’s why, for example, such as recorded in the work of Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936), Dutch colonial rulers in Indonesia applied strict procedures for the ones who wanted to perform haj or go there for study. We can also see that the like Ahmad Dahlan (1869-1923), the founder of Muhammadiyah, Indonesian second largest Islamic organization, was an alumnus of the intellectual life in Mecca in the late of 19th century.

In the petrodollar era, the relation of Saudi Arabia and Indonesia has changed significantly. With its dominating economy, Saudi Arabia has become the promising destination for job seekers. Very unfortunate, however, what Indonesians can mostly do there is the lowest rank of domestic sectors such as being the housemaids and with very minimum assurance from Indonesian government itself.

And worse, as we know, Saudi Arabia is a country with human right problems: on women, minority, racism and legal justice. Human right organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been a long time listing cases after cases and never withdraw their standpoints till the present time.

In Saudis common sense, perhaps because the Islamic jurisprudence enacted there does not specifies it, certain occupations such as housemaid is closer in meaning to the word serf, al-‘abd. A housemaid, therefore, with her domestic works, is situated in a relation between a lord and a serf instead of between an employer and an employee with agreed and respected legal contract.

Deeper culturally, there is there xenophobia and racism. Based on the reports of the former workers in Saudi Arabia, for example, there is a kind of unreasonable fear of strangers or foreigners that makes the working relationship easily worsens. And it is certainly something very difficult, not to say impossible, to be changed with the current dominative relationship between Saudis and Indonesians.

Beside importing migrant workers from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia is also an exporter of Wahabism, a radical Islamic school of thought, which is the dominant religious teaching there. This sect was initially propagated by Muhammad ibn al-Wahhab (1703-1792) in 18th century and later his descendants—which are the second in prestige to al-Saud, the royal family—become the holders of Al ash-Sheikh, the country’s leading religious family.

This school of thought, for example, requires the state to enact all levels of Islamic law which are far more rigid than the other schools, comprising of private affairs (al-ahwal al-shakhsiyyah), economy (al-iqtisad), rituals (al-ibadat) and criminal and politics (al-jinayah wa al-siyasah). Officially, Saudi Arabia is taken to have applied all of these laws regardless the reports of human right groups that their implementation is selective: the elites or certain people can be easily saved from being punished.

With the petrodollars, the exporting relatively runs smoothly. In the position of “takers”, for example, many Indonesian Muslims tend to effortlessly forget the local Islamic culture and diversity—which to certain extent are different from the ones embraced in Saudi Arabia but are basically not contradicting universal Islamic values. Even many of opportunist Islamic leaders utilize the principle “aji mumpung”, taking an advantage without thinking of its risk.

Apart from what Mr. Gumilar, the Rector of University of Indonesia, has mentioned in his apology as the commendable services of the Saudi King to Idnonesia, the direct effect of the dissemination of Wahhabism is the radicalization of religious life while many also assume that it significantly contributes to the propagation of terrorism and religious anarchism. For the hardliners, Wahhabism is taken as the referred ideology and what is running in Saudi Arabia is taken as the model, less or more.

With all of these, at least, we are not the ones who can’t express gratitude and keen of looking at the empty part of the glass. It is merely the matter of appropriateness. Intellectual symbol should however for something empathetic instead of political.

The writer is a researcher at Paramadina Foundation, Jakarta.