Do we need to teach other nations about tolerance?

Zacky Khairul Umam

Why do many among In­done­sian elites view their own coun­try with a su­pe­ri­or­ity syn­drome over those in the Mid­dle East and South Asia? This ten­dency has been more no­table since the po­lit­i­cal change and sec­tar­i­an­ism after the Arab Springs in 2011.

Some, for in­stance, be­lieve that In­done­sian so­ci­ety is bet­ter than those in the Mid­dle East and South Asia re­gard­ing plu­ral­ism, democ­racy, hos­pi­tal­ity and tol­er­ance. Coun­tries from Morocco to In­dia are per­ceived as re­gions full of con­flicts, vi­o­lence and dic­ta­tors.

Oth­ers view that In­done­sia is much bet­ter in main­tain­ing di­ver­sity across its huge ter­ri­tory span­ning the dis­tance from Lon­don to Is­tan­bul.

Sur­pris­ingly, many lead­ing in­tel­lec­tu­als and jour­nal­ists sup­port this opin­ion. As a re­sult, many among the pub­lic adopt this view too.

Vice Pres­i­dent Ma’ruf Amin re­cently stated, “In­dia has to learn about re­li­gious tol­er­ance from In­done­sia.” After the spo­radic vi­o­lence in some parts of the In­dian cap­i­tal New Delhi, he en­cour­ages In­dia to act like “us” — In­done­sia — in cre­at­ing tol­er­ance and moder­a­tion in our re­li­gious life. Ma’ruf spoke spon­ta­neously with­out ad­vice from ex­perts in the pol­i­tics and cul­tures of South Asia or the broader Mid­dle East.

As he rep­re­sents the voice of gov­ern­ment, it would bet­ter if the VP was well-equipped before giv­ing speeches. He could ap­point a spokesper­son for for­eign af­fairs. He is no longer the chair­man of an Is­lamic or­ga­ni­za­tion, nor merely a re­li­gious leader.

His opin­ions can af­fect bi­lat­eral re­la­tions. It would be a dif­fer­ent case if he had shared the above view in pri­vate with, for in­stance, the In­dian am­bas­sador.

Apart from such tech­niques of state­craft, we need to pon­der why we have this su­pe­ri­or­ity com­plex. Fur­ther, I am cu­ri­ous why some of us must ex­pose the su­pe­ri­or­ity of our own cul­ture that tries to con­ceal in­fe­ri­or­ity and fail­ure. Does our cul­ture of­fer end­less, im­mutable tol­er­ance? As if we have no prob­lems with mi­nori­ties and marginal­ized groups?

Rather than teach­ing other na­tions, we need to look at our­selves. We do have many acts of tol­er­ance. Our cul­tures are as dy­namic as our own lives.

But there is so much room to im­prove be­cause we have se­ri­ous prob­lems, such as la­tent vi­o­lence that can ex­plode any­time as amok or ram­page, sparked by dis­torted in­for­ma­tion and sta­te­orches­trated strat­egy, as has oc­curred too many times.

The rise of re­li­gious pop­ulism, in In­dia and many parts of the world, con­tin­ues to re­shape so­ci­eties with re­li­gious ma­jori­ties.

Po­lit­i­cal neg­li­gence to re­duce this re­li­gious re­flects gov­ern­ment ar­ro­gance that al­ways speaks in the name of tol­er­ance and re­li­gious moder­a­tion re­gard­less of re­al­ity.

In­done­sia has not yet dis­played im­pe­rial am­bi­tions to spread its pro­pa­ganda abroad. Its bet­ter fo­cus is in the ame­lio­ra­tion of civic cul­ture across the ar­chi­pel­ago as the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to im­prove the econ­omy and in­fra­struc­ture.

Be­sides, In­dian or Arab coun­tries have their own so­cial and po­lit­i­cal com­plex­i­ties and their unique his­to­ries.

They also have their ver­sion of tol­er­ance, in the past and present. They are also rich in hos­pi­tal­ity and forms of so­cial en­gage­ments.

There are many mod­els of coex­is­tence show­ing Hindu-Mus­lim sol­i­dar­ity in In­dia, Chris­tian-Mus­lim-Jewish col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Arab coun­tries or Iran, and so on. Like in the West, many news re­ports about sec­tar­ian con­flicts and vi­o­lence are not al­ways true.

We also need many com­pe­tent com­men­ta­tors and ad­vi­sors who are well-versed in the his­to­ries, lan­guages, cul­tures and pol­i­tics of the Mid­dle East and South Asia.

The lack of this co­hort of ex­perts con­trib­utes to our ig­no­rance of the mul­ti­ple re­al­i­ties of the re­gion and, fi­nally, to pro­duce par­tial knowl­edge and in­ac­cu­rate for­eign pol­icy.

I am proud of In­done­sia’s se­ri­ous en­gage­ment since around 2013 in mul­ti­lat­eral and bi­lat­eral ef­forts to help Afghanistan in the post-Tal­iban era.

The gov­ern­ment and Nahd­latul Ulama, the na­tion’s largest Is­lamic or­ga­ni­za­tion pre­vi­ously led by Ma’ruf, have shown their very pro­gres­sive ap­proach as co-­fa­cil­i­ta­tors to sup­port Afghanistan to re­gain peace and sta­bil­ity in the post-con­flict pe­riod.

In late Jan­uary, as For­eign Min­is­ter Retno LP Mar­sudi wrote com­pellingly in this news­pa­per on March 5, this in­ter­na­tional en­gage­ment even in­cluded the launch­ing of the strate­gic In­done­sia-Afghanistan Women’s Sol­i­dar­ity Net­work.

In as­sist­ing Afghanistan to reap its fu­ture peace and sta­bil­ity we don’t in­tend to teach its gov­ern­ment and cit­i­zens bla­tantly about our tol­er­ance, but to sup­port them to re­vive their her­itage and past cul­ture up to the pre­mod­ern pe­riod — the rich her­itage that also re­shaped Is­lamic his­tory in In­done­sia which val­orizes tol­er­ance and a so­phis­ti­cated in­tel­lec­tual tra­di­tion.

Shared and con­nected his­to­ries be­tween our coun­try and In­dia, Afghanistan, as well as the broader Mid­dle East, to some ex­tent should shape price­less val­ues to cre­ate our po­ten­tial soft power.

As a Mus­lim-ma­jor­ity coun­try, we should de­velop strongly the many cul­tural ties and his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions as a diplo­matic tool to per­suade and at­tract other coun­tries — which is po­ten­tially much more meaningful than preaching.

The Writer is a fellow at Abdurrahman Wahid Center for Peace and Humanities, University of Indonesia (UI). He is also a visiting fellow at the French School of Asian Studies in Jakarta and a PhD candidate in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Freie Universitaet Berlin.

Source: The Jakarta Post