The Piety of Citizenship Politics

Kompas/DIDIE SW

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The year 2018 constitutes a political year, with elections to take place simultaneously in numerous regions. West Java, Central Java and East Java are major battlegrounds for the candidates of powerful political parties to fight one another. Victory in these three provinces will be seen as a sign of strength going into the 2019 presidential election. Will it be possible for parties to exercise political piety, so as not to create havoc on the national political scene with socially divisive issues?

Will Kimlicka (2007) has studied multicultural politics by examining traditions observed in Turkey and in the Canadian province of Quebec. In Kimlicka\'s view, multicultural politics requires a spirit of mutual learning, respecting, sharing and accommodating various traditions growing in a country. Canada and Turkey are said to have succeeded in applying multicultural politics at the time. Now, unfortunately, Turkey is full of conflict.

I will base my point on Kimlicka\'s above-mentioned notion to explain what is meant by multicultural piety in the Indonesian context. Indonesia as a nation is growing and developing within a nation-state framework. The nation state is a necessity in line with progress, which results from developments in the public sphere.

Multicultural piety

The public sphere has to be protected against various forms of political hatred, and cultural hatred, because if it is not properly safeguarded, there is a risk of chaos. We frequently make the excuse that the Indonesian people have their own mechanism for settling crucial problems. However, it would not be wise to wait for social conflicts with many victims to happen, before local wisdom with its established social mechanisms is brought to bear on the conflict. That would be very tiring, to say the least.

The multicultural piety I have in mind is the willingness of every citizen, whatever their own culture, customs and traditions, to be willing to admit the existence of diversity. There is not claim to superiority. Instead, there is a willingness to learn, share and equip one another as Indonesian citizens.

No citizen should feel more Indonesian than another, or feel that his or her culture is better and thereby claim pretense to dominate Indonesian culture. Sharing experiences in cultural diversity is one of the keys to maintaining national unity amid the onslaught of various "foreign" cultures consuming this republic.

Middle Eastern culture is not synonymous with Islamic culture just because the Middle East has a predominantly Muslim population. Neither is American or European culture synonymous with Protestant or Catholic culture, because many of the people there are neither Protestant nor Catholic. Therefore, we must differentiate between what is called the Middle Eastern culture and the teaching of Islam. The same differentiation applies to American or European culture and Christianity.

Confusing Middle Eastern culture as a culture with Islam as the religion of rahmatan lil alamin (blessing for all mankind) causes what Buya Syafii Maarif likens to a bewildered man in the Arabian tradition who has lost his way, so that whatever comes from Arabia and the Middle East is always considered Islamic. The same assumption occurs when Samuel Huntington (1992) considers the entire American-European culture as a Christian culture through what he put forward as a clash of civilizations: Islam versus Christianity. In fact, Islam and the Middle East are distinctly different things. So are the American-European culture and Christianity.

The fundamental mistake of Huntington was to equate the Middle East with Islam and define America-Europe as Christian. That traditions from the Middle East influence Islam and vice versa is hard to deny, but equating them is a fatal mistake that leads to interreligious hatred all over the world. What Donald Trump did on Dec. 6, 2017, by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is the same silly form of saying that Israel is Jerusalem. In reality, Jerusalem is a holy city for three major religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Indonesia cannot tolerate what Trump did. Indonesia should not display the same stupidity as Trump. Its citizens should be immediately given an understanding of the diverse cultures that must be mutually appreciated. We should not use culture to punish others who are not in line with certain religions. All the trouble is caused by the basic mistake of conceiving of culture as a religion, which cannot be criticized by its adherents.

Therefore, a culturally aware citizenry should display multicultural political piety. Multicultural piety can be the glue for a diversity of cultures and traditions and help people recognize the diversity itself.

Citizens\' understanding of cultural diversity constitutes a necessity that will make this nation bigger. If we fail to develop the ability to appreciate, respect and recognize our cultural diversity, we will dwarf as a nation.

Political year

If we fail to recognize the need for multicultural political piety at the beginning of the “political year” of 2018, we are entertaining the risks posed by a spirit of hatred and arrogance and by the punishment of citizens over their political convictions.

Of course, we do not want 2018 be filled with a spirit of hatred among citizens over different preferences for regional political leaders. Any such tendencies must be immediately tackled, because the spirit of hatred has begun to emerge with various remarks in social media. The spirit of hatred ultimately punishes those with different political preferences. Takfiri (labelling others as infidels) against those with different political preferences will occur if we do not immediately promote the view that multicultural piety is necessary.

Each citizen has the right to his or her political stance and preferences. There can be no confusion about the legitimacy of political decisions as long as they are based on the conscious and critical choice of voters. It would be problematic if the determination of what is right was based on short-term accessory identity sentiment. What I mean by accessory identity is the populism that has now become a tendency in the cyber world and the political universe of Indonesia.

We have to dare to stop the manufacture of narrow populist identity barriers to be used in political campaigns in the regional elections of 2018. We as the Indonesian nation were born from a multicultural womb, which is a gift from God, as the wealth of this nation. Do not harm the diversity with scriptural texts and interpretations of hatred.

Hopefully, we can exercise multicultural political piety in 2018, so that the political tragedy of hating and killing each other as in the Middle East and in Europe or America will not infect Indonesia, which is a fertile land, easy to cultivate and abundant with natural resources. Indonesia is rahmatan lil alamin (a blessing for all mankind).

We appreciate political differences, because this is the dignity of a civilized democracy, not a democracy of hatred and insults.

Zuly Qodir

The writer is a sociologist of Muhammadiyah University of Yogyakarta and an expert on the presidential working unit for the implementation of the state ideology of Pancasila (UKP Pancasila)