Literacy Caliphate

KOMPAS/ANGGER PUTRANTO

Hundreds of supporters of Indonesian Hizbut Tahrir (HTI) are present in a HTI conference at the Bung Karno stadium, Jakarta, Sunday (2/6/2013). HTI encourages all Muslims to return to living under an Islamic Caliphate that enforces Islamic Sharia.

Building a knowledge-based civilization is an urgent need right now. Strengthening extremism with all of its variants, including intolerance and narratives of hatred, has triggered widespread concerns and calls for strengthening knowledge and literacy movements.

This is a deeply worrying fact. Unverified news or hoaxes are spread willy-nilly and often commented without any attempt of critical reflection and verification. Ironically, many people suddenly become extreme jihadis in responding to such gossipy news. Insults and obscenities flow freely against those with different views.

Relapsed radicals

A researcher once told me a story. He said that several deradicalized former terror convicts who have done their time and then reentered the society would sometimes act like vicious tigers who had just been reawakened from their slumber. They would act “viciously” once again in response to “hot issues”. On WhatsApp groups, these ex-combatants would sarcastically lob cruel insults without any semblance of self-control. They would even say that would “do the deed” for the sake of their beliefs, which they deemed were attacked and oppressed. They would then ask other group members, all of whom were former terror convicts, to be jihadis and seek noble deaths.

It has been proven that radical mindsets found their momentum as information technology, such as the internet, became increasingly popular. Through the internet, radical groups can spread their ideas. The onslaught of hoaxes has reached terrifying levels and even claimed lives. People are polarized and radical “sleeper cells” are awakened and spreading hatred.

It needs to be acknowledged that former terror convicts are prone to information spread in the cyberspace. The indoctrination they received from their mentors when they first entered their radical networks did not disappear despite them having gone through imprisonment. Radical views may still grip their minds and they can be easily triggered by reading radical writings online. Radical reading materials, be it in the form of books or online articles, may revive their radical thoughts. This is proof of their poor literacy: their emotions can easily take control of them in response to reading, without any foundation of deep scientific and critical thinking.

Such facts reaffirms that ideologies, to quote Ranya Ahmed (2008), strongly affects individual and group behaviors. It reaffirms the dictum of “one’s ideology determines one’s enemies”. Ideologies often have long-winded justifications for political moves. Worldviews determine decisions and actions, both violent and non-violent.

Civil way

In response to such extremism, we remain in need of deradicalization. A successful deradicalization, to quote Ian Chalmers in “Countering Violent Extremism in Indonesia” (2017), must focus on community-based actions. Communities have more “teeth” compared to government agencies. Community-based deradicalization can be more effective in approaching former jihadis and radicalism-exposed people, extending friendship toward them and asking them to participate in beneficial activities.

Therefore, deradicalization should not be a one-time activity without any follow-up. Former terror convicts may only be in a “short stop” from committing terror acts. If they find enablers, it will not be impossible for them to relapse to their old lives.

Thus far, the government’s deradicalization programs often apply a top-down approacg. Government policies are often carried out imperatively. Meanwhile, bottom-up programs are rare, including those initiated by former terror convicts.

The emergence of literary approaches for former terror convicts, as shown by a Jakarta-based organization with its Sovereign Books Home (Rumah Daulat Buku, or Rudalku) program, can serve as pionners in innovative deradicalization that hopefully can help counter terrorism in Indonesia.

Such a literary approach can be seen as a criticism on previous approaches that often do not tackle former terror convicts’ psyche and neglect their potentials to change as human beings. On the contrary, most deradicalization programs see former terror convicts as “bodies without souls” that only do habitual “rituals” without fostering their awareness to become mobilizers.

This is the portrait of our civil movement. Our civil society has proven capability of committing to activities that the government is neglecting in its role as the institution that serves the public at large; at the very least as an alternative discourse outside of the state’s bureaucracy in deradicalization program.

Nowadays and in the future, the role of non-state actors in deradicalization programs is gaining traction and acclaim. They may even have a bigger force than the state.

Extremism has become a serious threat for our country. This disease can contract anyone and may lead to our diversity being undermined into nothing more than symbolic without any spiritual meaning. We all should make a collective pledge to repopularize a “science-based tradition”.

Smart literacy

It is such a tradition that makes way for noble civilizations throughout mankind’s history despite the prevalence of shortsighted and dogmatic ideas. A civilization that brings forth nobility of the highest order (tsaqafah al-ulya) once manifested in the golden age of Islam. At the time, a tradition of science-based critical thinking became the foundation of society. Research is involved in processing rumors and news (kullu muddaIn mumtahan). Many great Islamic thinkers were born in this era, including al-Ghazali, Syafi’i, Ibnu Rusyd, Ibnu Khaldun and many others.

These ulemas chose the “path of silence” to do researches and writes volumes of books. Al-Ghazali, for instance, let go his academic position and became a recluse (uzlah) to read and write. He showed such an exemplary behavior of refusing to

present or celebrate himself colosally as a hero with solutions for all socio-political problems. No wonder, then, that the era was known for its great libraries, including the Baitul Hikmah in Baghdad. Caliphs race one another in building libraries, councils of knowledge and research agencies. It is this idea that I call the “literacy caliphate” that educate the people.

It is from such “literacy caliphates” that the world learnt how to apply strict verifications in processing knowledge (taftisy). One prominent example is the journey of Imam Bukhori, a trusted (tsiqoh) compiler of hadiths [records of Prophet Muhammad’s words and deed] famed for his strict verifications in compiling and selecting the hadiths. He spent years to compile various hadiths until his death at the age of 61 in Samarkand.

For centuries, Muslims have promoted the “heavenly requirement” of “iqra” or holistic reading. Such a noble requirement should be grounded through highly militant mobilization in order to educate the people. Therefore, no one will be easily triggered by extreme news and knowledge as they have been fortified with the tradition of smart literacy.

Said Aqil Siroj, General Chairman, Nahdlatul Ulama