Islam as
symbolic capital with tremendous power
|
Achmad Munjid ; President of the
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Community
in North
America from 2009 to 2011
|
JAKARTA
POST, 16 Agustus 2012
The holy
month of Ramadhan has essentially made Muslims more religious. Everyone is
“going Ramadhan”. Everybody should be happy.
“Everyone is wearing a jilbab today?” I asked a woman customer service officer at a cellular phone and internet provider office in Yogyakarta. It was the first Friday of Ramadhan.
“It’s our company’s policy, sir.”
“For everyone? How about non-Muslims?”
“Everyone is required by the company to wear Islamic dress during Ramadhan, including non-Muslims.”
My jaw dropped. Having been part of a minority in the US and Europe for eight years — although in a very different atmosphere — I didn’t ask if everyone was happy with that policy.
On the way back home, a motorist almost hit me. A few weeks before, another motorist actually hit me in a traffic accident. Apparently Ramadhan has nothing to do with how people drive in the street. In religious garb or miniskirts, many reckless drivers are running around as potential killers. According to one report, the number of road deaths in Indonesia has increased alarmingly to 48,400 in 2010 from 37,000 in 2005. The number might soar to 65,000 in 2020.
At home my eyes caught the most bothering headline of the week: The US$5.88 million Koran procurement scandal at the Religious Affairs Ministry. For immoral people, nothing is off limits.
How do we understand the relationship between the profound influence of religion on public life as seen during Ramadhan and vulgar immorality at all levels?
One scholar, Askari, devised an “Islamicity index” based on basic Muslim teachings such as equality, justice, fairness, freedom and trust. He arrived at a surprising conclusion: Most Islamic countries actually are not Islamic. The top 37 of 208 countries studied were non-Muslim, with New Zealand topping the list. With massive corruption, poor public services, huge economic inequalitues and discrimination against minorities, Indonesia was ranked 140th.
In Indonesia, as the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, Islam is more than just an identity. Especially since the rising economic and political Islamic tide in the 1990s, Islam has become a very powerful source of “capital”, to
follow Pierre Bourdieu.
Islam is a resource that effectively functions as social relation of power in the struggle for social recognition and shared values.
Unlike as in the 1980s and before, when most people preferred to stay away from anything Islamic, since the 1990s, more and more people have flocked to Islam. Islamic trends have dominated at schools, hospitals, associations, banks, media, music, fashion and newspapers, among other things.
The demand for Islamic preachers, training, books and facilities has been constantly increasing. More and more women, from street beggars to customer service agents to celebrities, are wearing jilbab.
Today Islam is a marketable symbolic capital with tremendous symbolic power.
Islam has become a categorical representation, a “signifier” for the ruling group. People take on anything Islamic to be part of the dominant order so as not to be the loser.
In this context, equality, justice, freedom, peace and other fundamental teachings or, say, the “signification” of Islam, is something else.
As reflected in the above illustrations, for some people, taking on Islamic attributes or Islamic signifiers is more about how to effectively navigate the web of competition and self-perpetuating hierarchy of domination.
Some people may not like or even disagree on their role in the puzzling constellation, but they are badly in need of job, more customers or political constituents. With this perspective, it should not be a surprise to find that many Islamic forms that go against Islamic norms.
It is certainly an irony but there is nothing new about it in the history of religion either.
Sufism emerged in the early 8th century as a spiritual movement when “everyone” in the Arabian peninsula was Muslim and when Islam became the dominant political power but lost its essential significance.
On the surface, Indonesia today is more religious, or more Islamic to be precise. Upon closer examination, however, especially under the global economic crisis and the dysfunctional state of the post-reform order, I suspect that actually we live in a nervous society.
This is reflected by our behavior in the street, our hyper consumption of new technology and increasing violence against minorities.
A recent survey by Kompas daily detailed the paradox of the Indonesian middle class who are economically very consumptive but politically and religiously conservative.
At the so-called “integrated Islamic schools”, many of us bombard our young generation with assignments and seclude them from “others”. We desperately try to present all kind of Islamic symbolism but forget Islamic principles.
What can this kind of Islam do in a nervous society, if not to make things only even worse?
Look at those porn scandal actors and high-ranking female graft suspects who suddenly wear jilbab or other Islamic attributes after police fetched them.
Notice how some Muslim hardliners, again, raid bars in South Jakarta in the name of Ramadhan.
This sacred month is the right moment for many of us to re-think, to reflect and to reorient our direction. When practiced by Prophet Muhammad and his early followers, Islam became the spirit, energy and vision for a moral and social transformation to create a just and peaceful world for all.
Why are we going in the opposite direction in the name of Islam? ●
“Everyone is wearing a jilbab today?” I asked a woman customer service officer at a cellular phone and internet provider office in Yogyakarta. It was the first Friday of Ramadhan.
“It’s our company’s policy, sir.”
“For everyone? How about non-Muslims?”
“Everyone is required by the company to wear Islamic dress during Ramadhan, including non-Muslims.”
My jaw dropped. Having been part of a minority in the US and Europe for eight years — although in a very different atmosphere — I didn’t ask if everyone was happy with that policy.
On the way back home, a motorist almost hit me. A few weeks before, another motorist actually hit me in a traffic accident. Apparently Ramadhan has nothing to do with how people drive in the street. In religious garb or miniskirts, many reckless drivers are running around as potential killers. According to one report, the number of road deaths in Indonesia has increased alarmingly to 48,400 in 2010 from 37,000 in 2005. The number might soar to 65,000 in 2020.
At home my eyes caught the most bothering headline of the week: The US$5.88 million Koran procurement scandal at the Religious Affairs Ministry. For immoral people, nothing is off limits.
How do we understand the relationship between the profound influence of religion on public life as seen during Ramadhan and vulgar immorality at all levels?
One scholar, Askari, devised an “Islamicity index” based on basic Muslim teachings such as equality, justice, fairness, freedom and trust. He arrived at a surprising conclusion: Most Islamic countries actually are not Islamic. The top 37 of 208 countries studied were non-Muslim, with New Zealand topping the list. With massive corruption, poor public services, huge economic inequalitues and discrimination against minorities, Indonesia was ranked 140th.
In Indonesia, as the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, Islam is more than just an identity. Especially since the rising economic and political Islamic tide in the 1990s, Islam has become a very powerful source of “capital”, to
follow Pierre Bourdieu.
Islam is a resource that effectively functions as social relation of power in the struggle for social recognition and shared values.
Unlike as in the 1980s and before, when most people preferred to stay away from anything Islamic, since the 1990s, more and more people have flocked to Islam. Islamic trends have dominated at schools, hospitals, associations, banks, media, music, fashion and newspapers, among other things.
The demand for Islamic preachers, training, books and facilities has been constantly increasing. More and more women, from street beggars to customer service agents to celebrities, are wearing jilbab.
Today Islam is a marketable symbolic capital with tremendous symbolic power.
Islam has become a categorical representation, a “signifier” for the ruling group. People take on anything Islamic to be part of the dominant order so as not to be the loser.
In this context, equality, justice, freedom, peace and other fundamental teachings or, say, the “signification” of Islam, is something else.
As reflected in the above illustrations, for some people, taking on Islamic attributes or Islamic signifiers is more about how to effectively navigate the web of competition and self-perpetuating hierarchy of domination.
Some people may not like or even disagree on their role in the puzzling constellation, but they are badly in need of job, more customers or political constituents. With this perspective, it should not be a surprise to find that many Islamic forms that go against Islamic norms.
It is certainly an irony but there is nothing new about it in the history of religion either.
Sufism emerged in the early 8th century as a spiritual movement when “everyone” in the Arabian peninsula was Muslim and when Islam became the dominant political power but lost its essential significance.
On the surface, Indonesia today is more religious, or more Islamic to be precise. Upon closer examination, however, especially under the global economic crisis and the dysfunctional state of the post-reform order, I suspect that actually we live in a nervous society.
This is reflected by our behavior in the street, our hyper consumption of new technology and increasing violence against minorities.
A recent survey by Kompas daily detailed the paradox of the Indonesian middle class who are economically very consumptive but politically and religiously conservative.
At the so-called “integrated Islamic schools”, many of us bombard our young generation with assignments and seclude them from “others”. We desperately try to present all kind of Islamic symbolism but forget Islamic principles.
What can this kind of Islam do in a nervous society, if not to make things only even worse?
Look at those porn scandal actors and high-ranking female graft suspects who suddenly wear jilbab or other Islamic attributes after police fetched them.
Notice how some Muslim hardliners, again, raid bars in South Jakarta in the name of Ramadhan.
This sacred month is the right moment for many of us to re-think, to reflect and to reorient our direction. When practiced by Prophet Muhammad and his early followers, Islam became the spirit, energy and vision for a moral and social transformation to create a just and peaceful world for all.
Why are we going in the opposite direction in the name of Islam? ●
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