The Jakarta Post | Mon, 02/15/2010 5:55 PM | Opinion
Ahmad Najib Burhani
Globalization is often perceived as Westernization, a growing influence of Western values in opposition or in competition with local values and identity. But in a country like Indonesia, globalization can also mean Arabization, a process of adopting Arab culture and traditions.
The growing membership of transnational organizations such as Hizb al-Tahrir, Ikhwan al-Muslimin, Wahhabism, Tablighi Jamaat, and Jamaah Islamiyah is perceived by some Indonesian Muslims as a threat of Arabization.
From a geographical perspective, considering these movements as agents of Arabization is not completely valid. The last two organizations are neither established in Arab countries nor have headquarters in the Middle East.
The Tablighi Jamaat was established in Pakistan and gained huge support and membership in Europe, while Jamaah Islamiyah is a clandestine movement with no clear base and membership. However, from a theological perspective these organizations have a lot of similarities, such as in the way of understanding and practicing religion.
In the last century, Arabization means Islamization and was not considered a threat. In term of religiosity, Arab Muslims were honored by Indonesian Muslims as big brothers. Whatever coming from them would be considered as a better form of Islam and would be absorbed as a process of re-Islamization.
Furthermore, for some village people in Indonesia, Arabic culture and language are seen as having aura of the sacred simply because the Koran is in Arabic, the Prophet is an Arab, and some of the saints who brought Islam to Indonesia were Arabs.
With the shrinking of the world because of globalization, there is a shift in the way Indonesian Muslims perceive Arabic culture and people. This shift is initiated by two factors: the growing number of centers of Islamic learning in non-Arab countries, particularly in the West and the easy access to the media particularly television and the Internet.
Previously, centers of Islamic learning were only in the Middle East such as Al-Azhar (Egypt), Mecca and Medina (Saudi Arabia), and Qum (Iran).
Nowadays, there are a number of rival institutions in Europe and North America such as Leiden (the Netherlands), the Sorbonne (France), the SOAS (London), Chicago (USA), and Montreal (Canada). The paramount position of Al-Azhar is challenged by such other centers as Chicago and McGill.
A number of ulema and Islamic scholars in Indonesia have not graduated from universities in Arab countries but from Europe and America. Nurcholish Madjid, Amien Rais, Ahmad Syafii Ma’arif, and Din Syamsuddin are among the
examples.
The consequence of this contestation to the centers of Islamic learning is the fragmentation of religious authority, a contest over who has authority to speak for Islam in Indonesia.
On the one hand, the Western-educated ulema claim that they have all the necessary knowledge and analytical devices to interpret the symbolic capital of Islam, to infer the correct meaning of the Koran and Hadith for this contemporary time and place. They claim that some of the Middle Eastern-educated ulema lack analytical tools and criticism in understanding Islam.
On the other hand, the Middle Eastern-educated ulema feel that they are more erudite in Islam than their rivals particularly in dealing with the sources in the Arabic language.
They even accuse the “Western-educated” ulema of having a malevolent tendency in studying Islam.
They are controlled by Western ideas which do not fit with Islam.
This debate between these two modes of scholarship is more academic in nature, although in several cases the debate was unhealthy and provoked violence.
This debate revolves around the kind of Islam that should be applied in Indonesia. Should people follow, borrowing Fariz Noor terminology, “Western-inspired” Islam or “Arab-derived” Islam?
The second reason of the shift is more popular in nature. A good example of this is my mom. She is a devout woman, a hajjah (has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina), and a religious teacher in a local mosque in a small village in East Java.
She graduated from a traditional pesantren (an Islamic boarding school) which gave her an intermediate level of the Arabic language.
Her background in the Arabic language, however, did not teach her about the diversity of Arab people and culture. For her, Arabic is Islamic. One day, during her visit to my brother’s house in Jakarta, she listened to an Arabic song on television that she thought was a religious song because the song used several religious terms, such as hubb (love) and ilah (God).
She was surprised and bewildered after realizing the song was sung by a belly dancer. Although this did not totally change her perception of Arabs, it gave her an awareness of the diversity of Arab culture.
The role of the media in portraying people and culture has a strong impact on how other people perceive them.
The bad habits of several Gulf or Arab princes, the naughty boys of a few Arab descendants in Indonesia, violent acts done by religious groups led by Arabs (e.g. the FPI), and the portrayal of Arabs as bakhil (stingy) undermine the noble image of the Arab in the eyes of ordinary Muslim people in Indonesia.
The deprivation of this image of the Arab in the eyes of common people in Indonesia does not mean the rise of the image of Western people.
The West is still identified with moral degradation. The solution for this is an effort to find a native identity, trying to create a new model of Islam that is Indonesian Islam which differs from Western Muslims and Arab Muslims.
The writer is a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and the Maarif Institute.
— JP
