Women vs. fundamentalism
Women’s movement vs. fundamentalist; lessons from Iran
Recently, the women’s movements in Indonesia have been facing a giant challenge from the fundamentalists. Campaigning for the anti porn bill framing women as the source of the problem, the fundamentalists have tactically pull the entire related discussion on women’s movements as anti morality and even religion because the fundamentalists emphasize their promotion based on morality and religious piety. Additionally, capturing women as an entity behind the rise of the porn phenomena suggests that the women’s movements in Indonesia call women to bravely show the immorally and religiously bad conducts; and this is an adequately strong reason for the fundamentalists to impede the women’s movements.
The noticeable angle is that the fundamentalists often use women’s issue as a turning point to design a theocratic state. Despite its simple for the fundamentalists to play with some religion-based rules to control women’s area –even few of the rules are written down– some fundamentalist ideas are easily pervasive among women’s lives. Jan Goodwin’s Price of Honor; Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic Word (1995) clearly documented the influence of the fundamentalist ideas that have been contagious among the country which had began from women groups. In Iran, for instance, since the theocratic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini controlled the country under the conservative Islamic schemes, some Iranian women asserted to initiate expressing their sense of Islam with some new customs such as wearing burgah, going to, staying and gathering in mosques more intensively, etc.
How can the women’s movements survive in this game? Instead some women imitated the fundamentalist ideas, some of them, particularly from the feminist groups, provide a crucial lesson that may inspire the women’s movements in Indonesia how to persist evolution from the fittest against the fundamentalists.
Since Ayatollah Khomeini sponsored the 1979 Revolution and developed the Islamic Republic of Iran, a lot of feminists within the country decided to live in some western countries such as UK, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Canada, and USA. They tried to assert not only avoiding the hard circumstances under the fundamentalist but also designing some genuine agendas to protect the Iranian women from the fundamentalist influences. A serial sarcastically comical book from Mirjani Satrapi, Perseapolis, richly portrays the journey of the Iranian feminists to the western countries.
Living in the western countries unlocked their sensibility toward feminism particularly within their country; then they productively fashioned some internationally theoretical and practical actions. It is no wonder that there are hundred internationally-based Iranian feminist organizations in the western countries with numerous programs on women and fundamentalism. These organizations are politically and academically supported by the western scholars. This has been a vital way for the Iranian feminists to show their existence to face the fundamentalist power.
The Iranian feminists living abroad then pull out their programs through weaving networks with some Iranian feminists struggling from their intern-country. In addition to providing some scholarship and other supporting finance for nationally-based feminist activists to broaden their knowledge, they also escorted the development of the western-Iranian feminist cooperation. As a result, there are thousand analytical studies about Iranian women and feminist including its correlation with fundamentalism. Further, the cooperation is also significant to change Westerner’s assumptions, prejudices, and stereotypes about Iran (Mahsa Shekarloo, 2006). In this regard, we can learn another lesson from the Iranian feminist to live survival vis-à-vis the fundamentalist regime.
These enormous Westerner’s studies on Iranian women encourage the Iranian feminists struggling in the country, whether from universities or non governmental organizations to not only actively study this subject but also keep their spirit of feminist movement up face-to-face to the fundamentalist influences. They dug some blessings in disguise of living under the fundamentalist rules to protect women from the subordinations, stereotypes and violence. Some of them develop community-based organizations to strengthen their position. A mutual coincidence when the feminist programs are internationally acknowledged, which was symbolically addressed by the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi, the intrepid Iranian human rights lawyer. Ziba Mir-Hosseini (2003) said that the Nobel will strengthen a particular set of forces in Iran’s long and arduous transition from theocracy to democracy.
These Iranian feminist’s efforts have two main strong orientations of both calling the international attention and alerting to the national fundamentalist regime. In this regard, finally, some elements of the women’s movements in Indonesia can creatively imitate these efforts. First of all, they must be aware of and critical to the ongoing situation regarding fundamentalism. This awareness then leads us to set up some powerful actions; and some lessons from the Iranian feminists should be very intriguing encouragement to present our existence against the fundamentalist waves then further contribute to democracy in Indonesia. (source: the jakarta post, july 25 2006)
c: farid muttaqin 2006 (fm181405@ohio.edu)
Vanquishing Women: Toward the Construction of a Conservative Religious State
Efforts to promote women’s rights in Indonesia are now in danger. After the reform movement, little fresh wind offered a promise of good opportunities for women’s rights. Nowadays, however, it has been gradually led to a worse situation. Now, we might forget the idea of affirmative action in politics to meet the 30% quota for women as legislation member candidates, despite our claim a couple of years ago that there was an awakening of Indonesian women in politics. Now, we might forget that we could formulate the Anti-Domestic Violence Act, representing a revolutionary picture of the Indonesian women’s movement. The Act has changed the domestic domain, which inspires domestic violence against women more politically and legally protective. The Act also has abrogated many misjudgments about women’s issues, including religious biases licensing husbands to perpetrate marital rape. Under the Act, marital rape becomes a type of violence against women; a husband perpetrating this violence acts against the law.
Nevertheless, despite our hard work, some conservative religious groups have been systematically attempting to foster conservative religious perspectives as a fundamental value of our state through the marginalization of women. In other words, women marginalization is a crucial way for the conservative groups to promote the idea of conservative religious state. If this process continues, it is possible that Indonesia could become a conservative religious state.
Based on a textually-interpreted religious doctrine, the trial to vanquish women as a prerequisite step to establish a conservative religious state began around 1998 when the Indonesian Islamic Community Congress III declared a restriction on women as presidents. Although the declaration has encouraged the latent debate on this topic, it could not strongly enforce the idea of religious conservatives in our political public discourse. However, I argue that it was a good way to make Indonesians aware of the political existence of conservative groups. Making such a declaration was a deliberate and tactical way to measure the political power of both the conservative groups and the liberal groups.
Some conservative groups spread their conservative ideas through vanquishing women around districts in Indonesia. They approached local grass root groups. Through collusion with local governments, they capitalized people’s despair toward the central government that has failed to provide a better situation after the reform. Taking advantage of regional autonomy, the local government had the independence to create public policies; they promoted a certain rule that accommodated local people’s needs for an Islamic Syariah movement. In this regard, they often utilize women’s issues to decorate their Syariah actions. Local governments of Padang, Tasikmalaya, Jember, Cianjur, and other districts have tried to construct the Syariah law. Now it has brought about the paramount debate, particularly after the city government of Tangerang developed a local anti-prostitution law that blames women as the origin of the prostitution problem.
At the national level, conservative groups use national institutions, including governmental institution like Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) as a vehicle to influence the decision making process on Islamic issues. In early 2005, MUI published a controversial fatwa on anti-liberalism, pluralism and secularism to restrict the rise of liberal movements. Although indirectly there is no correlation between the fatwa and women’s movement, but promoting women’s rights is seen as a liberal action; the main strategy of this action is to campaign for a religious doctrinal reinterpretation or cultural change. In addition, it is somewhat impossible to represent gender equality in Indonesian society without doing critical religious reinterpretation, especially since some gender-biased religious interpretations have inspired violence against women. Hence, taking advantage of women’s right promotion to critically reinterpret a lot of religious teachings can further reconstruct a liberal tradition of thought in several fields. In this case, the fatwa influenced the women’s right efforts.
The promotion of conservative religious ideas by vanquishing women seems clearer after the conservative groups strongly campaigned for the anti porn bill. They even blasphemed the group of women activist who try to refuse the bill as immoral and debauched women. They distinctly separated the opponents of the bill from the proponents by playing with moral issues so people will worry to follow the opponents. Again, if they can play this politic of morality, it is easier to conduct the next steps toward a conservative religious state in Indonesia.
We can discuss the driving forces behind the idea of using marginalization of women as a strategic turning point in the design of the Indonesian conservative religious state. First, conservative religious groups are typically gender-biased and dominant. The stereotype comes from the group’s literal approach on religious doctrines interpretation. Conservative religious groups commonly segregate women, especially in the public sphere. For instance, we can find the phenomena of polygamy in several conservative religious families. Additionally, blaming women as the culprit of some social problems, such as pornography and prostitution, has at least two relating targets. Emphasizing morality protection through the promotion of anti-pornography and prostitution, conservative groups are easy to label women “immoral” because that is a common view in our conservative religious community. Hence, the conservative groups only cultivate the public opinion that women are the evil behind these social problems.
A more important agenda than religious reasons is the “moral discourse” of pornography that blames women which is also related to the correlation between women and politics in the minds of conservative religious groups. The issue of morality in politics, especially regarding sexuality, is still taboo for Indonesians. People who do not agree with this promoted morality are blamed as immoral groups; in political race, morality determines people’s support.
This situation is similar with the fundamentalist movement in America, which promoted anti-feminism and anti-abortion ideals via the political race to design America as a theocratic Christian state (see William Saletan’s analysis about this subject in “Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War). Karen Armstrong in The Battle of God (2001: 312) described an intriguing theory on this subject; in particular, feminism and other women’s rights movements have “feminized” men and reduced men’s masculinity. In general, feminism has made people more feminine; in the mind of fundamentalists, it has changed their original political attitude from being aggressive to more accommodative. Maybe the political action of the religious conservatives in Indonesia is not really same as that of fundamentalists in America. However, we can underline the similar political spirit of both religious conservative groups in Indonesia and America to create a conservative religious state by vanquishing women and restricting the women’s movement.
In order to prevent the problem, women activists have to push their political orientation. They have to be aware that the ongoing discourse on anti-pornography and anti-prostitution is a political race. They shouldn’t be tempted by this political game. They should try to provide some evidence of the conservative group’s violence to re-attack their politic of morality. Further, women activists must focus to design new political strategies to face the problems including raising women’s awareness toward the political interest of conservative groups and unifying women from any social segments to express their political agendas.
Finally, I want to end this article with a question. Do we, people of Indonesia, want to have a conservative religious state? Before answering this question, we have to ponder and reflect on the possible condition that might occur under this type of state. Then, we need to decide carefully whether to follow or oppose the idea of using women as “martyrs” of religious conservative groups in their efforts to establish a conservative religious state in Indonesia. (source: the jakarta post, June 5 2006)
c: farid muttaqin 2006 (fm181405@ohio.edu)
Permalink Comments Off
A profile of a changing
I have never left my family
I was born in a family who strongly holds Islamic traditions. My father graduated from an Islamic boarding school. For more than seven years he learned Islamic studies especially Arabic language, Islamic jurisprudence, and Islamic history. After his graduation from the Islamic boarding school, he started teaching Arabic language and Islamic jurisprudence. He met my mother for the first time when he was a teacher in a basic Islamic school where my mother was one of the students of the school. At that time, my father was 21 years old and my mother was 15 years old. They decided to get married a year later. Four years after their marriage, my older sister was born and I was born four years later.
Five-times prayer, reading the Koran, one-month fasting in Ramadhan, the 9th month of Islamic year, and participating in many religious gatherings are obligation for all members of my family. However, my parents only directed their children not to leave these religious activities in term of fulfilling religious rites and divine obligations. They didn’t teach my sister and me how to correlate my religion to our daily activities when we interact with people. In this situation, I was a very pious kid to do all the ritual activities of Islam but I had lack of concern of some humanitarian problems around me.
Although my parents pay more attention to the ritual activities of religion, they have an open view in some of religious teachings. In this regard, they treat my sister and me in an equal caring. They have not decided a lot of gender roles based on sex. They give the same opportunity of education for all of us. In addition, even though my father considers as the main bread-winner and my mother is a housewife, they do not define this role division based on sex. Further, my father and my mother do not agree with polygamy while some Muslims who have a strong position in their society like my father usually support the polygamy. This situation significantly influenced me to have a sensitive view of gender relations and a concern to violence and inequality against women.
I enjoyed my childhood with my family in a small village in the western part of the island of Java. Javanese people which I am a part of them have very a strong familial relationship among others. In the past, they believed that it is better to live together with all members of family even though they are starving. They even acknowledge their far neighbors as members of their family. In this regard, all members of the society are considered as a member of a big family. They take many advantages from this situation. They can take care of the children whose parents immigrate to search jobs in other places. My parents took care of more than 5 children of my immigrating neighbors and my parents were not paid for this activity. This condition gave me a lesson how to interact generously with people around me. Further, this situation inspired me to be aware of and concerned to a lot of social problems around me.
When I was 12 years old, after my graduation from the elementary school, I had to leave my beloved family to continue my studies in an Islamic boarding school. The school was located in a small city and took 10 hours to get there from my hometown. It was the first time for me to live far away from my family. I was so sad and I thought that my parents were so cruel to sent me to a far place and made me live separately with them. For a couple of days, I was crying until finally I realized that I had to be strong emotionally and started to focus on my study. My sister also often advised me to be psychologically stronger to face the situation. I realized that I had chosen to study in the boarding school and it was for the sake of my future.
In the boarding school, I began to have a “new family”. I live in a dormitory where more than 30 male students lived together in a big place. We slept, ate, studied, chatted, and sometimes took bath together. We often shared foods and dresses. We lived as if we were in a big family. My social solidarity grew up significantly when I was in the boarding school. In addition, day-by-day, my memory toward my family became weaker and I then changed to be more independent, including in the way I was thinking. However, because we lived separately with female students, my view of gender relation tended to be gender-insensitive. I often look female students down and discriminated them as the second-lower group of Islamic society. This view became stronger after I studied some Islamic lessons in gender-biases methods of learning. My teacher in the Islamic boarding school often explained some Islamic teachings based on patriarchal view. Fortunately, when I was in the last level of my study, one of my teachers attracted me to have a critical thought even in religious teachings. He supported his students to study philosophy to have such critical and analytical view. For me, this was a blessing-in-disguise that finally led me to choose philosophy at the State Islamic University in Jakarta to pursue my bachelor degree.
My parents had never rejected my idea to study philosophy, even though they know that some students studying philosophy consider it as a religious dissident. It was a big blessing to get the approval from my parents to study philosophy because for a long time I religiously believed that parent’s approval indicates divine’s approval as Prophet Mohammad said. However, my mother often warned me not to leave all of the ritual activities of my religion especially 5-times prayer and reading the Koran. She often said that I can do everything I want as far as I do both rites. I am usually worried not to be able to fulfill my mother’s hope and afraid of the risks to be seditious child because of denying my mother’s warning.
Studying philosophy was a very crucial experience as it supported me to be more critical when I studied my religious teachings. It opened and broadened my Islamic views. I tried not to focus on the ritual activities as my fundamental religious piety and changed my focus on social-humanitarian activities. Additionally, I continued to live together with my friends in one house. My interaction in a close-relationship when I was in the University also sharpened my social sensitivity and solidarity. Further, I began to apply the critical thought that I got from studying philosophy to approach some Islamic teachings, including women’s issues. I usually discussed my new opinion on Islamic issues with my roommates. I often questioned some Islamic views regarding women’s right issues that I think are unequal, especially for women such as being a leader of prayer and preacher of Friday prayer, polygamy, leader of the family, etc.
When my parents then knew the changing of my views, they were so shocked and surprised. They felt that they failed to educate me to be a pious Muslim. However, they gave me an opportunity to discuss and share my new opinion on some Islamic teachings, and finally they understood my thoughts. I am so proud of them who trust me to have my own religious thoughts. Being trusted to have my own thoughts is the biggest blessing for me that I get from my parents and I feel to be the luckiest child to have such wonderful parents and family while a lot of children in my hometown do not get this blessing from their families. In this regard, even though I live far from my family, I used to feel that we still live together; I have never felt to live separately I have never left my family….
Responses to the contemporary religious movements
New Religious Movement in the US: Some Reading Responses
Timothy Miller from the University of Kansas USA in an article entitled “New Religious Movement in the United States: An Informal Introduction” outlined some interesting information on the phenomenon of new religious movement in America. I would like to highlight two aspects of his article. First is relating to the idea that new religious movements were considered to be a sect or a new cult from the perspective of mainstream religion. Second is regarding the causes of new religious movement.
The first highlighted issue is interesting because it illustrates the ambiguity of America which on one hand, celebrates liberal and open-minded views of all new phenomena including new religious movements but on the other hand, protests the existence of a new religious movement. Why do people of America seem to have the ambiguity? The first answer is regarding the fact that a lot of new religious movements used violence based on their beliefs like suicide, bombing, etc. However, in my opinion, another answer why a new religious movement, a sect, is not accepted is that it is too small to be religion.
A big religion or a religious movement should have a big name prophet, like Moses in Judaism, Jesus in Christianity and Mohammed in Islam. All mainstream religion community like Judaism, Christianity and Islam trust their religion because they trust the prophet of the religion. Meanwhile, the new religious movement usually has not had such a great name prophet. Hence, people of America or other countries, even though they have a liberal opinion, were reluctant to accept the phenomena of new religious movement.
A major religion also should have a holy book like Torah for Judaism, Bible for Christianity and Koran for Islam as the ultimate sources of teachings. It is difficult to accept a new religious movement that doesn’t have an ultimate book of teachings. Without the holy book, they do not have ultimate teachings that can lead their way of life.
Moreover, a big religion should have a big number of followers or congregation or ummah. People tend to believe a new phenomenon of truth after they see that a thousand people have been following that new truth. Hence, pioneers of a new religious movement often design a strategy to convince people by offering hope of progressiveness or happiness. Unfortunately, it is not easy way to collect followers because people often are suspicious trough of the new religious movement based on the record of violence conducted by several new religious movements.
However, when the new religious movements become bigger and bigger and they could present “new great name of prophet, holy book or number of congregation”, people will open their mind and start to believe it. An interesting example comes from Martin Luther’s Protestantism. In the first time of its emergence, they were protested by the old Catholicism and Luther was accused as a religious apostate. After Luther could convince his offering of renewal religion and flattered people to follow his idea, a lot of people began to be his follower and now the Protestantism became a big new religious movement trusted by many of people.
The second interesting information is about the causes of new religious movement. Miller mentions a number of causes of the increasing of new religious movement especially regarding some external factors such as social and economy situation and the policy of immigration of The Government of USA. I agree with his opinion describing the policy of the Government of USA as one of the biggest factors of new religious movements increasing. However, in my opinion, there are also internal factors for individuals joining new religious movement.
First of all is regarding the phenomena of “religion yes and organization of religion no”. It is a spiritual way when people prefer “to be religious than to have a religion” as in Martin Buber’s philosophy of religion. According to new religious movement initiators, it was time to leave the formal organization of religion like Christianity that for a long time could not give them spiritual happiness in their life. They were thirsty for spiritual satisfaction that they could not gain from the formal organization of religion. Therefore, a new religious movement is an escape gate to fill up their spiritual thirst.
Personal distressed condition is also an inspiring factor encouraging a new religious movement. On the one hand, this may be a problem of psychological illness when a person has no power to face a big problem of his/her life. But, the interesting issue is when he/she choose a religious movement to solve his/her problem. Hence, it is not only a psychological problem but also a spiritual problem. An interesting example came from the experience of Dr. Azhari, a terrorist, when he chose extremism to express his Islam. A long time ago, he was a successful scientist and had good life until his father died and other dark situations of his life emerged. The situation inspired him to search for a religious way that will heal him from the traumatic experience and he adopted a radical Islam as his new religious movement.
Religious narrow-mindedness is another factor leading to the increasing of new religious movements. In this term, people think that only a religion or a belief that can be a way of salvation. In this regard, we can catch the correlation between new religious movements and fundamentalism which has narrow-mindedness of belief as one of its characteristics. A person with a close-mindedness of belief tends to have an extreme way which often be chosen by some pioneers of new religious movement. In narrow-mindedness, they do not have alternative ways to solve their problem including problems of their belief or religion.
Finally, in conclusion, there were pull and push factors why new religious movements increased. While the pull factors are the external factors like social and economical condition, policies of the Government, increasing new religious movements in some parts of the world, etc, the push conditions came from internal individual problems, like spiritual, psychological, intellectual or educational background. Describing the internal problem inspiring new religious movements makes us to understand why people prefer to build or follow a new religious movement.
©farid muttaqin, 2006
The American Theocracy
In my opinion, it is difficult to explore American theocracy because it has a complicated relationship with many factors, such as the American philosophy of pragmatism and its political dynamic as well as American religion. However, Kevin Phillips in American Theocracy describes this subject very well by focusing on American theocracy in political practices. I would like to respond, not directly to Phillips’s description, but to the discussion of this subject.
It is surprising that in some parts of American political practices, the American government has experienced theocracy. In my opinion, this is an contradictory fact. On one hand, it is common for American people to follow a “modern” life style that is claimed to be far from any relating factors of religion. Besides, American is also popular as a secular community which separates religion from political practices. However, on the other hand, the Government could promote theocracy as a “spiritual” basis of their governance.
This appears to be a political game to attract most American people who have a conservative view of religion. Promoting a type of theocracy which increases during election time is done in order to overcome the problem of the different political parties. For example, Republican George W Bush could have gotten votes from people who initially would have voted for the Democratic candidate. People were able to change their opinion because “political theocracy” suggested a moral order with which people agree in opposition to what they called immoral actions, such as gay lifestyle, abortion, etc. In this regard, God (Theo) and religious spirit do not overwhelm the political theocracy practices. In The Guardian, it is stated that “Mr. Bush for years has been unashamedly talking about God, good and evil, religious belief and Christian faith. In an American context, … it merely means that a politician is saying to voters: I consider my-self to be a moral person..,” (The Guardian, November 10, 2004). Therefore, political theocracy is a political game regarding the common people’s interest in morality and religion as opposed to the effort to voice the word of God.
The political game of American theocracy is also related to contemporary global situations such as the increase of religious fundamentalism, especially in Islamic countries. In some periods of American politics, religious fundamentalism from any Islamic countries often hides other political dynamics. The tragedy of 9/11 is one of the biggest cases proving this situation. A lot of Americans are paranoid about the activities of Islamic fundamentalist groups any time violence erupts. The idea of theocracy in political America was meant to protect people from their fear. Therefore, the concept of theocracy is illustrated in President Bush’s crusade against Islamic fundamentalism just after 9/11.
In conclusion, the idea of American theocracy reflects more political interests and power than religious and spiritual reflection. It was a “smart step” from televangelist groups to encourage people to be supporters of their political interestsw.
©farid muttaqin, 2006
Religious Fundamentalism in the Globalization Era
What is globalization? In my opinion, globalization means that people in the whole world are unified in a global organization, a global world organization. As an organization, people have a relationship each other. People like my family in a small remote village in Indonesia like my family have correlation with people in a dynamic part of the world like members of Economic Hit Men (EHM) or the richest CEOs in New York City. In this mundane correlation, what is face fundamentalist religion like? Under what conditions does religious fundamentalism turn to the use of violence? Do perpetrators of such violence still voice the name of God in all of their actions?
Mark Juergensmeyer in his book, Terror in the Mind of God, offered some interesting discussions about fundamentalism in our current globalization. He described some facts and stories of religious fundamentalist actions such as the Hindu-Buddhist Asahara’s nerve gas terror in Tokyo, Islamist’s WTC explosion in New York, abortion clinic bombing in Alabama, and bin Laden’s 9/11 tragedy. The fundamentalist groups perpetrated these terror attacks by utilizing some high-tech devices.
Following this sophisticated use of technology for their actions identifies two realities. First, fundamentalists in recent times are people who have knowledge of and access to comprehensive modern products of technology. This allows their terrorist actions to be more sophisticated. Second, as a result, the effects of their attacks were tremendous and presented a long-time trauma among people. All people have the same possibility of being victims of these terrorist actions.
Juergensmeyer stated that in some of the diverse terrorist attacks by fundamentalist groups, America has been the biggest target. From this fact, we can discern the conditions inspiring the fundamentalist groups to use violence and terrors. The idea that terrorist actions express the battle for God against evil indicated that, in the minds of fundamentalists, America is the biggest place of evil. America is a trouble-maker in any crisis in the world. America dominates human life of the world. Terrorist attack against America will liberate the people of the world from the crisis. In addition, people of the world also despair with economic and political conditions in the recent globalization era that is dominated by America. Fundamentalists feel their religious community is under American attack when, for example, a lot of American products overwhelm their community. Therefore, some of terrorist actions against America were expressions of frustration. For this reason, terrorist attacks were not actually perpetrated in the name of God.
Some fundamentalist groups think that religion is the only solution to any problems of human beings in our contemporary globalization. As Juergensmeyer pointed out, using violence and terror actions means that fundamentalist groups reject the compromises with modern values that more liberal religious groups had done. Fundamentalists wanted to ensure people that attacking America as a symbol of progressive globalization and being separated with this kind modernity will save human beings from the horrible crisis. In addition, they convinced people that religion is the only solution for this crisis.
The fundamentalist view on religion as a solver of crisis seems very narrow. Crises in our contemporary globalization are tremendous and complicated. They overwhelm whole parts of our life, such as economy, politics, psychology, war and conflict etc. Back to the idea that globalization is unifying people throughout the world, fundamentalist groups should realize that religion can not answer the entire problem of the crisis. Globalization insists upon cooperation among people. It means that each group of people should take a part in trying to solve crisis. People have to build open dialogs to present understanding among them. They have to know that even though American capitalism and liberalism have presented some humanitarian problems, they have also presented progressiveness. On the other hand, even though religion is understood as an entity having humanitarian values, it still does not work to support progressiveness among people, especially in the economy. In this regard, terrorist attacks and violence used by fundamentalist groups are not the answer of our recent crisis in the globalization era. Open dialog is more significant to crisis solution because it emphasizes that we are one in a global organization.
©farid muttaqin, 2006
Religious Fundamentalism:
a Comparison between India and America
It is interesting to compare religious fundamentalism in India and America. In my opinion, there are a lot of similarities in the fundamentalist dynamics of both Hinduism in India and Christianity in America. Utilizing the media, especially television, to promote the idea of fundamentalism is one of the similarities. The Islamic challenge is another. In addition, fundamentalist groups in both countries have political interests. However, unlike America, India doesn’t face the problem of sects or the rise of new religious movements.
Television is very significant factor in disseminating any idea. It can attract people with some imagination that is appropriate to the dream of fundamentalism. “You walk through any neighborhood in Delhi at 6 or 7 a.m. and you will hear the sound of religious TV coming out of most homes,” claims Madhav Kant Mishra, executive director of the seven-month-old Sadhna religious channel. “People have gotten addicted to it.” (http://communalism.blogspot.com/2003/12/india-peddling-religion-on-tv.html). For this reason, fundamentalist groups in India also use television to campaign for Hindu fundamentalism. Some movies were produced to emphasize the sentiments of the Hindu community. Then television became more influential because it could touch the religious traditions of the Hindu community such as Mahabharata, Hindu rites and adorations. The fundamentalist groups then reinforced the sentiment of the Hindu community to increase Hindu nationalism. In my opinion, there are two main reasons for the increase of Hindu nationalism. The first is to develop Indian nationalism against Muslim separatist efforts and the second is to attract supporters of the political party or the Government. However, the development of Hindu nationalism has caused the problems of Hindu-Muslim conflict and India-Pakistan conflict that kills a lot of people.
Fundamentalist groups in America also utilized television to campaign for the idea of fundamentalism. They recognized that some television programs promoted by what they called secular humanism have significantly contributed to a supreme social, economic, moral, and religious crisis in America. The new generations of television from fundamentalist groups were eager to change the programs to ask people to return to the fundamental ideas of religion and morality (http://mb-soft.com/believe/text/fundamen.htm). Efforts to promote the idea of fundamentalism through television became more aggressive after they wanted to be involved in the political race. We can see this from the experience of Pat Robertson. As in India, the fundamentalist ideas in America increased as a reaction to Islamic fundamentalist attacks. However, in India the attacks came from a domestic Islamic group who wanted to separate from India, while in America the Islamic attack came from overseas. Further, the reaction of both India and America to the Islamic attacks expressed the idea of religious nationalism. In America, we can see it in President Bush’s crusade as a reaction to the 9/11 tragedy.
Fundamentalism in America also increased as a reaction to more competition from other religious sects which were the result of the immigration policy and the promotion of freedom of thought and expression. Hindu fundamentalism in India, however, is more stable. Even though the Government supports the freedom of expression, the strong religious and spiritual tradition of Indian people can hamper the increase of other religious movements.
In conclusion, the rising fundamentalism in India and America has been correlated with the increasing of television programs. The fundamentalist groups in both countries then tried to be involved in political dynamics which made the idea of fundamentalism stronger. This condition has the potential of erecting fundamentalism of religious nationalism, seen as important to protect people from Islamic fundamentalist groups. Islamic fundamentalism is a long-lived enemy of fundamentalist groups of both Hinduism in India and Christianity in America.
©farid muttaqin, 2006
Permalink Comments Off
