I KNOW this is not Ramadan, a month when Muslims refrain from food and drink for the entire day. However, the wisdom that almost every ustaz or religious teachers keep telling us whenever this month is on our doorsteps is deeply etched in my mind.

We fast, so goes the wisdom, because we have to teach ourself how hard the life of poor people is. Fasting is an act of solidarity, an act of putting yourself in somebody else’s shoe. With fasting we learn how it feels like to be living under a back-breaking poverty.

Whether or not Muslims internalize and live up to this “sweet”, ideal and noble goal of fasting, I frankly don’t know.

However, even if Muslims fail to elevate themselves up to this high-moral standard, and live instead in a double-standard world (I mean they fast in Ramadan, yet show an excessive display of consumerism as the month nears its end, as we all know very well), the wisdom of fasting as a method to teach us how it feels like to be in “other’s shoe” is still very attractive to me.

Echoing an ancient wisdom that is almost shared by great sages the world over, the Prophet Muhammad is related to have said that any one of us is not considered to be a believing person, mu’min, until h/she does unto others what h/she wishes they do unto him/her.

If you feel offended because others address you in a way that discriminates you, don’t ever do it to them. Social life is predicated upon the principle of “reciprocity”. As a noted anthropologist Marcel Mauss pointed out in his classics, The Gift, human society is sustained among other things through myriad cultural edifices such as the concept of gift and exchange. What underpins these concepts is the very idea of reciprocity.

Arrogance, self-righteousness, and seeing ourself as the sole holder of key to the truth are obviously against this ethics.

Martin Buber, a prominent Jewish philosopher, maintained that there are two modes of communication: the “I-It” and “I-Thou” communications.

The “I-It” way of communicating with others is to treat them as a passive “other” in the same manner we treat animal or inanimate objects. Whereas “I-Thou” communication is to treat others as human being with a great respect. That is what animates the ethics of reciprocity that lies at the very foundation of any society–the ethics of “putting yourself in other’s shoe”.

WHEN a group of people who arrogate themselves the “holy” task of defending Islam, God and his Apostle attacked the allegedly “deviant” sect, Ahmadiyah, demolished its mosques, kicked out its members from their houses, sent woman and children of Ahmadi families into shelterless refuge, they showed to us the lack of this very ethics.

Were Ahmadiyah a predominant sect in Indonesia, practicing the similar persecution and repression, what would those attackers think?

The problem with Indonesian Muslims is that they live so long as a majority, cultivating the mindset of “supremacy” given their status as the predominant religious group in the country. It never occurs to them how it looks like to be in the reverse position. It is so striking to see that the discourse of “civil right” is markedly missing in the rhetoric of Sunni majority in Indonesia.

Of course there are Muslim advocacy groups that adopt this discourse with a great enthusiasm. They try to defend the right of Ahmadi people to exercise their freedom of conscience. Unfortunately, those “good Samaritans” run into a risk of being designated as “westernized Muslims” adopting the language of western civilization, i.e. the language of civil right.

It seems that the only way for Muslim to learn how important civil rights are is to live themselves as a minority. That is exactly what I see happening in the US now. Being minority, Muslim in the US seem to realize that the only way to defend their right is to jump into the bandwagon of civil right movement. The good example is CAIR, Council of American-Islamic Relations, presumably the largest Muslim civil right organization in the US.

However, while CAIR is so enthusiastic to defend Muslims who are discriminated against in the US, which is definitely a very important task to accomplish, it strikes me that it pays so little attention to the same discriminatory practices that are so rampant in Muslim world nowadays, especially against minority sect such as Ahmadiyah. I would imagine that it is a very strong message for the Muslim world if Muslim organizations in the West such as CAIR say categorically that discrimination and persecution of minority sects, in all its forms and for whatever reason, is unacceptable in the civilized world. CAIR and the likes are in the best position to tell Muslims outside the West about the evil consequence of discrimination for any society, Muslim included.

That is, I think, the very implementation of “putting yourself in other’s shoe”-ethics. That is the realization of a noble goal of fasting in Ramadan: to learn how it feels like to be discriminated against.

Can Muslims live up to this Islamic ethics?

THIS is a lingering question that keeps haunting me time and again: if I want to be a good Muslim, should I shut down my mind and submit myself totally to God? Can I be a good servant of God while still reserving some space for doubt, question, and skepticism?

The way Islam is presented in the modern discourse of Islamist literature is very interesting. Take for example the popular work by Abul A’la Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-i Islam-i in Pakistan, entitled Towards Understanding Islam. I stumbled upon this book long time ago while I was still a young student in madrasa in Indonesia.

Islam, in the Maududian discourse, means literally submission. “Muslim” means some one who submits and surrenders. Islam is an act of submission. God has laid down for humanity a set of rules that will lead them to the path of salvation. To be a Muslim means to submit yourself to God’s sovereignty.

Islam, for Maududi, is not a religion as it is usually understood by western people, i.e. a personal conviction and faith that has no bearing on the public life. Islam is a faith plus a system; a religion that unfolds in the history of humankind in the form of complete civilization.

The mission of the prophet, according to Maududi, is not simply to produce individuals who adhere to moral teachings, but also political system in the modern sense of the word. In other words, Muhammad, in Maududian discourse, is not merely a teacher of moral life in the way Buddha is, but also Constantine who is taking upon himself a tremendous task of erecting an empire, a political system, a state, a dawla.

Submission in Islam is not simply an act of personal piety, but rather a “public” act to submit to a certain divinely sanctioned system. That is the system of God. For people like Maududi, God is not a solitary “father” in the dark corner of the world who cares so little about the mundane affairs. God acts in the same manner as a CEO in the modern companies who is busy as hell with the minutiae of human affairs, ranging from state administration down to the trivial affairs such as how you enter the bathroom. (Yup, even your CEO won’t care how and where the hack you pee!)

God’s rule is so complete and comprehensive that it leaves no single aspect in human life unattended. To be a good Muslim is to place yourself under this complete and totalitarian rule of God. Yes, God has equipped humankind with the faculty of reason. But, watch out: reason is given by God to test human truthful allegiance to his rule.

If we use our mind to challenge and question divine rule, that amounts to an act of rebellion against divine sovereignty.

In other words, if you want to be a good Muslim, you have no choice but shut down your mind. Of course, Maududi and the likes would do their best to repudiate any accusation that Islam is a religion that contravenes human reason. He will show you, of course apologetically, that Islamic history is ripe with the best instances where reason and revelation coexists harmoniously producing the fruit of civilization that benefit all humankind. Even Europe owes Islamic civilizations a great deal of debt.

Sound good argument, doesn’t it?

But I don’t buy it, AT ALL. Yes, Muslim generations over centuries developed a rich and magnificent civilization. But the standard bearers of that civilization were people of totally different breed. They are the champions of humanism and rationalism. They were even the victim of people of yore whose religious view was not so different from Maududi: totalitarian, anti-intellectual, and so hostile to the “other”. If Muslim philosophers and scientists like Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Ibn Baja (Avempace) and many others were ever resurrected again from their grave, they would definitely disown people like Maududi outright!

JOHN Shelby Spong, a Christian theologian from the US, is one of my favorite writer. In a book that he published recently, Jesus for the Non-Religious, he said something about religion that resonates so deeply with my understanding of Islam. Listen to him as follows:

The Christianity that is now emerging in America and in the Third World is something with which I do not choose to be identified. I do not want to be filled with competing claims or disturbing anger. I do not want to worship a God that I cannot challenge, or be loyal to a tradition that requires me to shut down my mind. (p. 7)

Spong is definitely a courageous man of religion. He chooses a thorny path: a God we are able to challenge, not God who judges our allegiance to him by how far down the slope we can go to shut our mind down.

Of course, this is not what Maududi thinks about God. Maududi’s God is a totalitarian God. Spong’s God is a God of dialogue, a God with whom I can negotiate.

I submit to this type of God.

IF you think that a case can be won by shouting at your opponent, yelling frantically at his face, hurling desperately “holy” words such “allahu akbar” (God is great) at him, you are definitely wrong.

What you need to win a case is a persuasive argument, valid data, and a sober reasoning. Yelling “allahu akbar” at your opponent won’t tilt the scale to your side!

In other words, to speak louder than your opponent doesn’t make you holier than him.

I’ve been invited to many discussions and seminars back in Jakarta and sat next to Islamist activists in the panel. What struck me was this: they always speak as if they yell at his fellow from a long distance in the desert. They shouted, they yelled, they screamed as if I am a deaf person. The audience returned the move with a thunderous chant: ALLAHU AKBAR!

I saw the other day a conversation on TV between Riziq Shibab, the head of Front of Islam’s Defender (FPI) and a young cleric, Kiai Maman. It was broadcast on SCTV, one of a major TV channel in Jakarta. They engaged in a heated debate on the supposedly “deviant” sect, Ahmadiyah, and violent act launched by a “thug” that belongs to FPI against people who rallied on June 1st in National Park to defend the religious freedom.

They sat on a two opposing benches: Mr. Shihab represented the conservative camp; Mr. Maman spoke for those who defend the right of Ahmadiyah to exist and exercise their freedom of conscience.

Mr. Shihab shouted and shouted during the discussion at his interlocutor, as if he delivered a sermon from a pulpit during Friday prayer. It was so annoying to see a scene such this on TV. Mr. Shihab spoke to a fellow Muslim and he is supposed to address his fellow with respect and civility. I noticed that he never looked at the eye of his interlocutor. He spoke without paying any attention to his “opponent”. He kept interjecting and interrupting other’s speech. When the moderator tried to stop him, he paid no heed and just kept talking endlessly.

Is this man so stupid that he is not aware that Muslim scholars developed over centuries what is called the ethic of disputation, adab al-munazara? The way Mr. Shihab behaved on TV screen at that time gave a very bad image about Muslim and Islam. I just imagine what non-Muslim viewers would think about this man, yelling and shouting at his fellow Muslim, pretending that he is on “God’s” side so that he is apparently entitled to harass and ridicule others.

To be louder, Mr. Shihab, does not make you holier than your opponent. What you did is exactly what “enemies of Islam” expect from any Muslim to do. You confirm other’s image about Islam as a violent religion. People like you are always mad and furious when others accused Islam as religion of violence. But, do you realize that what you did conforms squarely to the image that others have back in their mind about Islam?

Do you think that you have done a great service to Islam by acting so madly like that, Mr. Shihab?

Don’t ever think that this is a unique scene that you will encounter only in Indonesia. No, not at all. I saw a video of a debate between “Islamist” and “secularist” camp that was conducted during Cairo International Book Fair in Egypt. The Islamist camp was represented by Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali, a noted Muslim cleric who is also known as the ideologue of Ikhwan al-Muslimin, while the secularist was represented by Dr. Faraj Fouda. This debate occurred many years ago (I forget when it exactly happened; I guess in early 90s).

What struck me from that debate was that the audience which seemed to be predominantly “anti-secularist” camp kept shouting and yelling whenever Dr. Fouda had his turn to speak. As some you may know, Dr. Fouda was killed not long after that debate because of his critical stance against Islamist groups in Egypt.

What is that supposed to mean? Why do those guys always shout whenever they address other people? Are they so insecure and engulfed in a distress and anxiety that they shout so desperately? Is this shouting just a sign of frustration? Or do they think that they are on a higher moral ground than others so that they think they speak from a “supremacist” position?

MY upbringing is far away from being “liberal” and latitudinarian. When I was a little child in “kampong” (village), my father was so harsh and strict in setting up a moral standard for me and my siblings. And this was not peculiar to my family; everybody else’s house followed the same rule. We lived in a village where “strict morality” was the only game in “town”. Piety rules in every aspect of our life.

Music, for example, is an anathema in my family, the reason being that it will lead you away from remembering God. The axis of believer’s life, so goes the wisdom of my devout family, is to remember and worship God. Anything that distracts you from this noble goal should be kept at bay. Anything that increases your proximity to God and remembering him should be welcome.

Except the music of Om Kalthoum, the Egyptian female singer whose exquisite and miraculous voice earned her the honorary title of “the star from the east”, kaukab al-sharq.

My father fell prey to the spell of Ms. Kalthoum. He acquired a modest collections of her album. But, he would not let himself indulge in this “mundane affair” every day. He only played Ms. Kalthoum’s recordings on Friday morning after he finished his lecture on Quranic exegesis at 7 am. He would spend two or three hours for Ms. Kalthoum before he left for a mosque for Friday prayer.

As my father rolled his days on this routine, my ear got used to Ms. Kalthoum’s music. This was the only sweet music I was lucky enough to be exposed to. Western or even Indonesian musics was far away from my house. I was caught by my father with a radio transistor listening to a “dangdut” music with my friend. My father was so enraged that he confiscated this sinful edifice and broke it into pieces.

My father had a list of “do and don’t”, and it grew as time went by and our society was corrupted in his eye by modern technology. He was very unhappy with any types of sports, particularly soccer. My father told me, relying on the authority of my grand-father who was a noted Islamic scholar, a faqih, that soccer is forbidden since it will distract you from your sole noble goal to worship God. Beside, soccer is an aimless game that suits non-believers’ life. Those who believe in God has better and higher cause to serve other than such frivolous affair.

Piety rules in every aspect of our life in the village. Every single act in our life was governed along divine rules promulgated in what is now called “Islamic shari’a”. My father never became member of an Islamic party that advocates the application of Islamic shari’a. But his entire life is imbued with and ruled by this divine law. For him, Islamic shari’a is not a political rhetoric and “ideologized” agenda that we see now so rampant among Islamists of various hues.

Islamic law was meticulously practiced in my family not out of political motive. It was not imposed by state apparatus. Shari’a was part of my father’s life because he chose voluntarily to do so. Nobody put gun on his head to live such life. No moral authority that polices his life. Every thing springs from his voluntary decision to live under the God’s rule.

Even though I suffered from this strict morality, I took pride in ever living such pious life. I never lamented my past upbringing in such stoic midst.

AS I contemplate on a current debate that is going on among the Islamists, I see a stark contrast between shari’a as advocated by those modern Islamists and shari’a as lived by my father. Shari’a in my father’s life embodies what Tarek Fatah termed in his latest book, Chasing Mirage, “the state of Islam” as opposed to “Islamic state”. Shari’a in the rhetoric of modern Islamists is part of their larger ideology to re-enact the Islamic state, a project that turns to be so elusive that it is nothing more than a mirage, as Mr. Fatah aptly put it.

The problem with shari’a as Islamists propose it is that it tends to be “solidified” into a fixed and rigid formula that is impervious to any critical examinations. Any critical inquiry will end up being accused as sedition against God, Islam, and the apostle. After all, shari’a as clothed in modern Islamist ideology relies on state authority for its realization. It is acted upon out of imposition, not of piety as I saw in the exemplary life of my father.

I say yes to shari’a as part of piety at home; but no to it as a political project!

A controversy broke out recently in Indonesia over a minority sect that originates in India, Ahmadiyah. It claims that its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is a prophet. As the majority of Muslim believe in the finality of Muhammad’s prophethood, this claim came as a big shock to them. It amount to dismantling the very foundation of Islam.

Members of the above mentioned sect still believe in Muhammad as the last prophet tasked by God to convey the last divine message to the humankind. However, in addition to this, they believe that the founder of the sect came as a “messiah”, in addition to being a prophet, whose task is to strengthen the prophecy of Muhammad and spread his message. He didn’t claim to bring new “covenant” or message from God.

They are also of the opinion that what ends with the death of Muhammad is not prophecy in general. Muhammad sealed off what they called “the prophecy that conveys a divine law”, nubuwwat al-tashri’. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the sect, is not a prophet in that sense; he is a prophet in the sense of rejuvenating the divine law propagated by Muhammad before. In other words, he is prophet/renewer, mujaddid.

The difference between orthodox Islam and Ahmadiyah on this particular issue is very thin. It is merely a matter of interpretation.

As a matter of fact, Ahmadiyah members adhere to the same doctrines and embrace the same rituals as other Muslim do. They pray five times a day facing to Ka’aba exactly in the same way as other Muslim do. They visit Mecca to fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam, hajj or pilgrimage. They fast in Ramadan as others do. They pay religious alms, zakat, in the same manner as other Muslim do.

They believe in Quran as their Holy Scripture. It’s a sheer lie to say that they have in their possession a Scripture other than Quran, as their opponents repeatedly allege.

The sole difference resides in the way they interpret the concept of prophecy. Different interpretation is not unknown in Islamic tradition. Yet, the majority of Muslim believe that Ahmadiyah has crossed the tolerable line of valid interpretation. They believe that Ahmadiyah’s doctrine of prophecy amounts to deviation from the true “path” of Islam. Hence their “silly” request that Ahmadiyah’s members declare themselves as non-Muslim and set up a new religion.

Muslim also believe that members of this sect has done a serious blasphemy to Islam as they deviate from the true doctrine of prophecy. In June 2005, a fatwa or religious edict has been issued by the Council of Indonesian Ulama (MUI) deeming this sect as “going astray” (sesat). Unfortunately, the fatwa has set in motion series of attacks and persecutions against the sect. Numbers of Ahmadiyah’s mosques have been demolished. Thousands of its member end up losing houses that shelter them.

The accusation that Ahmadiyah commits blasphemy against Islam strikes me as a sheer “non-sense”. To have a different interpretation about certain doctrines in Islam cannot be seen as blasphemy. The orthodox mullahs or ulama who see themselves as the guardian of “truth” always think that their interpretation embodies the truth of Islam itself. They deliberately efface the line demarcating between “religion” and “the discourse on religion”, between din and al-khithab al-dini, as Egpytian thinker Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd once aptly put. To challenge their interpretation is to be seen as unwarranted “dissent” against the truth of Islam. That is not enough. They tell people that to challenge their authority is tantamount to commit a blasphemy against Islam.

It is sad to see that many Muslims buy this kind of thought and argument. They are enraged to see ulama being challenged. They took to the street in protest against what they see as a mounting threat to Islam.

The identification of “Islam” with the existing interpretation that is predominant among Muslim is dangerous. It obviously results in silencing different point of views in Islam. It will smooth up ways for the conservatives to place themselves as the sole voice of Islam. To me, this is a stealth move to hijack Islam.

Muslim should speak up to challenge such move. To have a different interpretation is not and cannot be a blasphemy. It is the right of every Muslim to have their own views on Islam aired and it is also their right to be treated with great respect to voice a different view and interpretation.

The mullahs always tell Muslim that by allowing such open leeway to interpret Islam, Muslim society will end up enmeshed in chaos, fitna.

I say to you, my friends: Muslims are already in chaos now, no matter whether or not they are aware of this. The chaos comes about not because of the excess of freedom Muslim enjoy to interpret Islam in such manner that speaks to the very challenges they face nowadays. The chaos is a result of the deficit of freedom instead.

WHEN we were on a summer vacation in Indonesia last year, an experience occurred to me that still amazed me till now. It’s a kind of puzzle. As we landed in Jakarta, and my kids met with some relatives, they refused to speak English, even though some of them insisted on hearing my kids speak that “alien” language.

For some people down there in Jakarta, let alone in my kampong, to see kids speak English is exactly like American seeing Barack Obama wear that “strange” traditional attire from Kenya, his father’s home country, the other day. It’s so cute to see our kids speak other “foreign” languages. It’s even an exotic experience for some people.

When I visited my wife’s home town in Rembang, some of her relatives “provoked” my kids, Ben and Billy, to speak English. But Ben who apparently spoke English better than his sibling at that time refused politely the “stir” and said instead, “This is Indonesia, and it is not the right place to speak English”. People bursted in laugh at that time.

That experience was an amazing moment for me. How do kids understand the very notion that a language is closely bound to time and space; that a language is “glued” to certain place; that English is not supposed to be spoken in different context?

What amazed me was that my first son, Ben, seemed to be so shy to be noticed of as speaking English in Rembang. He tried so hard to retain his Indonesian language and related with other people around him in that language.

In nutshell, how do kid understand the concept of language’s spatiality, i.e. that a it is relevant as far as it is spoken in the right time and right place?

When we came back to Boston, it was just automatic that my kids seemed to undergo a kind of “mental switch” and spoke English again as nothing never happened, as if we’ve never been in Jakarta few days before. Now, I have a hard time to “push” them to speak Indonesian. Their teachers in school always alerted us to the importance of bilingualism for kid’s mental and, particularly, language skill. My wife is tirelessly trying to speak Indonesian language with them at home.

I envy my Chinese neighbors who always speak Mandarin with their children at home. I also envy my wife’s best friend from Israel who insists on speaking Hebrew with her children as soon as the school’s class is dismissed.

I see my Indonesian friends as lacking in this “language nationalism” that I see among Chinese and Israeli friends. To my best knowledge, all my friends’ children in Boston area have abandoned their native language.

The other day, my American neighbor envied as I speak at least four different languages (Indonesian, Arabic, English, plus my own native tongue, Javanese), while most of ordinary Americans like him speak just one language. I was proud to realize that to be bilingual or multilingual is rare “stuff” that few people are lucky enough to posses.

But, how about my children who seem to loose grip of our national tongue now? At least, my kid’s generation has already lost one language, i.e. the native language, bahasa daerah. I lament so miserably that many Javanese people of today who live outside the “Javanese cultural hemisphere” (Central and East Java) had abandoned their native tongue.

Can we, or at least I, reverse this lamentable course of event?