Source/Credit: The Jakarta Globe
By Simon Pitchforth | December 23, 2010
Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la la la la and further more la. I have no gift to bring, parumpa pum pum. Let’s hope (but not pray, as that can get you into all kinds of trouble in this blessed country at the moment) that things remain peaceful this festive season. To be frank, it’s not been a very good year for the country’s religious minorities. A few months ago, I even found myself joining a group of demonstrating Christians up at Monas as they protested against their increasing persecution.
I should stress that I myself am a non-believer, but that I believe it’s important for people to be able to sustain their delusions of heavenly redemption without being molested by the tragically confused, stick-wielding members of a rival religion (surely a worse experience than waking up on Christmas morning to find that Santa has clambered onto your roof, dropped his handsome, red felt trousers, sat on the chimney and let loose a volley of miniature Christmas puddings down onto the living room below).
Non-Muslim worship is indeed getting trickier here. For believers, plan A is obviously to build your own church (or temple, or synagogue … actually, scratch that last one, that’s not going to happen). Indonesian law enforces the tyranny of the religious majority.
So those of frustrated faiths turn to plan B, namely, inviting a few people over to their homes for a prayer session. Attempts at this have also resulted in a lot of purple-faced shouting by various types claiming that the practice is illegal (saying prayers at home, illegal?) and noisy (this complaint is certainly a case of “physician heal thyself”).
And so we move swiftly along to plan C, i.e. trudge into a muddy field, hope it doesn’t rain, and say a few prayers there. Alas, a couple of weeks after the aforementioned Christian demonstration that I attended, the vicar who had led the service was stabbed in the stomach as he led his flock in muddy worship.
This leaves, most chillingly of all, plan D, which has been offered to the much persecuted Islamic Ahmadiyah sect over in Lombok. The governor there can’t understand why this oppressed community hasn’t embraced with open arms an offer to relocate them all to a nearby island. Apartheid? Jewish ghettos? The gulag? Concentration camps? Well, you can select your own ghastly historical parallel.
Even if they decided to take up the offer, those really committed orthodox militant types could still boat over to the island and have a go at them. Although a more striking image of a suicide bomber wearing a green helmet with a crescent moon and star symbol on it climbing into a cannon and being shot onto the island from the mainland as a human cannonball has just poked its way into my head.
This is all getting a bit negative though. ’Tis the season of goodwill toward all men after all.
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a charity Christmas dinner, complete with a rather unconvincing Indonesian Santa Claus sporting a comedic beard that seemed to engulf his entire face. It may have been 30 degrees Celsius outside but I had no problem at all in scoffing up several colon-stretching plates of midwinter grub. Then came the entertainment. A group of kids from a local orphanage, who were the beneficiaries of the charity dinner, came up on stage to serenade us all with some jolly Christmas carols.
It was a touching moment made all the more impressive by the fact that the kids couldn’t speak a word of English and had clearly learned the carols phonetically, much like many of the rock cover bands that play in bars around town. With Indonesia, and indeed many other places, flushing Enlightenment philosophy down the toilet, I half expected some FPI stormtroopers to barge in and trash the tables of turkey.
Getting these presumably Muslim orphans to sing carols surely can’t be something they’d approve of.
It’s depressing isn’t it folks? And silly. As John Locke once noted, if human beings really are going to be judged by a god when they die, then you have to grant them the use of their own free will, so that they may choose a path through life from which such a judgment about them can then be made. Thus, the very nature of religious faith itself is contradicted by compulsion. There you go, apply a bit of logic to the situation and the problem is solved. Anyway, happy midwinter solstice to one and all. And pray hard for a peaceful New Year. Very hard indeed. Amen.
Read original post here: Metro Madness: ’Tis the Season To Worship in Fear
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