Scrolling down the 9gag page and I found something interesting. It was a short cartoon serial called “The Crow” with a message that was nothing near my expectation. The cartoon started as a character asked the Crow, “does it ever upset you that good things happen to bad people?” The Crow then wisely answered, “answering that question requires morality to fit within a binary categorization.” The rest of it is less inspiring.
That line of words brings me back a week ago when I had a discussion, organized by Indonesia Berbicara. One of the big questions of that time was whether the state is doing enough to curtail the influence of dangerous (i.e. subversive) civil society.
One participant proposed an idea and I guessed her view was prevalent among many Indonesians, “the state should cooperate with MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia) to make sure that no civil society (civil society which has concern with religious affairs) with subversive idea could exist in our country.”
Do not get me wrong, I do not have any problem with MUI presence. What strucked me is the idea to empower one particular religious group with authority of the state to enforce their interpretation of a particular religion for all the believers. That kind of rights exactly resembles what radical group like FPI (Front Pembela Islam) is aspiring for all this time.
I did not make any comment at that time. However, I immediately pondered if it was the case, would not Indonesia fall into the category of an Islamist country? How about our secular identity, is not it too much involvement for a civil society (which MUI is basically one of) to co-govern the state? However intriguing all of the questions might be, many are out of my concern for this article.
This brings us back to the Crow’s answer. Such a proposed solution means giving one religious group a chance to be God – to define and separate the right from the wrong, the evil from the good side. Such a proposal, unfortunately, would bring disastrous impact upon our fragile and divided society. The division of society would be greater not only among different religious group, but among Moslems as well.
After all, Moslems as we know are divided into numerous groups with different interpretations of the same Quran and the same Hadits. With each of the group believes that they are the righteous one – the one that represent the divine power of God, giving one group power to rule the other would create a tension for sure.
I am not trying to say that particular religious group is dead-wrong, of course not, my point is that, rationally speaking, we cannot be 100% sure which group is the right one. And it is impossible to know either because as the Crow nicely put it, to accurately define something or someone as good or bad requires us to be able to create universal standard for morality. Can one mortal being even do that? I doubt so.
Feeling right or wrong is humane while defining the right and the wrong for the whole humanity is beyond what we are capable of. It is not just imprudent, but it is also arrogant and simply impossible.
As long as we do not have the universal standard, I will vote against any licensing of state authority for one of the religious group. Sounds like an idea of an infidel Westerner, like an anti-Islam thought? Nope. In fact, the wisdom has its root in an ancient and one of the oldest Islamic punditry. It is called the Murjites, a forgotten school of theologicians from the late seventh century Islamic world.
The school appears at a time when Moslem was split between several groups, most notably between the proto-Sunni and proto-Shiite, and each was claiming that their group is the rightful heir of Prophet Muhammad. Then, the conflict even descended into something chaotic and fighting was prevalent among them.