[caption id="attachment_196992" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Image credit: Wikipedia.com"][/caption] Tonight, I'm looking out of the window. I've been thinking of what to write and suddenly this idea snapped in my mind: writing about any Indonesia-related topics that trouble my mind. I just think it'd be great to make other people (fellow Kompasianers, in particular) sit down for a while and ponder what this big nation has been undergoing so far. By its 65th anniversary, Indonesia should've been a great nation that "stands out of the crowd". Yes, we're great in terms of number. When it comes to several other aspects, however, Indonesia doesn't seem as great as it looks. The nation seems to be wrestling against an endless supply of issues. That really afflicts us as we're observing other nations are racing surpassing us. Even the neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore are unstoppably advancing, stepping forward aggressively to transform themselves into a better nation. They're running marathon to compete in the highly competitive global race. But us? No offense, but we're more like crawling than running now. It's bitterly funny how God gives me a life full of fateful twists. Months ago, the idea of working in the capital (Jakarta) never literally entered my mind. Working in Jakarta sounded like an absurd thing to do. With the eternally jammed traffic, heavily polluted environment, hectic life style and dense population, I always cringed as I heard the word "Jakarta". "There's no chance that I'll be living there. No way," I swore by heart. And shame on me, I'm living here now. Perhaps God didn't take my words so seriously, so I guess. Here I am now, sitting on a stool with a laptop folded open, typing a post like nuts when other people are having fun on Saturday night. At the moment I'm writing this, I cast my eyes out of the window briefly. As usual, I see several skyscrapers out there (I always do this to make sure that I'm now REALLY living in the capital of cruelty). And one of them is J. W. Marriott Hotel, whose building appears grand compared to others. I'm currently renting an 8m2 cramped room near the hotel. Don't try asking how it feels to live in such a tiny room. I don't even bother explaining. Regardless of the fact that we have a good memory or start developing a symptom of dementia, let's refresh our mind. Today (July 17th) last year (2009), we might have been watching TV with mouth agape. It wasn't something admirable, magnificent that made us drop our jaw. But it was just the heart-breaking news that tore the whole nation once again. Around 7:50 am Jakarta time, the J. W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton Hotels in Golden Triangle Business and Diplomatic Area were hit by separate bombings, only five minutes apart. Seven lives were lost and more than 50 others were safe but suffered from injury in various severity scales. In 2003, J. W. Marriott was also a target of terrorist attack. TERRORISM PSYCHOLOGY The heading sounds like a new discipline but this isn’t. What follows is a summary of a talkshow called SAVE OUR NATION on Metro TV, viewing Prof. Komarudin Hidayat, one of the country’s best moslem scholars ever. He elaborated how the root of terrorism grows in Indonesia, and above all he suggested to study the psychological state of those terrorism upholders. Recruiting youths through extracurricular activities It’s hardly thinkable for most of us that terrorism uses this channel to survive and develop. Extracurricular activities high school or college students taking part in are allegedly to be the potential, effective “underground tunnel” for Noordin’s and his partners to get new members. The steps of recruitment, according to Hidayat, are inviting the potential youths to a group discussion, observing them, selecting the most potential one(s). They decide the most potential youngsters by scrutinzing their traits (usually young men with extreme stubborness, high intelligence and curiosity are chosen as the promising candidates). Soon after, these innocent young men are closely watched and observed, especially in terms of their personal life and problems. Disappointment, anger, feeling of being neglected may be destablizing their sensible minds and this is something terrorists are looking for. Hobbies and interests are some other way of attracting young people. Supplying them with what they want is a way to make them feel indebted to the recruiters. And the last step is convincing them that they have done uncounted sins which of course can’t be redeemed by doing ordinary way of repenting. Simply said, the youths have to leave everything worldly to achieve the ‘promised’ heaven. Roots of terror Hidayat emphasized the wrongly-designed Indonesian education system. These flaws in turn led this nation to being ignorant of any other equally or more vital issues. Hidayat took “ujian nasional” case as the typical example. Too much attention were given to design, train the students to pass the tests. One thing the authority completely forgot was that passing the exams didn’t guarantee the students’ character building. Our students are knowledgable but they’re weak when it comes to dealing with their own personal issues, setting their goals to a better life, being completely blind to decide who they are or who they are going to be in the future, they have no life principles. In a nutshell, Indonesian students are wandering around, looking for the identity but what they don’t know is that identity is primarily built by themselves, not by others. That’s why we’ve had an teenaged suicide bomber recently. How to counteract terrorism “Islam is destroyed mainly due to moslems, not by anyone or anything else”, Hidayat added. Indonesia is the country where the biggest number of moslems are living, but why can terrorism thrive here? Thus, there must be something….no, many things wrong with our being moslems. Moslems in Indonesia, in my opinion, pay too much attention on how to build Islamic symbols. Therefore, when it comes to worldly businesses, they seem to be less spirited. Most of Indonesian moslems know the meaning of “Kebersihan sebagian dari iman” but how many of us don’t treat rivers as our gigantic sewage ditch where we can throw anything we want away? I recalled a story told by my pal, he told me he was going somewhere with his American friend, and guess what…they spotted some feeble elderly walking on sidewalk, wanting to cross the street. But the one who first initiated to help and get the elderly crossed was the American not my moslem Indonesian pal. Ironic but true! I think we are too much consumed by our prejudice that America or any western parts of this world is place where people are drinking liquor freely, having free sex or things like that. They forget there are western people who like to help, think behave or act in a way a moslem is supposed to have. Like what I said, we preached too often about the importance of cleanliness but anyone can see how dirty Ciliwung is, how miserable our waste treatment is. As moslems, we must admit that some foreign, western cultural values are good and worth adopting. It is highly possible that we can be adopting some of their values without losing our faith. I think it’s the time for moslems to review themselves, what to improve, fix and discard.
- GIVING LESS SPACE
The short term measure the police and people take now is probably cooperating with each other to give the culprits less space of movement. With less space of movement, it’s going to be easier for us to catch and detain them. This, however, isn’t quite effective as terrorism is about mindset and thought. Mindset and thought are sometimes well-concealed and blur. We cannot easily detect which people are terrorists and which are not ones. Even they perish physically, as long as the wrongly-interpreted belief is widespread, it is not really surprising to see the younger version of them in the future.
- CREATING COUNTER-IDEOLOGY
Somehow the government, along with people, should show that Indonesia is a mostly -moslem-populated country so it’s extremely ridiculous and doesn’t make sense at all for the terrorists to demolish the country where many moslems -their compatriots- live their life and earn a living. Hurting Indonesia necessarily means hurting moslems as a whole, and humanity as a whole.
- DEVISING A MORE-HUMANE AND FRIENDLY APPROACHING METHOD
It is undeniable that terrorism is the result of extreme poverty, lack of education, marginalization. As we can see, most of Indonesian suicide bombers are some poorly educated people. Nana (one of the recent suicide bombers) came from a poverty-stricken village, he quit school at 6 grade and never continued to high school. Such kind of people is like a sitting duck for our culprits.
- DECONSTRUCTING AND REBUILDING THE WAY OUR YOUNG GENERATIONS ARE TAUGHT
The nation’s awareness has to be rebuilt and revised as our education system seems to ignore a lot of essential matters and at the same time pay too much attention on other trivial issues. Hidayat took an example, it’s ridiculous too see how busy this nation builds intelligence by getting their students prepared for National Examination held annually for 6th graders of elementary schools, 9th graders and 12th graders of high schools, while they’re ignoring the importance of building the children’s characters. What is worse is that no public officials or eve our presidential contenders managed to reveal their awareness, attention and seriousness pertaining to the nation’s character building. Character building is fundamental, yet tragically overlooked. Next, Hidayat criticized the education values that our students keep absorbing. To Hidayat, a huge number of school text books particularly the faith-related ones needs major revision. Hidayat gave our neighboring Singapore’s icon, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, as a typical example of the success of education system reform. We can see now, in spite of its size (compare to Indonesia), Singapore has become a developed country and reached many astounding progresses as a young Asian nation. Indonesia gained its independence years before Singapore did, but Indonesia is left behind. So, what’s wrong with Indonesia?
- FINDING THE BEST CONDUCTOR
Hidayat emphasized the vital role of a conductor for a choir. This is such an apt analogy for us. The nation, Hidayat added, had been ready to move on, move forward, but the problem is who can lead this nation so they have a common set of vision, concept, commitment, and action?? We’re ready, we’re strong, but can this nation find a distingushed leader who meets the requirements? P. S.: The second half part of the article above was previously published on my blog. For the sake of reminding us all of the dangers and prevention of terrorist attacks, I included this as a wake-up call for us (We've known how fast this nation forgets and ignores one issue after the newer issues coming up). Combating terrorism is a lifelong undertaking and should NOT be taken seriously ONLY after another inhumane bombing hits us. Folks, why don't you write your own posts about any issues that may be of help for our ailing nation? If those public officials don't read, just think God reads your post.
