Modi and Jokowi could not be more different. India is a Democracy, Indonesia is still an autocracy. The reality is very clear. In India you can have a Hindu Prime Minister, a Muslim President, a Christian Defence Minister and a Sikh Foreign Minister (or a Jain or a Jew). This has never happened in Indonesia where all cabinet-level officials are Muslims, and it is not going to happen anytime soon, in Indonesia. India has more or less accepted the multicultural and multireligious paradigm since partition, and has anti-discrimination laws. India also has an honest and apolitical military and judiciary, Indonesia does not, enveloped by corruption in the courts and in the military.
Yes, India and Indonesia have a common root in Hindu-Buddhism, with the Majapahit and Sriwijaya Empires in the Archipelago, which strongly influenced native Javanese traditions. India and Indonesia have also always had very close bilateral relations, as “non-aligned” nations, that go back to the close ties between Jawaharlal Nehru and Soekarno. There is no doubt about the closeness of India-Indonesia ties, but at the political and social levels, they are quite different, and not just because India is only 15 % Muslim and Indonesia is 90 % Muslim. Indonesia has never instituted affirmative action policies, like India (not to mention Communism is legal in India and not in Indonesia), and therefore the participation of non-Muslims in Indonesian politics is commercial and political, whereas in India, it is much more meritocratic. Having said that, India is a good model of what Indonesia should become, in terms of multicultural and multireligious diversity, as well as establishing an apolitical and ethical judiciary and military. The election of the non-military Jokowi, over the blood-stained Prabowo, is a small step in the correct direction.
Presenting happiness back to the people is the “goal” of the junta. Since when did happiness become the responsibility of the government. This is a question of individual desires, dreams and needs not a duty of government and especially not that of the military. Watching Thai media these days is like a hallucination. Political commentators now review movies, this is in order to not disturb the peace. The situation has predicated a replacement of academic critique with free haircuts and lakorn stars. Thailand top hit for 2014 “Land of the Smiling Walking Zombie Ghosts”. Amazing and exceptional that a country with so much potential is held back from progress wallowing in a pseudo feudal mentality. Mai suay ngaam loey.
“Maybe you are under the illusion that the army is actually protecting the people? Or are you perhaps protecting yourselves?”
I am a foreign teacher from Australia teaching in Thailand. Currently in Isaan. My mission is to protect my students’ minds by teaching my students HOW to think, not WHAT to think. I believe that the military are employed by the people to protect the physical safety of the people including the monarchy. The current Thai Junta have claimed they are doing this but it seems apparent that they are extending their mission beyond reason. They are limiting reason in all areas of Thai society, including education. Surely this is unsustainable in the 21st century.
In fact, the purpose of the New Mandala/TLC book review series is to feature discursive reviews that take titles under review as their points of departure but also allow reviewers to explore the subjects addressed by those titles in the context of their own intellectual interests. In this regard, Dr Grabowsky’s review is exemplary.
As for the “slim book” comment, other than wondering if the commenter has actually read the book, my only reaction is to say that such pettiness speaks for itself.
I have been asked about the harshness of my view of the response of Dr. Othman al-Muhammady to my putting to him the views of the late Prof. Fazlur Rahman as a way of contextualizing Kassim Ahmad’s views and grounding some serious and civil discussion of them.
To have risen to ask a question at all in that context, and certainly to have offered a challenge, no matter how polite, to that formidable scholar-ideologue, was no small thing.
So, when I did so, I was fully prepared for his treatment of me to be curt, dismissive, even irritable and unpleasant. After all, as he would have seen the matter, what business of mine was this anyway?
But I was simply not prepared for the vehemence of his reply, for the intensely personalized character of his response, and for the lack of civility and regard that he directed at Prof. Fazlur Rahman and his lifelong work.
So I was at the time, and remain even now whenever I think of that occasion, shocked and genuinely taken aback at his impugning of the good faith of Prof. Fazlur Rahman and his denunciation of that man’s intellectual influence, of the baneful effects (as he saw them) of the man’s ideas.
But friend and foe alike of Dr. Othman al-Muhammady will readily agree upon one thing: that he was no fool.
He was a very sharp man.
So, when I rose to ask and began outlining my question to him, I noticed him fix his attention closely upon me and my words.
He took seriously what I was saying, and, I am sure, saw immediately the challenge that I was presenting.
And he decided, so it would seem, to deal with that challenge decisively.
No half measures.
He seized upon the nub of my implied argument –– the invoking of Prof. Fazlur Rahman’s ideas and their authority –– and he struck immediately, hard and fast, at their credibility and acceptability.
Rhetorically and politically, it was masterful: a very powerful and effective move. It shut down the question and line of argument decisively.
But it was very unfair and involved doing a great injustice to one of the great thinkers of twentieth century Islam.
[…] *Fakta: Pasal 33 ayat 3 UUD 1945 mewajibkan “Bumi, air dan kekayaan alam yang terkandung di dalamnya dikuasai oleh negara dan dipergunakan untuk sebesar-besarnya kemakmuran rakyat.”, bukan “…dipergunakan untuk sebesar-besarnya beberapa dinasti yang tindakannya berkontradiksi dengan ucapannya”, seperti yang dirasakan oleh penduduk Sumbawa dan penduduk Rusia. […]
Stephen, can you please point me to some relevant literature on the musyawarah untuk mencapai mufakat process? Preferably in english, however Indonesian is fine too.
As a sign of the desperation of the Ulama to emasculate Kassim Ahmad, an absurd Fatwa was issued against Kassim in Terengganu, a State he never lived in, but was not issued an (absurd) Fatwa, in Kedah where he is from. The Federal Courts would not hear his case, because it was deemed an “Islamic” matter (his supposed heresy against Islam), so he was tried in Shari’a Court for heresy, based on his long-time rejection of the Hadiths and Aurat in Malaysia, which JAKIM and UMNO knew for 20 years, but decided to go after him right now, when they could have years ago, if they really wanted to. His books are banned, not because they are heretical, but because the Ulama cannot understand them. To call this a farce, would be an insult to all self-respecting clowns around the world. He appealed the ruling of not being allowed to be tried in civil court in the first instance, in Federal Court, and ultimately lost, with the Shari’a Court charge of heresy not being annulled. If any other Malaysian would have been treated like a dog, like Kassim was treated, they would howl in protest. That Kassim respected the system enough to let it take its course, like he has respected everything and everyone throughout his whole life, says more about the honour and decency of this man, than the reprehensible corruption and religious ignorance of the Shari’a Court. To even have been issued a Fatwa, in a State he never resided in, let alone committed any heresy in, is Kafaesque. The treatment and abuse of Kassim Ahmad, really epitomises how Malaysia treats anyone who dares to think outside the established norms, established not by societal consensus, but by the Ulama and by UMNO, who form an elite caste system.
I would note that a former prominent benefactor, who assisted him out of self-aggrandisement, has now abandoned him entirely, to be eaten by the wolves. Yet, Kassim persists, retains his optimism, and fights for the freedom to believe as one chooses. Kassim Ahmad is in the fine traditions of Naguib Mahfouz, Vaclav Havel, Czeslaw Milosz and Orhan Pamuk, all dissidents who refused to abandon principle for notoriety, and to appease the system that denigrated them. Kassim Ahmad is a Malaysian hero, a Malaysian original, and a Malaysian without whom, Malaysia would be a very different nation. Kassim, already 81 and frail, deserves an apology from the Ulama, UMNO and his former benefactor, from whom he is the least likeliest to receive anything safe. The treatment of this man is a disgusting disgrace, and calls very much into question, whether the Malaysian Government respects, or even believes, in its own Constitution. Every Malaysian should hang their head in shame, at the savage maltreatment of a true “Son of the Soil”. For shame !
With the editor’s permission, I offer two brief points of clarification.
First, in this 3-part commentary I discuss my involvement (on my side quite marginal) with Kassim Ahmad’s fate –– with the intersecting stories of his quest for Truth and my scholarly career –– from the time of his “non-seminar” at, and my academic visit to, UKM in 1985.
But his shadow had already loomed large over my life long before then.
When I arrived there as a graduate student in the mid-1960s, Kassim’s standing in the world of Malay Studies in London was already enormous, his reputation legendary. Anyone working, or starting, in Malay Studies there at that time had to take him into account, even after he had left SOAS and returned home to Malaysia.
And second, it has been suggested to me that it might be more accurate to say that Tun Dr. Mahathir’s Perdana Leadership Foundation agreed to accommodate and offer its hospitality to the February 2014 Seminar on “The Thought of Kassim Ahmad” after other institutions had declined or refused to host such an event –– rather than to say, as I put it, that Kassim spoke there, as I had inferred, at the personal invitation of Tun Dr. Mahathir. I am happy to offer that clarification.
If grandiosity is a measure of success, then SBY was indeed successful. If improved quality of life is a measure of success, SBY fell short by a large margin.
Prof. dok-ya I send my appreciation at your article 48 clarification.
But based on your 70 years or so experience with Thailand’s ever-changing political chairs, democratic or junta-style, it would appear that amnesties seem to be the Thai-style of misgoverning-then-misdeeds-erasing. Thaksin was going to ask for a full amnesty via parliamentary shenanigans, wasn’t he — which started the recent political musical chairs dance in the first place?
Was there any junta-authored Thai consitution without that Article 48 proviso Prof. dok-ya? I doubt it … so what was your dismay all about Prof. dok-ya on something to predictable and routine?
This is the first time I came across deeper insights into Indonesian politics. In Western media we generally get nothing of this (or we get more about tiny Latvia than huge Indonesia). “At the stroke of a pen, that annoying little watch dog has now been done away with.” What I don’t understand is why these “sincere legislators” have not done much (it seems). Had just one of them done a “Mahatma Gandhi” and went on a hunger strike on a public square, no matter how technical the verbiage of the law, the blogosphere (and international media) would have paid heed?! As for “… a rather strange grab bag of different types of changes to DPR procedures …” and “… get rid of some checks and balances …” – this seems to tell me that Indonesia lacks a constitution that bars certain legislation right off the bat and in itself provides “checks and balances”? And then you might also not have a Supreme Court, or one without “teeth”?
#13, we know that this torture has been going on since the last crackdown from information given by watermelon soldiers. Many thousands of people have disappeared. The torture has been routine, such as Krisuda’s boyfriend who was tied up, arms and legs, and thrown into polluted water container. This torture has been conducted by royalist pro-yellow soldiers and their wives with carte blanche from the highest levels. Pro-democracy (red shirt) activists have been too traumatised to speak out after their ordeals; plus their lives turned upside down; sometimes bank accounts frozen, and their families threatened. My hat off to Krisuda who is now hospitalised in a safe country. My message to the illegal White Crow regime is that watch this space: others will be inspired to speak out. The ICJ/ ICC are now alerted with more and more information coming forward…It is the end of the amaat regime (even if they do not know it yet)
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A tale of two elections
Modi and Jokowi could not be more different. India is a Democracy, Indonesia is still an autocracy. The reality is very clear. In India you can have a Hindu Prime Minister, a Muslim President, a Christian Defence Minister and a Sikh Foreign Minister (or a Jain or a Jew). This has never happened in Indonesia where all cabinet-level officials are Muslims, and it is not going to happen anytime soon, in Indonesia. India has more or less accepted the multicultural and multireligious paradigm since partition, and has anti-discrimination laws. India also has an honest and apolitical military and judiciary, Indonesia does not, enveloped by corruption in the courts and in the military.
Yes, India and Indonesia have a common root in Hindu-Buddhism, with the Majapahit and Sriwijaya Empires in the Archipelago, which strongly influenced native Javanese traditions. India and Indonesia have also always had very close bilateral relations, as “non-aligned” nations, that go back to the close ties between Jawaharlal Nehru and Soekarno. There is no doubt about the closeness of India-Indonesia ties, but at the political and social levels, they are quite different, and not just because India is only 15 % Muslim and Indonesia is 90 % Muslim. Indonesia has never instituted affirmative action policies, like India (not to mention Communism is legal in India and not in Indonesia), and therefore the participation of non-Muslims in Indonesian politics is commercial and political, whereas in India, it is much more meritocratic. Having said that, India is a good model of what Indonesia should become, in terms of multicultural and multireligious diversity, as well as establishing an apolitical and ethical judiciary and military. The election of the non-military Jokowi, over the blood-stained Prabowo, is a small step in the correct direction.
A sufficiently tight media lid
This gentleman is now the NLA chair, in August 2014… thanks New Mandala for keeping the archives.
Open Letter Condemning the Thai Constitution
Presenting happiness back to the people is the “goal” of the junta. Since when did happiness become the responsibility of the government. This is a question of individual desires, dreams and needs not a duty of government and especially not that of the military. Watching Thai media these days is like a hallucination. Political commentators now review movies, this is in order to not disturb the peace. The situation has predicated a replacement of academic critique with free haircuts and lakorn stars. Thailand top hit for 2014 “Land of the Smiling Walking Zombie Ghosts”. Amazing and exceptional that a country with so much potential is held back from progress wallowing in a pseudo feudal mentality. Mai suay ngaam loey.
Confused Thai Educators
“Maybe you are under the illusion that the army is actually protecting the people? Or are you perhaps protecting yourselves?”
I am a foreign teacher from Australia teaching in Thailand. Currently in Isaan. My mission is to protect my students’ minds by teaching my students HOW to think, not WHAT to think. I believe that the military are employed by the people to protect the physical safety of the people including the monarchy. The current Thai Junta have claimed they are doing this but it seems apparent that they are extending their mission beyond reason. They are limiting reason in all areas of Thai society, including education. Surely this is unsustainable in the 21st century.
Review of State and Uncivil Society in Thailand
In fact, the purpose of the New Mandala/TLC book review series is to feature discursive reviews that take titles under review as their points of departure but also allow reviewers to explore the subjects addressed by those titles in the context of their own intellectual interests. In this regard, Dr Grabowsky’s review is exemplary.
As for the “slim book” comment, other than wondering if the commenter has actually read the book, my only reaction is to say that such pettiness speaks for itself.
WaAllahu’alam …, Kassim Ahmad
A further comment or addendum, if I may.
I have been asked about the harshness of my view of the response of Dr. Othman al-Muhammady to my putting to him the views of the late Prof. Fazlur Rahman as a way of contextualizing Kassim Ahmad’s views and grounding some serious and civil discussion of them.
To have risen to ask a question at all in that context, and certainly to have offered a challenge, no matter how polite, to that formidable scholar-ideologue, was no small thing.
So, when I did so, I was fully prepared for his treatment of me to be curt, dismissive, even irritable and unpleasant. After all, as he would have seen the matter, what business of mine was this anyway?
But I was simply not prepared for the vehemence of his reply, for the intensely personalized character of his response, and for the lack of civility and regard that he directed at Prof. Fazlur Rahman and his lifelong work.
So I was at the time, and remain even now whenever I think of that occasion, shocked and genuinely taken aback at his impugning of the good faith of Prof. Fazlur Rahman and his denunciation of that man’s intellectual influence, of the baneful effects (as he saw them) of the man’s ideas.
But friend and foe alike of Dr. Othman al-Muhammady will readily agree upon one thing: that he was no fool.
He was a very sharp man.
So, when I rose to ask and began outlining my question to him, I noticed him fix his attention closely upon me and my words.
He took seriously what I was saying, and, I am sure, saw immediately the challenge that I was presenting.
And he decided, so it would seem, to deal with that challenge decisively.
No half measures.
He seized upon the nub of my implied argument –– the invoking of Prof. Fazlur Rahman’s ideas and their authority –– and he struck immediately, hard and fast, at their credibility and acceptability.
Rhetorically and politically, it was masterful: a very powerful and effective move. It shut down the question and line of argument decisively.
But it was very unfair and involved doing a great injustice to one of the great thinkers of twentieth century Islam.
That I still find hard to accept.
The benefits of mud houses
I think it is quite ignorant to say things such a negative manner when atleast one tries to do some thing better while saving the environment.
Demokrasi Indonesia Dalam Bahaya
[…] *Fakta: Pasal 33 ayat 3 UUD 1945 mewajibkan “Bumi, air dan kekayaan alam yang terkandung di dalamnya dikuasai oleh negara dan dipergunakan untuk sebesar-besarnya kemakmuran rakyat.”, bukan “…dipergunakan untuk sebesar-besarnya beberapa dinasti yang tindakannya berkontradiksi dengan ucapannya”, seperti yang dirasakan oleh penduduk Sumbawa dan penduduk Rusia. […]
Taktik Permainan Prabowo
brooo lho sekolah kagak ….diajarin sejarah kagak ??? kok gak tau sejarah kok malah kamu balik2 cari info broo browsing internet biar tau sejarah….
WaAllahu’alam …, Kassim Ahmad
Interesting read
House of Cards Part 2
Thanks for the article Stephen. If you don’t mind, I have some questions. Forgive me if they have obvious answers.
Firstly, how is a sectoral committee chosen.
How are the party leaders within a sectoral committee chosen?
Cheers
House of Cards Part 2
Stephen, can you please point me to some relevant literature on the musyawarah untuk mencapai mufakat process? Preferably in english, however Indonesian is fine too.
WaAllahu’alam …, Kassim Ahmad
As a sign of the desperation of the Ulama to emasculate Kassim Ahmad, an absurd Fatwa was issued against Kassim in Terengganu, a State he never lived in, but was not issued an (absurd) Fatwa, in Kedah where he is from. The Federal Courts would not hear his case, because it was deemed an “Islamic” matter (his supposed heresy against Islam), so he was tried in Shari’a Court for heresy, based on his long-time rejection of the Hadiths and Aurat in Malaysia, which JAKIM and UMNO knew for 20 years, but decided to go after him right now, when they could have years ago, if they really wanted to. His books are banned, not because they are heretical, but because the Ulama cannot understand them. To call this a farce, would be an insult to all self-respecting clowns around the world. He appealed the ruling of not being allowed to be tried in civil court in the first instance, in Federal Court, and ultimately lost, with the Shari’a Court charge of heresy not being annulled. If any other Malaysian would have been treated like a dog, like Kassim was treated, they would howl in protest. That Kassim respected the system enough to let it take its course, like he has respected everything and everyone throughout his whole life, says more about the honour and decency of this man, than the reprehensible corruption and religious ignorance of the Shari’a Court. To even have been issued a Fatwa, in a State he never resided in, let alone committed any heresy in, is Kafaesque. The treatment and abuse of Kassim Ahmad, really epitomises how Malaysia treats anyone who dares to think outside the established norms, established not by societal consensus, but by the Ulama and by UMNO, who form an elite caste system.
I would note that a former prominent benefactor, who assisted him out of self-aggrandisement, has now abandoned him entirely, to be eaten by the wolves. Yet, Kassim persists, retains his optimism, and fights for the freedom to believe as one chooses. Kassim Ahmad is in the fine traditions of Naguib Mahfouz, Vaclav Havel, Czeslaw Milosz and Orhan Pamuk, all dissidents who refused to abandon principle for notoriety, and to appease the system that denigrated them. Kassim Ahmad is a Malaysian hero, a Malaysian original, and a Malaysian without whom, Malaysia would be a very different nation. Kassim, already 81 and frail, deserves an apology from the Ulama, UMNO and his former benefactor, from whom he is the least likeliest to receive anything safe. The treatment of this man is a disgusting disgrace, and calls very much into question, whether the Malaysian Government respects, or even believes, in its own Constitution. Every Malaysian should hang their head in shame, at the savage maltreatment of a true “Son of the Soil”. For shame !
Kassim Ahmad – The long agony of Malaysia’s Al-Hallaj
With the editor’s permission, I offer two brief points of clarification.
First, in this 3-part commentary I discuss my involvement (on my side quite marginal) with Kassim Ahmad’s fate –– with the intersecting stories of his quest for Truth and my scholarly career –– from the time of his “non-seminar” at, and my academic visit to, UKM in 1985.
But his shadow had already loomed large over my life long before then.
When I arrived there as a graduate student in the mid-1960s, Kassim’s standing in the world of Malay Studies in London was already enormous, his reputation legendary. Anyone working, or starting, in Malay Studies there at that time had to take him into account, even after he had left SOAS and returned home to Malaysia.
And second, it has been suggested to me that it might be more accurate to say that Tun Dr. Mahathir’s Perdana Leadership Foundation agreed to accommodate and offer its hospitality to the February 2014 Seminar on “The Thought of Kassim Ahmad” after other institutions had declined or refused to host such an event –– rather than to say, as I put it, that Kassim spoke there, as I had inferred, at the personal invitation of Tun Dr. Mahathir. I am happy to offer that clarification.
Assessing SBY’s second term
If grandiosity is a measure of success, then SBY was indeed successful. If improved quality of life is a measure of success, SBY fell short by a large margin.
Open Letter Condemning the Thai Constitution
Prof. dok-ya I send my appreciation at your article 48 clarification.
But based on your 70 years or so experience with Thailand’s ever-changing political chairs, democratic or junta-style, it would appear that amnesties seem to be the Thai-style of misgoverning-then-misdeeds-erasing. Thaksin was going to ask for a full amnesty via parliamentary shenanigans, wasn’t he — which started the recent political musical chairs dance in the first place?
Was there any junta-authored Thai consitution without that Article 48 proviso Prof. dok-ya? I doubt it … so what was your dismay all about Prof. dok-ya on something to predictable and routine?
Open Letter Condemning the Thai Constitution
Thanks Jim Taylor #15.
But your and Krisuda’s story are just that … stories without any substantiating evidence … hearsays or just plain propaganda.
Give us proof please.
Video: wrap up of Indonesia presidential election
Great interview Ross, very enlightening, lots of pertinent points brought to light. Thanks heaps
House of Cards Part III
This is the first time I came across deeper insights into Indonesian politics. In Western media we generally get nothing of this (or we get more about tiny Latvia than huge Indonesia). “At the stroke of a pen, that annoying little watch dog has now been done away with.” What I don’t understand is why these “sincere legislators” have not done much (it seems). Had just one of them done a “Mahatma Gandhi” and went on a hunger strike on a public square, no matter how technical the verbiage of the law, the blogosphere (and international media) would have paid heed?! As for “… a rather strange grab bag of different types of changes to DPR procedures …” and “… get rid of some checks and balances …” – this seems to tell me that Indonesia lacks a constitution that bars certain legislation right off the bat and in itself provides “checks and balances”? And then you might also not have a Supreme Court, or one without “teeth”?
Open Letter Condemning the Thai Constitution
#13, we know that this torture has been going on since the last crackdown from information given by watermelon soldiers. Many thousands of people have disappeared. The torture has been routine, such as Krisuda’s boyfriend who was tied up, arms and legs, and thrown into polluted water container. This torture has been conducted by royalist pro-yellow soldiers and their wives with carte blanche from the highest levels. Pro-democracy (red shirt) activists have been too traumatised to speak out after their ordeals; plus their lives turned upside down; sometimes bank accounts frozen, and their families threatened. My hat off to Krisuda who is now hospitalised in a safe country. My message to the illegal White Crow regime is that watch this space: others will be inspired to speak out. The ICJ/ ICC are now alerted with more and more information coming forward…It is the end of the amaat regime (even if they do not know it yet)