my work

The Making of the Global: The Case of Asian Values Debate (1)

2007-03-27T21:56:00.002-07:00

In preparing the World Conference on Human Rights in Geneva, June 1993, representatives of Asian countries from Iran to Mongolia met in Bangkok. Despite recognizing that human rights are universal in nature, the Bangkok Declaration boldly insisted that “they must be considered in the context of a dynamic and evolving process of international norm-setting, bearing in mind the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds.”[1] The Bangkok Declaration was one of many messages Asian leaders sent to mainly the West (a term conveniently means Europe and North America), arguing that there is a unique set of “Asian values” different from presumably “Western values”.

Since then, the “political thesis” of Asian values has triggered a rich academic literature both in the West and the East. One of the most important issues in the discourse of “Asian values” is the very question whether there are really any “Asian values”. The proponent of Asian values typically based their argument on cultural relativism. In this argument, there is no way to judge other values on the basis of one’s own values. The proponents of human rights, on the other hand, argue that human rights are universal in their nature and need no local particularities. Nowadays we hardly hear the debate again. The arguably recent silence of the discourse might be related to the fact that the vocal defenders of the Asian values have left their leadership posts. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, the strong defender of Confucian-based Asian values, has retired. Mahathir Mohamad, the little Soekarno of Malaysia, has also turned over his position to the low profile Abdullah Badawi. The economic crisis in 1997 that hit most of East and Southeast Asian countries, resulting among others in toppling the authoritarian regime and allowing the daring democratization in Indonesia, might also have silenced the proponents of Asian values.

Now, the debate is over. As the dust settled, we might be able to offer an “outsider” or “non-partisan” review on both arguments. In this paper, I proposed to read the arguments of the proponents and the opponents to find what did really happen behind the over-discussed substance of Asian values. My hypothesis is that the Asian values debate was a process of making “globalization”. By the “globalization” here, however, I do not mean either an already made a global entity that comes, meets, and conquers locals in the way of domination, or less likely the victory of the West over the rest. I argue instead that in the making of Global there is a process of taking and giving, an exchange, a mutual share of what constitutes the global. To put it differently, globalization is not a matter of conquering a local by the global, but rather a making of the global entity by many locals. I believe the global is an intertwined network among “winning” elements of locals.

To break down my argument, the paper will review firstly the possible origin of Asian values discourse in the history of East-West relationship. I suggest that the “Asianess” was shaped by both colonialism and Orientalism. On the one hand, seen from Edward Said’s criticism, colonialism and Orientalism constitute a long Western political and intellectual domination over the East. But, on the other hand, that the long encounter of colonialism and Orientalism also allows a process of what Mary Louis Pratt calls “transculturation”,[2] the ability of the dominated, colonized, or subjected subjects to determine what they absorb into their own and what use it for.

Next to that historical tracking, I will present the international context of 1990s to make sense how the “Asian values” debate was staged. Some theoretical prophecies, particularly those of Fukuyama and Huntington, are worth discussing to uncover the broader discourse of world system and cultural divide. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism in East Europe promised a New Era on which those international politics gurus argue for their respective thesis. Finally, in the section following that broader discursive context, we will look at the Asian values debate trough the transculturation-lens to argue that the globalization is a process of making the Global by many locals, where the ideas and discourses emanated from the dominant culture are contested and selected by locals. The emanating local and the emanated then altogether make the global. With regard to particularly Fukuayama’s thesis, this Global is not the liberal democracy he once theorized.

The Origin of an “Asianess”

The term “Asian values” was actually coined years earlier than many scholars suggested. Even though we do not know exactly when, at least there is an evident of its use in 1970s. In 1976 the Department of Philosophy University of Singapore hosted a seminar whose topic was “Asian Values and Modernisation”. One of the papers presented in the seminar is by Ho Wing Meng, the published version of which is available for this research.[3] When reading this paper, one can find at least two impressions. First, in 1970s the concept of Asian values was discussed in a context of finding a way to “develop” Asian countries – development in the sense of broader discourse of developmentalism ideology in the Third World in 1970s. Second, what was being questioned at that time is whether or not Asian values, if any, was supportive for the modernization of Asia. Third, in answering such a question, Ming himself doubted the existence of so-called Asian values because the very Asia consisted of various cultures not similar one and another. He argues that the term Asian values should denote not to a particular, stereotyped, attitude or belief, but rather the great diversities in Asia.[4]

The genealogy of the discourse even might date further back. The long history of imperialism heavily affected the way Asians see themselves and the colonial powers (most of them were European). Being the victim of the long Western exploitative project of colonialism, most Asians have no hard time to see any Western presence as another form of imperialism. In 1950s and 1960s, anti-imperialism was really a popular rhetoric for Asian leaders to rally support either domestically or internationally.[5] This psychological condition is nowhere else more obvious than in the Asian-African Summit in Bandung. In 1955, when the world were increasingly divided along the two western blocks of Communism and Capitalism, for the first time in the history the newly independent Asian-African nations met in Bandung, Indonesia. In considering the “new imperialism” of the US and Soviet Union, the nations in the conference declared their non-alignment position. The Declaration of Bandung is considerably the first “coalition of willing”, similar to the Bangkok Declaration 38 years later, in challenging the Western political and discursive presences in the East.[6]

Along with the long political imperialism, the root of “Asian values” is the Orientalism, “a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience.”[7] Even though Orientalism as a discipline, style of thought, and institution was developed in the West and mainly for the Western audience, its influence in staging the world system—supported by the European political colonialism—reached the non-Western mindset and remains influential through the colonial legacy in the East. For example, as Said put it, most universities in Arab world are generally run according to some pattern inherited from, or once directly imposed by, a former colonial power.[8] As they become a satellite of Orientalism, the students of the Orientalist in the East reproduce, mimicry, discourses once produced in the West. The beliefs and conceptions of self distinguished “Asianess” in the arguments of Asian values arguably are sorts of “self-Orientalism”, or “Occidentalism” if you will.

Continued to part 2

The Making of the Global: The Case of Asian Values Debate (2)

2007-03-27T21:56:00.001-07:00

The Victory of Liberal Democracy: The End of History? The long post war rivalry between the American-led Capitalist West and the Soviet-led Communist East, or the Cold War, surprisingly ended in the dusk of 1980s. The giant empire of Soviet Union dissolved in a matter of months. The Berlin Wall, serving 28 years demarcating the two Western competing ideologies of post war, was soon destroyed and the two Germany reunited. In the summer of 1989, amid this ongoing collapse of Communism in the East Europe, Francis Fukuyama wrote the most discussed article “the End of History”. He argued that liberal democracy had conquered rival ideologies like hereditary, monarchy, fascism and communism. Accordingly, liberal democracy will constitute “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and it therefore marked “the end of history”.[9]

In Fukuyama’s thesis, there are no boundaries between the West and the East because liberal democracy will eventually be the only ideology prevails. Liberal democracy is the form of government, Fukuyama insists, humanity has been longing for. Liberal democracy is a form of polity where liberal values, liberty and equality, were preserved along with the all citizens’ right to share political power trough democratic mechanism. More specifically, Fukuyama refers to Lord Bryce’ definition of liberal rights that include: civil right, “the exemption from control of the citizen in respect of his person and property”; religious rights, “exemption from control in the expression of religious opinions and the practice of worship”; and political rights, “exemption from control in matters which do not so plainly affect the welfare of the whole community as to render control necessary”.[10] As his thesis argues that liberal democracy will be the final form of polity, it is these values that will dominate all over the world, either West or East. Fukuyama has many reasons to argue for his thesis. First, there are now more democracies than in any time in the history. The percentage of democracies to its rivalry systems, according to Freedom House, increased over time: 0% in 1900, 14.3% in 1950, and 62.5% in 2000.[11] Second, related to the first one, democracy works in any place in the world. Representations of democratic states vary from the South Africa to Middle Eastern Turkey or “Chinese” Taiwan. Based on the map of world freedom, there is no reason to be pessimistic about spreading democracy all over the world.[12] And third, there is no seemingly significant competing ideology now, after the collapse of communism, and in the near future. In his account on Islam, a religion whose ideology often poses a political threat in the Western mind, Fukuyama believes that its “cultural conquest” is over. Islam might win back “the lapsed adherents but has no resonance for the young people in Berlin, Tokyo, Moscow” In fact, Islamic countries are vulnerable of being liberalized and democratized.[13] Fukuyama’s thesis was controversial and many have criticized his points.

The most important one is Samuel Huntington. In his article “The Clash of Civilizations?” published one year later after Fukuyama’s, Huntington dismissed thesis based on ideological and economic factors as failing to catch the most crucial aspect of post Cold Ward global politics. Instead of expecting another episode of ideological and/or economic conflicts, he argues, the next conflict is cultural one. “The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”[14] Huntington suggests five reasons to argue for his thesis. First, differences among civilization over the course of history has created the most enduring and violent conflicts. Second, the world is more connected through communication and migration. It increases the interactions among civilization and intensifies the consciousness of one’s own civilization. Third, on the one hand the globalization erodes long-standing local identities that are then replaced by larger identity, most importantly religious identities. Fourth, the Western domination triggered the increasingly cultural-consciousness civilizations to challenge the Western domination. And the last one is that cultural characteristics are less mutable. Ideological difference is simply a preference that one could easily move from one to another choice. By contrast, culture is identity and it is not acquainted by choice, but rather given.

Those two contrasting thesis represented enough the broader discourse of 1990s when the Asian values debate reached its international attention. Huntington’s thesis is based on the idea that culture matters and in this way the international system is staged in cultural units. The cultural divide determines the international relation after the end of the clash of ideologies and replaces it. On the other hand, Fukuyama does not buy cultural arguments. According to him, “the problem with this kind of cultural argument is that developed cultural systems like Christianity, Islam, and Confucianism are highly complex.”[15] Fukuyama puts forward a strong example of the implicit debate between the two Lees, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan. Lee Kuan Yew has attracted considerable attention by arguing that Confucianism supports a certain kind of political authoritarianism; while Lee Teng-hui calls on his Confucian scholars to provide an evident that indeed there is a democratic precedence in Confucianism.

Bearing in mind these two main theoretical approaches, cultural and ideological approaches, in the next section we will deal with the arguments of the proponents and opponents of the Asian values. Our focus is to see how this debate is part of a larger process of making the global trough “transculturation” where the “subjected” locals determine how far they absorb and also influence the “dominant” local. The different status between the “subjected” and the “dominant” is mainly a result of economic and political gaps. In making the global, however, the two contribute their respective share through transculturation. The Asian Values Debate: Ambiguity and Defend The ideologically borderless world system in 1990s after the collapse of communism opened a question about the future of the world system. Fukuyama and Huntington propose different thesis, one ideological (the victory of liberal democracy) and the other cultural. In either way the West and its liberal democracy pose a challenge to the rest, either as a future single ideology or a cultural hegemon.

The rise of liberal democracy as a “winning” ideology in the West of 1990s posed both a threat and a promise to the Rest, depending on who was seeing it. For the illiberal regimes of Asia, the rise of liberal democracy was a threat to their establishment. For the liberal element in Asian society, however, the rise of liberal democracy was a promise. The democratization movement in Indonesia, for example, welcomes the change in Europe and this change energized their struggle against the authoritarian regime. And the debate of Asian values was certainly part of their reactive or supportive responds to the challenge posed by the liberal democracy as the “winning element” in the West. My conception of “winning element” is important because it maintains the fact that the West has never been a single ideological unit. There were and are ideological elements competing in the geographically western part of the world. In 1990s it was the liberal democratic element that won the competition. This winning element then represents the West when it is conceived in an oppositional binary of East-West. There were and are likewise competing elements within the geographically eastern part of the world. And in early 1990s, the conservative illiberal element won the competition in the most part of Asia. This was then who represent the East in that long discursive confrontation of the East-West. The Asian values debate at all was part of this competing ideological configuration. Looking to the papers, articles, book written on the Asian values in 1990s, one would easily find that within Asia itself there were those who promote Asian values and those who criticize the argument.

In responding the rise of the winning liberal democracy in the West, the Asians values debate provides three different answers. First group are those who reject both democracy and liberalism. Second group accepts democracy, but not liberalism. And the third accepts both liberalism and democracy. Lee Kuan Yew is one of those in the first group. Democracy, according to him, is not an appropriate form of government for Asia. He argues, “what a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy. Democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions.”[16] Liberalism, emphasizing on individual over the community, is also not fit into “communitarian” Asian. “The Confucianist view of order between subject and ruler helps in the rapid transformation of society… in other words, you fit yourself into society – the exact opposite of the Americans rights of the individual.”[17] The second group accepts democracy, but not liberalism. Mahathir Mohamad is one of them. In his short book, the Asian Values Debate, he believes that part of Malaysian success is because of its democracy. But, he quickly added, that not all democracy is good. “There is good and productive democracy as well as bed and destructive democracy.”[18] What he conceived as a bad democracy he rejects is the one that cannot solve “social problem”,[19] implying democracy with excessive individualism. Another politician in this camp, the Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, promotes what he called “pragmatic democracy”, a sort of democracy where the government acts as a trustee, “it exercises independent judgment on what is in long-term economic interest of the people and acts on that basis. Government policy is not dictated by opinion poll or referenda.”[20] The third group, consisting mainly of human right and democracy activist, welcome the liberal democracy as a universal value.[21]

Whether it originates from the West or has indigenous root in Asia, Asia needs [liberal] democracy because this is the only regime that upholds the autonomy of the individual and the individual’s right to participate in government. The concern of this group is that non-liberal democracy oftentimes abuses human rights in the name of societal order, appropriating what to be claimed as a community at the expense of individual. Even though these three groups pose a different level of encountering liberal democracy, it is the worth noting that none does completely reject the West as a whole. Lee Kuan Yew once stated, “As an East Asian looking at America, I find attractive and unattractive features. I like, for example, the free, easy and open relations between people regardless of social status, ethnicity and religion… I find parts of it totally unacceptable… The expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of orderly society.”[22] Mahathir, on similar fashion, is also conscience of the fact that not all Asian values are good. Next to his fierce criticism to what he sees as the cultural threat of the West, he also criticizes some Asian values. This part is interesting because what he finds bad in Asian values are those the liberal democracy criticizes: authoritarianism, repression of women, inequality, and some issues that concern individuals like inferiority and lack of self confidence.[23] The acceptance and, at the same time, rejection is also evident in the language of the Bangkok Declaration[24]. This is the declaration on which Asian countries were united to voice a challenge against “the human rights crusade” of the West and later triggered the Asian values debate.

The document indeed does not question the declaration of human rights, promotion of human rights, or ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It instead supports human rights both as a value or a legal right of every human being. It simply does not like that “the other” intervenes their countries or that the human rights are used as a political means. In addition to that “ambiguity” (acceptance and rejection) the Asian values debate was articulated in a defensive way. Asian leaders do not reject the presumably Western values itself, but rather “unfortunate” excessive Western discursive presence during 1990s.

The discourse of human rights and democracy itself was an excess of euphoria after its victory over communism at a time when Asian countries in its hot economic growth that gave them confidence to walk on their own way. Mahathir’s statement in defending Asian values was very deep, “Why then must we change ourselves to suit the West and their values. Why are so many in the West insisting that we become just like them. This the strong among us will not do. The weak unfortunately have little choice.”[25] Similarly, Singaporean Goh Chok Tong once said, “We find it necessary, from time to time, like a good father would, to help members of the family to progress. The West say, ‘Why are you interfering?’ but we have a different problem and we have to solve it our way.”[26] It is in these ambiguity and defensive arguments that the negotiation in the ideologically borderless world of 1990s occurred.

Politically and economically weaker before the stronger West, Asia might be subjugated. But Asia was not that weak — at least that was what Mahathir believes. If we look at these three arguments, it seems that the discourse of liberal democracy was absorbed in Asia in three different levels, from totally rejection to totally absorption, depending on whom and in what position he/she is. The liberal democracy, happening to represent the West, and its “Asian values” counterpart, happening to represent the ruling elites in Asia, interact in a way that would define the global map as a whole. The Asian values debate was the process of negotiating political, economic, and cultural power in the making of the world today, the world that is not fully democratic neither liberal.

Continued to part 3

The Making of the Global: The Case of Asian Values Debate (3)

2007-03-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

Conclusion: Transculturation and the Making of the Global

The Asian values debate occurred more than a decade ago. It was a story of the raising liberal democracy (with its capitalistic economy) after conquering its long rival Communism. Its rise as a candidate of single ideology poses a challenge to the rest of the world as it expanded beyond its geographical border. For the East, the once victim of Western colonialism and not fully recovering from its past, the West once again presents as a looming threat. Haunted by its past, the East’s respond to this challenge were various, from rejecting the liberal-democratic-capitalistic West to accepting it.

We also noticed that the debate over Asian values occurred within Asia itself. While it is true that the arguments for the Asian values were mainly addressed to the West as an answer to its looming ideological domination; it was debated among communitarian-conservative Asians and liberal-progressive Asians who demanded change and found the liberal-democracy in the West as a momentum endorsing them to fight against the establishment. Their debate clearly involved their political, economic, and academic positions. Most political elites were in a defensive position relative to their threatened political position in the case their country embraced liberal-democracy. The oppressed civil movement activists, on the other hand, support liberal-democracy because it takes their side. It might remind us to one of Said’s points that ideas cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or their configurations of power, also being studied.[27] The idea of Asian values is not an exception.

The debate is a locus to study transculturation as well. If we look at parts of Asia today, the process of transculturation involving the Asian values debate a decade ago continues to shape the region. Unlike what Fukuyama theorized, liberal democracy has not yet become the single winning ideology in Asia. It is also not the case that the clash of civilization colorizes Asia’s relation to the rest of the world. Some parts of Asia are liberalized, but some are not. Indonesia, South Korea, and Taiwan, apart the sui generic Japan, are on the march to liberal democracy. Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, are struggling with their threatened democracy. Other parts of Southeast Asia are still under non-democratic regimes. Needles to say, China, the biggest stake holder of Asia, is the most interesting case for transculturation. It is the place where capitalism was absorbed within its changing socialism and democracy is experimented in the village level.[28]

This map of Asia is just another face of the once debated Asian values in its current expressions. No debate anymore, but Asians are working in adapting the “foreign” ideas to their own use. Altogether, these colorful Asian faces (from democratic to authoritarian) is inseparable part of what we conceive as the global, and not a terra incognita in the global map where the Global will eventually conquers it.
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[1] http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu5/wcbangk.htm
[2] More on this concept see Mary Louis Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1991, p. 6
[3] Ho Wing Meng, Asian Values and Modernisation – a critical interpretation, Singapore: Department of Philosophy, University of Singapore, 1976.
[4] Ibid., p. 11.
[5] F. S. C. Northrop, Asian Mentality and United States Foreign Policy, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 276, Lessons from Asia.(Jul., 1951), p. 126
[6] For an analisys on its impact to the East Asia soon after the Summit, see C. P. Fitzgerald, “East Asia after Bandung”, Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 24, No. 8. (Aug., 1955), pp. 113-119.
[7] Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books, 1994, p.1
[8] Ibid., p. 322.
[9] Francis Fukuyama, The end of History and the Last Man, New York: Free Press; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1992, p.xi.
[10] Ibid., pp. 42-43.
[11] http://web.archive.org/web/20050307102714/http://www.freedomhouse.org/reports/century.html#table1
[12] http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=20&year=2006
[13] Francis Fukuyama, The end of History and the Last Man, p. 46
[14] Samuel P. Huntington, “The clash of civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs Vol. 72, No. 3, Summer, 1993, p. 22.
[15] Francis Fukuyama, “the Illusion of Exceptionalism”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1997), p. 148.
[16] From The Economist, 27 April 1994, p. 5, as quoted by Kenneth Cristie and Denny Roy (eds), The Politics of Human Rights in East Asia, London: Pluto Press, 2001, p. 1.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Mahathir Mohamad, the Asian Values Debate, Kuala Lumpur: the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, 1997, p. 9.
[19] Ibid., p. 11.
[20] As quoted by Bilahari Kausian, “The Asian Values Debate: A View from Singapore”, in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (eds.), Democracy in East Asia, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998, p. 20.
[21] See Margaret, Ng, “Why Asia Needs Democracy: A view from Hong Kong” in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (eds.), Democracy in East Asia, pp. 1-16.
[22] As quoted by David Kelly, “Freedom as an Asian value”, in Michael Jacobsen and Ole Bruun (eds.), Human Rights and Asian Values: Contesting National Identities and Cultural Representations in Asia, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000, p. 182.
[23] Ibid., p. 8.
[24] The online version is available at http://law.hku.hk/lawgovtsociety/Bangkok%20Declaration.htm
[25] p. 4
[26] As quoted in Daniel A. Bell et al (eds.), Toward Illiberal Democracy, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995, p. 163.
[27] Edward Said, Orientalism, p. 5.
[28] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4319954.stm

Missing the Authentic Sherpa

2007-02-03T03:44:00.000-08:00

[This is a book review for Tigers of The Snow. To read more about this worth-reading book, please click this link.]

Before reading the conclusion, let's recall for a while what the book is about. In its introduction, Vincanne aimed at exploring what led Pasang Lhamu to get involved in the high-risk mountaineering because "she wanted to" (p.8). Vincanne, methodologically speaking, relies on a general inquiry into the creation of Sherpa identity in Western imagination and the persistent and anthropological and Western desire to find a site of authenticity beyond the Western gaze.

In doing so, she insisted, one has to recognize "the obvious role [sic] Westerners have played" in "creating" the Sherpa (p. 8 and 11). Her argument is based on the widespread image both among Sherpa and the West that becoming Sherpa is "currently" all about the people expert in mountaineering. In this very mountaineering is "originally" introduced by the West, not by Sherpa who considered the mountain itself god and goddess. To put it another way, mountaineering is not "original" identity of Sherpa.

While she argues for that "obvious" impact, however, Vincanne hopes that the readers will see the impact of Sherpas on the Westerners (p. 8 and 12, another repetition in her statements). Sherpas recruit Western Others to become their sponsors in response to Western desires to become part of the Sherpa world.

So, did she succeed? Yes, as long as those two objectives are concerned, Vincanne has successfully write in a rich and incredible ethnographic work. She does convince us both the western impact to Sherpa in creating the images of the Tigers the snow and the reversal impact of Sherpa on the Westerners. However, only in a way we accept her basic assumptions.

Let's see the other ways. Instead of seeing mountaineering as a created identity, why don't we see it as finding the unexplored gift Sherpas have as the people of the mountain? The gift had been there before the West introduce mountaineering as a business. Why did she think (p.7) that "the idea that one climbed because one "wanted to" belong, originally, to Westerners? I just don't understand that the non-Western subjects do not have such a strong desire. I found it as a kind of a racist bias. It was not a European, unfortunately, who explored the world just because he "wanted to"; The north African Ibn Batuta and Chinese Cheng Ho did it before Marcopolo and Columbus.

She also failed to recognize the very process of how Sherpa maintaining their "original" identity. While she argues for Western impact in the adoption of medical approach to the sickness; she undermines the way Sherpas change their names to avoid bad luck as a very original ideas of Sherpa's body. She failed to recognize this as a set of very significant belief she should deal with in her research and simply refers it as a "problem" she cannot accept with her Western perspective."I found that Sherpas I met were difficult to keep track of..." (p.240)

Finally, I find a dilemma in her work or in broader academic works . The relationship between Sherpa and their jindaks is a short of emotional and spiritual experiences. As I experienced myself, such an "meta-experiment" is beyond our cognitive experiences writeable in a rational academic discourses. I do regret how she reads that sincere and friendly letter as simply a proof to explain how Sherpa create a worldwide jindaks network (p. 220-221). With her Western and academic biases, she also fail to understand the complex world of religious belief when she found the local interpretations of Kami's death as simply a naive strategy of preserving "transnational" images of "true Sherpa". For the people of religion, particularly the pious one, becoming true Buddhist or Muslim has nothing to do with reputation. It's about next lives.

In those latter ways, she missed the authentic Sherpa, the one that lies beyond the Western gaze...

(By the way, sorry that I posted my respond earlier; I am preparing myself
for the Super Bowl day... uh, another example of how non-American students mimicry the host country )

SAID, PRATT, AND COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS

2007-01-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

Imperialism used to be justified, even glorified. When its time was over in 1960s, its legacies continue. Discursive colonialism, if I can use this term, seems to be lasting because it has been embedded in the civic society rather than in the political society —the one that had been decolonized during the Post War II. To decolonize the civic society and knowledge is as hard as the bloody political decolonization. In this regard, it might not be an exaggeration to say that this effort of decolonizing the colonial legacy begun when Edward W. Said, thanks to Gramsci and Foucault, launches his ground-breaking work Orientalism (1979).

Said’s Orientalism has successfully unraveled the complex hidden power/knowledge relation in the Orientalist approach to the East. Characterized by a notion of distinct other culture (race, religion, or civilization), Orientalism has neglected human experience. Overwhelmed by a sense of self-congratulation or hostility and aggression, Orientalism had contributed to Euroimperalism and hegemony. While some his critics misinterpreted him as generalizing, put together all different voices in single category of Orientalists, and demonizing the West, Said work has been a helpful to be reminder of knowledge as the tool for all humanity.

Said’s criticism was focused on the West, and there are two possible answers one could give: Occidentalism or Orientalism in reverse, a study about the Occident, the one that Said has anticipated but not expected; or a study focused on how the East had reacted to the Western hegemony.

In Said’s Orientalism, so powerful is the Western hegemony that the East is merely a represented and powerless object and it pays little attention to how the East reacts to that hegemony.[1] In this regard, Mary Louis Pratt’s work, Imperial Eyes: Travel Wiritng and Transculturation does rightly fill this gap. Her “authoethnography”, particularly help us understand how the Orient, the colonized subjects, “undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s own term” (Pratt, 1992: 7). It is not a “native” or “genuine” text of self-representation; but rather a “hybrid” because it happens in “the contact zone” where the colonized subject rely partially on collaboration with, and adoption of, the idioms of the conquer.

Said, Pratt, and the Readings

On the readings we have been trough, we seemingly will not be able to use those theories for all travel writings. Said’s criticism helps us much in reading travel writings written by Westerners whose potential audience are the Westerners, or when the writing is written by colonizing subjects for colonizing readers. We can apply his strategy to read Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior of Arica, Isabella Bird’s Korea and Her Nighbors, as well as Yosano Akiko’s Man-mo Yuki. All of these works involve what Prett calls “imperial eyes” —whether the imperial is Western Europe or Japan— and written by the “seeing-man”. In these work, as Said argues about Orientalism, the West/the imperial were able to both “present”, with their travel to the East, or the colonized Manchuria, and able “represent” them to the fellow colonizing subjects.

While Said himself never applied his criticism those “popular writing”, focusing his on academic writing in 19th century, Pratt’s work help us to critically read travel writings, as a genre, and find power relation in the less academic works, the apparently “innocent” non-political writings. I like the way she reads what in Park’s wordings that look objective, natural, innocent (after he was robbed, alone and have nothing), as indeed a projection of European goodness and African wildness (p. 77). Without her smart reading, I likely could not have read that way.

In Pratt’s “contact zone” and “transculturation”, however, the power/knowledge relation is more complicated than in Said’s because, to her, the colonized subjects in colonial frontiers are able to determine an extent to which they absorb what emanate from the dominant culture. In this sense, while Europe is shaping others, it is in fact shaped by others (by the way they represent themselves to Europe). Said’s work, as far as the reciprocal process is concerned, will no longer help. Therefore, we need Pratt’s “contact zone” and “transculturation” to read a “hybrid” literature like Poma’s letter. I wish I could have read her interpretation of Poma’s letter to see how far she can argue for her theory. Judging only from the picture illustrated in the first chapter, in which biblical reference of Adam and Eva is used along with Andean symbolic space, I think her argument could be convincing. It must be interesting to fully read her readings in chapter 8 where she analyze how Spanish American writers selected and adapted European discourses on America.

So now, we have already two kinds of analytical tools to read different genres. On the one hand, Said’s criticism works well for literature written by Westerners, for Western readers, in their own terms and languages (if you let me call them “ethnographically not sensitive Orientalism”). On the other, Prett’s work is great tool to analyze literature written by non-Western subjects, for both Western audience and their own society, and using a hybrid discourse. But, colonial encounters involve more than those two genres. There is also a literature written by non-Western subjects, using non-Western languages, and representing the West for non-West.
Coincidently, some of our readings, from Xu Jiyu’s account on “George Washington and the American Political System”, Zhigang on “Trains and Treaties”, to Li Gui’s “Glimpses of a Modern Society” are the genre neither Said nor Pratt has dealt with because it was written by Chinese, in Chinese, and for Chinese audience.

We obviously cannot call them “Orientalism” and it is also hard to call them an “Orientalism in reverse.” Not because I see the Chinese writers do not have a will to dominate inherent in Orientalism; but simply because Orientalism is an academic designation, style of thought and even corporate institutions. These Chinese accounts are too raw to represent “Orientalism in reverse”.

Furthermore, these works are neither “autoethnographic” nor “authentic” or “native” accounts. First, to be autoethnographic writing, it is not about Chinese for metropolitan literature. Second, to be an authentic it does not talk about, for example, Chinese history.

However, it doesn’t mean that Pratt’s strategies are not relevant to read those Chinese travel writings. Pratt’s insistence on the importance of studying “the site of occurrence” to unravel the histories of subjugation and resistance is more than useful. We can use Pratt’s study of genre and ideology, then, in a rather modified way: how do those increasingly colonized subjects represent the West? And instead of the question “how do they justify and betray in their texts” applied to the Western literature, we should ask how do they resist or accept the Other’s power and hegemony?

I think it is only Xu Jiyu’s account that could be a purely non “autoethnographic” character of this work. Instead of using the word Chinese do not understand, he uses “Commander”. The editor of the book might think that this is a less accurate account because Xu never visited America. But I can also argue that Xu just tried to make sense America for his readers. Look at the way he makes a lot of analogies to Chinese object and discourse to help his readers: comparing Washington with Cao or Liu; the climate is like Hebei, Shanxi, Jiangsu, and Zhejian; or referring to Hongzhi period of Ming Dynasty instead of certain date to retrieve a familiar date to his readers. Even, he describes a democratic process with reference to “the old ideal of three dynasties”.

The other more recent accounts on America, which are travel writings, represented America in different way, on which we can use Pratt’s strategy even more. In those works, “transculturation” occurred. In the political context where American power was raising and China was fading, the writings tend to be amazed by America. While there is a self-congratulation ideology in the writing of dominating subject; it is a self-criticism that we can find in most of that writing. I would love to read the next writings that we haven’t read in our class to know how those writings describe America more hostile.(*)

[1] Said, indeed deal with how the East react to the West. In addition that he only give a brief account, he undermines the ability of the East in resisiting the Orientalis (see p. 323-324, 1994 edition).

Global Asia (Homework)

2007-01-07T21:43:00.000-08:00

Reading compiled readings, detached from their whole-book context, is sometimes like the three blind men and the elephant. I am not really sure about what I get from reading the three articles. In addition I am not trained as an anthropologist nor historian, to whom the articles might address. Among three, only the second article, “Boundary Displacement: the state…”, that I would give a longer comment. So let me first give a brief comment for the first and third articles.

My first impression about Invisible Cities -- without knowing who the author is and what kind of book is -- is that it must not, if you let me call it, be a “scientific” book. It must be a very exciting novel written by a talented novelist.

I was curious if I correctly guessed it and, as it is always my case, I google Italo Calvino. To my surprise, Google provides me many links and I choose this Wikipedia link. (Being an Indonesian and working on political Islam, I have enough excuse not to know him, though.)

It is clear now for me (like a blind man seeing the whole elephant after a successful surgery) that the article is a part of one of his most read novels. Well, as a novel, it just makes sense that the book presents too many details for my “academic expectations.” The details, however, are necessarily helpful to bring a reader to an exotic imagined world Calvino created (I am still not sure if they are Calvino’s own imagined descriptions or Marcopolo’s).

Because of the nature of this work, a novel, the book is a good example of “imagining” others. A novel does create an imagined object a reader would always bear in his mind about the object – the readers might be like Khan, captured in the first impression more than the later even more accurate and representative information they might finally encounter in their own travel to the East: “The new fact received a meaning from the emblem…” [p.22], as we put this novel as an emblem for the Western reader.

While a reviewer of Invisibles Cities said, “Trying to actually describe the book is a frustrating, almost futile attempt ….” I would argue in almost similar vein for the third article. While the title is “Theory’s Imaginary Other: American Encounters with South Korea and Japan”, the article did not really deal with American encounters with Japan. It is confusing to understand his presentation of a French poet Henri Michaux’s encounter with Japan as a representation of American encounter with Japan. Is he trapped in the same bipolar East/West he criticizes, in which a Frenchman can represent an American for their single “Westerness”?

I would like to change the title, therefore, to make sense this article: “American encounter with South Korea”. In that way, then, Wilson successfully gives the reader a point about how Fulbright-sponsored anthropological research, P.J. O’Rourke’s gonzo journalism, and NBC’s coverage have “misrepresented” – if the “correctly representing” is somehow possible – Korea.

The second article is the one I love most because this short paper really poses many important questions about our very being as a researcher or scholar. I like this sentence, however, to begin with, “why does this surprise you?” If I had to answer, I would say that I am surprised not because I don’t know but because I finally find someone who can articulate my personal concern of being a grantee (a student receiving foreign money for his study).

When I told my family and extended family, living in a far away place where the internet is unthinkable “creature” (yes, this is our Indonesian way to express a novel technology we are not familiar with), that I would study at an American university, they just have hard time to make it sense: for free and for what? Why does Bush (the most hated American in Indonesia but not interchangeable with America as a nation) give you this scholarship?

Yes, it was not easy. I had been trained as an Islamic scholar (you would call me a cleric if you knew my previous trainings), and I have to forgo my supposedly credibility because I am now “Americally” educated, for which the Islamist would easily accuse me of being an American puppet if I write a liberal piece in an Indonesian daily.

It was also hard for me to get this scholarship. Like the way we define area study, I had this question to define myself: can I describe myself as the one who works on classical Islamic law to get a Fulbright scholarship? I doubted. Thus, to make sure that I am eligible for the scholarship, I was defining myself as the one who works on the conflict between democracy and Islamic law. I thought democracy is more “selling” than Islamic law, and here I am.

I fully agree with Cuming to “abolish the CIA and get the intelligence and military agencies out of free academic inquiry”; but if that is the only way to get funds for our projects, why, it seems to me, cannot we simultaneously get fund and be independent? To make it less abstract, did Kennan write the famous “X document” only to satisfy Washington DC? If I get fund from CIA to study Islamic terrorism, for example, I do not think that the agency expects me not to work independently. Otherwise, they will not get a right and “objective”, if any, information about a terrorist group they expect to handle.

Neoconservative Foreign Policy and Terrorism

2006-12-09T23:56:00.000-08:00

INTRODUTION

In June 2006, the PEW Global Attitudes Project released its survey on U.S. global support. The result of that survey simply did not surprise those who pay attention to international affairs. During six years of the Bush administration, according to the survey, the global support for America has slipped significantly, either in America’s allies or non-allies. In Great Britain, America’s closest ally, favorable opinion of the US has decreased from 83 percent in 1999/2000 to 56 percent in 2006. While in France, it slipped from 62 percent to 39 percent.[1] Another survey by PEW Project in 2005, more interestingly, has shown that the source of anti-Americanism is President Bush and his foreign policy, rather than America in general. In Canada, 54 percent said Bush is the problem while 37 percent viewed America in General; while in Spain, it is 76 percent for Bush and 14 percent for America. Only in non-ally countries, such as Russia, that America outnumbered Bush.[2]

Some argue that the international disapproval has to do mainly with the elements of Bush’s foreign policy that many call “the Bush doctrine”. On the evening of January 29, 2002, for example, Bush outlined his vision for US foreign policy, telling the public that the war on terrorism had given the United States a new mission. America would hunt down terrorists, destroy regimes seeking weapons of mass destruction, and spread freedom throughout the world.[3] In subsequent documents, most notably, the National Security Strategy released in September 2002, the president outlined clearly his doctrine.

According to the doctrine, the United States would increasingly rely on unilateral power to achieve its aims in foreign affairs. First, the doctrine articulates a strong belief in the importance of a state's domestic regime in determining its foreign policy and the related judgment that it is an opportune time to transform international politics. Second, the United States would increasingly use preemptive force, rather than negotiation, to counter the threat from weapons of mass destruction and rogue regimes. Third, the United States would place a higher priority on promoting democracies and freedom around the world as a means of strengthening states whose weaknesses provided a harbor for terrorists. In a remark delivered in 2003 Bush said, “As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace.”[4] Fourth, as both a cause and a summary of these beliefs, there is an overriding sense that peace and stability require the United States to assert its primacy in world politics.[5]

The doctrine did not come from thin air. Many believe that the very doctrine has been influenced by neoconservatism. Supporters and critics of the Bush administration alike regularly assert that its foreign policy is now under ‘neoconservative’ influence,[6] or that Bush has embraced the grand strategy of global hegemony and democracy promotion characteristically associated with neoconservatism.[7] Richard Perle happily asserts that George W. Bush is following neo-conservative ideas on “issue after issue” and William Kristol declares that Bush’s “is basically a neocon foreign policy”. From the other side, Bush’s critics claim that he is “the callow instrument of neo-conservative ideologues”[8] or, as Howard Dean said, “[President Bush is] an engaging person, but I think for some reason he's been captured by the neoconservatives around him.”

Few, indeed, argue that there is nothing really invented in either the Bush doctrine or neoconservative foreign policy. I, for my own part, share this argument. Bush or neocons simply articulates what America has ever embraced in its foreign policy. Those principles are not unique to Bush or neoconservatism. They become more obvious recently in the Bush administration only because the administration has to deal with a changing context of international balance of power. The disapproval of the rest of the world over Bush and its foreign policy is more a result of their own changes than the US’s. I think the appropriate words for those doctrines would be: neo-unilateralism and neo-Americanism, but keeping in mind that these concepts are necessarily neo versions of old stuffs.

In this paper, I would argue that, on the one hand, it is the nature of threats posed by terrorism that makes some old-fashion principles of foreign policies – American primacy, unilateralism, and pre-emptive attack – more obvious than others. Because the 9/11 terrorist attacks were so devastating and shocking, it does not matter whether the president is Bush or not; it probably would not have changed the course. He or she must have been back to these principles in such a situation. Bush who indeed promised to be more committed to the domestic issues soon turned his eyes to the international stage; and the old American dignity, accompanied by an economic and military power, led the administration to the those doctrines. At the mean time, I do argue that while the doctrine is conventionally “American”, it unfortunately does not help the administration to meet the challenges the terrorist groups have posed. The nature of Islamist terrorism requires all the “not”-Bush- doctrine’s elements: not military approach, not pre-emptive war, not unilateralism.

In presenting my argument, I would first deal with neoconservatism and the “historical” nature of US foreign policy. In these parts, I argue that while neoconservatism is different form other political strains, it is not really a new strain; and that the Bush doctrine has its historical roots. In the part that follows those parts, I would deal with the Islamist threat that has forced the Bush administration to wrongly pursue its neoconservative foreign policy and why it failed.

ON NEOCONSERVATISM

What is neoconservatism? “Even I, frequently referred to as the ‘godfather’ of all those neocons, have had my moments of wonderment,” said Irving Kristol. Despite its common use, it is seemingly not easy to figure out what this term really means. Irwin Stelzer, the editor of Neoconservatism (a selection of articles by neoconservative intellectuals published by Atlantic Books), has a good point when he said that neoconservative is not a movement and that the intellectuals known as “neocons” prize their individualism, not for grouping with others into an ideological monolith.[9] Because of this reason, here I would refer to two important intellectuals in the camp to learn their self-definition of neoconservatism. First, I will take the definition from Irving Kristol and second, from that of Francis Fukuyama, who ceased to be neoconservative and criticized neoconservatism.

Writing in a well known magazine of neoconservative, The Weekly Standard, Irving Kristol interprets some domestic policies that most neoconservatives agree, such as cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom."
Kristol was surprised that neoconservative influence is mostly captured in the foreign policy issues. This is surprising, he said, since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy. They are only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. First, he argues, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, arguing for their black and white world, statesmen should have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed.

And above all, important to neoconservatism is the way it sees American military power as a destiny to lead the world. It is a destiny simply because no one planned it. American incomparable power comes just suddenly as a “bad luck” of the end of the Cold War. And power has its own destiny. Kristol believes, “With power come responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not. And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you.” [10]
In June 2006 Francis Fukuyama, a former prominent neoconservative, bitterly criticizes the current neoconservatism. He argues that the “true” neoconservatism – the one that the now neocons have departed from – has four principles common to the idea up through the end of the Cold War: first, a concern with democracy, human rights and, more generally, the internal politics of states; second, a belief that American power can be used for moral purposes; third, a skepticism about the ability of international law and institutions to solve serious security problems; and finally, a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends.[11]

Unlike what many see as Fukuyama departure’s from neoconservatism, Fukuyama did not really depart from it. He still shares their primacy of the ideas of democracy and human right – the American creeds, as other Americans do – and skepticism in international law. He indeed observes, “The problem with neoconservatism’s agenda lies not in its end, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them”.[12] Thus, their agenda is fine and the use of military is likewise no problem as long as not “over-militarized”.
Fukuyama’s main criticism departed mainly from the fourth point, the limits of any social engineering. He argues that Iraq War is against neoconservative pessimism in social engineering: it is impossible to bring democracy to the Middle East. Fukuyama might be right. One neoconservative wrote in the journal of Public Interest that the success in shaping a better and more harmonious society is dependant more on a fund of traditional orientations, or values, than any social engineering approach. Dan Bell was one of them. Fukuyama, however, missed that other Neoconservative like Irving Kristol, from the outset, has never been in full agreement at this point.[13]

To sum up, neoconservatives agree upon these three features of foreign policy: first, the universality of American’s creed (democracy and freedom); second, the use of American power to spread its creed; and unilateralism or skepticism in international and multilateral institutions. The Bush administration in many ways follows these principles in its War on terrorism.
The pre-emptive war, which many think as a new in the Bush administration, simply represents an implication of unilateralism. If America would ignore international institutions, it just makes sense to ignore any international norms for its own security in this anarchic world. In addition, the U.S.A is not the first one who use this measure to protect itself. Israel did it earlier when in 1981 it destroyed the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor located 30 kilometers South of Baghdad.[14]

“NEOCONSERVATIVE” AMERICA

If those are the principles neocons are promoting, we will find that those principles are not unique to neoconservative and the Bush doctrine. The history of American foreign policy shows the roots of those principles in American administrations and America as a nation over time.
One of the central principles the neocons assert is the American exceptionalism or the American’s creed. Historically, it refers to “the perception that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations, because of its unique origins, national credo, historical evolution, and distinctive political and religious institutions.”[15] In 1630, John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, famously proclaimed in a sermon at sea that the settlers’ efforts would produce “a city on a hill,” an example to the world.[16]
From the very beginning of their national life, American professed a string belief in what they consider their destiny, to spread freedom and social justice. And to be a “Repudiation of the Europe is, after all, America’s main excuse for being.” Europe stood for war, poverty, and exploitation; America, for peace, opportunity, and democracy.[17]

Since then, the notion on “American exceptionalism” has taken on a variety of meanings. In foreign policy, American exceptionalism implies the need of American leaders to be guided by those values and to promote them all over the world. Almost all Americans share this idea, the only difference among them is whether America should do that simply by example or that America, with the exceptional power it has, should spread these values by force. The first is known as an isolationist approach and the second is the internationalist-activist approach.
In the foreign policy practice, however, there has never been really isolationist approach in American history. The US has been actively engaged in international affairs even before it become first class power on the world politics stage (by expanding its territory to the south and north west of the country) and has more actively been engaged since it rises as a great power in the 20th century.

The Monroe Doctrine is arguably an important early doctrine formulating that American exceptionalism in a formal way. In a message to the congress, Monroe set three essential points for his foreign policy. The first committed the United States to a policy of non-colonization by affirming that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects to future colonization by any European powers.” The second endorsed the policy of “hands off” while arguing that the monarchical system of the Old World “is essentially different from that of America”. The third embraced a policy of abstention from European political affairs.[18]

While the doctrine appears isolationist, as some would argue, it really did not work that way. It isolated Europe, but not America, from extending their “hand” and, at the same time it opened a way for the U.S.A to extend its power into the region’s affairs and to cultivate American style of governments, particularly in Latin America. Moreover, it indeed promoted unilateralism. As historian John J. Johnson observes, the doctrine, a unilateral presidential statement without standing under international law, committed the United States to do very little except to defend its own basic interest.[19]

Not long after the doctrine was promulgated in 1820s, driven by its “Manifest Destiny”, the U.S.A expanded itself in 1840s to 1880s within the continent westward. By the late 1890s the United States had became deeply involved in the Carribean, Pacific, and Asia in a surge of national feeling that became known as the “new Manifest Destiny.” With regard to these activities, Howard Jones observes, “Any US interest in the actual annexation of territory had given way to ‘informal empire’ or commercial penetration that led either to economic dominance without direct political controls or to acquisition of colonies having no prospect of statehood.”[20]

And then, the War with Spanish and the liberation of Cuba, the annexation Caribbean and Pacific islands, the colonization of the Philippines, the Open Door in China. The US foreign policy had never been really isolationist before the 20th century and continued to be active and even more active in the Roosevelt Era (1900-1913).

Other important historical foreign policy on which the Bush doctrine finds its ground is the missionary foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson. He was more willing than Bush to work to make the world safe for democracy. By the time his administration come to a close, the United States had delved deeply into East Asian and Latin American affairs, entered a world war that he called a crusade for democracy and, worth noting, engaged in two military interventionist episodes in Russia in 1918 and 1920.[21]

While some argue that the Wilson Era is an example of American liberalism, particularly with the president’s effort to establish League of Nations, I would argue the opposite. It is worth noting that while the president was willing to pursue his internationalist foreign policy, the U.S.A (as a nation re[resented in the Congress) indeed did not join the league. Returning from Europe, Wilson found unexpected bitter rejection. And similar to the Bush doctrine and neoconservative later articulated doctrine, America has never submitted itself to such an international body. America was (and is) very skeptical in the world government. On the League of Nations, Missouri Senator James Reed snidely remarked at in 1919, “Think of submitting questions involving the very life of the United States to a tribunal on which a nigger from Liberia, a nigger from Honduras, a nigger from India… each have votes equal to that of the great United States.”[22]

Unilateralism does have its root back to the earlier days of American empire. When the United Nations was established in 1945, the U.S.A quickly join the multilateral body simply because, unlike the League of Nation, it guarantees America’s veto right – a right the U.S.A can use to protect its interest. Otherwise, the United States would have never joined the body and that is why the U.S.A has vetoed the UN resolutions more than the rest of the five.

Another doctrine similar to the way the Bush doctrine believes in the use of American power to spread its creed all over the world is the Truman Doctrine. The logic of this doctrine was clear from its document: Greece was threatened by terrorist activities whose goal was imposing an authoritarian regime and the US had the willing and power to sustain it as a free nation. Truman rightly read American mind, “I do not believe that the American people and Congress wish to turn a deaf ear to the appeal of the Greek Government”.[23] Referring to the objectives of the United Nations that the United States has played an important role, he then said, “We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity.”

But why did the U.S.A. need to intervene and spend its budget for Greek and Turkey? The intervention to sustain those free nations is crucial because “…totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and the security of the United States.” The Bush doctrine is similar to this logic: Iraq was ruled by an authoritarian regime threatening “free” countries or free world and the US has willing and ability with its power to protect that free countries and to install freedom and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Surely there is a difference in the level of measures the U.S.A took and the threats these administrations were dealing with, but their very logics do not change: conceived terrorist and totalitarian regimes threat, on the one hand, and the American ability and unilateral intervention on the other.

Finally, if we are required to judge whether the Bush foreign policy represents the nation or not, we simply need to refer to the time when the invasion of Iraq started. Bush did not go war alone; he was fully supported by the nation represented in its Congress. At the time, Bush did receive very significant congressional approval. In the Senate, Bush won 77-23 votes; while in the Congress, he won similarly significant 296-133 votes. Ahead of the vote, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, announced he would support Bush on Iraq, saying it is important for the country "to speak with one voice at this critical moment."[24] The then unpopular policy was very “popular” even among Democrats and did represent the nation. The differences between Bush and his opponents are seemingly not a substantial difference; but rather a political rhetoric to win the election.

THE TERRORIST THREAT AND IRAQ: A CASE TO CONSIDER

The success and, alas, the failure of the presumed neoconservative foreign policy are the invasion of Iraq. One could argue that the Bush doctrine was actually be implemented successfully in Iraq when we look at it in the way Bush himself proudly boasted as America’s victory, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”[25] On the day of that remark, Bush could surely list America’s success in Iraq: (1) removing the evil regime; (2) bringing liberty to Iraqis; (3) and that no terrorist network gained weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

In September 2006, arguing for the “success” of the Bush doctrine in Iraq, Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative intellectual, presents the following five somewhat similar arguments: first, Iraq has been liberated from one of the worst tyrants in the Middle East; second, three elections have been held; third, a decent constitution has been written; fourth, a government is in place; and fifth previously unimaginable liberties are being enjoyed. He bitterly asks, “By what bizarre calculus does all this add up to failure? And by what even stranger logic is failure to be read into the fact that the forces opposed to democratization are fighting back with all their might?”[26]

In an interesting piece of the New York Times, Johnson and Tierney argue about the perception of failures. Iraq could be like Vietnam and Somalia: both are commonly held as the most striking failures of the post-Cold-War era. They argue that America actually won Vietnam War and the Tet Offensive was a great blow for the Communist Vietcong in South Vietnam. Like Podhoretz who believe that the forces of anti-democracy are not fighting with their once full-might, Johnson and Tierney argue that America succeeded in killing almost half of Vietcong guerilla and it could never recovered. The war, however, was perceived as failure only because the way the media covered it and, most importantly, high expectation promised. From this analogy, the failure in Iraq is therefore only in the sense that Bush is too early to announce the mission accomplished.[27]

However, if we look at Iraq, surely it is not about perception. The only success is removing Saddam Hussein. The number of death is telling enough to say the opposite: 650,000 Iraqi lost their lives. Is that a fair price for the “conceived” freedom and liberty? While democratic system requires elections to be held; the elections held in Iraq are not necessarily a sign of democracy. What Podhoretz sees as a government of Iraq does not govern anything in the country. The administration of Nuri al-Maliki, with American forces’ help, even cannot well control Baghdad. And what Podhoretz sees as a democratic election is illusion.

More than a perception, the failure of the invasion can be seen from its failure of creating security in the region. The media reports have told us that Iraq now is more dangerous than ever before. In October and November 2006, the crisis has posed dangers to journalist, religious minorities, and women, in addition to the looming civil sectarian war in the country.[28]
Furthermore, the declassified intelligence report also concluded more seriously that “The war in Iraq has become a cause célèbre for Islamic extremists” and the document make these obvious points:

The increased role of Iraqis in opposing al-Qaida in Iraq might lead the terror group’s veteran foreign fighters to refocus their efforts outside that country.
While Iran and Syria are the most active state sponsors of terror, many other countries will be unable to prevent their resources from being exploited by terrorists.
The underlying factors that are fueling the spread of the extremist Muslim movement outweigh its vulnerabilities. These factors are entrenched grievances and a slow pace of reform in home countries, rising anti-U.S. sentiment and the Iraq war.
Groups “of all stripes” will increasingly use the Internet to communicate, train, recruit and obtain support. [29]

It is now obvious that the Bush doctrine was successful in changing the regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq; however, it indeed failed when dealing with the real threat: Islamist terrorism. Dealing with Saddam’s Iraq and Taliban’s Afghanistan, the doctrine can be implemented successfully. However, when it is confronted with non-state actors, terrorist organizations whose rationality are not like states, the doctrine got stuck and become a costly project. Why did the doctrines fail?

First, a pre-emptive war is only fightable against the states supporting terrorism, but not the terrorist organizations. The terrorist organizations spawn their cells beyond supporting states. They can grow within any state and then attack the state. They can even grow within America as a local grown terrorism. The cases of Adam Gadahn, John Walker Lindh , and Jose Padilla[30], Americans who voluntarily joined the terrorist network, are not necessarily fightable with a pre emptive-war. This kind of ideological international network lies not in the level of state and cannot be defeated by military forces.

Moreover, terrorist deadly violent attacks happen less frequently; they happen sometimes and the preparations for those attacks take longer time. In a terrorist attack, the preparations of the operations matters more and it is on that stage that the US should work. Before the September 11 attacks, the al-Qaeda’s members used the internet to email, research, and coordinate among its cells and used cell phones to prepare the attacks.[31] In such ways, pre-emptive military operation is necessarily not required in the first place; and other more subtle measures are required instead. The U.S.A military, unfortunately, knows how to destroy state governments and their armed forces, but it has been far less impressive in its use of such more subtle, non-military tools.[32]

The second doctrine of unilateral actions is, therefore, necessarily counter-productive in fighting a decentralized organization of terror with global network. With its “Islamic” identity, terrorist groups are united in a one “nation”, ummah, which goes beyond the secular concept of nationalism. Their boundary is not the “state”, but rather their very identity as Muslims — regardless what nation-state they live in. A Jordanian al-Zarqawi was as at home as Saddam Hussein in Iraq because Iraq is the land of any Muslim. In South Asia, the Pakistani Pastuns and Afghan Pastuns are “Muslim Pastuns” who work together in jihad against the infidels.[33]

London and Bali Bombings are excellent examples for this case. Unlike Palestinian suicide bombers crossing into Israel, Chechen rebels in Russia, or the 9/11 hijackers attacking the United States, these terrorists attack their own country. In the London bombing, the terrorists were British.[34] In the Bali bombings, the terrorist are Indonesians.[35] Those bombings were possible only because they perceived the United Kingdoms and Indonesia as other entities they do not really belong to. They believed in a belonging to an identity higher and broader than those national identities: ummah, the broader Islamic identity. Dealing with enemy without state boundary requires working with as many as possible countries rather than working unilaterally.

Finally, the Middle East or Islamic world, where the terrorists against America mostly come from, is more than geographical concept void of ideology and civilization. As Doran argues, it is a region in its own war of civilization.[36] With or without American invasion to Iraq, it had already had its own war: colonialism, socialism, modernity, secularization, religious and class conflicts. As Fuller observes, some in the West just ignore those Muslim’s problems and insist Muslims to face reality and get on with it. The U.S. tendency to disregard popular Muslim concerns as Washington cooperates with oppressive regimes fosters environment in which acts of terrorism become thinkable.[37]

Even without the conceived unjust invasion of Iraq, to export American creeds to that world was already difficult because the feeling of anti-Americanism had pervaded among Arabs for The US’s perceived blind support for Israel. The Arab regime might have close relations with the U.S.A, but Arabs have never found America as a sincere friend. To put it in Fareed Zakaria’s phrase, “Most Americans think that Arabs should be grateful for our role in the Gulf War, for we saved Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Most Arabs think that we saved Kuwaiti and Saudi royal families. [It is a] big difference.”[38]

Thus, none of the elements of the Bush doctrine meets the required foreign policy in dealing with Islamist terrorism and its threats. The Billion dollars the administration has spent has brought but violence, unsecured Iraq that become the haven for a growing number of fundamentalist, and civil war.

From Afghanistan to Iraq, human lives seem unworthy to pay the implementation of unilateral action and regime change project of the doctrine. So high is the bid for implementing the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war and nation building that even Condoleezza Rice, often credited with writing the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, made clear as early as in Summer 2003 that the United States would ‘‘never want to do another Iraq.”[39]

CONCLUSION

The Bush doctrine, whether influenced by neoconservatism or not, shares some points with the strain, particularly in their belief in the universality of American’s creed, the unilateralism and skepticism in international body, and the possible use of American extra ordinary force to export democracy and regime change. Bush and the neoconservative, in this sense, are in the same boat.

However, these ideas indeed are not newly invented by either Bush or neoconservative; they have deep roots in the history American foreign policy. Those are necessarily a reemergence of principles previously appeared in, most notably, the Monroe Doctrine, the missionary foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson, and the Truman Doctrine.

The problem in the Bush doctrine and the neoconservative approach is that they do not meet the nature of terrorist threat the U.S. now is faced with. While terrorism is done by non state actors, pre-emptive war only works when dealing with other state actors posing the danger to America’s interest. While terrorist rely much on an international network beyond national boundaries, the Bush doctrine exactly rejects multinational institution that could provide parallel international network required. Instead of persuading the cooperation from the nations, Bush speaks to the rest of the World with statements that many perceive as an arrogant call, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”[40]

At least two things are important to consider. First, to be respected again by international community, the United States needs to fully embrace multilateralism. It will be wise to use the power America has to lead the world in a multilateral way rather than acting unilaterally. Most of the world still respects the United States as a nation. When the source of anti-Americanism is the unilateral foreign policy, it is then the time to stop it. Second, Bush and America are certainly right that democracy can make the world peace. Most of the world love democracy America is fighting for. But promoting democracy should be in a democratic way. It doesn’t make any sense that the Bush administration tries to plant democracy through military power. Democracy is a political tool to solve power conflicts in a peaceful and civilized way; why did we use military power to implement it?

***

Faktor Pemicu Kebenian terhadap Amerika

2006-11-19T23:54:00.000-08:00

REPUBLIKA, November 19 2006

Bush belum datang, tetapi demonstrasi menentang Bush sudah marak di berbagai kota, termasuk mereka yang memaksa masuk dan berunjuk rasa di Kebun Raya Bogor. Karena unjuk rasa itu sering diwarnai dengan aksi pembakaran bendera Amerika, orang [Amerika terutama] lalu menafsirkan demo-demo itu sebagi ekspresi dari anti-Amerikanisme. Orang-orang Amerika yang lugu pun lantas geleng kepala keheranan, "Why they hate us (mengapa mereka membenci kami)?" Pertanyaan yang pernah sangat populer di Amerika ketika teroris menyerang dan merobohkan menara kembar WTC pada tahun 2001.

Bush sendiri dalam pidatonya sering mengekploitasi ekpresi kebencian itu sebagai kebencian terhadap kemakmuran, kebebasan, dan kekuatan Amerika. "Ah, mereka itu ngiri saja sama kita," kata Bush di berbagai kesempatan.

Bush factor
Mungkin Bush benar bila yang dimaksud dengan 'mereka' adalah Usamah bin Ladin. Usamah memang bukan tipe pembela demokrasi dan liberalisme Amerika. Tetapi yang gagal ditangkap oleh pernyataan itu adalah kebencian itu sendiri bukan karena Amerika dan tidak kepada Amerika. Kebencian itu adalah karena Presiden Bush sendiri, alias Bush factor in anti-Americanism.

Menurut survei di Jerman tahun 2004, ketika berlangsung pemilu presiden Amerika yang mempertarungkan Bush dan John Kerry dari Partai Demokrat, 80 persen orang Jerman lebih memilih Kerry daripada Bush. Kerry bahkan 'menang telak' di Prancis dengan hanya menyisakan 5 persen saja untuk Bush. Satu periode kepresiden saja saat itu sudah cukup membuat komunitas internasional, termasuk sekutu Bush di Eropa, untuk menolaknya.

Menurut survei lembaga terkemuka di Amerika, The PEW Global Attitudes Project, selama masa enam tahun kepemimpinan Bush dukungan internasional terhadap Amerika merosot sangat tajam. Di Inggris, angka dukungan turun dari 83 persen di tahun 1999 ke 56 persen di tahun 2006. Sementara di Prancis, angka dukungan merosot dari 62 persen ke 39 persen. Sementara di Indonesia, angka dukungan anjlok dari 77 persen di tahun 2000 menjadi 30 persen pada tahun ini.

Lebih penting lagi adalah data yang diperoleh PEW dari survei berbeda di tahun 2003. Survei yang menelisik sumber anti-Amerikanisme ini menemukan bahwa, di Prancis, misalnya, sumber anti-Amerikanisme itu adalah Bush (74 persen) dan hanya 21 persen yang menyatakan Amerika sendiri sebagai sumber masalah. Di Indonesia, pada tahun yang sama, 69 persen menilai Bush sebagai sumber masalah. Jadi, perlu dicatat bahwa walaupun bendera Amerika yang dibakar dan kedubes Amerika yang dikepung, ketidakpuasan dan 'kebencian' itu, jika memang ada, sebenarnya ditujukan lebih kepada Bush daripada kepada Amerika sendiri.

Anti-Bushisme, istilah yang saya usulkan untuk mengganti anti-Amerikanisme, di Indonesia juga menyebar rata dari kalangan fundamentalis Muslim sampai dengan yang moderat. Ketua Umum PBNU Hasyim Muzadi, misalnya, sempat marah-marah terhadap kebijakan luar negeri Bush saat Perang Israel-Lebanon yang lalu.

Bahkan, Muslim paling liberal pun juga tidak bisa menerima kebijakan luar negeri Amerika. Saya masih ingat bagaimana Ulil-Abshar Abdalla secara emosional, dengan kata-kata yang sangat tajam, mengungkapkan kekecewaannya di sebuah harian nasional dan di website Jaringan Islam Liberal. Ulil yang mengagumi Amerika sebagai 'peradaban' tak bisa memahami kebijakan Timur Tengah Amerika yang 'biadab' --secara membabi buta memihak Israel dan membiarkan warga Lebanon dibombardir dan kotanya diratakan dengan tanah.

Mengubah Kebijakan?
Adakah perubahan kebijakan luar negeri yang bisa kita harapkan dari kedatangan Presiden Bush ke Indonesia ini? Kalau umat Islam ingin melihat perubahan kebijakan luar negeri Amerika, mestinya bukan Presiden Bush yang kita jamu di Istana Bogor saat dia datang, melainkan Nancy Pelosi, calon ketua DPR-nya Amerika (House of Representative) yang baru.

Kekuasaan DPR Amerika dalam menentukan anggaran, membuat komisi pengawasan kebijakan, dan komisi penyelidik bisa mengerem kebijakan luar negeri Bush yang ekpspansionis. Sementara Bush sendiri, walaupun saya berharap bisa berubah karena tekanan Kongres yang kini di tangan Partai Demokrat, kelihatannya tak akan banyak berubah.

Ia memang merespons dengan cepat hasil pemilu legislatif yang baru lalu dengan penggantian menteri pertahanan (pemain kunci dalam kebijakan luar negeri Amerika yang militeristik). Tetapi tak ada pengamat politik Amerika yang yakin bahwa perubahan drastis akan terjadi. Dalam buku Bob Woodward yang menghebohkan publik Amerika, State of Denial: Bush at War Part III, disebutkan Bush pernah menyatakan bahwa ia tak akan meninggalkan Irak meskipun hanya tinggal Laura (istrinya) dan Barney (anjingnya), yang memberikan dukungan.

Tentu saja kita menghormati keteguhan hati Mr Bush. Tetapi bila ia lebih mencintai Amerika (yang ikut dibenci komunitas internasional karena kebijakan luar negerinya) daripada Laura dan Barney, tentu kita berharap agar dia mau mengubah kebijakan luar negerinya. Kebun Raya Bogor yang sejuk semoga saja menjernihkan pikirannya.

Jakarta can help Bush find graceful exit from Iraq

2006-11-16T23:51:00.000-08:00

The Jakarta Post, Opinion and Editorial - November 16, 2006

President Bush's Republican Party has just been punished for his incompetent foreign policy: The messy invasion and occupation of Iraq. While Americans are now demanding Bush change his course, it seems his administration is still struggling to come up with alternatives. Bush's visit to Indonesia, however, could provide him with such a strategy.

The mid-term election was nothing short of a referendum on the president. So bad was Bush's performance that a Democratic candidate needed no smart agenda to get elected. The Washington Post's columnist Eugene Robinson mockingly said candidates could win just by sending out a simple message: "Look, I'm not George W. Bush!"

According to the Weekly Standard, nearly four in 10 voters leaving the polls said their vote was cast against Bush. Sixteen percent of those who said they voted for Bush in 2004 voted for Democratic candidates. And the more telling number is that his approval rating was 42 percent in the exit polls, 10 points lower than on election day in 2004 and 24 points lower than in 2002.

The Gallup poll found three issues were ranked "extremely important" by the voters on Election Day: corruption (41 percent), terrorism (39 percent), and Iraq (36 percent). If we combine terrorism and Iraq into one category of foreign policy, the message is clear: foreign policy matters in the election. And Bush needs fresh ideas to make things right.

Unfortunately, neither the Democratic nor Republican parties have yet thought outside of the box. The options most often talked about are "staying the course" -- maintaining the troops or even doubling their numbers or "cutting and running" -- a total withdrawal. These options are not really much of a plan. "Staying the course" means more money and more Iraqi lives. "Cutting and running", on the other hand, will drag Iraq into a bloody civil war. The problem in those options is that they only see "America". They ignore a possible third party who could help solve the problem.

A few people do have a good idea beyond those options: "engagement". According to this option, the U.S. needs to talk to key players in the Middle East, particularly Iran. The majority of Iraq is Shiite and they have a close connection with Tehran. If America needs a solution, it has to involve Iran.

However, it is likely America will be unwilling to make such a move. First, Iran is an "enemy"; and a part of the Bush doctrine is not to "talk with your enemy". Second, the U.S. certainly knows that involving Iran would only give it more bargaining power over its nuclear project. Iran has already had a covert influence among Shiite Iraqis and America will never let it have a direct presence in the conflict.

Thus, how to implement an engagement-strategy while maintaining the power balance in the Middle East? How to involve Tehran without giving it too much power? I would argue that involving Indonesia as part of an engagement-strategy is an option Bush should consider while visiting Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono next week.

First, Indonesia's role will not change any power balance in the Middle East. Although it does not recognize Israel, Indonesia is a relatively neutral country without many interests in the area.

Second, Indonesia is arguably a friend of both conflicting parties, including Iran and America. Even Israel can accept the deployment of Indonesian troops in Lebanon, while complaining about those from Bangladesh and Malaysia. Last May, Indonesia hosted President Ahmadinejad and will shortly host President George W. Bush. This best indicates the unique position Indonesia can play.

Third, Indonesia is a Sunni country and acceptable to the Sunni faction in Iraq. Indonesia could also be a trustworthy broker when negotiating with a Shiite faction.

For Indonesia's part, there is good reason be involved. It is time for the country to show real concern about Iraq. Indonesians need to express their solidarity beyond the conventional condemnation and demonstrations. Nothing is wrong with people organizing rallies to show their solidarity to their Iraqi Muslim "brothers".

The role Indonesia can play could include talking with Iran and other key players, lobbying Islamic countries in the OIC, and sending peace-keeping troops under the UN mandate.

I understand though that Indonesia's role finally depends on Bush and Yudhoyono. Bush needs a fresh exit strategy and Yudhoyono, as he has shown on many occasions, wants to play an international role. Bush made a mistake invading Iraq and his party was punished for it. It is time, therefore, to end the mistakes and start working on the solutions.

Teokrasi Amerika?

2006-10-08T23:50:00.000-07:00

Published on REPUBLIKA, October 8th 2006

Dalam Resonansi 5 Oktober lalu, Azyumardi Azra menyepakati dan, karena itu, 'meresonansikan' sepenuhnya tesis 'gejala kebangkitan teokrasi Amerika'. Tesis ini diajukan oleh Kevin Phillips dalam bukunya American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. Philip memang mengajukan tesis menarik atas negara yang kini mengklaim diri sebagai paling demokratis itu.

Hanya, terlebih dahulu, untuk mengikuti alur argumen buku itu maupun kesetujuan Azyumardi, kita perlu sepakat bahwa teokrasi dalam konteks pembicaraan ini adalah bukan teokrasi dalam arti sesungguhnya. Teokrasi di sini sekadar metafor tentang pengaruh agama yang sedemikian kuat dalam kehidupan 'demokrasi' Amerika, bukan persenyawaan antara teokrasi dan demokrasi dalam konsep teodemokrasi yang diusung oleh Abu Al Maududi.

Nah, benarkah teokrasi, dalam pengertian di atas, adalah gejala baru di Amerika? Berbeda dengan tesis kedua intelektual itu, menurut hemat saya, pengaruh agama dalam politik Amerika adalah bukan hal yang baru.

Agama dan politik
Ada pepatah politik yang popular di kalangan ilmuwan dalam membandingkan Amerika dengan Eropa. Eropa membuat negara-bangsa untuk melindungi diri dari agama. Orang Amerika, sebaliknya, mendirikan negara-bangsa untuk melindungi agama. Artinya, negara Eropa adalah anti-tesis gereja, sementara orang Amerika dahulu lari dari persekusi-gereja Eropa untuk menciptakan negara yang bisa melindungi kebebasan setiap orang dalam beragama. Jadi, tesis sekularisasi Amerika sejak awal memang tidak anti-agama.

Untuk mendukung tesisnya, buku yang dibedah Azyumardi, mengajukan argumen berikut: adanya presiden yang meyakini bahwa ia berbicara dan bertindak atas nama Tuhan; partai berkuasa menjadi kepanjangan tangan komunitas beragama; dan Gedung Putih mengambil kebijakan domestik serta luar negeri atas motivasi-motivasi keagamaan dan pandangan dunia biblical. Mari kita lihat sejarah Amerika untuk menguji argumen ini.

Pertama, kebanyakan presiden Amerika menggunakan bahasa agama sebagai bahasa vernacular(bahasa asli) rakyatnya. Jika Presiden Bush sekarang sering menggunakan bahasa-bahasa agama, ia bukanlah orang pertama. Kalau kita berkunjung ke memorial Presiden Jefferson di Washington DC, misalnya, kita akan merasakan betapa religiusnya pernyataan-pernyataan yang dipahatkan di dindingnya.

Dalam konteks bertindak atas nama Tuhan, tentu saja Bush tak sebanding dengan Woodrow Wilson di era Perang Dunia I yang setelah memenangkan perang itu meyakini dirinya sebagai sebagai Almasih bagi Eropa. Bagi kritikusnya, ia dianggap mengidap a Messiah complex. Tapi bagi pendukungnya itu hal yang tak berlebihan. Seorang wanita di Paris bahkan mengirimkan surat berbunyi, "Wilson! Wilson! Glory to you, who, like Jesus, have said: Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men."

Kebijakan luar negeri Amerika yang biblical juga bukan hal baru. Perang internasional pertama yang melibatkan negeri Paman Sam, Perang Amerika-Spanyol, disambut para pendukungnya sebagai 'awal kemenangan Tuhan'. Sementara mengomentari kemengannya di Filipina, Komodor Geroge Dewey berkata, "Andai aku orang yang saleh, aku harap demikian, aku tentu mengatakan bahwa tangan Tuhan bersama kami."

Kebijakan luar negeri Woodrow Wilson yang sangat idealis juga sering disebut dengan istilah religius: missionary diplomacy. Sementara Istilah crusade for democracy dalam buku-buku politik di Amerika juga seakrab istilah jihad di kalangan Muslim dalam mendeskripsikan perjuangan mereka di jalan Tuhan. Dan lobi yang paling kuat, seperti sudah banyak dimaklumi, juga lobi kelompok agama: lobi Yahudi.

Ringkas kata, pengaruh agama dalam kehidupan politik di Amerika bukan gejala baru dan tidak pula akan berkembang sejauh yang ditesiskan buku itu. Azyumardi sendiri menyebutkan bahwa ia sudah pernah membaca gejala itu sejak dua puluh tahun lalu. Nah, dua puluh tahun sudah dan 'gejala' itu tetap menjadi 'gejala' dan tidak menunjukkan peningkatan berarti.

Seperti Azyumardi, selama saya tinggal Amerika, saya juga sempat cemas oleh pengaruh kaum Kristen fundamentalis semisal Pat Robertson yang pernah mencalonkan diri, tetapi gagal, sebagai presiden lewat Partai Republik di tahun 1988. Tetapi kecemasan saya itu, kata seorang teman Muslim Amerika, tak beralasan. Menurutnya, pengaruh kelompok fundamentalis Kristen itu mengalami pasang-surut, tergantung siapa yang menjadi presiden Amerika. Pada masa Reagan, suara mereka pernah lantang, lalu tenggelam saat Bill Clinton, dan kini nyaring lagi karena didengar oleh Bush.

Contoh bagi Indonesia?
Melihat model interaksi agama dan politik di Amerika, umat Islam di Indonesia yang ingin aspirasinya didengar di ruang publik mungkin tertarik untuk melihatnya sebagai model yang lebih cocok ditiru oleh Indonesia daripada model demokrasi sekuler Eropa. Berbeda dengan sekularisasi Prancis, misalnya, yang tidak memberikan sama sekali ruang publik bagi agama, Amerika memberikan ruang itu dalam kerangka kebebasan berekspresi. Agama, di Amerika, setara dengan ideologi lain: tidak dikucilkan dari ruang publik yang menjadi milik ekslusif ideologi sekuler.

Hanya, sisi buruknya, umat Islam harus sadar bahwa model Amerika ini pula yang membuat kebijakan luar negerinya mereka 'benci'. Akibat pengaruh agama di ruang publik itulah yang, misalnya, dalam kasus Perang Israel-Lebanon membuat Bush (didukung penuh oleh fundamentalis Kristen Amerika) berpihak secara membabi-buta kepada Israel. Sebaliknya Prancis, yang model sekularisasinya tak menarik bagi umat Islam, justru mengambil kebijakan luar negeri yang menguntungkan Lebanon. Nah, mana yang lebih baik?

Learning from Islamic Conservatism in Malaysia

2006-08-31T23:48:00.000-07:00

Published in the Jakarta Post

A Malaysian friend, an activist with a feminist NGO, Sisters in Islam (SIS), e-mailed me recently about how difficult it is to get support for feminist interpretations of religious texts in Malaysia as compared to Indonesia.

In an increasingly conservative Malaysia, where Islam is considered monolithic, challenging clerics' interpretations could be considered a sin. She received, for her part, verbal attacks when she criticized a fatwa that isolates people living with HIV on an island.

The growing conservatism in Malaysia is also represented in its politics. There is seemingly no significant difference between the ruling Barisan Nasional -- a supposedly secular party -- and its opposition Partai Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), in their campaign for the Islamization of Malaysia. In response to PAS' promotion of Islamic law and the relative success of the party in Kelantan, UMNO follows in its footstep in a bid to maintain its hegemonic position.

These days, there is much controversy surrounding the case of a Muslim woman who converted to Christianity. Azlina Jailani, a Malay of Javanese blood converted to Christianity in 1998 and adopted a new name, Lina Joy, as a symbol of her new identity as a Christian. She first applied for official permission to change her religion in 2001. However, the judge ruled that "As a Malay, the plaintiff exists under the tenets of Islam until her death". Lina Joy then appealed the decision on the grounds that it contravened Malaysia's constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. She lost her appeal in 2005 and is now waiting for another judgment for her appeal in the Federal Court.

In a seemingly oppressed Islamic world from Chechnya to southern Thailand, many Muslim Malaysians view such a case as an attack on Islam. "Why are Muslims being attacked politically and culturally everywhere?" said one blogger in an online debate.

But, as a Muslim, allow me to explain, this case is not an attack.

Can a faith be maintained by a coercive state power? As far as the Koran is concerned, it says la ikraha fi al-din (no coercion in religion); and it also clearly proclaims lakum dinukum wa liy al-din (it is up to you to embrace your faith and it is up to me to embrace my faith).

There are some debatable prophetic traditions about death penalties for those who convert from Islam. The clear thing, however, is that no single worldly punishment is stipulated in the Koran. It is more than enough to argue against those secondary arguments. After all, Malaysia is not an Islamic state and a reference to Islamic law would be tricky.

Moreover, how can we force someone to be a Muslim without her/his consent while Islam requires voluntary submission? In Abdullah Ahmad al-Naim's words, a prominent Sudanese scholar, "the coerced believers do not worship God, but the state who forced them so". To put it another way, it is a sin to force people to "worship the state" rather than God -- isn't worshiping someone other than God the biggest sin a Muslim could commit?

In this regard, is Indonesia any better than Malaysia? I would argue yes but only to a small degree, namely, we do not have any law stipulating an Indonesian must be a Muslim. Indonesia does force its citizen to embrace one of six "official" religions. And in a case similar to Lina Joy, Muslims, women and men alike, are not allowed to marry non-Muslims.

I don't know if any study has been done on the implications of such laws for those who converted to Islam to marry Indonesian Muslim women. I would call them "coerced Muslims" in a sense that some convert "formally" to Islam because Indonesian law prevents them from marrying Muslim women. Involuntarily converting, they alas do not practice their faith after marriage. Some marriages end in divorce instead.

In a free society, like the one I have encountered in the U.S., Islam flourishes as the fastest growing religion without relying on the coercive state power. Why should we, Muslims, worry about our "non-practicing" fellows leaving their Islamic path then?

Allah once reminded the Prophet that even though he spent all the money in the world, he would not be able to change a man's heart. Allah is the only one who changes the heart, "not you Muhammad". Did we not learn from Koranic stories about Abraham and his father, Noah and his son, David and his beloved wife? Those prophets could not bring their beloved ones to the path of God, how can we?

I think the best we can do is to practice our faith and I believe we are all taught these words, "Ya muqallib al-qulub, tsabbit qulubana ala dinika", a prayer to the only one who can change the heart, God and not the state.

The Secularization of Islamic Law

2006-06-22T23:47:00.000-07:00

The Jakarta Post, June 22 2006

Most proponents of Islamic law believe that to implement it, it has to be codified into a state law, transforming the Islamic law from fiqh (legal literature written by Islamic scholars) into a state-law (either state laws or regional bylaws or Perda).

What they don't quite realize is that the very transformation changes the nature of Islamic law from a divine and religious law into a secular law. Contrary to what the proponents believe, what is happening in Aceh and other localities is not really the shariatization of state-law but is instead the secularization of Islamic law. Let me make it clear here.

Historically speaking, from the time of the Prophet to the end of the caliphate system, Islamic law was implemented in a decentralized way where every judge had his individual and independent authority to issue a judgment out of his personal legal reasoning (ijtihad).

There is a bold principle in Islamic court of justice stipulating that a judge is not bound by any other judgment when he has a case to be dealt with. Furthermore, he is even not bound by his own previous judgments, tilka ma qadayna wa hazihi ma naqdi ("that was our previous judgment in this one is our new judgment").

To put it in a legal-speak way, it is "the judge who makes the law", not the legislative or executive branches. Islamic legal tradition and history are much closer to those of the Common Law tradition than to those of the Continental Law one.

There had never been any codified laws in Islamic legal history until the last decades of the Ottoman Caliphate, as a result of its attempts to modernize its empire and of the Continental European influence.

The first attempts were made as early as in the first century of Islam when a caliph of the Umayyad dynasty asked Imam Malik (the most senior Imam of the four prominent and authoritative imams that have ever existed) to let the caliph have his treaties of Islamic law (al-Muwatta) be the only book of Islamic law imposed on the caliphate.

The caliph was inspired by his predecessor, Uthman bin Affan, who succeeded in unifying all Muslims around one Koranic text. The caliph felt it would be similarly beneficial to unite all Muslims under one Islamic book of law.

However, the imam had sharp and decisive answer to the proposal. "I am only a man with limited knowledge of prophetic tradition. What I compiled in my book are simply some parts of other parts of Islamic law that I don't have any capability to cover. The students of the Prophet have left Medina and the knowledge of some Islamic law has gone with them. My book is far from being appropriate to be the standard one."

Since then, Islamic law has lived an independent life outside of the state machinery. Every judge has free preference to issue his judgment and the state has no authority to intervene in them.
Indonesia itself is a good example of this. Up to the 1990s, we actually had no a standardized Islamic law or a single codification implemented for all Muslims.

Judges in Indonesian Islamic courts had the right to refer to their preferred book of Islamic law appropriate to a given case in a certain locality (what is appropriate to Minangkabauan Muslims might not be appropriate to the Javanese ones).

Sad to say, with the ambition of the New Order to unite Indonesia, those plural practices were seen as a problem and a project of unification of Islamic law was carried out under the auspices of the Religious Affairs Ministry. In 1991, a presidential instruction legalized the so called Kompilasi Hukum Islam as the single reference for Islamic judges. The once plural practices were unified under a national version of Islamic law, eliminating local interpretations.

Now, epistemologically speaking, with the codification of Islamic law and its formalization into a positive law, undang-undang or perda, can we call it Islamic law? Surely, we can "name" it, but what is in a name? Undang-undang and perda, no matter what we call them, are state-made laws -- yes, state-made, not God-made. It is not a divine law anymore. On the contrary, it is secular law.

In addition, according to Islamic legal literature, to issue an Islamic law, a person has to fulfill many academic pre-requisites. He has to be a pious Muslim, have mastered the Koran and its interpretation, understand prophetic tradition and its textual critique and is also required to have mastered Arabic and its literature. Are those members of parliaments or local legislatures eligible and qualified to issue any Islamic law?

Therefore, if the proponents of Islamic law implementation continuously and relentlessly demand those Islamic-law-inspired bills be passed, they have to realize they have secularized the Islamic law anyway.

When Islamic law is secularized, it is a matter of public issues, and has nothing to do with one's faith. If a Muslim joins the Movement of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika to reject the pornography bill, for example, please don't say he or she is not a good Muslim. Because she or he is rejecting mere secular law, not an Islamic law; and that has nothing to do with being a good or bad Muslim.

Religion, Ethnicity, and Political Conflict

2006-06-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

Works and analysis in humanities and social sciences literature have been for a long time focused on attempts to explain why ethno conflicts and other conflicts sometimes occur and sometime not; and why, when they occur, the results are sometimes atrocious, leading to genocide, some are not. However, those very questions and attempts, put under a terminological umbrella of ethno-religious-nationalist conflicts, seemingly tend to complicate problems rather than make the problems better understood.

Why genocides, mass killings, massacres, and mass rapes, tragedies with which we are concerned, should be seen through ethno-religious-nationalist conflicts frameworks? When our very concern is to understand these “dark” sides of human life, then ethno-religious-nationalist analysis could probably be a prejudice unconsciously constructing the “fact” in limited scholarly assumptions at the expense of an analysis open to explanations other than that triad of conflict. By so saying, I would not insist that there exists such a “neutral” point of view; rather, I argue that such predetermined frameworks would leave many explanations other than ethno-religious-nationalist ones unexplained.

Ethnicity, religion, and nationality, notwithstanding their frequent symbolic uses, are merely identities among other identities which individuals belong to. In the heart of a conflict, I would argue, identity is simply a tool to achieve something other than the identity itself. The conflicting groups would strive to find the most powerful tool available at the time being to increase their strength by which they would achieve their common cause. Identity which is providing sense of belonging is desirable to build up a group’s unity. Because no one really has one single identity, the interest groups have to find the most dominant identity that, in turn, provides most powerful support to achieve their goal. When religion is the most powerful identity available among people in a certain place and time, the interest groups will rely on the religion; and when religion is not powerful enough, they would shift to another identity — ethnicity, nationality, geography, shared-history, language, and so on.

It is worth noting, therefore, that identity is inventible and not necessarily given. It might change whenever conditions require it to change. In the case of lack of a powerful identity, the elites would devise the assumed most reliable and available identity. Then they develop and preach it among the populace. The history could be rewritten, language could be taught, and religions could be reinterpreted, all for the sake of constructing a more powerful identity binding the imagined community and excluding the imagined others. To put it differently, I would argue, conflicts create or empower identities rather than the identities create the conflicts.

How then do conflicts create identity? First of all, human beings grow in a group of social unit. In the pre-modern world, for its unity those social units relied on a blood relation (family, band, clan, or tribe), locality (villages, island, or valley), language, or religions.[1] In each social unit a blood relation, a locality, a language or a religion provided a legitimacy on which the elites based their political power. However, these bases alone are not something given and fixed. They have to be continuously maintained as hardly as maintaining the very political power because the relation between them is simply like two sides of a coin.

It is interesting, for example, to notice the primordial blood relation as a basis of political legitimacy.[2] It has been effective from the pre-modern time up to now. But the ways it has been maintained as a basis of political legitimacy have been dynamic ones. At the out set, it was justified because the leader was the father of the family. Then it was justified because the leader is the closer family to the previous leader. After that, they create patriarchal system to maintain. When they begun establishing religion, the legitimacy was derived by creating a myth or belief that the leader is the “descendant” of (or having blood relation with) gods. As they have to deal with other group, the blood relation is then conceived in ethnicity. And so on. The blood relation, in this sense, has been one of the most powerful bases of legitimacy and has been maintained in many interesting ways simply to maintain political power.

Arguably, the political power is the independent variable; while the basis of legitimacy, such as religion, ethnicity, and other potential identity, which are changing and redefined over time, is the dependent variable. Therefore, conflicts of identities are necessarily byproducts of the efforts done by conflicting groups to build, maintain, or fight against a political power. Clive E. Christie aptly points out the case in the French nationalism. Referring to Ellie Kedourie, she said, “In the French revolutionary concept of la nation, the essential foundation of the new state was a matter not of identity, but of political principle.”[3] In similar fashion, Anthony W Marx also begins his discussion on the origin of European nationalism with this search of legitimacy, foundation, to draw the popular allegiance. Modern nationalism, for Anthony Marx, is a kind of meeting point between the elites who hold the power to rule and the populace who gave some of their power to avoid harmful conflicts and ensure their own peaceful prosperity.[4]

Accordingly, the bloody conflicts such as genocides and mass killings are byproducts of this effort of finding power equilibrium rather than a conflict of identities. It is true that the conflicts involve identities (ethnicity, religion, or what so ever), but they were involved in the conflict and not causing the conflict. To put it differently, conflicts create identities rather than identities create conflict.

Based on that insistence, it is my preference to see what so called ethno-conflict and religious-conflict as a power conflict, in which two conflicting parts create and rely on their respective legitimacies (whether it is based on religion, ethnicity, or nationalism). A conflict would stop whenever groups achieve a point where they both see the point of balance in power, an “even” distribution of power. When the point is achieved, the superficial layer of conflicts, such as religion, ethnicity, and nationality, would not be a further justification to fight other groups; and the very identity would be redefined accordingly.

In so doing, my aim is to bring our attention back to the very question of why conflicts occur and how identity (Islam in this paper) is defined or redefined. My paper would show how the relation between political struggles of separatism and the religious/ethno identities is dynamic. It is not a black and white relation where nationalism (represented mainly by the nation-state) and religion/ethnicity (represented mainly by the separatist) stand on a different and contrasting position. Instead, they can accommodate and absorb each other. They merged some time, but they could contradict at other times.

The Cases

The separatisms of Moro and Acehnese are interesting cases to explore my arguments. In the Philippines, the differences of religion between the majority of Filipino and the minority of southern Filipino are supposed to be the bases of the failure of the southern Philippines to integrate with the rest of the country. In Aceh, there is no religious difference between the majority of Indonesian and Acehnese, they are all Muslims. Still, the separatism begins with the declaration of an Islamic state and with Islam as a basis of legitimacy.

These cases are important to my argument because no matter how obvious Islam is in these conflicts today, it was not the religion that triggered the secession. Muslims, in both cases, were free to exercise their religion before the secession. Though Islam is important factor, it other factors that actually triggered the revolt, not suppression of Islam. Some personalities of the revolts, for example, had assumed positions in the nation (Daud Beureueh was a military governor, Nur Misuari was an instructor, and Hasan Tiro worked for the Indonesian government until he join Daud Beureu’eh). In this paper, I would describe how those attributions to Islam and ethnicity are byproducts of conflicts. I don’t mean to say that Islam or ethnicity is not important, but rather it is merely a matter of the level of importance which is concerned. Islam or local ethnicity is a negotiable factor to achieve other cause.

My paper is organized in four sections. First section is this introduction. The second and third sections each will deal with Moro and Aceh. These two sections would not cover all the aspects of the conflicts. They are limited in describing a brief context and, the main argument of this paper, how religious identity is defined or redefined, maintained, and negotiated to achieve power, politically and economically, objectives. The final section, section four, will be the general conclusion of comparing the two cases.

PART TWO

THE BIRTH OF BANGSAMORO

A. The Sovereign Islamic Sultanates

There was surely no Moklo, Moro, or Bangsamoro in the past. The islands of the southern Philippines were inhabited by bands and tribes rather a large well-organized polity. When Islam came to the islands around the 14th century,[5] it united, as it did in Arabia since the 7th century, some tribal (banua) and economic (barangay) units into a bigger centralized polity, the sultanate. Islam, more than a religion, came to the Philippines and changed the people’s life. It gave them a sense of a religious community, new laws, a more developed political organization, and a new system of writing.[6]

There were two sultanates in southern Philippines, one in Sulu and the other in Mindanao. The sultanate of Sulu was established around 1450, whose territory extended to now Sabah, Malaysia.[7] The Sultanate of Maguindanao, on the other hand, arose around the second decade of the 17th century. Its territory extended as far as to Bukidnon and Butuan in the North of Mindanao.[8] Both sultanates were independent and sovereign. Their economic activities reached geographically as far as China to north and Java to south. According to the Filipino historian B.R. Rodil, at the coming of Spanish colonizers, the Moros in their respective sultanates were the most dominant grouping in the archipelago for some reasons. First, economically, they had monopoly of trade with neighboring countries. Second, politically they were the only large grouping with centralized system of government. Third, religiously, they alone had a monotheistic belief system,[9] a religion that gave them sense of universal identity transcending their tribal local identity.

However, sad to say, their political and economic independences gradually changed as the Spaniards reached and attempted to colonize these rich islands. After conquering northern Philippines, the Spaniards seek to extend their power to south. Unlike the northern Philippines that was easily conquered and Christianized, the well-organized of Southern Philippines were able to defend themselves for long time. For almost 300 years, form 1565 to 1898, the Spaniard and Muslim sultanates had involved in war. The Muslim sultanates had remained fully unconquered by the time of American come to the Philippines. According to one source, it is worth noting that when the Spain “sold” its colonized territory, the Philippines islands, to the U.S, the Treaty of Paris (10 December 1898), the treaty did not include the islands of Cagayan de Sulu group, the islands of Sibutu and certain other smaller islands which in Spanish time were considered part of the Sultanate.[10]

The long war against the Spaniards was irony for the Moros. On the one hand it was an honor to be independent for such a long time. It is a history they deserve to be proud of. On the other hand, however, the long war had weakened the great and rich sultanates, cutting their economic network and leaving the sultanates incapable to survive any longer. When the Spaniard left the island, the sultanate of Sulu, the last one to survive, was not as strong as before. The new colonizer, the United States with its double-edge strategy, easily subdued the sultanate. The United States succeeded in gaining sovereignty over the sultanate both through diplomacy and military forces. As early as 1899, they reached an agreement with the Sultan of Sulu. It was done probably to concentrate their force first to pacify the north; because, as soon as in 1904 the U.S. unilaterally abrogate the agreement and self-claiming of its sovereignty over the sultanate of Sulu. In addition to “lip-service” diplomacy, they

“… came like a thief in the night, bearing death and destruction, frustrating the Filipino aspiration for national freedom… Alongside with armed force the American government trumpeted the ringing rhetoric of civilization and democracy, held so dear in the United States of America but bandied about to deceive and justify the use of force in the Philippines.”[11]

Though unilaterally subjugated by the colonial government of the U.S., the Moros still continue their fight. The sporadic revolts of Muslim communities, led by the datus, continued year to year. During 1903-1916, for example, Datu Ampunaga-os of Taraka led guerrilla warfare.[12] In January 1906, arose a resistance led by three prominent Tausug leaders, Imam Sahirun, Ma’as Abdullatif, and Panglima Sawadjaan. It continued to unleash nationalistic fervor until another major battle erupted — the battle of Bud Bagsak in 1913.[13] All Muslim warriors met their martyrdom in the five day battle against the well-equipped US army. Their defeat marked the end of organized Muslim resistance during the first 10 years of the US colonialism in the Philippines. This decline paved the way for the signing of the Kiram-Carpenter Agreement in August 20, 1915 where the sovereignty of the Sulu sultanate was taken over by the US colonial government. The collapse of the Sulu Sultanate, in turn, led to the integration of Mindanao and Sulu into the colonial rule covering now the Philippines.[14]

B. Reluctant Integration

Having equated the relation between Muslims in Mindanao and the United States as children and parent, a letter written to the president of the United States in 1935 reads:

Should the American people grant the Philippines independence, the islands of Mindanao and Sulu should not be included in such independence because we don’t deserve at all to be independent.[15]

The letter seemingly reflected what Muslims would felt if the colonized Philippines became independent. Under the colonial government of the USA, both south and north Philippines had stand in an equal position, ruled by the other. To some extent, Muslims even had enjoyed some political and cultural privileges. Arguably the power had been distributed evenly between north and south. An independent Philippines, on the contrary, would alter the balance and Muslims realized that the majority in the north would have more powers then they would. The letter also calculated that they would have finally achieved their own independence if they remained ruled by the USA for a certain period. The looming imbalance of power seemingly drove this writer to send this letter.

Though the northern and southern Philippines were geographically united under the U.S, for nearly 300 hundred years they had lived under a different culture and influence. On the one hand, the northern had been Westernized-Christianized; on the other, the southern were sovereign-indigenous Muslims ruling their own states (sultanates) for hundred years. The short experience of union under the US colonialism had barely contributed integration of the South and North as a nation.

According to Nunez, an alienation of Moro from the Philippine state particularly grew during the Commonwealth period when the Manuel Quezon administration put an end to the special treatment the Moro received from the U.S. The administration refused to acknowledge the successor to Sultan Jamalul Kiram II, it ended official recognition of the civil title, and the biro of non-Christian Tribes was replaced by the Office of the Commissioner for Mindanao and Sulu. It also abolished the Administrative Code for Mindanao and the Moro Board whose function was to settle dispute according to Islamic laws.[16]

When the Philippines eventually reached its full independence in 1946, what Muslims had worried about simply became more obvious. In Mindanao, the settlement of the island by the northern Filipinos increased rapidly. From 1950 to 1960, Christian prospectors, industrialists, loggers, and politicians disposed the Moros and the Lumads of their lands through title frauds, tedious application procedures, and costly legal processes. Christians began to dominate the political and economic spheres of Mindanao, even in some predominantly Moro areas.

As it is frequently the case, marginalized groups who lost their power try to maintain the rest of the power they have by consolidating their available resources to re-accumulate their power. Empowering available identities is one of the important measures to unify their group. In the Moro case, the gradual but rapid process of marginalization drove them to rebuild their previous and unburied identity: Islam. Nunez notices that a larger development during that process of marginalization was the resurgence of Islam. Muslim preachers from all over the Islamic world organized mission in Mindanao along with the scholarship for young Moros to study in the Middle East. While they were marginalized politically and culturally; their sense of Moro nationalism strengthened instead.

c. The Birth of Bangsamoro

A continuation of colonial policy, migration and settlement program were stepped up by President Ramon Magsaysay in the early 1950s. In 1950, 8,300 families had been brought to government settlements in the South. By 1963, the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration was administering colonies, including over 25,000 families and 695,500 hectares. The flow increased dramatically under the Marcos regime. According to official statistics, the population of the southern was 2.5 million in 1948; by 1976 it had increased to 8.7 million in 1976. Muslims, who formed 98% of the region’s population in 1913, accounted for only 40% by 1976.[17]

Seen from the number, this migration of the Northern Filipinos simply aggravated the situation of Muslims and other non-Muslim natives. In the Muslim side, they had lost almost everything since. Having lost their political independence during American colonization, they also lost their economic resources in the post-independence Philippines. From traditionally owning most land in the South, after the resettlement program Muslim had only 17% of the land. This very small number, even worse, distributed unevenly only among the Muslim elites. Culturally, the decrease of Muslim proportion, from a majority to a relative minority, contributes likewise more latent problems for them.

In 1968, this process of political, economic, and cultural marginalization exploded. The case was triggered by what so called “Jabidah Massacre”. It is not clear, however, what the case was really about. Newspaper headlines screamed of massacre by the Philippine Army men of between twenty-eight to sixty four Moro youths who were part of hundred eighty alleged trainees of Jabidah Forces. The trainee were supposedly part of a secret Marcos scheme to split Islamic ranks, provoke a war between Sulu and Sabah, and then invade and reclaim Sabah. The lone survivor of the killing explained that the trainees were shot because after they refused to attack Sabah, the army feared a leakage of the plan. Some said that the problem is a corruption because of which those trainees were not paid fully as promised.

In any case, it doesn’t really matter what Jabidah Massacre was all about. To be a perpetrator, a case needs no reason and explanation. Jabidah Massacre worked in a way of triggering what had been accumulated until that time: political problems, land conflicts, cultural differences, minoritization of Muslims, and prejudices between two groups of Muslim and Christians.[18]

Soon after the massacre Muslim students in Manila and elsewhere demonstrated to protest it. Cotabato Governor Datu Utdog Matalam immediately set up the Muslim Independence Movement. Maranao representative Rachid Lucman responded to a Malaysian offer to train and arm dedicated young Moros for war against the Manila government.[19] In the Christian side, 1968 witnessed the rise of terror squads that were supported by the PC and the Armed Forces of Philippines (AFP). The largest group was Ilaga, led by seven municipal mayors and three provincial governors and funded largely by timber merchants who sought Muslim lands for their logging operations.[20]

From 1968 to 1972, both political and military organizations of Muslims grew. Two of them were important at that time: BMLO (Bangsa Moro Liberation Organization), which considered themselves the umbrella organization of all Moro liberation forces, and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), led by young Misuari, who tried to distinguished it from Moro elite and to express their disgust with aristocratic leadership. With acknowledgement and support from the Islamic countries, MNLF became the major Moro movement, and begun its armed resistance in 1972, marking the birth of Bangsamoro.

d. Islam and Nationalism

The relation between Islam and nationalism in the Moro conflict, as it has been going on for hundred years, is very complex. At the beginning, in the war between local political power, the sultanates of Mindanao and Sulu, and the colonial power of Spain, Islam involved directly because the rulers were Muslims and at that time religion, as in most part of the world, was the main basis of political units. Vividly remembering the crusade, both powers inevitably used religions in the conflicts.[21] Islam was an effective political, cultural, and economic tool to maintain Moro’s sovereignty and independence in the southern Philippines. Three hundred years of resistance was long enough to prove the role of Islam for Moro sultanates.

Along with the decline of Islamic sultanates elsewhere, a lost of economics network, and exhausted by the long and costly war, the Moro sultanates had to think pragmatically by the time Americans took over the Philippines Islands from Spain. The treaty that was soon signed between Sultan of Sulu and the USA marked a decline of Islam’s role as a political power. Islam in the southern Philippines could no longer sustain the unity and sovereignty of the sultanates. When the sultanates eventually collapsed, marking the death of centralized political Islam, it was not easy anymore to read the conflict on Muslim and non-Muslim basis.

With the collapse of the centralized power, Muslims were divided among the datus. Even though some datus were pious caring their community, some were opportunistic politician pursuing their own interest. Some strived to maintain their independence, but some took pragmatic measures. The above mentioned letter to the president of the United States is an example that under American colonialism, with its cultural and educational strategy, the clear-cut analysis of Islam and non Islam would be difficult to be applied.

The period of 1946 – 1967 also presents significant features when religious and national identities could live in relatively different arenas. It was not a real problem to be a Filipino and Muslim at the same time. Most prominent proponents of Moro separatism post-1967 violence were a full member of Filipino nationality and some of them were government officials. Datu Utdog Matalam was the Governor of Cotabatu; Rachid Lucman was Maranao Representative; and Nur Misuari, the most important leader of separatism, was an instructor at the University of the Philippines. As long as this twenty years period is concerned, we don’t see Islam as a competing identity to the Filipino nationality.

When the political, economic, and cultural marginalization increased during two decades of marriage, however, an alternative ideology was needed to voice those political, economic, and cultural grievances. Was it Islam? If we look at what happen during 1967 – 1996, the use of Islam as an alternative ideology in political struggle in southern Philippines was ambiguous. Islam and nationalism invariably have played important roles in the both military and diplomacy battles for the Moros. I would argue that both Islamic identity and nationalism framework were dynamically negotiated to facilitate political and resources conflicts between the Moros and the Philippines state, in international level and local level alike.

The MNLF uses Islamic credential to gain political and financial support for his struggle from international community. With its Islamic identity, the MNLF derives support from Islamic international communities. Libya, for example, supported the Moros with arms, military training, and diplomacy. The neighbor Malaysia was the refuge for those fled from their hostile fatherland. The OIC (the Organization of Islamic Conference) provided the stage for internationalization of the conflict, mediating the government of Philippines and MNLF. Still, Indonesia, a co-member in ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asia Nations) to the Philippines and a Muslim “brother” to the Moros, eventually helped them to reach the final peace agreement in 1996.

On the one hand, MNLF also thought realistically that Mindanao did not fully belong to Muslims. Other important stake holders were non-Muslim natives. The use of Islam could have been counter-productive to build a coalition with other oppressed natives. To have a sound argument for secession, the grievances of Southern Filipino should be altogether attributed to other natives. Therefore, they prefer to extend the term Bangsamoro to include both Muslims and non-Muslim native to the Mindanao and Sulu.

From an international perspective, it is worth noting that nationalism indeed won the battle over the Islamic identity in the Philippines. The OIC, notwithstanding its Islamic nature and cause, has never supported an Independent Islamic state for the Moros. Nur Misuari has hard times to gain the OIC’s support for an independent Moro trough its series of its ICFM (the Islamic Conference of Foreign Minister). Since the 1973 ICFM, the OIC acknowledge Moro’s problem as an internal problem of the Philippines. The Tripoli Agreement signed in 1976 in Tripoli, Libya, confirmed the OIC’s position. The MNLF would only gain an autonomy status rather than an independent state. The 1984 15th ICFM once again respects the Philippines territory.

Following these facts, we might conclude that while Islam has drawn an international solidarity of Islamic countries, it only drives them to the point where Muslims in the Southern Philippines are politically and economically protected. It is also the case of MNLF itself when it has to deal with their fellow Southern Filipino. Islamic identity might be downplayed when politically not supportive, such as the case of their political consideration to build a more powerful legitimacy by including non-Muslim natives to the common cause. As Gutierrez said, “Religion has very little to do with it. Rather, the situation can be better described as conflict between natives who happen to be Muslims and settlers who happen to be Christians. Animosities exist among Christians themselves, and it is well known that different Moro ethnic groups are not always on good terms with each other.”[22]

We will find another similar case of a dynamic relation between religious identity, ethnicity, and nation state in the case of Aceh, Indonesia, in the next part. In the Acehnese case, it was religious identity that arose initially in the first rebellion, but ethnicity became stronger than religious identity at the second rebellion.

PART THREE

ACEH AND THE UNSATISFIED NATIONALISM

a. The tale of Serambi Makkah: from a center to a periphery

Aceh is a province at the northwest tip of Indonesia. Geographically and politically speaking, it is a periphery of what now Indonesia. But it was not a periphery when Indonesia was not yet born. Aceh was the gate of the archipelago’s contact with great powers and civilizations from the West: from India, the Middle East, and then Europe. For ancient India, it was part of the Suvarna-dvipa, the gold land, the mysterious land in the Indian epic. For Muslims, Aceh is a step-stone in spreading Islam throughout the archipelago. Aceh sultanate is the one that introduced the use of Arabic script for Malay. And it was the center of Islamic learning. It was a Mecca of Indonesian Muslim and for that reason it was named Serambi Makkah, the Veranda of Mecca. For Dutch, English French, Aceh was the first Asian targets because of its abundant pepper and its own aversion to the Portuguese enemy.

Antoni Reid writes, “In this popular period Aceh was one of the important powers of Asia, with its authority stretching as far as Tiku and Pariaman (near Modern Padang) in west Sumatra, Asahan in east Sumatra, Pahang, Johor and Kedah in the Peninsula. Thousands of captives were brought back from its victorious naval expeditions to populate the city, man the war galleys, and conduct the heavy construction work in the sultan’s building.” Aceh, in many senses was the center of the archipelago, extending its political and cultural influence throughout Indonesia.

Aceh was the only unconquered land for most part of the archipelago colonial history. As early as 1524, Sultan Ali Mughayat Syah consolidated its power and drove the Portuguese out of Aceh forever. Aceh remained independent while most parts of the archipelago had been conquered by the Dutch. An eighty years long and bitter war, the most costly one in the history of colonial wars in the Southeast Asia, kept Aceh from Dutch colonial power until the beginning of the 20th century, jus a few years before Japanese invasion got rid the Dutch off Aceh.

b. A Full-Hearted Integration

Indonesia was nothing than an archipelago of many polities united by colonial rule of the Netherlands. When Indonesia declared its independence in 1945, did these polities really feel as a part of this new state? What about the latest land absorbed into the colonial rule? The secessionist versions clearly deny that the Acehnese voluntarily integrate themselves into Indonesia. As quoted by Schulze, Hasan di Tiro argues that:

Aceh has nothing to do with Javanese “Indonesia.” The Netherlands declared war against the Kingdom of Aceh, not against “Indonesia” which did not exist in 1873; and “Indonesia” still did not exist when the Netherlands was defeated and withdraw from Aceh in March 1942. And when the Netherlands illegally transferred sovereignty to “Indonesia” on December 27, 1949, she had no presence in Aceh.[23]

The statement is interesting in two ways. First, it is an effort of “othering” Indonesia from Aceh. In so doing, Tiro uses three elements here: (1) Cutting any relation with Indonesia; (2) defining other Indonesia as a “Javanese” Indonesia; and (3) defining his own political Aceh as an independent polity, a kingdom, existing earlier than Indonesia. Second, he reinterprets the history by downplaying the critical episode of 1942 – 1949. He smartly avoids this critical period to connect directly his time and the past, crating a new other body of an imagined self-history. To some extent, this transitional period was the most obvious integration of Aceh within Indonesia instead. Reid even considers Aceh a model of outward loyalty to the central government.[24]

The first evidence of how the Acehnese greeted Indonesia’s independence is Maklmumat Ulama Seluruh Atjeh in October 15, 1945, two months after the independence’s day. Contrary to what Hasan di Tiro said, the Acehnese had considered Java as part of their “we-ness”, a single imagined community. The text reads,

Di Djawa bangsa Belanda serta kaki tangannya telah melakukan keganasannja terhadap kemerdekaan Republik Indonesia hingga terdjadi beberapa pertempuran di beberapa tempat jang akhirnja kemenangan berada dipihak kita.[25]

The paragraph which begins with a description on the battles against the Netherlands in Java, only celebrates “our victory” (kemenangan di pihak kita) at the end of it. More importantly, the very text also ensured the Acehnese public that the struggle for the new republic is necessarily a continuation of the previous struggles in Aceh led by local national-heroes (perdjuangan ini adalah sambungan perdjuangan dahulu di Atjeh jang dipimpin oleh almarhum Tgk. Thjik di Tiro dan pahlawan-pahlawan kebangsaan lainnya). This heavily “nationalist” text was signed by four prominent Achenes ulama (religious leaders and scholars) and by the new national authority in Aceh.

The second obvious and popular case to be made is the fund-rising to buy two airplanes for the new republic. When President Soekarno visited Aceh in June 16 1948, he was able to ensure the Acehnese to help new independent Indonesia buy airplanes. For this proposal, the Acehnese collected money and any other goods comparable to 25 kg gold. From this money, the new republic then bought its first DC-3 airplane named Seulawah (Mt. Gold).[26] Oftentimes, when the Acehnese feel betrayed by Indonesia, they mention that great contribution they have made in the beginning days of independence. Both pro and anti-Indonesia invariably agree on this fact, though the secessionists say the Acehnese was cheated.

Another event important to understand the process of the Aceh integration into Indonesia is Perang Cumbok (Cumbok War) in 1946. It was a head-on confrontation between two distinct social forces, uleebalang and ulama, with rival claims to leadership. Uleebalangs were the local officials who administered a district on behalf of the sultan and then colonial rules. As they became direct hands of these colonial powers in oppressing the populace, it is understandable that the populace disgust them. A Japanese official’s memoirs record an ulama’s explanation of the domestic Aceh situation in January 1942:

The people of Aceh felt extremely resentful towards the Dutch and uleebalangs. The uleebalang are the confidants of the Dutch, and oppress the people, so that almost all the people distrust and even hate the uleebalangs.[27]

Ulama, religious scholars, on the other hand, had led all the struggles against colonial powers and held popular influence over the society. Rivalry between the two groups silently had begun during the transitional period from the Dutch to the Japanese. During the Japanese occupation, uleebalang continued hold their formal-political power but the ulama increased their field influence over the populace. With the Japanese surrender to the ally and the appointed local government itself, residen Aceh, has not yet strong enough to control the region, the rivalry between uleebalang and ulama exploded into violent confrontation over control of the new independent government. The first bloody confrontation was in Sigli, where 50 people died, and reach its climax in Cumbok, a region under administration of an uleebalang named Muhammad Daud.[28]

It is beyond this paper’s scope to deal with this war thoroughly;[29] my own interest here is to emphasize that in that bloody conflict, both uleebalangs and PUSA (led by ulama and dominated by pemuda) competed over the control of “new independent government”, not in separating Aceh from the republic. Uleebalangs tried to maintain their political power in the new government as they had had before independence; and the pemuda who dominated PUSA and the anti-uleebalangs movement demanded political reformation in accordance with the national changes. In the either competing sides, there was no question about the integration with Indonesia; on the contrary, they took it for granted.

Another case to learn the sense of “Indonesianess” among the Acehnese was secessionist movement of Darul Islam. In September 21, 1953, Teungku Muhammad Daud Beureu’eh, a prominent Islamic scholar, freedom fighter for Indonesian independence, announced Aceh as a part of the new declared Islamic Republic of Indonesia led by Kartosuwiryo.[30] Again, it was not fully a denial of Indonesia, rather a resistance against government policies they consider not compliant with local aspirations, a demand to create a “real” Indonesia as it had been imagined by the Acehnese: more local political autonomy and particularly preservation of local Islamic values (such as implementation of Islamic law). Therefore, this separatism was not declared as a separated state of Aceh, but rather an Aceh as a part of the Islamic Republic of Indonesia.

The separatism was finally resolved and Aceh reintegrated to Indonesia when the central government promised a special region status as demanded. It is interesting how in this case a nation state was not considered as an anti-thesis of Islamic values and its implementation. In his dakwah that marked the reintegration of Aceh to the “non-attributed” Indonesia (a republic without “Islamic” adjective), Teungku Daud Beureu’eh thought the implementation of Islamic values would enable the Acehnese to contribute more for the republic.[31] There was no idea of a contradiction between a nation-state and religion as long as the nation-sate, the Indonesia republic, could accommodate more local autonomy and values.

Last but not least, the feeling of “Indonesianess” among the Acehnese can be read in the statement of a 23 years old Acehnese in his treaties on the Aceh history. Reid accurately found this young man’s words:

As it was in the past, Aceh is an indivisible part of the Negara Republic Indonesia, so also its history too is one undivided part of Indonesian history, and our slogan is one nation, one language, and one fatherland.[32]

This man is the same man who declared the independence of Aceh from Indonesia in 1976, the man who wrote the treaties in 1948 and who in 1995 denied any relation between “Javanese” Indonesia and Aceh. He is the same Hasan di Tiro. Time changes people’s mind, self-portraying, and identity.

c. Islam, Aceh and the Indonesian Nationalism

The change of Hasan di Tiro’s identity, from a lover to a separatist denying any relation with Indonesia, records a broader dynamic of the relation between the nation-state Indonesia and the Acehnese, a relation that has been marked by the continuing bloody conflicts between the central government and local forces or among local forces alike.

Aceh had been for along time an independent polity before the birth of Indonesia. In that long struggle, Islam played very important role as the source of unity among the Acehnese, a defining factor of the self and the other (we Muslims and the infidel Portuguese and Dutch), and, for the sultanate itself, as the basis of its legitimacy. To the extent that almost all Acehnese are Muslims, it is then very difficult to discern Islam and any political issues, including nationalism.

The underlying factor that had made Aceh unconquered until the beginning of the 20th century was, among others, Islam. First, sultans were always Muslims whose belief, behavior, and act were derived, directly or indirectly form the Islamic corpus.[33] Second, the political structure of the sultanate was established within the tradition of the “Islamicdom” (from a centralized caliphate to decentralized form of sultanate stretching as far as from North Africa to eastmost sultanate of Ternate and Tidore). Third, Islam was the unifying factor of the Acehnese polity, between the commoner as well as the elites. The “imagined community” under the sultanate was an “Islamic community”. When they go to the battles, it was not for the sake of serving the sultan, rather for the sake of the Islamic community with a hope of divine reward in the hereafter life. Hikajat Prang Sabil (the Tale of the Holy War)[34] was the lullaby, planting an Islamic pride of dying for the sake of religion since the Acehnese were babies. Downplaying Islamic role in the Acehnese politics will not make any sense.

However, it is worth noting that the importance of Islamic role doesn’t necessarily mean that the Acehnese brought Islamic stick in every political act. When Aceh confronted the Portuguese in Malacca, it also had to confront the rivalry sultanate in the peninsula, the Sultanate of Johor who helped the Portuguese drove Acehnese forces out. While it called Turkish support on the basic of Islamic relation to defend Aceh from the infidel, it also had a good relation with Western forces, such as Britain and French. It was also fine to contact the Japanese forces in Penang to gain their support in driving out the Dutch of Aceh in 1941-1942. The Islamic card was played at a time it is needed.

As we have seen from the preceding section, it was interesting that the Indonesian state was easily accepted during the first years of Independence. From the maklumat until the declaration of the Islamic Republic of Indonesia, there was no question about Indonesia and the Islamic identity of the Acehnese. Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin whose work is on the Acehnese rebellion, found that from the beginning of the rebellion its leaders had no intention of separating the region from the rest of the country.[35] Benedict Anderson’s account also supports the evidences presented in the previous section. In a paper presented in Jakarta in 1999, he said,

“During the whole history of the independence movement from the late-colonial period on, no Acehnese I’ve heard of ever had aspirations for “independent Aceh.” During the Revolution, Aceh was the only province where the Dutch didn’t dare come back. But far from taking the chance to declare an Independent Aceh, the Acehnese made, on a fully voluntary basis — I want to emphasize voluntary — huge contributions to the revolutionary cause in terms both of manpower and economic resources.”[36]

However, the political situations, the policies the central government pursue had changed this identity. First, it was an Islamic identity that was reinforced, nine years after the voluntary integration with Indonesia, when Teungku Muhammad Daud Beureu’eh declared Aceh as a part the Islamic Republic of Indonesia. The real problems that caused the rebellion were not strong enough to demand changes in the central government’s policies to ward Aceh. Islamic cause, therefore, had become an ace card to unify the Acehnese against that centralistic policy. To put it in Nazaruddin’s account, “… despite the fact that the statement [of independence] itself was preoccupied with the religious argument, it was obvious that it also accommodate regional sentiments of the neglect of Aceh in matters of economic, social, and political development.”[37] Here, religious identity was used even though the driving causes were not.

By contrast, when in 1976 Hasan Tiro declared the independence of Aceh, he changed all his Indonesian past into an anti-Indonesian today and future. Unlike Daud Beureu’eh who fought in the Islamic cause, Hasan Tiro preferred an ethnic identity and cause. His declaration refers not even single Islamic word. There were no basmalah (a sentence marking the beginning of Muslim documents and acts) in his text, no mention of an Islamic identity of Aceh, and even the text uses the word Tuhan, common Malay name for “God”, instead of Allah, the name of God in Islam. His declaration was fully expressed in an anti-Javanese terms, instead of contrasting secular Indonesia with an Islamic Aceh.

We are not sure about why Hasan di Tiro put aside Islam in his declaration. Some analyst said that it was a strategy to gain a general international support for their struggle. An Islamic identity close to a fundamentalist image, seen from this point of view, was not helpful.[38] Another explanation is that an “Acehnese” identity itself would imply an Islamic identity because a true Acehnese, concludes Schulze, is a person whose family resided in Aceh over several generations, a member of one of Aceh’s nine suku (tribes), and a Muslim.[39] The way GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka), Tiro’s field organization, impose pajak nanggroe (tax), for example, also represents this separatism’s position on Islam. Pajak nanggroe is originally based on Islamic teaching of infaq (a form of religious charity in Islam); however, said Sofyan Ibrahim Tiba, “…that Aceh is no longer struggling for an Islamic state it is called pajak nanggroe”.[40] This second separatism now rely more on ethnicity than the first one did.

If we compare both separatisms, however, it is noticeable that in both cases, whether referring to a religious identity or an ethnic identity, the root of their separatism was not religion or ethnicity. It has been always injustice. Daud Beureu’eh, declared the independence when Indonesia was economically week, found religion as the most appropriate identity to compete with Indonesian nationalism. On the other hand, Hasan di Tiro who declared the independence when Indonesia exploit Aceh’s economic resources with the support of military (personnel of which are mostly ethnic Javanese) and the Javanese immigrants flowed to Aceh found ethnicity as the appropriate identity to call a unity among his fellow Acehnese and to resist against the central government of Indonesia.

We will compare these findings on Aceh and those on the southern Philippines in the final part of this paper. Hopefully we can contribute account worth to our discussion on the ethno-religio-nationalist conflicts.

PART FOUR

CONCLUSION: THE MAKING OF CONTRA IDENTITY

In the previous pages it seems that the Moros and the Acehnese are people who have been “unlucky” enough on their experiences in modern history. From independent, sovereign, and wealthy ethnics, they have to experience colonization, displacement, humiliation, and massacre. They lost their political power when the glory sultanates of Aceh, Sulu, and Mindanao, are conquered by foreign powers. Their grievances did not end when their respective “nations” reached their independence. On the contrary, they have been oppressed by their fellow countrymen, by those who hold a power of state (an institution that has legitimate monopoly to use violence and, in both cases, has used it against its own citizens). Against the state’s oppression, both the Moros and the Acehnese have used a contra-violence as the only way to fight against the states. It was not an immediate and instant process though. The oppressions were done gradually and the social grievances accumulated in not a short time. In the case of the Moros, it needs 20 years; in the case of the Acehnese, it needs eight years.

In both cases, there was a problem of the relation between central government and local people. The relation was bad because the central government trivialized the local interest, politics, economy, education, culture, and religion. In happenstance, there was other potential difference along with those general interests: ethnicity and religion. The majority of those in Manila are Christians; while the Moros in the South are Muslims. The majority of those in Jakarta are the Javanese; while those in Aceh are the Acehnese. These religious and ethnic differences, initially downplayed when they integrated into a nation, arose again as they are used in defining “us,” the local people, and “them”, the central government.

Interestingly, in both cases, these differences were aggravated by a marginalization of local ethnics as a result of the settlement of immigrants whose ethnicity or religion are the ethnicity or religion of those in power. The local ethnics accused the settlement policy as an intended program to marginalize them. It is a bold perspective both in Mindanao and Moro; while at the same time I have not found any document from the majority to confirm this claim. The states’ reason of resettlement policy in Indonesia as well as in the Philippine is to reduce the density of the overpopulated island, Java or Luzon, by resettling the population to the under-populated Sumatra or Mindanao. Those different perspectives arose, I think, because the national project was not pursued in a common project terms involving the local ethnics. In the Indonesian case, the central government never asked the Sumatrans if the Javanese were resettled there. On the contrary, the central government simply thinks Sumatra their political territory, their belonging, so that they do not need local consent. Anderson says that in the Soeharto regime’s mind, it was “Too bad there Acehnese in Aceh and Irianese in Irian.”[41]

Therefore, it is arguable that there is really a process of “othering” on the both sides. The governments simply think the local ethnics as an outside entity beyond the nation. They do not consider the local ethnics fellow countrymen to whom they have to talk about the local interest, but rather a “problem” or “obstacle” for the claimed “national” (majority) interests. As a result, the local identities were reinforced along with these political, economic, and cultural negations which the central governments impose. In this process, the local ethnics take a similar measure: “othering” the central government. “We are Bangsamoro and we had been independent nation before the Philippines was born,” said MNLF freedom fighters. And “We have nothing to do with Javanese Indonesia”, said the freedom fighters of GAM in Aceh.

On these conclusions, I would insist again that conflicts creates or reinforces identities rather the identities creates conflicts.

******

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[1] Daniel Chirot, “Introduction”, in Ethnopolitical Warfare: Causes, Sonsequences, and Possible Solutions, Daniel Chirot and Martin E.P. Seligman (eds.), Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2002, p. 5.

[2] Some theories in political literature distinguish legitimacy, charisma, and coercion as a basis of political power. In my paper, however, I put no emphasis on such details as my attention is on “the basis” itself, whatever we name it.

[3] Clive E. Christie, A Modern History of Southeast Asia: Decolonization, Nationalism, and Separatism, London, New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996, p. 4.

[4] Anthony W. Marx, Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 3-4.

[5] There are at least six theories explaining the coming of Islam in the Philippines, including, “trade”, “missionary”, “political”, “economical”, “religious”, and “resistance” theories. About these six theories, see FR. Eliseo R. Mercado, Jr. OMI, Southern Philippines Question: The Challenge of Peace and Development, Cotabato City: the Philippines, 1999, p. 9-13.

[6] Rosalita Tolibas-Nuñez, Roots of Conflict, Makati City: Asian Institute of Management, 1997, p. 9. Notice that “writing”, or print capitalism in the Anderson’s work, is more than important to create the imagined communities.

[7] Ibid., p. 13

[8] B.R. Rodil, A History of Mindanao and Sulu in Question and Answer, Davao City: Mincode, 2003, p. 11.

[9] Ibid., p. 23

[10] B.R. Rodil, A History …, pp. 55-56.

[11] Ibid., p. 39.

[12] Aijaz Ahmad, “Class and Colony in Mindanao”, in Kristina Gaerlan and Mara Stankovitch (eds.), Rebels, Warlords, and Ulama, Quezon City: Institute for Popular Democracy, 2000, p. 105.

[13] For secondary account on this war, see Ferdinand C. Llanes, “Destroying Moro Communities: Remembering Bud Dajo and Bud Bagsak”, in http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2003b-1.shtml

[14]From another secondary source on: http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16521, downloaded on June 3, 2006.

[15] Aijaz Ahmad, “Class and Colony in Mindanao”, ibid., p.6.

[16] Nunez, Roots of Conflict, p. 17.

[17] Aijaz Ahmad, “Class and Colony”, p. 13.

[18] In a quantitative open-ended questioner, Nunez found these result from both sides. According to Muslims, the root of conflicts are: (1) the government’s failure to be fair to Muslims; (2) land conflict; (3) cultural differences; (4) the “minoritization” [sic.] of the Muslims; (5) stereotyping and discrimination, biases and prejudices between Christian and Muslims; and (6) historical events. From the Christian side: (1) The desire of Muslims to control Mindanao even if they are in minority; (2) land conflict; (3) misunderstanding caused by differences of cultural and customs, beliefs, and traditions; (4) “the minoritizations” of Muslims; (5) biases and prejudices between Muslims and Christians; and (6) the government’s failure to bring economic development to Mindanao. Nunez, Roots of Conflict, p. 49.

[19] Nunez, Roots of Conflict, p. 20.

[20] Aijaz Ahmad, “The War against Muslim”, in Rebel, Warlord, and Ulama, p. 28-29.

[21] On how Spain waged its wars in the Southeast Asia, see Paul B Means, “Religious Background of Indonesia Nationalism”, in Church History, Vol. 16, No. 4, 1947, p. 239 where he quotes a bold statement of Vlekke on Portuguese and Spain wars, “With them, they brought another holy war, that of the Christians of Spain and Portugal against the Moors of Africa. The idea of the Crussades was always present in the mind of the Portuguese conquistadors. It influenced all their colonial activities”.

[22] Eric Gutierrez, “Afterword”, in Nunez, Root of Colflicts, p. 97.

[23] Hasan di Tiro, Denominated Indonesians, an address delivered to UNPO General Assembly, The Hague: 1995, as quoted by Kirsten E. Schulze, The Free Aceh Movement (GAM): Anatomy of a Separatist Organization, Washington: East-West Center Washington, 2004, p. 6. He wrote a paper with similar tone in July 1985, “Indonesian Nationalism: A western invention to subvert Islam and to prevent Decolonization of the Dutch East Indies”, presented in London.

[24] Anthony Reid, An Indonesian Frontier, p. 316.

[25] “Maklumat Ulama Seluruh Atjeh”, attached in M. Nur El Ibrahimy, Peranan Tgk M. Daud Beureu-eh dalam Pergolakan Aceh, Jakaarta: Media Dakwah, 2001, p. 289.

[26] “Seulawah, Si Gunung Emas yang tak Tersentuh Tsunami” in Pikiran Rakyat, January 17, 2005, downloaded from http://www.pikiran-rakyat.com/cetak/2005/0105/17/cinta02.htm on June 9, 2006

[27] Reid, An Indonesian Frontier, p. 285.

[28] Accounts on this, see M. Nur El Ibrahimy, Peranan Tgk M. Daud Beureu-eh…, p. 113-124.

[29] For more detail account, see Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin, Revolusi di Serambi Mekah, Jakarta: UIP, 1999.

[30] Kartosuwiryo proclaimed his Islamic State of Indonesia in August 7th, 1949 in West java. On this event, see Jan Pins, “Some notes about Islam and Politics in Indonesia”, in Die Welt des Islam, New Series, Vol. 6, Issue 1/2 (1959), p. 120-121.

[31] Teungku Muhammad Daud Beureu’eh, “Dakwah”, attachment 23 of M. Nur El Ibrahimy, Peranan …, p. 332.

[32] Reid, An Indonesian Frontier, p. 346.

[33] Accounts of Ibn Batuta as quoted by Raden Abdulkadir Wigdjojoatmodjo, “Islam in the Netherlands East Indies”, The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Nov, 1942), p. 49.

[34] An account on the text of Hikayat Perang Sabil can be found in Teuku Ibrahim Alfian, Wajah Aceh Dalam Lintasan Sejarah, Banda Aceh: Pusat Dolkumentasi dan Informasi Aceh, 1999, p. 167-180.

[35] Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin, The Republican Revolt: A Study of the Acehnese Rebellion, Pasir Panjang, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1985, p. 197.

[36] Benedict Anderson, “Indonesian Nationalism Today and in the Future”, in Indonesia, No. 67 April 1999, p. 4.

[37] Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin, The Republican Revolt, p. 103.

[38] M. Isa Sulaiman, Aceh Merdeka, Ideologi, Kepemimpinan dan Gerakan, Jakarta: Pustaka al-Kautsar, 2000, p. 27.

[39] Kirsten E. Schulze, The Free Aceh Movement (GAM): Anatomy of a Separatist Organization, p. 7

[40] Ibid., p. 24.

[41] Benedict Anderson, “Indonesian Nationalism…,” p. 5.

Iraq War: Between Liberalism and Realism

2006-05-30T23:40:00.000-07:00

Why did the United States invade Iraq? There are many ways to answer this question, two of which are more established in the international studies literature: Realism and Liberalism (Idealism). I would like to say I am a realist; however, I believe that even a realist should calculate power politics and security on various levels of power: capability to influence other states, rather than mere raw military; and the security outcomes rather than a strategy. Mankind is made up of unique creatures whose natures differ and vary extremely. As we know from our daily life, for example, not all children can be treated in a same way. Some children would love to listen what we say and obediently follow what we ask them to do. Some would like to do what we prohibit and not to do what we urge them to do. That is also the case of human being at any ages. States, as a highest manifestation of human organization, would behave in such various ways that a mere military approach in power politics, no matter how sound the generalization might be, is not enough.

In the case of invasion of Iraq, both Realism and Liberalism seemingly can explain why the invasion was pursued. Generally speaking, the Realism approach would understand The U.S. invasion as a “natural” behavior of any great power politics — reminiscent to what Athenians said to Melons. On the other hand, Liberalism believes that ideas can change the world, and ideas of democracy, peace, and order should be brought about in the international order. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is a way of making the pax democratica: stopping democide by establishing a democracy.

My paper would argue that even if we follow realist or liberal explanations, we would find that the Iraq War is a failure project of either way. While, to Realism, a great power politics should seek to accumulate its power and domination, I would argue that the invasion of Iraq decreased the U.S. power instead. Rather than enhancing its power in the international stage, the invasion has simply put The U.S. in a very difficult position since. In cases where The U.S.A is supposed to have a more bargaining power, it cannot do what it needs to do. On the other hand, if Liberalism is all about spreading democracy, Iraqis, and Americans as well, have to pay too expensive for this ideology.

I will elaborate my argument in the last section of this paper. Before dealing with this argument, it is worth analyzing the Bush administration from two different realist versions, offensive realism of Mearsheimer and “ideal realism”[1] of Mandelbaum, and a liberal theory in Huntley.

The Logic of Great Power

The U.S. invasion of Iraq, seen from Mearsheimer’s offensive Realism, is very understandable. According to Mearsheimer, great powers concerned with figuring out how to survive in a world where there is no agency to protect them from each other. The great powers are rarely content with the current distribution of power; and they will use force to alter the balance of power if they think it can be done at a reasonable price. In this way, the ultimate goal of a state is to be hegemon in the system.[2]

The invasion of Iraq, therefore, is just one measure to promote The U.S. hegemony in the Middle East. At that time The U.S. knew that behind the international embargo, the Russian and France companies took an advantage in the business of Iraqi oil. American companies could not join the party because their state prohibited them from doing business with a state that promotes terrorism. From the point of view of The U.S., it also threatened The U.S. hegemony in the region. Therefore, the invasion is necessary for the ultimate goal of The U.S.’s hegemony. The invasion of Iraq, a realist would say, is the way to accumulate power politics.

The invasion was at the outset clearly framed and campaigned in realist way. The reason to fight against Saddam Hussein was that he had developed WMD and reactivated their nuclear program. A realist approach would urge the great powers to use its military power to defend itself from such a threat and outside aggressor. According to Mearsheimer, if the calculation supports military action, the great power will be more than willing to use military power to change the balance and accumulate their power. War against Iraq would not risk The U.S. internationally and it would win the war easily. The U.S., seen from the realist perspective, did what a great power should do.

Meanwhile, following realist approach of Mandelbaum, The U.S. invasion is even “morally” correct. As a “government” of the world, one of its functions is providing security and state-building. It is a moral obligation of the government to create security for a region. Therefore, Mandelbaum sees The U.S. intervention in the north Iraq as a “humanitarian intervention” and “on behalf of the Kurds”.[3] It was humanitarian because it was aimed at protecting oppressed citizen and The U.S. has no any interest. It may also the logics when helping the Iraqi people to have their own government by toppling the unwanted government. More than the logic of great powers that send their army for their own interest, The U.S. invasion of Iraq is motivated by a selfless interest. This is a benign Goliath who sacrifices himself for others.

However, following the realist argument, we can still ask this question: did the invasion enhance The U.S. power in the Middle East? And did the invasion is a “legitimate” function, if any, of a World’s government? I would answer this critical question in the last section of this paper. Here we will first look at the invasion from the liberal point of view.

Liberalism and the Trap of Political Rhetoric

To some analysts, indeed it is the very liberal ideas of making democratic world that drives the administration to invade Iraq; particularly, the liberal idea that has been developed in its neoconservative version. George Pecker in his The Assassin’s Gate, for instance, clearly elaborates the genealogy of this war and its relation with the neoconservative ideas.[4] To neocons, like Kagan, the United States is a liberal society and as a great power The U.S. has to use its power to advance the principles of a liberal civilization and a liberal world order.[5] Iraq is a nail in the field of liberal civilization. For one with hammer like the United States, it is his moral obligation to save the liberal world by striking this nail down.

We can understand too the invasion from Huntley’s argument. To Huntley, repeating many other supporters of the democratic peace theory of Immanuel Kant, a democracy would not kill its own subjects and likewise fight other democracies. Democracy is the best strategy to stop wars and democide. But why is it a war against Iraq to reach peace? Not answering directly to this question, however, he said, “To get peace and preserve freedom, however, they must be prepared to go to war and to stop aggressive dictatorship, because these breed wars.”[6]
Pre-invasion Iraq, viewed from this point of view, was the best case to be made. Saddam Hussein was a dictator who killed his subjects, gassed the Kurds in the north, and massacred many others. His totalitarian state was also a danger to his neighboring states. He waged a war for years against Iran. Then, he invaded Kuwait in 1990. He at least also had bombed Saudi Arabia during his invasion of Kuwait. In addition, the most important rationale for many Americans, Saddam was a threat for America’s closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, whom The U.S. seemingly would do anything to defend.

In many senses, Iraq was more than eligible to be struck down and transformed into a democracy. If Iraq can be transformed into a democracy, as the Bush administration frequently boasts, it would not kill Kurds, Shiite, or then Sunni. Accordingly, it would bring about peace in the Middle East because Iraq, as a democracy, would not fight other democracy. Ultimately, the invasion would save Israel from evil state in its next door.

Such a pax democratica is exactly what the Bush administration follows after the war. While the initiation of this policy was campaigned in realist logics, a pre-emptive war against a rouge state; Bush shifted his argument to idealist rhetoric soon after he failed to prove the existence of WMD. This idealist rhetoric is used hopefully to win the public support. First, as Mearsheimer points out, Americans dislike Realism.[7] To win their support, Bush has use ideal-liberal slogans. Second, toppling Saddam Hussein was a right decision to establish a democracy; and a democracy is a way to transform Iraq from a rough state, an enemy to the United States, to a friendly state. Furthermore, it is often compared to Japan and Germany in after World War II when they have became America’s allies by the time they were transformed into democracy.

If it is the case, we can easily point out here that idealism, such as Huntley’s Pax Democratica, would explain only an outer level of Iraq War. We are not doubtful at all that Bush has frequently boasted democratizing Iraq; but we also really know exactly that he is not really concerned with democracy — he does not bother with authoritarian regimes of Pakistan and Saudi, and he reluctantly supports a democratized Palestine. If democracy was really a strategy for Iraq, he should have talked about this in the beginning, instead of more realist argument of the threat of a W.M.D.

The Price of Invasion

Let us now evaluate the invasion from both Liberalism and Realism. After Saddam Hussein was removed from his reign, Iraqis have been left in chaos. It has been three years and what we see in Iraq is not a democracy, rather a messed-up state vulnerable of civil war. A democracy would not kill its citizens, but the citizens could kill their fellow. Democracy is ideas, culture, and institution. An election, a parliamentary government, and political parties are not enough for a state to be democratic. Even though the new government has been elected, Iraq is still far away from a democracy.

The most intolerable aspect of this coerced democracy is the cost of lives of Iraqi and of American soldier as well. The incidence of suicide bombings has increased dramatically since the occupation to the point where these bombings are daily events. Religious-ethno conflicts arose too as the ethno and religious groups compete to fill the vacuum of power in the post-Saddam Iraq. If democracy worth to be fought for, Iraqis and Americans have to pay quite a bit for this ideology.

From the realist perspective, the invasion has weakened American position in at least two cases I can make. The first case is the international row caused by the publication of the prophetic cartoons in Denmark. In this case, it sounds odd that the champion of liberty and freedom of expression has to take a side of the angry Muslims while even some Muslims, and the Danish government as well, take a side of the Danish cartoonist’s right. The Bush administration was in the difficult position because of its problematic Iraqi invasion and occupation. The U.S. is not able to defend its traditional allies in the continent because it really needs Muslim support for Iraq.

The second case is the Iranian nuclear. Not as Kagan suggests, this guy with hammer in hand now has to think twice and more to strike down the nail Iran. First, The U.S. can not handle the smaller Iraq with an appropriate way and it has been necessarily not well done. Second, the invasion of Iraq has proven that transforming a rough state into friendly state is a gambling expensive to pay. The new elected government, dominated by Shiite, is not as friendly to The U.S. as it is hoped. They are very possible to be a second Iran in the Middle East, closer to Iranian mullah than to The U.S.. The Bush administration is far from being powerful to prevent Iranian nuclear program and its competitors, the ex-superpower Russia and the emerging superpower China, have received more power values from The U.S.’s lost since.

Still, from the realist perspective, the liberal idea of promoting democracy in the Middle East is, as Bush must realized it after the Iraqi election, not a good idea for this time and place. The democratized Middle East only gives a way for the fundamentalist to take over the power democratically. As in the Palestinian case, and would be the case of Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, democracy is a powerful and legitimate tool for the political Islam to win the public support amid oppressed citizens under the current authoritarian and American-friend regimes.

The invasion of Iraq, therefore, seen from both liberal and realist theories, is “understandable” and “explainable”; however, the result of the invasion, seen from either way, is not “justifiable”. (*)

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[1] I am cognizance of the risk of treating Mandelbaum as a realist. His ideas are based on a power politics theory, believing in a great power extending its power over the world. However, he is also an idealist saying that this great power is benign one. To some extent, I would prefer to call him a neo-conservative rather than a realist.
[2] John J Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York and London: Norton, 2003, p. 21.
[3] Michael Mandelbaum, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World’s Government in the 21st Century, New York: Public Affairs, 2005, p. 65.
[4] George Packer, The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq, New York: FSG, 2005.
[5] Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order,
[6] James Robert Huntley, Pax Democratica: A Strategy for the 21st Century, New York: St. Martin Press, 1998, p. 3.
[7] Mearsheimer, The Tragedy…, p. 23. He interestingly says, “…foreign policy discourse in the United States often sounds as if it has been lifted right out of a Liberalism 101 lecture.”

Of Paradise and Power

2006-05-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

No matter how my position on the ideas embraced by American writers is, what I like about reading them is that their arguments are clearly stated, well-organized, and convenient-to-read. In our class, we have learnt how Huntley, Mearsheimer, and Mandelbaum, for example, present uniquely diverse and contrasting perspectives enriching our understanding of global system and security in such a way. Though the main camp of the discourse is only two, idealism and realism, they can show us cleavages that they can fill, presenting arguments from left to right in different levels of similarities and differences.

Our today’s book, Of Paradise and Power, is another smart, fluid, and concise argument — characters forged by the limitations of space in writing a column for newspaper — explaining the relations between the now super power, the United States of America, and a union of the world’s ex-super powers, the European Union where Britain, French, Spain are its members. Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, takes the long-avoided question on the current relation between the U.S.A. and the E.U. “Stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world… Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.” (p.3), he said. Kagan’s argument is simple, straight-forward, and maybe heart-hurting for Europeans: they are now different because Americans have power and Europeans not; Americans have hammer and European not; Americans have gun and Europeans do not. This basic power-gap sharpens the way Americans and Europeans think about themselves, about the world order, and about how to deal with world’s problems.

How “Marsy” then, if I may put it, are Americans and how Venusy are Europeans? Kagan’s use of these two popular terms, coined by John Gray in his Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, easily situates the reader to anticipate how America behaves (like a man) and how Europe behaves (like a woman). Like men and women in John Gray’s, they agree on little and understand one another less and less. The United States resorts to force more quickly and, compared with Europe, is less patient with diplomacy. Americans generally see the world divided between good and evil, friends and enemies; while Europe see a more complex picture. America uses coercion (the stick), rather persuasion (the carrot); while Europeans insist they approach problems with greater nuance and sophistication. Notwithstanding possible exaggeration in such statements, the undeniable fact is that they are somehow different, and the more important question to answer is “why” they differ?

Power, here all begin

To some extent, Kagan’s explanation refers to the classical explanation of security studies: behavior of a state is driven by its military power. However, unlike the realists, Kagan does not claim that all great power politics pursue hegemony and seek to be dominant of other states. He is close to the camp of realism but he follows idealism paths in significance way. Indeed, he weaves his realist argument with the idealism sentences.

He begins with a realist explanation: the logic of power politics. American and European behaviors are necessarily a result of the power gap. He acknowledges nothing new in the explanation of this first argument. All knew that Europe, since the consecutive world wars, have lost their domination and military power (destroyed by European internal powers). The empire their once established and maintained for almost four centuries had one by one gone with the wind of history. They had lost control over almost all colonized territories in the East.

Furthermore, the very wars likewise destructed not only their material capital, for which Marshall Plan was designed to solve, and military, but also their self-confidence as the world hegemons. Psychologically speaking, they are loser now. Since the end of the World War II, it has been the United State who gradually replaces their position: governing the world and policing its security. The most obvious case showing how weak Europe military has been is the Eastern Europe conflicts, occurring in its own backyard. The Balkan conflict at the beginning of the 1990s revealed European military incapacity and political disarray; the Kosovo conflict at the end the decade exposed a transatlantic gap in military technology and the ability to wage modern warfare (p. 22). Once placed their military power throughout and to control the world, the Europe now had limited resources even to guard their home from disturbances.

To Kagan, the American dominance in those wars troubled Europeans in two ways. On the one hand, it was shocking blow to European honor, “[the U.K.] which prides itself on being a serious military power, could contribute only 4 per cent of the aircraft and 4 percent of the bombs dropped”, said a British analyst. For Europeans, the Kosovo war had only “highlighted the impotence of Europe’s armed forces.” (p. 46). On the other, European dependence on American military power gave the United States dominant influence not only over the way the war had to be fought but also over international diplomacy before, during, and after the war (p. 47).
The Implication

Being different in military power, the two can no longer think and behave in the same way. The United States has now become Mars and the Europeans Union now is Venus. Strong powers view the world differently than weaker powers. “When you have a hammer, all problems starts to look like nails,” and Kagan agrees on this. Likewise, he said, “When you don’t have a hammer, you don’t anything to look like a nail.” (p. 29).

The best example is the way the two see threats posed by the deviant states. Bush calls them “the axis of evil” because of their real threats to the world order. Europeans, on the other hand, see those states, more calmly, as “failed states” rather than “rough state”. Having a hammer, the U.S. simply thinks they are nails, which possibly hurt us when we walk around and need to be smack down. The Europeans, having no hammer, simply see them as a badly-implanted nail over the cupboard. Those states may not be in proper condition; still, they are not as dangerous as the U.S. think.

To be sure, the European leaders do not think like that openly. Instead, they have found a justification not to think in power politics: “opium” of postmodernism manipulates them to be happy in a non power politics way. Europeans believe that they have gone beyond “power politics”, finding a new way to behave as a “post modern” state. In post-modernism, as we knew, the analysis of power relation focuses not only on the “hard” power politics, but also more importantly on the soft power of knowledge and of what then they call “governmentality”. Knowledge functions a powerful manifestation of power no less than power politics.

If I were stay on a power perspective, I would have call it “opium” instead of paradise, because Europe, as Kagan shows, actually wants to have military power. The idea of going beyond power politics merely covers their failure in establishing alternate military power. In the end of 1998, the UK and French proposed an establishment of European military force independent of NATO. Blair and Jacques Chirac at that time won European approval for building a force of 60.000 troops that could be deployed far from home and sustained for up to a year. But the proposal remains a paper. The European Union has never had military power, independent of NATO, until now.

Kagan believes that the answer of this failure lies in the realm of ideology, in which Europe succumbs to the idea of multinational government, and a possibility to live in harmony and cooperation, rather than competition leading to hurt one another. But, the case may be not like this. Instead, this idea of post-modernism is mere opium to relieve their paint of their impotence; it is not a paradise to where they fleet from the power politics to a peaceful world of harmony.

The Dangers of Neocons

To the point that we look at the American behavior from the power perspective, I agree with Kagan that Europe’ reluctant to use power politics necessarily related to the “security service” the U.S. has provided for them since the World War II. I argued in the same way when I was criticizing Katzenstein for relying too much on cultural explanations while overlooking the security service the US provides for Japan. Without the US security’s guarantee, I argued, Japan would follow the basic behavior of states: developing its own military power. Since it is “cheaper” to purchase the alternative security goods, it is better for Japan to “buy” them rather than spend more expensive budget. If there were no cheaper alternative, they would have thought twice about having no military power and, at the same time, to live among dangerous neighboring countries such as China, Russia, and North Korea. Kagan’s argument, that European states have been reluctant to spend a budget for security because the presence of American force, simply shows another case to explain the seemingly peace-minded states like Japan. American power is not a factor, rather the factor influencing very much the idealist behavior of states.

However, I disagree with him when coming to the point of what power is for. It seems odd to me when Kagan changes the nature of power in the case of the U.S. Almost similar to Mandelbaum’s idea of the U.S. as a government of the world, Kagan also points to this benign nature of American hegemony. He puts another name for Mandelbaum’s Goliath: a behemoth with a conscience (p. 41), “it is not Louis XIV’s Franch or George III’s England. They don’t claim the right of the stronger or insist to the rest of the world, as Athenians did at Melos, that ‘the strong rule where they can and they weak suffer what they must.’” Why does American power differ? Simply because to Kagan, “The united States is a liberal, progressive society through and through, and to the extent that Americans believe in power, they believe it must be a means of advancing the principle of a liberal civilization and a liberal world order” (p41). To me, this messianic statement is simply a shift from power to idea, from realism to idealism. Because now Kagan believes that liberal ideas of Americans can control their own power over the rest of the world.

I would insist that power is power, whether it belongs to Louis XIV (over his subjects) or the U.S. (over the rest of the world). And the nature of any power, as Lord Acton puts it, “…tends to corrupt.” The single power that the U.S. has today is not less vulnerable to corruption than the power Athens has, regardless they literally worship different beliefs. And the corruption has begun even in his book: a corrupting and dangerous idea of the US power. Let me quote his arrogant belief to make the case, “The only stable and successful international order Americans can imagine is one that has the United States at its center… If it this is arrogance, at least it is not a new arrogance.” (p. 94) Thus, what is the difference between his words about American power and the Athenians to Melon? If the world is divided between good and evil, where does arrogance stand? If the evil arrogance is justified in this way, it is just a matter of time to have a devil oppress others in the name of justice.

This combination of realist and idealist ideas is more dangerous than those who rely on mere realism or mere idealism. The realist is like a gentleman in a fight because he warns others that he has a power to be used, whether it is for his own good or not, others have to prepare to fight against him or suffer . Athenians are “good” example how to be a realist superpower. The idealist, on the other hand, is a pious who preaches justice and equality. He believes that values are more important than power and that power has to succumb to values, to the international law. Europe, if we had not analyzed them from power theory, could have been be an example of this idealist approach.

Combining two positions is what Kagan does in his book. Let’s notice his afterword where he argues fully in the realist way: demystify international order and multilateralism, justify preemptive war, and finally sweetly justify the legitimacy of liberalism. This combination would result in a fascist idea possibly driving a state to justify its arbitrary and unlimited power not in the name of power but in the name of ideal values. It doesn’t declare a war but it cowardly kills others from behind. And for all these dangers, we should take care of this neoconservative doctrine. (*)

Cultural Norm and National Security

2006-05-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

It is just a happenstance, I think, that I read a piece in the New York Times written by Max M Kampelman who headed the U.S. delegation to the negotiations on nuclear and space arms in Geneva from 1985 to 1989, when I am writing my review on Cultural Norms & National Security. Recalling what he did as an arm negotiator in the Reagan Administration, a success in negotiating two different and contradictory agenda with two different parties: negotiating elimination of nuclear weapon with Soviet Union, and on the other hand negotiating with the speaker of the House to approve request for more MX missiles, he says, “There is a moral to these stories: you can be an idealist and a realist at the same time.”

Peter Katzenstein clearly states his position in fairly similar vein, finding a third way to go beyond two prevailing approaches of idealism and realism in security studies. He observes that both theories are correct but not enough. They both overlook a cultural explanation in different ways. Realism, focusing mainly on the effects of material capabilities, discredits the importance of culture. On the other hand, idealism only points to regulatory norm and pay no attention to the constitutive norms embodied in culture. Both neglect culture in different ways.

He thinks, therefore, that both theories are not capable of explaining Japan’s internal and external securities policy. Liberalism lacks in two important points: first, they don’t pay enough attention to a non great political powers. As non-militarized state, Japan has no military power to be considered great political power in international affairs. In any measure, realism generally indeterminate in what it tells about Japanese security. If all states merely behave in a reaction to other states, the states will change its securities policy in response to the changing situation around the neighboring states. This theory, however, does not work well to explain Japanese security policies. Since 1970s, American – Japan’s patron – position had been weakening, the Soviet military power had grew significantly, and Chinese power had increased importantly; Japan, amid these rapid changes, had been relatively unchanging.

In different fashion, idealism has neglected another, if not greater, important side of norm. Idealism focuses on written laws and other mores that help create spontaneous local order. The theory does explain how norms affect actor behavior and how individual impetus and social facts are formed in action-oriented framework. In so working, however, idealism then neglects cultural explanation. Idealism is critical to cultural explanations because they are too general. Confucianism values, for example, embraced by majority in three different countries of China, Korea, and Japan, do not bring about the same security policy. Second, cultural explanations assume norms as individually, rather than collectively, held values. These criticisms on cultural explanation, to some extent, are plausible, but the provided example of Confucianism is not quiet relevant to the security policy and current Japanese situation, especially its defining business, political, and legal culture. Katzenstein finds that “Idealism focuses only on the efficiency effects that ‘thin’ regulatory norms have on individual norms have on individual behavior. It overlooks ‘thick’ constitutive norms that define the identities of actors.” (p. 27).

Both in fact may contribute to a third option: institutional theory that based on neglected aspects of those theories. First, like realism, institutionalism treats state as rational, unitary actors with fixed preferences, especially its priority to survive. But, unlike, realism, institutionalism bothers internal dynamics realism neglects. Katzenstein believes that the distinctive aspects of Japan’s security policy can be understood best by analyzing in one analytical framework its international and domestic aspects. Like idealism, Katzenstein pays attention to the norm in explaining these domestic aspects. However, unlike idealism, he pays more attention to what he calls constitutive norms found in cultural aspects of the state.

Based on this theory, Katzenstein tries to provide a more comprehensive explanation about security policy in Japan at expense of combining two different views on international affairs and the state behavior. Katzenstein’s world, therefore, is both idealist and realist one. Like idealist, he believes that “international institutions do not merely create political efficiencies. Their form reflects collective identities that embody substantive political purposes” (p.29), such as to set up certain conduct and behavior. The norms seemingly are needed by states that strive to survive in the supposed amoral world so that the world can be more manageable. To put it differently, state behavior is affected by strategies to survive, the preferences of which are contingent on domestic cultural, economic, and political and international norms.

Japan’s security policy, then, is a result of a complex relation between international norms, collective identity produced by historical experience (either pre or post 1945), and domestic written norms and political institutions delineating the preferences of political actors. To make it more understandable, Katzenstein compares these three aspects of Japan’s security policy with the US and Germany. Because of its complexity, it is difficult to summarize Katzenstein’s argument. Below are the most important arguments of him.

The “Security Culture”

Katzenstein’s thesis focuses on “culture” and constitutive norms, rather than international balance of power and regulatory norms. But, what does he means by this culture? He observes three distinct cultural dimension: state organization, state-society relation, and transnational links.

First, analysts have different views on Japanese State organization. Some said it is a centralized state with a powerful and dominant government deriving its high quality and dedication staffs from its society. Some said that Japan is governed by three important sectors working together: bureaucracy, conservative party elders, and big business. Some view Japan in very contrast way: that in Japan there is a prolonged war between business and government. After all, it seems that, whatever the representation is, there is a strong relation between government and society. Second, the relation between society and state, among others, can be seen in the relation between state and Japanese firms that is informal, face to face, and horizontal. The close relation is also expressed in the placement of retiring government officials with the Japanese firms in the system of amakudari. The excellent example how Japan relies its security on society is its intelligence. Japan counts on its major trading houses, banks, and manufacturing corporations for its intelligence needs. Even though not operated directly by the state, it is “the most comprehensive and complex of friendly spy network deployed against the United States.” (p. 36). The third dimension of structure of the Japanese state is transnational as well trans-governmental. Foreign actors are included directly or indirectly in domestic policy coalition in which nationalists and internationalists seek to find acceptable compromises.

Support for Katzenstein’s main argument, however, lies in the striking Japanese legal culture. Idealism/liberalism focuses on written norms that actually become effective only when the informal social control breaks down. Japan, in fact, has a strong social control that forms a non-litigious character of contemporary Japanese society. Law in its cultural sense, as a doctrine of morality, is respected; on the other hand, law, as an instrument of adjudication, is viewed in suspicion (p. 43). If we pay attention more to the written norms, we possibly overlook the more important aspect of Japanese legal culture. We should pay attention to both aspects.

Katzenstein finds that in Japan, there has been a mix between the norm and culture. The written norms did have shifted dramatically Japan’s security policy since 1945. On the other hand, the Japanese culture expressed in the civilian control and an “anti-military” public sentiment supports that written norm and places military in a subordinate role in domestic and foreign policy affairs. Finally, the intertwined relations bring about police and military as agents of non violence.

Katzenstein and Mearsheimer

It is very interesting to compare Katzenstein and Mearsheimer for their different point of views. I will try to elaborate their arguments relevant to the aspects that they themselves can be criticized altogether.

I agree with Katzenstein that realism cannot explain Japan’s security policy in more detailed aspect in which Katzenstein can. Realism’s main premise that states are not be sure about behavior of other states is deniable in the case of Japan-US security relation. Instead of being suspicious to the US, I find that Japan does trust the US for its security more than Katzenstein suggests with his cultural explanation. Katzenstein suggests that Japan’s behavior in international security are resulted from, not exclusively though, its domestic culture that become more anti-violence since 1945. I think, however, that Japan’s non-military approach in international approach is a result of its cooperation with the US. Japan has “paid a bodyguard” for its international affairs and they do relay on this bodyguard without any doubt. Instead of thinking about “a supplemental security policy”, they focus their limited resources on economics.

I am thinking about the Robinson Crusoe Economy in economics class in explaining this Japanese behavior. According to this economics theory, it is more economical for individual to focus on his specialization rather than producing two different goods to fulfill his needs. Japan’s has comparative advantages on “economic good”, while the US has comparative advantages on “security good”. It is more beneficial for both of them to specialize in their respective comparative advantages to produce more goods. Japan, I think, devices this economic theory very well in its foreign policy security. If there were no security support from the US, one that Katzenstein doesn’t think about it, Japan would follow the “rule” held by Mearsheimer — that states will compete to survive and maximize their power.

Therefore, security relation between the US and Japan is not about “free-riding” or about reluctant to promote military position as Katzenstein suggests to criticize both realism and liberalism (p. 188), rather it is about security policy “economic consideration”. Why should Japan spend its budget to produce “security” if they can “buy” it cheaply from the US? It is better for one whose specialization is selling good to concentrate on his specialization and has his house fixed by a carpenter rather than he wastes his time to fix his house.

While Mearsheimer’s work would fail, too, in explaining “non great” political powers, because of its measure on military power, Katzenstein’s works well in Japan. In Mearsheimer’s world, small political powers would act according to the great political powers. Their policies are not significant because they will not influence world affairs though. However, we should consider the security “out come” rather than the security strategy used by a state. Katzenstein shows us that internally, Japanese society is very secure with a very low incident of criminality. Without sending its army oversea to protect economic interest, Japan can do business as well as the US who has to send its military in hot spots to maintain its economic interest. While Japanese are welcomed throughout the world, Americans (as a price of the US’s aggressive foreign policy) sometime has to bring Canadian flag to disguise his identity. To some extent, Japan benefits more by not using military power, having given it to the U.S., to influence the world.

So, Mearsheimer’s framework is still relevant to explain broad context of world affairs. Japan is not an exception; it doesn’t neglect the need to survive in the world competition. Instead, it shifted its security policy from “direct handling” to “indirect handling” by submitting its security interest to a management of the U.S. Domestic culture, surely, influences preferences that Japan has taken so far — as Katzenstein argues. Japan can be so dependent on the US for its external security because the US is not a threat and reliable. The basic behavior of state to survive or to rule does not necessarily encourage a state to pursue military hegemony. Japan obviously has been success in pursuing hegemony in different way. Katzenstein’s work is a strong challenge for both realism and idealism. (*)

Comparing Cartoon and Darfur

2006-04-21T23:34:00.000-07:00

Why does supposedly violation against an aspect of religious belief trigger international row, violent demonstrations, and economic boycott; while evidently violation against humanity seemingly does not bother Muslims?

Darfur crisis now, depicted as the first genocide in the 21st century, is in the front page of American media. Darfur-related “dot org” is easily searchable in Google; and the very word Darfur reached more than 29.000.000 links — obviously more than the words “Muhammad Cartoon”, which are less than 3.500.000 links. In addition, this weeks, there will be massive rallies for Darfur in main cities like Washington DC and Seattle.

Then why does Darfur crisis yield no significant reaction from Muslims? Do Muslims care more on literally religious teachings than the universal message of religion for humanity (rahmatan lil alamin)? Are they angry only for religious blasphemy but not for human right violation?

First of all, it is a matter of information. Unlike in the US, news about Darfur is not much covered by media in the Muslim world. Why not? I am not quite sure as I can not really answer the similar question why Darfur is so highly covered in the US.

Responding why Darfur had suddenly attracted international interest, Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, told The New York Times, "I don’t know why one place gets attention and another not. It’s like a lottery... I myself have said that the biggest race against the clock is Darfur, but in terms of numbers of people displaced, there are already more in Uganda and the eastern Congo."

If we bought his lottery theory, the explanation why Darfur case is not massively covered is that it did not win the media’s lottery in the Muslim world. I think, however, we need more explanation than such lottery theory.

I see that Muslim reactions to humanity crisis mostly depend on the “Muslim and non-Muslim” of the issue. Muslims are really concerned to the human right violation in the Balkans, Chechnya, southern Thailand, or Palestine where Muslims are oppressed by non-Muslims.

By contrast, they are more reluctant to react in the cases where Muslims are in conflict with other Muslims. Sunni-Shiite conflicts in Iraq, bloody conflicts between the Indonesian government and Acehnese, Turkish or Iraqi governments against Kurdish, are some of apt examples how Muslims prefer to be silent about their fellows.

It is more evident in the Afghanistan case: when the conflict was between Afghan-Soviet, Muslims from all parts of the world came to defend; when it then involves Muslim-Muslim, Muslims seems to have no choice. Darfur crisis, involving Muslim government and Muslim rebels, I think is just another similar case to which Muslims prefer to be indifferent.

Therefore, I would argue that Muslims must stop thinking in this way. Humanitarian crisis, whether involving Muslim or Non-Muslim, has to be stopped. Violation against human right is as ‘insulting’ as blasphemy against religious teaching. As they were angry for the cartoons, they should angry for human right violations.

It is inseparable part of Islamic teaching to protect human right and life, included in the principle of al-hifz bi al-nafs (protecting human life).

However, I am cognizant that Darfur crisis is not only humanitarian crisis. Regrettably, as some analysts say, Darfur crisis has been manipulated for foreign political objectives. There is oil fuelling, literally and politically, this crisis.

It is not about winning a “lottery” that Darfur is on the top list. Sudan is the largest country in Africa. It is under an Islamic regime that is almost similar with the ‘defiant’, as American media puts it, Iran, and it has a significance oil reserve. Since 1997 their oil has been tapped by Asians, China, Malaysia, and India, and no America — American oil companies are prohibited from doing business with a ‘terrorist state’. Now, they can not let these Asians monopolize the oil. They are playing the game amid the conflicts.

For some Muslims, who are bored with the interventionist policy of the US, campaigning international intervention is necessarily opening the door for this ‘gas-guzzling’ country to make the oily Sudan as another Iraq. Should we understand this reason, we know how difficult Muslims have to take side.

Human right violence must be stopped at any price. But, at the same time, we do wish that oil-oriented policy is not the right price we pay.

The Case of Goliath

2006-04-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

Reading The Case for Goliath after two previous books, I find the book is much more similar to the Huntley’s Pax Democratica. Both writers hold that the end of the Cold War marked an important change in the international order and relation. Huntley optimistically views the end of the Cold War as the end of the bloody history of humankind and celebrates it as the end of the dark night and the dawn of the hopeful future (Huntley, 1998: 13). Similarly, Mandelbaum begins his work with associating the end of the Cold War as the end of political, military, economic, and ideological conflict. Neglecting the fact that the number of bloody conflict remains as high as during the Cold War,[1] they believe that the world has been going better afterward.

Mandelbaum is a liberal who build his theory on the idealism. In the previous book, The Ideas that Conquer the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Market in the Twentieth Century (2002), Mandelbaum argues for the triumphant of this triad in the 21st century. Goliath, compared to The Ideas, is basically based on the same argument from the different angle: the Actor who plays the ideas. Therefore, I would argue without any doubt that Mandelbaum travels in the same boat with Huntley. Huntley, after all, devotes Pax Democratica (the Peace of Democracy) to argue that democracy is the only strategy for the 21st century when the world will be peaceful because democracies do not fight each other. Instead of war, the states would focus on strengthening their internal economy where free trade or free market as the other strategy accompanying democracy — even though he does not much talk about free market, he does devote few pages to defend this system.

In contrast to amoral world of Mearsheimer, both Huntley and Mandelbaum also live in the same “black and white” world where there are “good and bad” guys. Though there are bed guys challenging world order, Huntley optimistically boasts, “It is for the first time in the history, ‘might’ and ‘right’ are so wholly on the same side”, (Huntley, 1998: 12) and quotes Edmund Burke words, “When bad men combine, the good must associate…” (Huntley, 1998: 184). In the more or less similar tone, Mandelbaum makes the case for the good giant, “If America is a Goliath, it is the benign one.”

Even though they build their work on the same basis of idealism, still they present it in rather different way. Huntley’s work is more prescriptive than Mandelbaum’s is. Huntley employs so many words of should and must throughout his book, while Mandelbaum writes in a more argumentative way: presents a thesis and brings forth the argument and proof. To some extent, with this different style of writing, Mandelbaum’s book sound more convincing.

Another different is the way they describe the relation among the states in the post the Cold War’s international affairs. They do believe in the peace, democracy, and free market as dominant features of the new order, but they imagine different form of relation. Huntley, published the book in 1998, deliberately does not talk a single dominant state in the new order. He instead argues for a democratic world where the states deal each other equally in a club of likeminded states. He emphasizes, therefore, more on the international institutions (NATO, Europe, OECD, and so on) as key players in the new order. His world is administrated by “intergovernmental” institutions where the United States is a mere member of those institutions. In what he proposes as the International Community of Democracies (ICD), national interests will be replaced by common interests.

Mandelbaum, by contrast, thinks in different way. For him, the club will not work without someone or a kind of body running the club. It just makes sense that the club has “a government”. Hence, there must be a government in the world order; and the most appropriate one is the United States, the benign Goliath. Why? Because, in his account, it has sufficient power, as no other country does, for this role (Mandelbaum, 2005: 10). According to Mandelbaum, the word “government” is also apt to describing this role instead of “empire” — the more frequently used by America’s critics.

It is surely not an easy-used term though, and it may sound less apt than “empire”. The word “government” has been identified with what the world lacks: a state. A state has three defining features: (i) it has delineated territory; (ii) it has specialized apparatus; and (iii) it is sovereign. Government is the instrument of the state acting on behalf of it. When the world has not state, the world must has no government. But, Mandelbaum invites us to see government not from this way, rather from the services it provides for the society. If we assume that individual sovereign states as independent individual members of a society, then we can, by analogy, see the world as a society of states. In this society, what America does is what a government does for society.

This framework is better describing the United States relation with the rest of the world than “empire”. Empire is unequal relation imposed by a polity over other supposedly sovereign state. It is a relation of exploitation that the ruling polity benefits alone or much more than the ruled. Empire is a form of dictatorship by a foreigner. The United States, after all, does not rule directly or indirectly the politics and economics of other societies, as empires have always done (Mandelbaum, 2005: 5). In addition, unlike empires pursuing domination, the United States has this role in a happenstance when it defends itself against the Soviet Union and international communism. While empires were glorified, Americans generally find its position as a burden. Mandelbaum observes, “No American holiday or monument, or even a commemorative postage stamp, is devoted to celebrating the the position of international primacy that the United States occupies” (Mandelbaum, 2005:xxi).

At this point of describing the United States role, I think Mandelbaum becomes closer to Mearsheimer. Basically they both assume the distinctive power that the United States has and others not. However, they both do not want to put the United States in the position where empires occupied, the position that now becomes identical with the evil of “imperialism” (Mearsheimer, I am sure, would deny my such “bad and good” approach). To put it in another way, they both justify the United States’s role in actually similar way: eliminating negative side of its superiority.

Mearsheimer argument just implies that the United States is not bad [this is the main message, and then] neither good, because to justify its superiority, all the great powers will do as the US do. So, don’t blame what the United States do. If there is any hegemony, he would argue, the United States’s role is merely a geographically limited hegemon, the regional hegemon of western Hemisphere.

Mandelbaum also acknowledges the dominant role of the United States and its comparable military and economic power. His message is delivered to those who coined the US as “empire” for this position. Therefore, while acknowledging many similarities between roles empires had in the past and what the US does today, he, like Mearsheimer, proposes another term, the “neutral” one (see p. 6) to cover negative side of the US’s role in the world.

Thus, they both try to portray the role the United States plays in the world in a “neutral” way. Mandelbaum did it in through language by using neutral word of “government”, while Mearsheimer used “approach” to neutralize the state behaviors. I would admiringly say they both have well ably defend their country in a seemingly contrast ideas.

Drawing on these findings, I think it is appropriate to propose a provoking thesis: intellectuals of even different and contrast schools in a nation unconsciously would defend the common interest of the nation. Whether they are idealist or realists, defensive or offensive, they talk about a shared common interest.

--------------------------
[1] Detailed account for this data, see Nilles Petter Gleditsch, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg, Havard Stand, Journal of Peace Research, 39.5 (Sep., 2002), p. 615-637, where they show the increasing number of conflict immediately after the Cold War (1992 – 1994), and in 1994 – 2001 the number backs to the level similar to the one pf the Cold War.

War and Peace

2006-04-12T23:24:00.000-07:00

War and war. It seems that the world has never gone a day without a war or violence. From the great war of Mahabharat in as early as 3102 BC till today’s war in Iraq, human beings witness and engage in the both condemned and glorified wars. Never has a decade or century gone without war. Robert Huntly calls the 20th century as a terrible century in which not less than 170,000,000 human beings lost their lives. The 21st century just begins, and we have already witnessed thousands have lost their lives in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Why do we engage in a war? Is it the case that “warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death” as Sun Tzu puts it? Or should we view war as a misfortune of life that we have to eliminate?

Our reading on the books of Mearsheimer and of Huntley is just a good example how the long debates about the morality of war are translated into perspectives to understanding the international order and affairs. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics written by John J Mearsheimer, as we will see later on, is the example of those who believe that “war” is just as natural as life, the logic of power. On the other hand, James Robert Huntley in his Pax Democratica: A Strategy for the 21st Century believe that there is a better way for life, a life without war in democracy.

Those opposite ideas are interesting as we try to find a satisfying explanation to the international affairs. The books, therefore, will be discussed critically and, then, comparatively, to find their contributions to our efforts. Hopefully I can find sensible theory and arguments to the very question of world order and peace.

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Mearsheimer based his book on five assumptions that he believe as an accurate representation of an important aspect of life in the international system.

The first assumption is that the international system is anarchic. It does not mean that it is chaotic or riven by disorder. Instead, there is no central authority above state, by which all states can have their sovereignty. To put in his word, “there is no government over governments.” (Mearsheimer, 2001: 30). The second assumption is that great powers have military capability to hurt and destroy each other. He believes that the states are dangerous to each other. In addition, as his third assumption, the states can never be certain about other state’s intentions. The fourth assumption is that survival is the primary goal of great powers. Security is their main most important objective. The last assumption is that great powers are rational actors who are aware of their external environment and they think strategically about how to survive in it. (Mearsheimer, 2001: 30-31).

Through these five assumptions, Mearsheimer sees the international affairs as an ongoing struggle of power between the great power politics. He based these assumptions on a Darwinian world where the basic nature of all creatures, including human beings and then the state they build, is the survival. Accordingly, the most important thing for a state is security of its own.
Such anarchic view of the world is not a new or innovative one in the international studies. He himself mentions at least two dominant opinions to understanding the international affairs: the liberal idealist approach (liberalism) and the realist approach (realism).

He describes liberalism, which he does not embrace, as an approach that tend to be hopeful about the prospects of making the world safer and more peaceful. They generally have three core beliefs shared by all theories in the paradigm. First, liberals consider states to be main actors in international politics. Second, they emphasize the internal characteristics of states vary considerably – such as bad and good states. Third liberals believe that calculations about the power matter little for explaining the behavior of good states — political and economic calculations matter more. In an ideal world where there are only good states (the 21st century?), power is not relevant to be analyzed (Mearsheimer: 2003.

He also points out three theories explaining why it is possible to have an ideal peaceful world. The first is liberal-market theory that believes that economic interdependence among the states, and the prosperity coming from this economic web, makes them unlikely fight each other. War happens because the states try to gain or preserve wealth, so they will have no reason to wage a war if they already wealthy. In addition, economic interdependence makes them think twice to wage a war: it is better to enhance their economic ties and concentrate on accumulating their wealth rather than waging a war.

Another important theory based on liberalism approach is democratic theory, which claims that democracies do not fight other democracies. Therefore, in an ideal world where all the states are democratic, they will follow a peaceful “democratic” way in dealing with other states as democracy resolves the differences and conflicts by non-violent ways.

Last but not least, there is a possibility to make a peaceful world because the states believe in an international cooperation and establish international institutions that significantly reduce the likelihood of war. Liberals claim that those institutions can fundamentally change state behavior and the way they deal with other states in a “proper” way according to the rules they have negotiated.

Realism, which Mearsheimer belongs, understands that creating a peaceful world is desirable, but it is not practical. Realism does emphasize on the irresistible strength of existing powers, to compete each other. What should be done is accepting and adapting to these forces and tendencies. The view is based on three core beliefs. First, realists also treat states as the principal actors in the world politics, but hey focus only on great powers. Second, realist believe that the behavior of great powers is influenced by external environment, not by internal characteristics – there is no such good and bad states because all states behave according to the same logic toward external situations. Third, realists hold that calculations about power dominate states’ thinking and that states compete for power among themselves.

There are two main theories under realism: human nature realism (classical realism) and defensive realism (structural realism). First, human nature realism who holds that states are led by human beings who have a “will to power” and likely “were born to power”. The principal driving force in international politics is the will to power inherent in every state in the system, pushing them to strive for supremacy. The second theory, defensive realism, does not assume “a will to power” as driving forces of the states, instead a “will to survive”: they strive to survive in the system and therefore they seek security. However, the “will to survive” does not come from the human nature as classical realism believes, instead from the belief that the world is anarchic environment.

Mearsheimer’s position is not like those two theories, he calls it offensive realism. It is a structural theory of politics that sees great powers as concerned mainly with figuring out how to survive in a world where there is no agency to protect them from each other. However, unlike defensive realism, offensive realism believes that the absence of status quo in international system is an incentive for the states to be the hegemon in the system. Therefore, offensive realism is like classical realism in portraying great powers as relentlessly seeking powers. However, the difference between them is that classical realism claim that states are naturally endowed with Type A personality and defensive realism sees international system that force the states to maximize their power. In arguing for the defensive realism, he believes, that he makes the case.

Pax Democratica

As it was mentioned by Maersheimer before, there are three theories developed under the tent of liberalism: the liberal market, democracy, and the international institutions. Pax democratica, I think, just fully represents this liberalism. First of all, Huntley is concerned with war and democide, and he is committed to reduce them, and the best way to eliminate them is “replacing arbitrary and autocratic regimes with democratic government” (Huntley, 1998: 5).
He believes in democracy as a solution for the world in crisis because “(1) well-established democracies, tied together in cooperative webs, are most unlikely to make a war on one another; (2) Well established democracies are highly unlikely to perpetrate democide on their own peoples, or on others.” (Huntley, 1998: 6). Furthermore, based on Freedom House’s survey, he believes that democracy is a world wide trend, irrespective of cultures or continents “Think of democracy as the modern way, not just the Western way.” (Huntley, 1998: 9).

Unlike realism that emphasizes on the “real” world, understanding it and trying to find ideas how to deal with its realities without any ambition to change it, pax democratica learns the world as a changeable reality. Something can be done to change the world into the idealized one. As Huntley found the 20th century as a terrible century, his book is trying to offer wisdom so that those terrible world will not happen again, “wars have killed millions, for insufficient reason. War is humankind’s greatest evil. Good people should make a system to eliminate war” (Huntley, 1998: 3).

Therefore, I would say, this book is about should theory, a normative work where we can find easily how Huntley tries hard to “construct” his idealized world with imperative words of should and must. In as early as page 1, he has already said, “We must learn how to strengthen further the brotherly impulses of our world…”; “Democrats everywhere should regard it as their first duty…” (p. 6); “The democracies should form a permanent … intercontinental community…” (p. 6); “to confront looming chaos, the democracies must regroup…” (p. 64); and we can find such should-ideas elsewhere in his book.

War, therefore, is a reality that should not happen and the history of human beings, according to his view, is the history of finding an escape from war and of finding an order. He divides this effort into four phases: order through empire, order through a balance of power, order intergovernmental organization and international arbitration, and finally order through supranational political community. Democracy, in this perspective, is In the hart of this fourth phase because the idealized world that Huntley argues for is the world with democracies (chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, and 8 are devoted for this), in which they set up an international web of cooperation to establish a peaceful world order. The non-democracies are seen merely as challenges that democracy and its club should deal with and change.

Comparing Two Worlds

So, we have two different worlds here. The one is an “amoral” world of Mearsheimer where the logic of power, the will to survive, and the will to be a hegemon, are the driving force behind the international relation and politics. On the other hand is the constructed and idealized world that Huntley sets up through the strategy of democracy and international order.

Mearsheimer would understand and be interested in the idea of peaceful world, but he rejects such approach as a utopia: it will not work to explain the behavior of states and international relation. For Mearsheimer, “the morality” is out of power logics. When the US had to deal with NAZI, it did work together with the communist Soviet Union. The political decisions depend more on the power calculation than moral calculation. If the communism was morally wrong, what did make the US work together with Soviet Union? The answer was and is power. For Huntley, however, what matters is that we will not let that happen again. The logics of power has cost millions lives and the logics is the old way of dealing with other states in the old world. In the 21st century, we should and we can use another strategy: democratic strategy.

Democracies have saved democracies from the violent world, and it will work as it did. He said, “A look at what the democracies were able to do in the recent past, 1940-1990, may give us heart…”

The differences arise from the different ways of learning the history. For Mearsheimer, the history is a reality that we have to deal with as whatever it is; it works on its own logics that states only can “response”, understand and adjust, so that they can survive in this anarchic world. Huntley, on the other hand, looks at the history as a lesson that human beings and their machineries (states) have a control over it. For Huntley, there is no such pre-determined nature of willing to power in the state because human beings can choose what they consider good and bad.

Cold War Matters?

With those differences in understanding history, Mearsheimer and Huntley view the Cold War in very different ways. Huntley would celebrate the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall as the end of Cold War. His logics suggest that the end of the Cold war is the end of competing two super powers and the war (fighting for power) was over. Seen through this way, the logic of power is not relevant anymore because it is only democracy now that dominates the world. In his argument, democracies will not fight each other. So, the end of Cold War is the end of continuing war and the prospect for the peace world of democracy, pax demoratica.
However, for Mearsheimer, there is no substantial difference between the pre-Cold War, the Cold War, or even the post Cold War, you mention it. In the anarchic world of Mearsheimer, the world without any supra political unit over states, they will always compete to maximize their power. The competition for power did not stop by the end of the Cold War. He believes that states still fear each other and seek to gain power at other’s expense. The best evidence for this is the fact that the US maintains about one hundred thousand troops in Europe and Northeast Asia for the explicit purpose of keeping the major states in each region at peace (p. 361).

Conclusion

Can democratic societies learn from the history? Only Huntley, I think, who believe that “democratic societies” do exist and, therefore, they can learn from the history to bring about peaceful world Huntley dreams about. The democratic people, he said, has learnt from the history and taken an uncompromising lead: they determined that democracy must survive; they envisioned a world order based on common action by the democracies; and they created interlocking web of international institutions to smooth the transition to a new phase in the advance of civilization.

For Mearsheimer, by contrast, “democratic societies” is utopia and there should be no such society who can learn form the history. What Mearsheimer believes are “Machiavellian societies” whose logics are survival. For such societies, pursuing power is the only thing they can learn form the history.

***

the Demand on the Implementation of Islamic Law

2006-03-14T23:22:00.000-08:00

In understanding a phenomenon of political activism in which Islam is used as a means by Muslims, most scholars tend to consider the phenomenon as a “revival” or “resurgence” and “a return to fundamental Islam” (labelled as “fundamentalism”). For them, Islam is only one, timeless, and the same Islam of the Prophet.[1] As if Islam, seen through such perspective, “resurges” all of sudden from a death in certain period of Muslim’s political history and resurges with “archaic” form.

Moreover, Muslims activism is framed as a merely religious respond to the Western challenge rather than a long continuous historical dynamic experienced from the time of the Prophet to nowadays. We can find such reaction-to-the-West idea in the work of prominent Orientalist Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong.[2] It is true that the political activism is partly a response to the Western cultural and political penetration; however, it is inappropriate to see it simply as an answer to the Western challenge rather than internal dynamic to interpret religious text — the activity that has never stop in the history. In this fashion, the Orientalist discourse on fundamentalist Muslims only, to put it in Turner account, “…took place in the context of [Western] anxieties about the state of political freedom in the West”.[3] It is only a mirror to establishing Western “we-ness” and othering the Orient.

In addition to oversimplification leading to an absolute clear-cutting dichotomy based on imagined geography of West and East, about which Edward Said strongly warned in his pathbreaking work, Orientalism;[4] I would argue that this approach fails to capture the profane political nature of “Islamic” movement. The dichotomy “secular” and “fundamentalist” movement, for example, overlooks the possibility that in what is called “Islamic fundamentalism” is secular political respond.

Moallem’s study on Islamic fundamentalism in Iran is an important alternative to the Orientalist approaches. It is a project that Edward Said may expect from his critique. Instead of treating fundamentalism as the revival of an “archaic” Islam;[5] Moallem clearly argues that fundamentalism is the very product of modernity, another modern discursive formation no less modern than “progress” and “development”.[6]

Following Moallem, I would argue in this paper that the demand of implementation of Islamic law in Indonesia is an unbroken chain of the long history of Islamic involvement in Indonesian political life and a product of Indonesian modernity. I do believe, as Moallem does, there is no such a “rupture” in Islamic visibility. Islam is always on going process, no return to the origin but also inseparable from its past. To deal with that, in the first part I will elaborate Islam in Indonesia before the political reform of 1998 to show such continuing involvement; while in the second part, I would discuss how the demand of implementation of Islamic law is no less modern than it might be expected: framed in secular perspective, grounded on current facts, justified by some Islamic discourse, and then promoted as Islamic alternative.

Islam in Indonesia

Historically, Islam was introduced to Indonesia through a peaceful trade and developed under the influence of the traders with their egalitarianism, dynamism, entrepreneurship, and independence.[7] Instead of Islamic military conquer; it was an Islamic convert of local Hindus, Buddhist, and Animist kings that spread Islam across the country. Islam was in the center of politics, religions of most Indonesian pre-colonial kingdoms. [8]

During the age of colonialism, Islam became source of national identity and national independence struggle. As Graham said, “Islamism has played a key role in the anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggle across the Muslim world. It powerfully inspires national liberation movements…”.[9] In Indonesia, war of independence was framed in Islamic Holy War. From Diponegoro War in Java to wars of Aceh, it was Perang Sabil and Prang Sabil that they waged for the war against Dutch.

During the administration of Soekarno, the first president of independent Indonesia, political Islam appeared both in democratic and violent ways. Islamic political parties of Masyumi and NU gained significant seats in the first democratic election of 1955, fueling the reemergence heated debate on the relation of Islam and the state in the Konstituante (the body assigned to produce Indonesia constitution). Out of democratic way, there were Islamic revolts in Java and Sulawesi to establish an Islamic state by Darul Islam movement.[10]

Islam remained an important factor in Indonesian politics under authoritarian regime of Soeharto.[11] Since President Soeharto came to power in the mid 1960s, the regime attempted to maintain a delicate balance, acknowledging and, in certain respect, encouraging Islam’s religious and cultural influence while restricting its political influence.[12] The Islamic visibility and Islamism, during this period, take another form: the more cultural one yet with strong political influence. Even though Islam was marginalized politically, Abdurrahman Wahid’s election as the president of NU was seen as the symbol of un-coopted Islamic community.

The existence of religious court is also another important form of Islamic visibility in politics. Never did it disappear from Indonesian politics. Once practiced by Islamic kingdoms in pre-colonial Indonesia, Islamic court had been surviving during the colonial time. As in the case of Islamic law in Egypt studied by Talal Asad, “The shari’a was not abandoned, but it was restricted to matters of personal status and to area where it could be clearly and easily codified”[13] and it has been Islamic court that enforce this law.

In the daily life of Muslims, Islam is practiced in many cultural levels. In Java, for example, Islamic law and teaching are practiced from pregnancy, birth, circumcision, to marriage and death. It is part of social cement to collect society member, to organize social events, to build public infrastructure, and to provide social services — school, orphanage, health clinic, elderly housing, and so on.

Thus, the later visibility of Islam in the period of political reformation 1998 to now is not a reemergence or revival, rather a move from the periphery, marginalized by Orde Baru political system, to the center of political stage.[14] The demand of implementation of Islamic law, therefore, is only another form of visibility among other continuing visibilities in Indonesian public life. And, in addition to Western challenge, the response is internally dynamics. Let me now discuss how the proponents of Islamic law frame rationally their idea sharî‘a as a solution for national problem.

The Modernist Discourse in the Fundamentalist Demand

According to Oliver Roy, the Islamist believe that the function of the state is “to defend sharî‘a”.[15] Kremer study on the Muslim authors in the Middle East also comes to the same conclusion that for those the authors, “the hallmark of truly Islamic system (al-nizâm al-islâmî) is the application of sharî‘a and not any particular political order” and “… the sharî‘a to be applied requires social organization and state”.[16] Howewer, for those Middle Eastern authors, even though “Islam is religion and state”, whose task is enforcing sharî‘a, but “the precise form of the government is left to human reason to define.” [17] It is also the case in Indonesia Islamist.

There was indeed rebellion to establish an Islamic state in 1950s,[18] but today Indonesian Islamist fight for implementation of Islamic law rather establishing an Islamic state. They seemingly can live with the democratic Indonesia and take advantage of political openness to promote their agenda. As Barber also has noticed in his study, “fundamentalist Islam is not first of all opposed to democracy but to modernization as manifested in the Westernization.”[19]

The most outspoken and organized Islamist group in Indonesia with an agenda of implementation of Islamic law is Hizbut Tahrir. Just during I write this paper, they hold a peaceful demonstration across the country with thousands attendance, men and women in white, recalling khilâfah (Islamic pan-nationalism) and demanding, again, the implementation of Islamic Law in Indonesia.[20] With regard to other groups, such as Majlis Mujahidin, their influence seemingly has decreased since the Indonesian bombing and their highest amir (commander) was arrested for immigration case.

The paper written by Muhammad Ismail Yusanto, Indonesian Hizbut Tahrir spokesman,[21] therefore, can be a good site to view the “secular” and “modern” nature of the demand. In his paper, “Selamatkan Indonesia dengan Syariat”[22] (Save Indonesia with Sharî‘a), he begins this paper not by any reference to Islamic teaching, instead grounding his idea on the contradicting situation of Indonesia: the Indonesia’s rich natural resources and multidimensional crisis. Even, to analysis the crisis, he prefers to begin with three secular perspectives, before he finally cites one verse of the Qur’an:
Pertama, dalam perspektif teknis ekonomi, krisis itu terjadi karena lemahnya fundamental ekonomi…; dalam perspektif politis, krisis itu terjadi karena berkuasanya rejim yang korup dengan tatanan yang tidak demokratis…; dalam perspektif filosofis radikal, … krisis itu karena kapitralisme liberal.[23]

Without showing any objection to those perspectives, he moves then to cite one verse of the Qur’an to justify his “additional” perspective, which he believes as “dalam pandangan Islam…” (the Islamic perspective). The Indonesian problems, thus, are framed in the secular perspectives and criticism and present religious text as a “pretext” (read: justification) rather a proving and explaining text.

In page 143, where he puts the figure of the Indonesian problems and their solutions, all are termed even in the Western philosophical terminologies:

Ekonomi Kapitalistik
Politik Opportunistik
Pendidikan Materialistik
Budaya Hedonistik
Tata Sosial Indvidualistik

We can notice that his wordings are necessarily “western”: kapitalistik (capitalist), opportunistik (opportunistic), materialistik (materialistic), hedonistik (hedonistic), and individualistik (individualistic). He did it intentionally or not, the case simply proves the influence of a discourse and inability of author to escape from its episteme. Therefore, how “fundamentalist” do they look, the Islamist is product of modern discourse not a return to the archaic Islam.

In addition, unlike most Islamist, the call to return to sharî‘a for Yusanto is not a call to return to the past. He frankly admires modernism with its technological advances. What he rejects, however, is the westernization. He says, “Islam tidak menolak modernisasi, bahkan bila dirunut dalam sejarah, justru Islamlah yang mengajari Barat yang sekarang dianggap sebagai kiblat modernisasi…” (Islam does not reject modernization; instead Islam taught the West, which now considered as the leader of modernization). In his latest piece, he suggests that there are two faces of modernization: science and technology, on the one hand; and Westernization, on the other. He accepts the former face because of its neutral nature and he rejects the later because of its Western values.[24]

To inform this discussion, it is interesting to look at Robert Hefner’s analysis[25] on the recent Indonesian politics. It shows how the Islamist and fundamentalist Muslim are part of modern trend in Islam, rather than of traditionalist one. He makes figure below to give a clear map of this grouping:

Islam vs Non Islam
!
Santri (orthodox) vs Abangan (Syncretist)
!
Modernist vs Traditionalist
!
Liberal vs Islamist

Following the chart, in the general Indonesian context, there are two poles based on their religions: Muslim and non-Muslim. In Muslim group, there are two extreme poles: santri, Muslims whose religious commitment and concern are higher than abangan, the less committed. Among santris, there are two poles either: the modernist, who call for purification, a return to the Qur’an and the Sunnah, and the traditionalist who maintain the heritage of ulama, respecting them, and following what ulama said in almost every single aspect of life rather a direct return to the Qur’an and Sunnah. Finally, among the modernist, there are two poles: the liberal who embrace Western ideas of secularism and the Islamist who believe in rationalization but anti-Western culture.

Conclusion

I have shown trough this papers that in Indonesia, Islamic visibility is not by mean resurgence. Islam involved in many level of Indonesian life, from political one to cultural one, from public to personal and private life. It is impossible to say any resurgence for such continuing phenomenon. I also have presented, supporting Said, Roy, Peletz, and particularly Moallem, that fundamentalism who express itself trough the demand of implementation of Islamic law in Indonesia is product of current events, not a return to the past, to the archaic Islam. Masked with some religious language and justification, the fundamentalist discourses are necessarily produced through “secular” perspectives — borrowed from political, economical, and philosophical criticisms that barely unrelated to religious text.

This paper, for sure, requires further research because I only present the latent “secular” discourse of fundamentalist Muslim; another research on, say, “fundamentalist” discourse of liberal Muslims is worth done. By accomplishing researches on both polarized groups, we will be able strongly argue for the need of deconstructing “enlightment” and orientalist approach toward Islam — an approach leading to “clash” of civilizations, rather than “coexistence”.

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[1] See Oliver Roy’s critique of Western Orientalism on this issue, “Introduction” in The Failure of Political Islam, C.Volk (trsl.), Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (1994), p. 7
[2] Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, New York: Oxford University Press (2002). One of examples how arbitrarily orientalist literature when talking about the Orient can be found in Lewis argument that there is no “native secularism” in Islam (p.100). To argue for his point, he shows the readers how difficult Muslims initially translating this word (p. 104-105). However, he simply forgets his own note (p. 96) that the term “secularism” appears to have been first used in English toward of the nineteenth century”. So, if Islam has no native secularism because its difficulty to translate, what about this his own note? Will he say the West have no native secularism for this late terminological making?
[3] Bryan S Turner, “Orientalism and the Problem of Civil Society in Islam & Politics and Culture in Islamic Globalism”, Orientalism, Postmodernism, and Globalism, New York: Routledge (1994), p. 34.
[4] Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Book (1979).
[5] Not only the Orientalist, though, who believe in such “return to pure Islam”, the fundamentalist do jargonize this mantra. Therefore, it is indeed difficult task to escape from such epistemological trap, as Roy also notes it — see Oliver Roy, “Introduction”, p. 7.
[6] Minoo Moallem, Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press (2005), p. 9 - 10
[7] Abdurrahman Wahid, “Indonesia’s Mild Secularism”, SAIS Review, XXI.2 (2001), p. 25.
[8] For more detailed history of Islam in Indonesia, see Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, New Haven : Yale University Press (c1988); Brief account on the history of Islam in this islands, ses Martin van Bruinessen, "Global and local in Indonesian Islam", Southeast Asian Studies (Kyoto), 37.2 (1999), p. 46-63.
[9] Graham E Fuller, “The Use of Political Islam”, in The Future of Political Islam, New York: Palgrave (2003), p. 40.
[10] Martin van Bruinessen, “Genealogies of Islamic Radicalism in post-Suharto Indonesia” A first draft of this paper was written for the international colloquium “L’islam politique à l’aube du XXIème siècle” organized in Tehran on October 28-29, 2001 by the Institute of Political and International Studies and the French Institute of Iranian Studies in Tehran. The present version was written in February-March 2002 and updated in July 2002.
[11] For analysis on Islam in Soeharto’s Indonesia, see Mark Cammack, “Islamic Law in Indonesia’s New Order”, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 38.1 (1989), 53-73; Malcolm Cone, “Neo-Modern Islam in Soeharto’s Indonesia”, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 4.4 (2002), p. 52-67.
[12] Suzanne Brenner, “Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and ‘the veil’”, American Ethnologist, 23 (1996), p. 676.
[13] Talal Asad, , “Reconfiguration of Law and Ethics in Colonial Egypt”, Formation of the Secular Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press (1994), p. 227
[14] On Islam and civil society post Soeharto, see Martin van Bruinessen, "Post-Suharto Muslim engagements with civil society and democracy”, paper presented at the Third International Conference and Workshop “Indonesia in Transition”, organised by the KNAW and Labsosio, Universitas Indonesia, August 24-28, 2003. Universitas Indonesia, Depok. The paper is downloaded from:
http://www.let.uu.nl/~Martin.vanBruinessen/
personal/publications/Post_Suharto_Islam_and_civil_society.htm
[15] Oliver Roy, “Introduction”, p. 14.
[16] Gudrun Kremer, “Islamist Notion of Democracy”, Middle East Report, 183 (1993), p. 3, 5.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Rizal Sukma, Militant Islam and Indonesia's Frail Democracy, Jurnal Kultur III.1 (2003), on http://www.pbb-iainjakarta.or.id/kultur/?Berita=052403040253&Kategori=16&Edisi=9
[19] Benjamen R Barber, Jihad vs McWorld, New York: Ballantine Books (2001), p.209
[20] About Hizbut Tahrir, visit their website http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/main.php?page=jubir&id=28
[21] It is worth noting that, unlike other organization, there is no “chair” or “president” or such other highest rank position in Hizbut Tahrir. Spokesman is the “highest representation” of the movement.
[22] Muhammad Ismail Yusanto, “Selamatkan Indonesia dengan Syariat”, in Syariat Islam Pandangan Muslim Liberal, Jakarta: JIL, p. 137-138.
[23] Ibid., p. 141. It reads “According to the economic perspective, the crisis is caused by the weakness of political foundation; according to political perspective, the crisis is caused by the regin of corrupt regim with undemocratic system…; and according to radical philosophical perspective, the crisis is the coming from liberal Capitalism”.
[24] Muhammad Ismail Yusanto, “Kebangkitan Islam Menantang Modernisasi dan Globalisasi:Perjuangan Hizbut Tahrir Di Indonesia”, in http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/main.php?page=jubir&id=28
[25] Robert W Hefner, “New Patterns of Islamic Politics in Democratic Indonesia”, in Asia Program Spesial Report, Washington D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Asia Program, 110 (2003), p. 7.

Annotated Bibliography on Political Islam

2006-03-13T23:19:00.000-08:00

Asad, Talal, “Reconfiguration of Law and Ethics in Colonial Egypt”, Formation of the Secular Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press (1994), 205-256

Asad seeks to trace the root of secularism in Muslim country. Asad gives the explanation how the idea of secularism was made thinkable in Muslim country. The proponents of secular Indonesian embrace the modern idea of a secular society that “included a distinctive relation between state law and personal morality, such that religion became essentially a matter of (private) belief.” (205).
Like in Egypt, which Asad is talking about, in Indonesia, “The shariah was not abandoned, but it was restricted to matters of personal status and to area where it could be clearly and easily codified”. (227)
I think the most relevant point he made is that “…only where there is this public realm can personal ethics become constituted as sovereign and be closely linked to a personally chosen style of life – that is, an aesthetic” (p. 255). The absence of public realm in the most part of Muslim societies’s history, a history of despotic society where there were only two distinctive entities, individual vis-a-vis state, seemingly makes the idea of independent individuals, supported by civil society, implausible.
From Asad’s explanation, I can understand that secularism is preferred by Indonesian than Islamic state because it is easily handled. Like in Egypt, Islamic law in Indonesia is restricted to the family law because it is simpler to codify them.

Barber, Benjamin R., Jihad vs McWorld, New York: Ballantine Books (2001)

Because I am talking about Indonesian fundamentalist and liberal, I need to give a theoretical framework of fundamentalist Muslims. Barber refers to Marty and Appleby who take fundamentalist religions to be engaged in militancy, in a kind of permanent fighting: they are militant, whether in the use of words and ideas or ballots or, in extreme cases, bullets.” (205-206)
The debate on Islamic law is also related to the debate between the rationality and belief, and “In at least one version of its history,” Barber said, “Islam too is story of the struggle between reason and belief, between consent and authoritarianism, between resistance to tyranny and tyrants.” (208)
It is interesting that the debate in Indonesia is not about “democracy”, rather using democracy in promoting Islamic law. Barber confirms this fact by saying that “fundamentalist Islam is not first of all opposed to democracy but to modernization as manifested in the Westernization.” (209)

Bowen, John R., “‘Religion in the Proper Sense of the Word’: Law and Civil Society in Islamicist Discourse.” Anthropology Today 12.4 (1996), 13-14

This article tries to address non-sympathetic attitude toward implementation of Islamic law. Bowen mentions two reasons: First, suspicion toward the law — whether it because we don not want to its presence to rule us, or, because it decreases the quality of civil society. Second, religious law contradicts the modern European stance toward religious faith and social toleration.” (p. 13)
Bowen himself proposes three steps toward constructing toward an adequate ethnography of religious law. First, distinguishing between fiqh and sharî‘ah. Fiqh is a human interpretation, but sharî‘ah is God prescribed “path” for human being. By distinguishing those entities, we can treat fiqh as other human-made-law. The second step is to point out that religious law making is cultural interpretation. And the third one, the most challenging for the West, is to critically examine the folk model available in the European and American culture for the analysis of public religious pluralism. One of the solutions Bowen proposes is that we need to begin with Habermas’s idea that individual autonomy requires that the citizen sense that the laws are their own. (p.14)
The important of this article to my topic is that it can help me understand more on the argument of those against implementation of Islamic law and what the possible solution they do not think yet.

Fuller, Graham E, “The Use of Political Islam”, The future of Political Islam, New York: Palgrave (2003)

Fuller give attention to the roles that religion, Islam in this case, can play in human life other than mediating human being and his God (faith). Islam can be used in many ways: self perception, identity, and also politics.
In understanding the Indonesian case, I can borrow his explanation on the functions of political Islam: 1) to critique authoritarian regime and corruption, 2) support for political party, 3) vehicle for class aspiration, and 4) providing the vocabulary of political critique.

Gole, Nilufer, “Islam in Public: New Visibilities and New Imaginaries”, Public Culture 14.1 (2002), 173-190

The space where the Indonesian Islamist and the liberal Muslims have been struggling for is a public sphere and, as Gole puts it, “the public sphere is not simply a preestablished arena; it is constituted and negotiated through performance.” (p. 179). As the case of Turkey, public sphere in Indonesia also become a site for modern and secular performance.
The reluctant of Indonesian liberal Muslim also can be explained through her point of view regarding stigmatization. In the case of Islamist, in the public sphere, there is a double movement that causes uneasiness among the secular-liberal Muslims: Islamist seek to enter into spaces of modernity, yet they display their distinctiveness. (p. 186)

Kazemi Farhad, “Perspective on Islam and Civil Society”, Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2002), 38-55

Kazemi explanation on the relation between state and society in Islamic world view is important to explain the fundamentalist demand on the implementation of Islamic law. According to him, “In the Islamic worldview, a vibrant society needs the state in order to allow for full participation in public life. It is the state that provides protection, maintains legal order, and safeguards right of individual and groups.” (41)

Lewis, Bernard, What When Wrong?, New York: Oxford (2002)

Since Indonesia declared its independence and the new state was established, the Indonesia’s founding fathers decided to build a state that is based on secularism, rather than an Islamic state even though 87% of Indonesians are Muslim. However, there have been Islamic groups promoting another way, which bring about tension between secularism and Islamism. The current tension between Islamist and secularist in Indonesia can be explained through Bernard Lewis’s statement that there was no native secularism in Islam (p. 100). There has been a demand from the Islamist to implement Islamic Law in Indonesia because they believe, following Lewis, that there is no human legislative power (p. 101).

Roy, Oliver, “Introduction”, The Failure of Political Islam, C. Vol trasl., Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press (1994), 1-27

In the in the introduction, Roy pose challenging question on how Western outlook is trapped on the old fashion of Enlightenment whereby only one scheme for Progress: Political modernity, embodied in parliamentary democracy, and secularization. Many forget that there have been many puritan revolution, secular dictatorship, industrialization under dictatorship, and so on. Understanding political Islam requires a new framework.
In understanding political Islam, he contend not to establish a relationship of causality between, on the one hand, the manner in which the Islamic tradition thinks of politics and, on the other, the reality of regimes and institution in Muslim countries (p.12). This is the case in Indonesia.
For my paper, his explanation that for the Islamist the function of state is “to defend the shariah”(14) is also helpful in understanding the popular demand on the implementation of Islamic law.

Turner, Bryan S., “Orientalism and the Problem of Civil Soiety in Islam & Politics and Culture in Islamic Globalism”, Orientalism, Postmodernism, and Globalism, New York: Routledge (1994), 20-35, 77-94

Turner’s work is necessarily important in the way that he, as Edward Saeed did in his Orientalism, put the issue of politics in the colonial discourse of Oriental. The Orient, he argues, is only the place for the Occident to build itself. To make itself “liberal”, the Occident have to make sure themselves that the Oriental despotism is absent of them. To put it in his words, “The debate about oriental despotism took place in the context of [Western] anxieties about the state about the state of political freedom in the West.” (p. 34).
From that point of view, the Indonesian liberal Muslims seems to be caught in the Western discourse (Orientalism trope) where they don’t believe their own heritage, viewing the Islamic history in skeptical way and rejecting any attempt to rebuild the past. By contrast, the hard liner offer no comprehensive way to a return to the past.

Kramer, Gudrun, “Islamist Notion of Democracy”, Middle East Report 183 (1993), 2-8

This article addresses the question if Islam is compatible with democracy. Many suggest that Islam is not compatible with democracy and the only way for Muslims to embrace democracy is to choose “Mecca or mechanization”.
To give the different picture, arguing that it is possible to talk about Islam and democracy, Kramer present an analysis on the books written by authors representing mainstream in the Middle East.
Drawing the remarks from these books, Kramer helps us understanding several issues pertinent to the relation between religion and state. The most relevant point to my topics is his finding on the “agreement” among the authors that “the hallmark of truly Islamic system (al-nizâm al-islâmî) is the application of sharî‘a and not any particular political order” (p. 4) and “… the sharî‘a to be applied requires social organization and state” (p.5).
Kremer also help us to understand, in the context of Indonesia debate on shari‘a, how Indonesian state does not really matter. According to those Middle Eastern authors, “Islam is religion and state”, whose task is enforcing shari‘a, but, “the precise form of the government is left to human reason to define.” (5). Thus, the Indonesian Islamist propose no change for Indonesian state except that it has to implement Islamic law (shari‘a).

McBeth, John, “The Case for Islamic Law”, Far Eastern Economic Review, 165.33 (2002), 12-15

McBeth begins his article with straightforward statement, “It is not only extremists who admire Islamic law. In Indonesia, a surprising number of moderate Muslims, worried about a collapse of moral values, would like to see a bigger role for sharia.” (p. 12). This article is about the current issue in Indonesia where the debate in the public sphere has reached the top state body, People’s Consultative Assembly (Majlis Permusyawaratan Rakyat). Even though the debate eventually won by those who reject amendment of Indonesia Constitution to include shari‘a, there is a fact of growing support for the shari‘a. In recent study by the Jakarta-based Center for Islamic and Community Studies, more than 61% of the respondent approved of the implementation of shari‘a, though that number decline significantly on the harsh punishment. Therefore, the campaign to fully implement shari‘a has failed to win support.
This article relatively covers new developments in Indonesia, giving the reader broader understanding about the complexity of the issue at question in a new liberal, democrat, and secular state like Indonesia.

ISLAMIC LAW IN INDONESIA

Brenner, Suzanne, “Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and ‘the veil’”, American Ethnologist, 23 (1996), 673-697

While she talks about veiling (jilbab), her account on the background of this veiling movement is important in describing how the secular Indonesia, unexpectedly, urges Muslims to find an “origin” identity in Islam (676-677). Living under secularism, modernization, and westernization has been “annoying” for those who realize that they are Muslim and should maintain their identity as Muslim. In producing themselves as modern Muslims, veiled women simultaneously produce a vision of a society that distances itself from the past as it embarks upon new modernity (673).
Out of conscience, unlike in Iran, Indonesian Muslim women find jilbab as the way of subject self-building. I think the popular demand on the implementation of Islamic law is best framed on such context.

Woodward, Mark R, “Indonesia, Islam, and the Prospect for Democracy”, SAIS Review, XXI.2 (2001)

Woodward maps Indonesian Muslim into five categories: (1) Indigenized Islams, in which religion is a thoroughly integrated component of a larger cultural system, are common throughout the country, particularly in east and central Java. (2)The traditional Sunni Islam of Nahdlatul Ulama is rooted in the study of the classic legal, theological, and mystical texts. It is most prevalent in east Java. (3)The Islamic modernism of Muhammadiyah rejects mysticism and extols modern education and social services. Modernists are usually found in urban areas. (4) Islamist groups espouse a highly politicized and anti-Western interpretation of Islam. They are most common on university campuses and in large urban centers. (5) Finally, neo-modernism seeks to find Islamic foundations for many features of modernity, including democracy and religious and cultural pluralism.
With regard to my topic, it is the fourth and fifth group who is now struggling for more Islamic and more secular Indonesia.

Cammack, Mark, “Islamic Law in Indonesia’s New Order”, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 38.1 (1989), 53-73

In this article, Cammack deal with the dynamic of the implementation of Islamic law during New Order regime. In an episode involving demonstration and public denial on the reformation of Islamic law in 1973, we can learn how Islamic law has always been a political issue for Indonesia.
What Cammack presents in this article is important to describe the historical events where the implementation of Islamic law has been argued for and against by various group in Indonesia. We can see, from this article, that in 1970s and 1980s, Islamic voice was relatively compact: against the government cooptation. However, if we compare to the post New Order period, as the cooptation disappear, Islamic voice can be various. Those who denied “unification” of law under the New Order, like NU and Muhammadiyah, now became the main voice in denying implementation of Islamic law demanded by the Islamist.
To this point, Mark Emmeck’s works is relevant to provide historical background for the current debate.

Wahid, Abdurrahman KH, “Indonesia’s Mild Secularism”, SAIS Review XXI. 2 (2001), 25-29

Article by this former Indonesian president, the first president elected democratically in the history of Indonesia, well describe the relation of religion (Islam) and the state in Indonesia.
According to Wahid, Islam was introduced to Indonesia through the way that completely different from other part of the world. While most part of the Middle East, North Africa, and others conquered by Islamic warriors during vast expansion in 7th – 11th centuries, Islam was introduced to Indonesian through peaceful trade and then developed under the influence of the traders included traits like egalitarianism, dynamism, entrepreneurship, and independence, which affected the ideology and practice of Islam in the country significantly. As a result, the Indonesian people are now basically egalitarian in their outlook, an important ingredient for a functioning democracy (25).
Although Islam is the religion of the majority of Indonesians, the country’s founding fathers, supported by the people, unanimously agreed that the Republic of Indonesia should not become a theocratic state. Instead, they agreed that the Indonesian state should be based on patriotic as well as humanitarian and religious values (26). To put it differently, Indonesian state is in between: it is not secular as Turkey, but it is also not theocratic like Iran — Indonesia pursues a mild secularism.
In the context of the debate on the implementation of Islamic law, Wahid’s account is important to analyze the trend. Is Islamic law important for Muslims about whom Wahid describe egalitarian in their outlook?

Syariat Islam: Pandangan Muslim Liberal, Jakarta: The Asia Foundation and JIL (2003)

The heated debate over implementation of Islamic law was well documented by those involved. This book was compiled by Jaringan Islam Liberal (JIL), the network of liberal Muslims who promote secularism. It contains five main articles and three transcripts from the discussion between the liberals and the Islamists. For my research, this book is main site where the ideas of liberalism on the Islamic law are unpacked.

Warrior Borthers and Veiled Sisters

2006-03-01T23:18:00.000-08:00

In her book, Moallem argues that, although Iranian modernity and postmodernity have produced specific images of gendered, sexualized, and racialized bodies, these images are not produced with any degree of finality, instead a dynamic, historically specific process through which visual imageries of bodies are framed and coded by gender and race against the background of institutional practices across various domains, such as the family, the state, and political and religious organizations. While modern Westernized cultural meanings of Persianness claimed hegemony over the meaning of identity pre-revolution of 1979; the meaning of identity, then, was replaced by Islamic notions of community (Moallem, 2005: 25).

In both cases, Iranian modernity and post-modernity are dynamic response to the Western modernity and colonialism. What so called umma (Islamic community), for example, is necessarily product of modernity rather than a return to an idealized archaic community (Moallem, 2005: 25); and what is called “fundamentalism”, for another case, is the crisis of modernity, instead of the one of tradition (Moallem, 2005: 120).

To work on those arguments, Moallem draws on scholarship from a number of fields: transnational and post-colonial feminism, queer theory, and Middle Eastern and Iranian women’s studies. Her objective is to contest the existing Western representation of Islamic fundamentalism as irrational, morally inferior, and barbaric masculinity and its passive, victimized, and submissive femininity (Moallem, 2005: 8). There are three serious consequences to this problem: first, it legitimizes imperialist and militarist intervention of the West in general in the Middle East; second, it is used to maintain racism against Arabs and Muslims in the U.S.A.; last but not least, it indeed makes various forms of fundamentalism appealing to the masses of people in the Middle East — creating situation where claiming an “us” or making certain claims to authenticity becomes a site of resistance and identity formation. Furthermore, such intellectual tradition reduces all Muslims to fundamentalist and all fundamentalist to fanatical antimodern traditionalist (Moallem, 2005: 8).

Therefore, Moallem tries to historicize what is becoming fixed in the notion of Islamic fundamentalism and Iranian identity. In so doing, she looks at how Iranian reacted to “civilizational imperialism” and its counter reaction. Civilizational imperialism led the Reza Shah to impose western model of modernization deemed capable of bringing Iranian out of the fixed backward Islam: the adoption of European dress, suits, jackets, trousers, and the likes (Moallem, 2005: 64). As a reaction, in turn, the revolutionary Muslims impose a kind of de-westernization during the revolution, producing a number of tropes found in Islamic tradition to replace any tropes of the western ideas, such as promoting the imagined Islamic community called ummah to replace nation, imposing reveiling on the women instead of unveiling,

Another important point she makes — I think it is of her use of queer theory — is her analysis on how civic body is preferable site whenever the regimes attempt to impose their certain ideology. Moallem works well on this issue when she discusses unveiling and reveiling (Moallem, 2005: 69). The hijab (veil) has been crucial in staging difference and in giving meaning to a series of dichotomies that underlie gender, power, and authority in Iranian modernity. In 1934 and 1935, Reza Shah imposed forced unveiling, while post-revolution regime forced women on reveiling. Governing civic bodies is one most important disciplinary tools of any regime in Iran.

This book is not really new in the sense that many scholars have challenged what Said called “orientalism” attitude of the West in othering the Rest. Since Saeed’s path breaking work, Orientalism, was published, many scholars have tried to understand the Rest in its own right. Peletz’s book we discussed before was also written in this spirit. However, the contribution Moallem made is in the way she deals with the issue of umma. While there is a small number of works have been done to understand the rise of umma, amid bulk theories of nation; Moallem put the discourse of umma in distinguished fashion: her argument that umma is the product of modernity rather than a return to the earliest time of the community of Allah is challenging at all.

I am also interested in her explanation that one of serious impact of Orientalist way of depicting Islam is indeed a boost for fundamentalism. By fixing Islam to certain type of fundamentalism, it is very difficult for those who try to reinterpret Islam in a different way. The Liberal Muslims in Indonesia, for example, have no public credential to claim Islamicity because the fixed representation of Islam is in a fundamentalist trope. In the case of banking, for instance, only shariah banking can claim Islamicity. The conventional banking (with its interest based system), although acceptable according to Islamic liberal interpretation, is considered non-Islamic. It is necessarily difficult to claim Islamicity out of the fixed fundamentalist trope of Islam.

Considering its “heavy” content, this book will be difficult reading for those who are not familiar with post-modernist approaches. Just reading one paragraph in page 25, for example, we find several methodological terms requiring wider reading on contemporary approach: cultural studies, queer theory, transnational, and discursive production, tropes, images, signifiers, narrative, subject formation, all of which unexplained in the book. The reader needs to understand first the concepts developed by Ferdinand de Saussure (linguistic), Rolland Bart (semiotic), Michel Foucault (discourse), Jacques Derrida (deconstruction), and Edward Saeed (post-colonial study) and other structuralist and post-structuralist to understand better this book. And, as far as I experienced, that is not easy done.

New Imperialism

2006-02-15T23:17:00.000-08:00

David Harvey’s book, New Imperialism, seeks to explain current events by uncovering the underlying forces within the chaos of surface appearances. Why America fights? Why Iraq? Propagandistic claims and rhetoric will not answer such questions because they are made to mask the real objective. For example, if democracy really matters in the case of Iraqi war, then why not war against Pakistani and Saudi regimes? Instead of claiming that Saddam should be removed from his position because he supported terrorism, we were informed just a couple weeks after the war that Saddam had no relation to 9/11. Therefore, it is important to seek the explanation beyond the “said” to the unsaid.

To make a long story short, today’s events in America are related to the history of capitalism, to the rise of bourgeois imperialism as the way out of capital overaccumulation in Europe and America. The first capital overaccumulation marked by the European-wide economic collapse of 1846-50 indeed opened the way for bourgeoisie to incorporate within the state apparatuses. It first happened in Europe and then in the USA in aftermath of the Civil War. The solution of capital overaccumulation is what Harvey calls, “spatio-temporal fix”, in which the capitalists expanded the geographical territory to invest and trade. Here is in this context that the USA was better off than its counterparts in the Europe. Its governmental form, not burdened with feudal and aristocratic residuals of the sort to be found in Europe, broadly reflected corporate and industrial class interest and had, since independence, bourgeois to the core (as formalized in the constitution). Political power internally was devoted to individualism and opposed to any threat to private right and profit rate. It was a multi ethnic society preventing narrow nationalism. It was also exceptional in possessing abundant space for internal expansion, within which both the capitalistic logic and territorial logic could find room.

With all of those advantages, the Post War History (1945-1970) is simply the history of the USA domination both in technology and production. The only serious opponent was the Soviet Union, but the country had lost vast numbers of its population and suffered terrible degradation of its military and industrial capacity. If imperialism is understood as distinctively political project on the part of actors whose power is based in command of a territory and a capacity to mobilize its human and natural resources toward political, economic, and military end (territorial logic of imperialism), the US domination during the Post War History, is not kind of that. But, if it means “the molecular process of capital accumulation in space and time” or imperialism as a diffuse political economic process in space and time in which command over and use of capital takes primacy, this is the case of the U.S. domination during 1945-1970.

Because the capitalists have their own logic, it is actually difficult for the state, even though as powerful as the U.S., to control the expansion of capital accumulation. The switch into financial domination of the world in the 1970s was a specific move taken within the United States to enhance financial capitalism against manufacturing and productive capitalism. Manufacturing and productive capitalism has largely been pushed out of the United States; much of it has moved to East and Southeast Asia. The United States is no longer a dominant player in the world of production. But the U.S. took the view that that didn't matter; provided it always had the financial power. The U.S. used the financial power to its advantage during the 1980s and 1990s, in particular, and assembled a great deal of wealth out of this particular “financialization” strategy. During this period, neo-liberalism leads the way. However, we now see an end of this strategy. The internal budget deficit of the United States is making the U.S. into a chronic debtor country. This is a real threat to America hegemony.

Is it the reason why the U.S. administration now pursuing territorial imperialism? He is not really sure about it. But the real fact is the return of conservative politician, whose vision is maintaining authority and order here and abroad, to the power. It has not got the leverage it once had through financial strategy or through productive capacity, or even through cultural persuasion that America once had. The only leverage it has got left is indeed the military one, and the military one has always been about territorial logic. So a return to militarization brings it back into territorial aggrandizement.

So, is “new imperialism” really “new”? No, Harvey puts it in this way, “The American bourgeoisie has, in short, rediscovered what the British bourgeoisie discovered in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, that… it [is], ‘the original sin of simple robbery’.... If this is so, then the ‘new imperialism’ appears as nothing more than the revisiting of the old, though in a different place and time.”

Which Logic Rules?

There are two logics of power in this book: territorial logic and capitalist logic. There some different points between two logics. While the capitalist holding money capital will wish to put it wherever profits can be had and typically seeks to accumulate more capital; the politician and statesman seeks outcomes that sustain the power their own state vis a vis other states. While the capitalist seeks individual advantage, the statesman seeks collective advantage.
During its first of hegemony, as mentioned above, the U.S. relied more on capitalist logic than territorial logic. However, it then moves from that logic to territorial logic. So, the question is, is it the end of capitalism? Can we compare the U.S. with China?

It is maintained that free market and freedom of enterprise is the key features for capitalism to grow. The U.S. has both, but the capital flow to China where the freedom of enterprise are really controlled by the government. The current case of Google and Yahoo, simply showcased that capitalist logic is not merely about freedom of enterprise. It seems that as long as the capitalist can accumulate their capital, they will do everything and make adjustment to the territorial logic. On the other hand, the leader of capitalism, the U.S., finally has to follow the suit: make use of territorial logic by maintaining control on the key economic region of the world: the Middle East with its oil wells.

Reading such facts, it is still difficult then to understand the current events. Why America fight against Iraq? If the U.S. is merely only concerned on maintaining its hegemony, what about its capital accumulation? If the war against Iraq is to ensure capitalist accumulation, why China need no such strategy?

Heboh Kartun Nabi

2006-02-05T23:14:00.000-08:00

Tom Heneghan, redaktur agama di Reuters, menyebut kasus penerbitan dan penerbitan ulang kartun Nabi Muhammad di Denmark dan koran-koran Eropa seperti dialog tuna rungu. Pers Eropa tak mendengar pendapat umat Islam yang merasa terhina, dan umat Islam tak bisa memahami arti freedom of expression.

Ada batas yang mestinya dipahami kedua belah pihak dimana “pelecehan”, di satu sisi, dan “kebebasan berekpresi” di sisi lain. Batas itu, tentu saja bukan batas legal, right, melainkan batas “etis”, golden rule dalam ajaran luhur semua agama, bahwa “bila ingin dihormati, maka hormatilah orang lain”.

Mengapa batas legal (right) tidak mampu menyelesaikan persoalan ini? Pertama, kita sekarang hidup di kampung global yang tak lagi bisa dibatasi oleh jurisdiksi tertentu. Penerbitan kartun itu ada di wilayah hukum Eropa dan mayoritas orang yang merasa tersinggung berada di luar Eropa, di dunia Islam.

Kedua, kasus ini melibatkan perbedaan kultur, nilai, persepsi, sejarah, agama, dan bahkan politik yang tidak pernah akan terjangkau oleh hukum manapun. Walaupun ada mahkamah internasional, jurisdiksi mahkamah internasional tidak bisa menjangkau kompleksitas kasus ini. Umat Islam pasti lebih mendengar fatwa ulama mereka daripada fatwa Mahkamah Internasional.

Jadi, yang diperlukan adalah penyelesaian etis dan terhormat dari kedua belah pihak, saling menyadari dan bisa duduk dan melihat dari sudut pandang si lain.

Ketika Nabi Dilecehkan

Umat Islam sebaiknya kembali ke sejarah dan teladan Nabi Muhammad SAW. Semua Muslim paham benar bagaimana ketika beliau di Makkah dan mulai mengajarkan agamanya. Cacian, cercaan, pemboikotan, dan bahkan ancaman pembunuhan beliau terima.Ketika mencoba dakwah ke Taif, orang-orang menghujani beliau dengan batu hingga mengancam nyawanya. Malaikat Jibril yang geram datang menawarkan pembelaan, “Wahai Rasul, bagaimana kalau mereka diazab saja seperti umat-umat terdahulu?” Rasulullah yang tengah terluka dengan sabar menentramkan Jibril dan berdoa, “Ya Allah, berikan petunjuk kepada mereka, sebab meraka melakukan ini karena tidak memahami.”

Dalam kisah lain disebutkan bahwa salah seorang penduduk Makkah setiap hari meludahi beliau saat beliau shalat di Ka’bah. Namun, Beliau terima penghinaan itu sampai suatu hari orang itu tidak kelihatan di sekitar Ka’bah. Beliau memperoleh kabar bahwa si Fulan sedang sakit dan beliau kunjungi dia. Orang ini akhirnya memeluk Islam karena Muhammad yang ia hina setiap hari justru menjadi orang pertama yang menjenguk saat sakit.

Kartunis Denmark itu seorang non-Muslim yang membuat karyanya karena ketidak-pahamannya tentang Islam. Mestinya Muslim bisa bersikap seperti Nabi dengan mencegah kekerasan seperti yang hendak dilakukan Jibril, dan mendoakan mereka agar memperoleh petunjuk.

Kebebasan Berekspresi

Menurut harian Jillands-Posten, penerbitan kartun itu adalah untuk menguji batas-batas kebebasan berekpresi. Seperti dalam uji coba sebuah penelitian, mestinya setelah menimbulkan reaksi umat Islam, langkah berikutnya adalah mengevaluasi. Diizinkannya penerbitan ulang kartun itu di sejumlah harian di Eropa, tentu saja, lebih mudah dipahami sebagai provokasi daripada niat baik untuk “menguji kebebasan”.

Sikap pers Eropa, seperti sikap umat Islam, tentu saja juga berlebihan. Bukannya memberikan pemahaman yang baik kepada umat Islam tentang arti freedom of expression, kasus ini justru memberikan makna yang negatif pada “prinsip suci” kebebasan pers ini: kebebasan pers bisa disalahpahami juga mencakup bebas menghina orang lain.

Hal yang tidak diperhitungkan pers Eropa, dengan memancing emosi umat Islam untuk menuntut pembreidelan, kasus ini sama saja dengan memberikan dukungan secara tidak langsung kepada rejim-rejim otoriter di negeri Muslim untuk tidak memberikan kebebasan pers di negerinya. Bila kita perhatikan, tidak sedikit politisi di negara Muslim yang memancing di air keruh demi mempertahankan kursi kekuasaanya dengan “turut mengecam”.

Dengan kata lain, para pembela kebebasan pers di Eropa yang sebenarnya tak memerlukan lagi perlindungan kebebasan, hanya karena “coba-coba”, telah memukul telak gerakan kebebasan pers di negeri-negeri Muslim.

Sama-sama Rugi

Jadi, di pihak Muslim maupun di pihak barat sama-sama dirugiukan oleh kasus ini. Islam bisa jadi semakin identik dengan kekerasan karena reaksi umat Islam yang keras. Agama Islam ternoda di mata Barat karena ulah umat Islam yang berniat membela agamanya dari penodaan.

Di sisi yang lain, “pendakwahan” agama sipil — dalam istilah sosiologi — yang bernama freedom of expression terhantam oleh bumerangnya sendiri yang dilemparkan di Eropa. Umat Islam semakin sulit diyakinkan tentang pentingnya kebebasan pers karena yang disuguhkan kepada mereka adalah kebebasan untuk menghina orang lain.

Jika kedua belah pihak mengedepankan niat baik, kebebasan pers dan keyakinan agama semestinya tidak perlu menjadi musuh.

Modern Islam in Malaysia

2006-02-05T23:11:00.000-08:00

The book poses twofold thesis: First, the judicial process in Islamic court courts is informed by a very clear cultural logic that this logic itself is well informed by contrasting discourses and the play of contradictory elements. Second, Islamic courts are in fact strategic site for modernization of Malaysia.

Peletz in fact writes in a multi-disciplinary tradition involving political sciences, anthropology, sociology, and women studies, by which he provides ethnographic, historical, cross-cultural, and transnational perspective on recent development in Islam and laws. In this regard, his study is against Weberian account on Islamic law, in which Islamic law is seen as an irrational and backward, and against more general attitude of “orientalist” literature that consider Islam as incompatible with modernity, monolithic, and eternally unchanging. He is not the first one doing such studies and he confirms findings of other scholars such as Bowen, Eickleman and Piscatori, Lawrence, and Hefner.

He supports the first thesis by looking at what happens in the court. He find that the practice of Islamic court -- form the way they file the case, the way the judge handle the case, and the judgment they made -- necessarily flexible and dynamics. For example, he shows how the courts put the husband as the initiator who file the case rather than the wife so that the cost of adjudication is covered by the husband.

With regard to his second thesis, contribution of Islamic courts to modernization can be described in a way that Islamic courts and legal institution of Islam have encouraged a certain type of modernity and civil society. First, they provide a legitimate and confidential forum for people to articulate intimate experiences and feeling of different conception of moral injustice. Second, promoting contractual responsibilities among individuals in which they became realized that finally, in the Day of Judgment they individually are responsible, not with some larger groups. Third, the court has been playing a role of democratization of family relations, in which they do it through corrective advice and more encompassing discourses freeing people from constraints of extended kinship. Fourth, the court emphasizes that identities is something chosen, not natural, and therefore it is hybrid and protean.

To the extent that he describes the modernity of Islam, particularly Islamic court, he has done that well. But, there is a kind of contradictory argument in his positions toward Islamic Court. When he deals with the historical data such as punishment and Undang-undang Melaka, he argued the data should not be taken as evidence that such laws were widely known or systematically enforced in Melaka because, firs, there is much more justice and law than crime and punishment and, second, people tend to deal with the disputes and conflict by avoidance, negotiation, and mediation, and/or arbitration rather than adjudication. If we follow this argument, we may argue that what he finds in Islamic court is not strong argument to maintain that Islam can be modern, because what happens in the court, if it really represents modernity if Islam, is more exceptional than norm – majority of Malay Muslims are outside of the court. If Islamic courts democratize family relation, how many families do file their case to the court? If we refer to his own argument, it should be few families because in Malay tradition, informal dispute resolution (negotiation and mediation), are preferred than adjudication.

Another critical problem is the term “modernity” he used to judge his findings. The facts that courts promote equality between men and women, promote individual and contractual responsibility, or promote a kind of openness, are not enough to say that the court is modern. First, those are not new facts in Islamic tradition. For example, the general practice of avoiding Islamic inheritance law in Muslim countries, such as Morocco and Indonesia, can be considered as a Moslem’s way to support female heirs whose share is only half of male heirs in Islamic inheritance law. Second, one of important element in modernity, according to Geertz whose argument is referred by Peletz quoted (Peletz, 2002: 17), is self conscious sense of doctrine. If they do all of these “modern” attitudes without consciously referring to any doctrine, not systematically done, it is not modern.

Generally speaking, however, her study is the most comprehensive study on the recent development of Islamic legal institution, particularly on the practice of Islamic court. (*)

Hamas Victory

2006-02-04T23:08:00.000-08:00

Opinion and Editorial - February 04, 2006
Arif Maftuhin, Seattle, WA

Hamas' landslide victory has shocked the world, especially Israel and the US. By the day, Hamas has proved its dominance in these polls.

Pessimists take the view that Hamas is purely a terrorist organization rather than political party, and argue that nothing can be hoped from an organization whose sole strategy is violence. Since Hamas prefers violence, their win implies that Palestinians want to continue to wage war.

Optimists compare Hamas to the political wing of IRA, Sinn Fein, and believe that Hamas will change their violence strategy. Hamas is no longer a militia; it is a government whose responsibilities are not only killing enemies and creating terror, but also providing shelter, food and education for their citizens. Naturally, they are forced to become more realistic and make some compromises.

Those taking a more cautious attitude are waiting for further developments. While the optimists and pessimists focus on Hamas, the indifferent see Hamas as just one of several other equally important determinants. Many and complicated factors can influence Palestine's future.

Those who adopt a cautious position have strong reasons for taking such an attitude.

First, Hamas could become more moderate or it could remain radical. Hamas is not Sinn Fein; it has its own history and context.
Second, Hamas' position also depends on external factors, especially the U.S. and its allies. While acknowledging the result, President George W Bush has warned that U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority might be cut unless Hamas renounced violence and stopped calling for Israel's destruction. An isolating policy such as this could potentially lead to a radicalization of Hamas, rather than moderating them.
Third, there is the internal Palestinian political context. Turmoil and unrest, immediately after the parliamentary election, indicated negative developments. It is still not clear how Hamas, an anti compromise organization, can achieve a compromise with Fatah while the youth wing of Fatah rejects coalition with Hamas.
Fourth, there is the radicalization of Fatah. Many people say that Hamas will become more moderate, but forget another possibility of Fatah becoming more radical.

The moderate leaders of Fatah have lost their credibility. The succession will bring a younger and more radical generation of Fatah to the leadership.

While we don't know what will happen, the Palestinian election has given a lesson to the world, especially to radical Muslim movements.

After the successful Iraqi elections, President George W Bush repeatedly boasted that democracy in Iraq would spread throughout the Middle East and bring peace to that region. If he really meant what he promoted, he should be happy: Palestinians have practiced well the democracy class he taught in Iraq.

Sad to say, Palestinians also gave him a bitter lesson: democracy and terrorism are not as black and white as he thinks, with the "terrorist" Hamas winning a huge majority in a democratic election. A newspaper cartoonist in Seattle depicted democracy as an "all size" t-shirt that even a Hamas terrorist could fit into.

On the other hand, Hamas has given radical Muslim movements a good lesson, "You can not defeat Bush militarily, but you can defeat him using democracy and freedom".
Islam in a more fundamentalist form remains powerful in the Middle East. This is true not only for Hamas. Recent elections in Egypt also showed a similar trend with fundamentalist Muslims gaining significant support from the public.
The failure of existing regimes in the Middle East has opened the way for fundamentalist Muslims to pledge a change.

The writer is a student at the school of international studies at the University of Washington, and is a lecturer at UIN Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta. He can be reached at arif_maftuh@yahoo.com.
The Jakarta Post - The Journal of Indonesia Today

Negotiating Identities

2006-02-01T23:07:00.000-08:00

The Approach: State, Nation, Community

Kastoryano saiys her study is different to other studies of negotiation of identities in the way she deals with “state”. While other studies deal with the intercultural negotiation between groups or minorities sharing public space, her study focuses on “the state and minorities” (Kastoryano, 2002: 4). To put her idea differently, she analyzes two political entities, state and immigrant, instead of majority and immigrant (minority) sharing a public space. She argues that state:
…is not seen simply as an administration and juridical power whose role in matters of immigration is limited to the control of flows and thus to the protection of national borders. (Kastoryano, 2002:5)

Her assumption of the capability of state to play more roles is obvious in her statement:
By state, I mean an institutional reality that, although influenced by external forces, has its own internal logic, born of history and nourished by ideology, acting directly on civil society and shaping its political life (Kastoryano, 2002: 5)

However, she does not explain what she means by “institutional reality” and how the state “… has its own logic” or how we ably know state’s logic. She, as far as research methodology is concerned, did not explain. While she claims that her study is different in the way she puts state and minority, she also considers state as a nation, when she says “…state, whose substance is the nation…” (Kastoryano, 2002: 5). In other words, her research may include negotiations between “nation and minority”. Furthermore, the concept of “state” becomes more undefined when she uses other words that she treated as state, such as public authorities and machinery of the state (Kastoryano, 2002:5).

To this point, I can not understand what makes her research distinct from other research on negotiation of identities, because state is nation, and state is public authorities. If Kastoryano really wants to claim that her research is new, she has to convince the reader first. She can not deal with state as an object of study if she treats many various political entities as interchangeable. State, nation, nation-state, community, public authorities, and machinery of the state should be defined as clearly as possible; otherwise, she will fail in dealing with the role of the “state” in negotiating identities. I will show the result of this ambiguity on the next section.

Minority versus Majority

Because Kastoryano fails to define the state, and tends to treat state, nation, community, and public authorities, as interchangeable, we find that she includes almost everything, except the minority, as representations of “state” — law, government and public authorities, politicians, public opinion, poll, media, academia, and culture majority, as “the state” vis-a-vis the minority.

In the Chapter One, “The War of the Word”, on the word immigrant, she indeed refers to law in France, while not mentioning any reference to any law for the word gastarbeiter in Germany. Further, she refers to politician, public, political parties and their leadership (Kastoryano, 2002:17), and then she referred to academia and an article in newspaper (Kastoryano, 2002: 18). This is also the case when she discusses “threshold of tolerance” and “the battle of numbers”, where she refers to politicians, headline newspaper, journals, and political party (Kastoryano, 2002: 19-22). By referring to public entities (media, academia, politicians) as much as to public authorities, the readers are not convinced by her statement that she deals with “state” and “minority”. I think it will be problematic to put politicians and newspapers as representation of the state.

A probable explanation of all this ambiguity seemingly lies in her approach, which combine institutional and cultural approach together. As I mentioned before, by using two approaches together, she can not describe well “the role of state” because in her explanation she mixes the role of the state as represented by public authorities and other public actors that, in fact, contribute to the negotiation as much as state — not only as a context for the state policies. When she tries to give a context for state policy, she describes the role of politicians and media in negotiating identities. State, in this case, is not single determinant anymore.

Alternative Approach

Kastoryano’s ambiguity raises question about the validity of treating the state as an autonomic subject with “… its own internal logic” as she claims. In the concept of nation-state, there is a merger between two different entities. One is cultural entity (nation), and the other is institutional entity (state). In this merger, state is the means of the nation to achieve its objectives. Since state is only means, it does not have “… its own logic”.

From any approach, state is an indifferent entity depending on the logic’s of nation. From the point of view of the cultural approach, we can not understand what the “state” does unless we understand the nation’s discourses (from a prime minister, politicians, academia to the media) in the public space. Alternately, viewed from the institutional approach, we can not understand the state unless we understand the law made by the legislative and its implementation by the government. There is no such state with its own logic, and Kastoryano’s study in fact confirms such understanding. What she shows in her study is not the state’s logic, rather the nation’s logic shaped in the public space by many stake holders, especially the majority voice of a nation.

Viewed from such understanding, she actually explains well how identities are negotiated in the public space by the constituent of the state: the majority and the minority. We find in her study that government policies are influenced by public discourse and not only by government logic. In a democratic country such Germany and French we can not expect government (“state” in Kastoryano’s methodology) implements its own logic — government tends to meet majority’s demand.

In the conclusion chapter, where Kastoryano said “Relation between state and immigrant are often expressed in term of conflict and allegiances” (Kastoryano, 2002: 181), it is difficult to imagine such expression other than the conflict between majority ruling the state and the minority. Additionally, when she says, “these raise question about the nature of the national community…”, it really confirms that the negotiation occurred between the majority (the national community) and the minority (the immigrants). Therefore, I don’t agree with her claim that the state “…is not seen simply as an administration and juridical power”. In the context of negotiation, the proper role of a democratic state apparatus is a referee in the battle (negotiation) of identities between the majority and the minority. Because, in a democratic system, the ideal state is the one who, if we use Putnam’s theory, is responsive and efficient: in this context, it is responsive to majority whose identity is threatened, and to the minority who want to maintain their own identity; and efficient in mediating two parties. Therefore, the state has no its own logics.(*)

Making Democracy Work

2006-01-25T23:05:00.000-08:00

The Main Thesis

Among three approaches to explain institutional performance,[1] Robert Putnam finds sociocultural approach most appropriate in explaining the question of why some governments succeed and some fail. His thesis states that civic life plays greatest role in the performance of a government.[2]

His conclusion is seemingly based on the data he collected in Italy from 1970 to 1986 when Italy established a new system of decentralized politics (regional government). His data shows significant differences in the performances of northern and southern regions. In this context, he shows that two of three approaches in political literature are not able to give satisfying explanation as to why we see variation between the northern and southern.

Institutional design theory argues that institutional performance depends on the institutional design: a well written law, constitution, will bring about high performance. In Italian experiment, however, that is not the case. By 1970, all regions have operated the same new system of regional government. If institution matters, as what institutional theory assumed, they should have equal performance.

While institutional approach can not well explain the differences, can socioeconomic approach do? The data he collected clearly show that northern regions, in economic term, are better off. Sad to say, this approach can not explain, in the Italian experiment, whether economic modernity is the result of high performance or if high performance is the result of economic modernity. The data he collected do not confirm the theory and the only visible answer lies in civic life factor.

Now, the new questions arise: where does civic life comes from? Why are northern regions more civic than southern regions? Because the data he had collected during the adoption of new regional governments (1970-1986) were not able to answer that question, he traced the explanation to the past history. He believed what happen in the previous millennium, a period before modern Italy, had significance influence on the making of civic community. Briefly speaking, he found that southern regions was under Norman kingdom, while northern Italy developed into “communal Italy”, consisting of city-states, where civic culture developed among them.

In this very point, however, Putnam’s becomes ambiguous. In his previous arguments, he has convinced the reader that northern and southern Italy are distinguishable by their quality of civic life, however he can not sustain his further explanation on why some regions are more civic than others.

Further, his historical approach undermines his sociocultural explanation. Civic life, finally, is a product of history. The history he presented to us shows that institution matters: In Putnam’s account, the existence of powerful kingdom in the south was able to prevent the rise of civic culture; and the absent of powerful kingdom enabled northern Italy to develop its civic culture. The kingdom itself was an institution.

In addition, Putnam argued in page 136 that Hapsburg and the Bourbons “systematically promote mutual distrust and conflict among their subjects, destroying horizontal ties of solidarity in order to maintain the primacy of vertical ties of dependence and exploitation”. In this part, it is clearly stated that institution of kingdom does makes culture of distrust.
Another problem is that Putnam does not take into consideration the effect of centralized politics during 1860 – 1970. If a kingdom prevented southern region from rising their civic culture, the centralized government of 100 years presumably ought to make northern cities lost their civic culture — by seventeenth century, communes had faded and led to a kind of “re-feudalization” of the Italian Peninsula.[3] Therefore, Putnam did not explain why civic culture survives so long time and generations, and it is difficult to understand how the lost civic culture can reemerge easily quickly during short period of 1970-1980.

Other Critical Points

1. Isolating Italy and Geographical approach.

Putnam presented map of Italy 7 times in his book. Now, let’s see those maps! None of them present cities and regions neighboring Italy.

The way he presented the map is interesting because we can read his imagination. The isolation
of map reflects his isolated idea of Italy. He presented Italy in the thin air, and it is Italy without a geographical context. Therefore, to answer the question why some regions are more civic than others, he has to find it in the ancient Italy when Italy, actually, had not been “Italy”.

If we look at the Italian map plus its surrounding areas, we will find that northern Italy is close to the heart of Europe, the heart of Renaissance, and adjacent to the revolutionary French society. Widening the map, he can widen his episteme of Italy and then open possible other answers. Such as northern Italy more civic because the influence of French revolution; or because northern Italy has a better access to the European market. Since he limited the map of Italy, he can extend only the time but not the space to explain the data.

Jared Diamond, for example, ably presented an astonishing explanation on the origin of differences among countries in the world by presenting and comparing maps of Eurasia, Africa, and America. Because Eurasia has wider vertical length than its horizontal one, people who live there could develop food production better than people who lived in America and Africa whose horizontal length shorter than their vertical one.

2. Religious Community and Civil Community

Putnam excludes religious community from civic community, but he did not explain why.[4] He explained that in today’s Italy, the civic community is a secular community.[5] However, because he explains the roots of civic community date to 12th to 18th century, why did he exclude religious community? Did religious community have no influence?

If we consider figures of civic community (p. 97) and institutional performance (p.84), and then compare them with figure 5.1 (p. 134), it would show that ex-papal regions have significance high level of both civic community and institutional performance. Compare also with figure 5.2 (p150) where papal regions has medium to high level of civic tradition.

These figures are too significance not to be explained. Instead of considering the relation among those figures, he did not explain the performance of papal regions in the term of civic culture.

--------------------------------
[1] Those approaches are; 1) Institutional design; 2) socioeconomic factors; 3) sociocultural factors, Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 9-11.
[2] Ibid. p. 15.
[3] Ibid. p. 135.
[4] Ibid., p.107.
[5] Ibid., p. 109.

The Making of A Terrorist

2006-01-21T23:01:00.000-08:00

In making mention of freedom fighters, all of us are privileged to have in our midst tonight one of the brave commanders who lead the Afghan freedom fighters — Abdul Haq. Abdul Haq,we are with you…

It was in March 1986, the Republican President Ronald Reagan, in his remarks at the Annual Dinner of the Conservative Political Action Conference, warmly welcomed and introduced Abdul Haq with high respect.

Abdul Haq and other people fighting for the freedom of their country were, Reagan said, “the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance.”

A couple weeks later, Margaret Thatcher invited Abdul Haq to Downing Street. Again he was special in the sense that Thatcher had never want to meet other freedom fighters, such those in Palestine and South Africa, unless they stopped their violence strategy. In the case of Abdul Haq, such condition was not required.

Who was Abdul Haq? Why was he so special in the West?

In his heyday, he was effective commander, a devout Muslim and a proud Pashtun. He was once a hero in 1980s Afghanistan War and then unfortunately executed by Taliban in 2001. The regime accused him as “a spy of American and British governments.”

We can spend a whole day to discuss him, in this brief space however I would like only to remind us what he had done before he was invited by Reagan and Thatcher.

In September 1984 he designed bombing at Kabul airport in which 28 people were reported to have died. Many of them were innocent relatives of students preparing to fly to the Soviet Union and about 15 were military officers. Why did he kill civilians? To the media, he said he wanted to warn “people not to send their children to the Soviet Union”.

With regard to another long-range rocket at Kabul which had also hit civilians, he defended himself this way, “I have to free my country. My advice to people is not to stay close to the government. If you do, it's your fault. We use poor rockets; we cannot control them. They sometimes miss.”

His cause and logic are really, if I may call it, proto-terrorist idea: achieving a political agenda to free a country from the assumed “colonization” and, more importantly, targeting civilian — compare it with the definition preferred by the US Department of State,

In Muslims history, Abdul Haq may be not the first one embracing such idea. Algerian FLN during 1950s, who killed many French civilians, or PLO during 1970s, used the similar logic.

However, there are significant differences between those actions in 1950s to 1970s and Afghanistan case. Firstly, targeting civilian had never been justified by international political leaders and their actions were condemned.

Secondly, they did fight against real colonial rulers. Algerian FLN were struggling against French; while PLO are fighting against Israeli occupation in Palestine.

Thirdly, it is local struggle and by local fighters. Both in Algeria and Palestine, there were no internationally imported fighters.

The Afghanistan case marked a beginning of global terrorism in two main features: Firstly, it was war against indirect colonization, an imagined colonization. They fought against fellow nations supposed to be a puppet of foreign power — Barbrak Karmal who was supported by Moscow.

Secondly, targeting civilian was no longer condemned. Abdul Haq who killed civilians was welcomed and praised by American president as “freedom fighter”, “brave commander”, and was on equal standing with American founding fathers.

More than welcome remarks, according to Mamdani (2002), the US military spend 660 millions dollar in fiscal 1987 to support the mujahidin and brought almost 100.000 Muslims from around the world to engage the war.

Now, let consider those points to read current terrorism: what now called Muslim terrorist is necessarily individual like Abdul Haq. The difference, however, Abdul Haq was warmly welcomed and called “freedom fighter” by an American president; while his “students”, Muslims radicals mostly graduated from Afghanistan war, are called terrorists by another American president.

Reading terrorism phenomena in this way, we are really faced to pure political and secular making of terrorism. Religion, if any, was only a tool. To gain support from Muslim countries, Muslims were taught that Aghanistan War was a holy war against atheist Soviet; while America, the non-Muslim ally, is “in God they trust”.

If we realize the close connection between radical Muslims and the US government in the past, morally and financially, and now we find them are cursing each other, it will be fool of us to involve in their “bussiness”.

What we — non-involving Muslims and Americans — need is asking them to play their own game on their own field. If I meet them, I would say “Don’t hijack Islam for you political goal, and don’t hijack democracy and freedom to intervene sovereign nations!”

Ambiguities of Domination

2006-01-18T23:00:00.000-08:00

Considering widespread spectacles of cult in Syria, where the images or monuments devoted to President Hafiz al-Asad were pervasive, the book questions, “Why would a regime spend a bulk of resources on a cult whose content is patently spurious?”

What she found in Syria was interesting. In newspapers, television, taxi cab, and elsewhere, the images of President Asad can easily be found. The president was praised as “the father”, “the knight”, and “premier pharmacist”. At the same time, however, most Syrian did not believe in what they themselves talk about. How do we understand the role of those rhetoric and symbols in producing political power in such condition?

In political theories, there are three theories on the ways to produce political power: legitimacy, charisma and hegemony.[1] If legitimacy to mean an appeal to higher sanctioning authorities, the spectacle Asad’s regime impose higher authority, then it does not really work for Syrians because the very Asad’s dominance is in fact higher than anything he can appeal to — whether revolution, constitution, or even religion.

If by legitimacy it means “the capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for society’,[2] then it also did not answer yet such question, “Do cult and spectacles, in the case of Syria, really bring about belief among Syrians that the existing regime is appropriate?” It is difficult to answer because, according to Wadeen, the holding of election shows that the regime itself is not sure about its popularity.[3]

Asad’s regime did not base their power on charisma. Charisma is 'power legitimized on the basis of a leader's exceptional personal qualities or the demonstration of extraordinary insight and accomplishment, which inspire loyalty and obedience from followers'.[4] Asad’s regime in fact is out of this category.

The existing understanding of hegemony, that it “consist of thing that go without saying because, being axiomatic, they come without saying; things that, being presumptively shared, are not normally the subject of explication or argument.”[5] This understanding to some extent does not capture the dynamics of official rhetoric in Syria whose statement can not be accepted as “axiomatic”.

Besides those theories, there are two approaches, according to Wadeen, usually used by political scientist: the materialist and ideational approaches. The materialist studies, concentrated on the material resources, fail to explain why Syrian government, which has not many resources, spends a bulk of money on symbolic production rather than minimizing it and using punitive enforcement. The ideational approach tends to treat “discourse” as independent variable. It suggests that successful rhetoric produces legitimacy, charisma, or hegemony. This approach fails to distinguish between public dissimulation of loyalty and real royalty.[6] In Syria, all Syrians are capable to reproduce regime’s slogan and act as the regime want, but, at the same time, they don’t really mean it.

Therefore, the main argument of this book is that Asad’s cult is strategy of domination based on compliance rather than legitimacy.[7] The regime produces compliance through enforced participation in cult of obeisance that are apparently phony both to those orchestrate them and to those consume them. Asad’s cult, according to the book, is disciplinary tool (in Foucaultian term) to generate politics of “as if”, dissimulative politic in which citizens act as if they revere their leader. It seems irrational and foolish, but it is politically effective: maintaining Asad’s administration since 1970.

Because the prevailing theories and approach do not satisfyingly explain what happens in Syria, Wadeen then uses a combination technique between those materialist and ideational approaches. She calls her approach “political ethnography” since she borrows techniques from political sciences and “interpretive” anthropology. This approach helps us to get at the meaning of the symbols, rituals, and practices in a way that avoids a simple functionalist interpretation — which try to understand if the symbols is meant to produce a political power. This functionalist interpretation is not relevant because we are not capable to know what is Asad and his men’s mind. It seems for me that, as other post-structuralists, Wadeen believes “author’s intention” is not relevant because, anyway, the author is death.

Wadeen works on three levels in which political power is produced in Syria:
- Sentence and statement
- Metaphor
- Act

In chapter 2, Wadeen discusses the proliferation of posters, slogan, and words working as coherent system of rules that regulates speech in ways that are comprehensible and facilitate communication. Regime has begun to build these “rules” as early as Asad comes to power. From depicting him as “comrade” in 1973, “savior” in 1976, and the use of the word ’ahd (contract of loyalty) since 1982, to leader that will rule forever (ila al-abad) in 1984 referendum.[8] Still, we find many other representations that is, in fact, sound contradicting: Asad can be both knight of war or man of peace; premiere pharmacist or teacher, lawyer or doctor.

Wadeen propose four explanations for that: first, the different representations express different group and interest that the regime is facing. But, because we don’t know what which groups is intended, what we can know is that the regime try to unify the differences through the language and symbol. Second, the differences also imply that Asad surround himself with competitive sycophant and encourage this rivalry for his favor by permitting contradictory statements to exist simultaneously. Third, it may be that the regime was producing counterfactual statements because the acknowledgement of certain fact can be embarrassing for the leader. Fourth, the statements function to communicate the regim’s power by dominating public space.[9]

In Syria, family metaphor operates in the official narrative to the regime’s idealized relation of domination and membership and to specify the form of obedience. Syrian family, as many others, is hierarchically organized and stratified: the young are subordinate to the old, women are subordinate to men.[10] In this context, father, being the oldest and male, is on the top of hierarchy. Depicting himself as a father makes him more powerful.

To show the “as if” act, dissimulative act, Wadeen presents an interesting example on how the regime even control “the dream”. It doesn’t really mean that the regime can actually control the dream but it emphasize on how citizens should retell their dream in accordance to what the regime want.

All those method, though sound implausible at the short run, it really produce political attitude that the regime want. In the long run, people get used to “lie” and to act “as if”, until they don’t realize what it means not to lie. Getting used to live in such context, people don’t think anymore about those odds and become naturalized.

For sure not all Syrians stop resisting the regime on that condition. In the chapter four, Wadeen deal with some transgressions, acts beyond the permitted boundaries. She calls it transgression because such resistance will not change the regime. It’s only a little bit deviation from the supposed boundaries.

Wadeen has been able to show this non-totalizing authoritarianism in Syria reveals the ways in which cults and their associated spectacles not only discipline participants, but also expose the way state control, on the level of symbolic strategy, is subject to transgression. The Syrian case enables us to view that rhetoric and symbols can produce idealized representation of the leader and nation state while also crating alternative spaces for irony and ambivalence.

[1] p. 5
[2] p. 9
[3] Ibid.
[4] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_authority, January 18, 2006
[5] p. 11
[6] P.5
[7] p. 6
[8] Pp. 33-35
[9] Pp 40-41
[10] P. 51

Islamic Education and Fundamentalism

2006-01-14T22:56:00.000-08:00

“You must be kidding me. I know no conservative from UIN”, said a Malaysian feminist as I introduced myself, “I am from UIN of Sunan Kalijaga, and I am religiously conservative.”

For one familiar with academia of UIN/IAIN/STAIN (State Islamic Universities), it seems easier to him/her to associate UIN with liberalism than conservatism. Donald Rumsfeld may have reasons to suspect Islamic learning (madrasah) in Pakistan; it’s difficult, however, to bring the case into Indonesia.

It is true that, seen from the educational, economical, and even ideological background, UIN academia is, say, bloody religious minded.

Most of UIN students graduated from madrasah or pesantren. UINs are the only higher education accessible for santri because the education they received in pesantren is not accommodated in secular system of education.

Many UIN students come from a family whose philosophy of life finds religious education more important than professional education. “Religion is foundation of life. Learning religious knowledge, then, is learning about life. If you well understand the life, you can go trough it safely, worldly as well as next in the hereafter” they said.

Demographically, they come from rural areas. TV may have changed aspects of life; still villagers are traditional in many ways. And in Indonesian Muslim’s case, traditional means religiously committed. Born in religious family, brought-up in traditional community, educated in Islamic learning from the elementary to college, they become neither radical nor fundamentalist. Instead, they are moderate and even secularized.

Most liberal Muslims are the very product of Islamic education. The prominent secular Muslim, the late Nurcholis Madjid, was alumnus of IAIN of Jakarta. Progressive Islamic communities, such as LKiS in Yogya, or liberal JIL and JIMM in Jakarta, were students of IAINs.

The only anomaly so far is Agus Puryanto, who died accompanying JI’s number two, Dr Azahari, in Malang. He was registered as a student of STAIN of Surakarta. But, he was not really STAIN affiliated: failed in many classes and didn’t finish his study. In addition, he was not alumnus of pesantren.

I myself graduated from STAIN of Surakarta two years before he enrolled. I would argue that he may have been radicalized by radical Islamic communities easily found in Surakarta, not by STAIN. His case, hence, is merely a happenstance and may be neglected. He is only one of hundred thousands of UIN/IAIN/STAIN academia.

The relevant question remains: how does Islamic education produce liberal and secularized Muslims much more than secular education? First of all, religious education of UIN is not monolithic. Students get used to deal with many religious notions and fatawa (edicts). They find religious teaching not as absolute as many lay Muslims do. The bulk literature of Islamic law, for example, clearly represents that the absolute Word of God (recorded in a single scripture) has been being interpreted and became less-absolute.

Secondly, religious education makes them religiously independent. They are not committed to a single religious notion. Say, if Osama bin Laden interprets the Quran in a violent way, IAIN academia would easily find different interpretation. While the Indonesian Council of Ulama prohibited Muslims from congratulating non-Muslim festival, IAIN academia may embrace different edict from different source. Believe me, it is very difficult to convince the academia to follow one fatwa because they are, in fact, trained to produce fatwa.

Thirdly, one with religious background doesn’t experience crisis of identity. He is confident enough to deal with modernity, secularism, and non-religious ideas without being concerned of losing his identity. By contrast, a lay Muslim, lack of Islamic knowledge and education, would have problem to deal with apparently non-Islamic values. He may have no ability to distinguish which value is compatible with his religion and which value not.

Last but not least, one would not be “liberal” Muslim without having credential as a Muslim. To put it in Clifford Geertz’s classification, if one is a santri (devoted Muslim) he can be attributed with any adjective: liberal santri, radical santri, and the like; but if one is abangan (Muslim without credential as a Muslim), he will never be any santri, because he remains abangan.

Therefore, Islamic education, as far as Indonesia is concerned, brings about moderatism and liberalism, not radicalism and fundamentalism. Tiny number of terrorists graduated from Islamic education had been radicalized not by their religious education, but their experienced violence, such as wars in Afghanistan or Mindanao.

After all, if the Western powers want to bring Muslim world into what they believe as a modern, civilized, and peace world, who do they think are able to communicate those issues with Muslim world? I believe, they must not non-Muslim westerners, but educated Muslims who can speaks in both ways — like those graduated from higher Islamic education system.

Ben Anderson and Imagined Communities

2006-01-11T22:54:00.000-08:00

“I have a relationship to that book as to a daughter who has grown up and run off with a bus driver: I see her occasionally but, really, she has gone her own merry way.”[1]

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is the most read books on nationalism and was written in a different way by his writer, “I am probably the only one writing about nationalism who doesn’t think it ugly” said Benedict Anderson. His path breaking contribution is his definition of nation where he presents concepts “imagined communities”.
There are four elements in this concept: Firstly, it is imagined because the members of a nation will never know most of their fellow members;[2] but at the same time they feel recognize each other and share imagined things (culture, belief, and attitude). Secondly, it is imagined as limited.[3] There is no nation imagine themselves would include all the people living on earth. As he said, “To have one nation means there must be another nation against which self-definition can be constructed.” Thirdly, it is imagined as sovereign because, according to Anderson, the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm (Anderson, 1991: 7; original emphasis). Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a horizontal comradeship.[4]

As I read thoroughly his work, I would argue that Anderson wrote his subject in more linguistic approach than other discipline. While he wrote a politic subject and a scholar of international studies, he employed linguistic theories[5] that so far have been influencing heavily studies of anthropology — the main canvas upon which he drew his theory of nationalism.[6]

My conclusion is based on the facts that: first, he is familiar with linguistic theories and in fact he published a book, a couple years after imagined community, on Language and Power: Exploring Political Culture in Indonesia (Cornell University, 1990). Second, he listed, at least, 15 books of literature, language, and novels in the bibliography. Third, the most important one but he never mentions explicitly in his book, is the very concept of “imagined” (not intended to be the same meaning with fiction) would be best understood in the French vocabulary of linguistic, imaginaire.[7] Last but not least, some linguistic terms he uses: especially sign, symbol, memoir (best understood under theory of sign and signer, langue and parole) and some authorities he refers: Foucault and Roland Bartes.

His linguistic-anthropological approach is pervasive from the beginning of his book until the end. Let me refer to some chapters where he was influenced heavily by linguistic approach. In the second chapter, cultural roots (the title was self-explain), he argues that religious community was form of imagined community, and it was the very language that was the basis for this imaginary. He calls it sacred silent language, through which the great global communities of the past were imagined…”[8], and “… the sacred language made such communities as Christendom imaginable…”[9]

The important of sacred language is shown by the fact that once the religious communities lost confidence in the unique sacredness of their languages (the idea that a particular script language offered privileged access to ontological truth), they lost confidence in their ideas about admission to membership in the religious community.

In the same chapter, furthermore, he analyzes three fictions (but he mentioned “four fictions”) to trace the earlier development of nationalism: Noli Me Tengere of Jozé Rizal (the Father of Philipino); El Periquillo Sarniento of José Joaquín Fernandez de Lizardi; and Semarang Hitam of Mas Marco Kartodikromo, an Indonesian nationalist. This analysis is necessarily linguistic, discursive production analysis.

In chapter 5, Old Language, New Models, again he discusses objects related to the history of and use of language. As Anderson himself said, the analysis of this chapter focus on print language. He argues that national print languages were of central ideological and political importance. Here, he mainly refers to the argument developed by Seton-Waston that “the nineteenth century was, in Europe and its peripheries, a golden age of vernacularizing lexicographers, grammarians, philologist, and literatures”. Anderson, then, developed this data to conclude that “The energetic activities of these professional intellectuals were central to the shaping of nineteenth-century European nationalism in complete contrast to the situation in the Americas between 1770 and 1830.” (p.71)

In chapter 6, Official Nationalism and Imperialism, no less than before, he emphasizes the use of language to produce what he called “official nationalism”. He argued that lexicographic revolution in Europe, however, created conviction that languages were personal property of quiet specific groups and that these groups were entitled to their autonomous place in a faternity of equals.[10] It seems, then, justify them to be a special community, a nation.

He then refers to historical events in Europe to describe the important of language to form a kind of nationality. Germanization, Russification, and many cases we can observe the rise of nationalism in Europe.[11] In the same way, did the rise of last wave, chapter 7, nationalism in the colonized countries such as Indonesia where the difference races and hundred languages were unified under “Indonesian” and become one nation.

The most obvious linguistic analysis is on the discussion of census, map, and museum (chapter 10), where semiotical analysis plays important role. Census, map, and museum are symbols, signifier, where beyond this lied signified, and both produce discourse. In this case, census, map, and museum produce discourse of nationalism.

Reading the book, I would argue that Anderson has skillfully used linguistics. For those who are not familiar with linguistics theory and post-structuralism approach, the book may seem unorganized – as one of the student pointed out in the last quarter. But, he really relied on the linguistic and semiotic ways and should be understood on that ways. He is on the right tract to show the relation of nationalism and language through linguistics; and as a matter of act to me, we would be difficult to deal with “imagination” without language, because it is very language the way we think abstractly and imaginarily.

I am more convinced to assume linguistic influence on his work by his typically structuralist statement I cited in the beginning of my paper: his book is his daughter and has gone with bus driver – to put it in structuralism’s linguistic term, the author has been dead. A work, a book, writing, would live once it is produced. The readers of the book will treat them on their own interpretation and understanding. The author intention, not in a few cases, sometimes is not found anymore by the reader (the bus driver who married her).

-----------------------------------------
[1] Interview by Lorenz Khazaleh, translated by Matthew Whiting. Published on http://www.culcom.uio.no/aktivitet/anderson-kapittel-eng.html as retrieved on Jan 7, 2006 04:50:12 GMT
[2] P. 6
[3] P. 7
[4] Ibid.
[5] Especially Saussurian structuralism (I refer to Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of modern linguistics) that has been developed into structuralism and, then., post-structuralism theories.
[6] He said, “in an anthropological sprit, then, I propose the following definition of nationalism…” pp. 5-6.
[7] In Anderson’s book, we can find in the bibliography one book that may contributes his concept of imagined but he failed to refer in the body page or in the footnote of first time he proposes the use of imagined, that is the book by Hyden White, The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973)

[8] p.14
[9] P.15
[10]
[11] pp. 84-89

Edward Said and Orientalism

2006-01-10T22:53:00.000-08:00

Said and Foucault

Let me begin with my uneasiness to read what I would like to call “Foucauldian studies” (studies that relay on theories developed by Michel Foucault). One of the objectives of this study is unpacking the historical a-priori that grounds knowledge and its discourses which represent the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch (episteme). In so doing, a Foucauldian study works on the level of language as a system of representation used to communicate the realities. As a language itself is an arbitrary system, a knowledge produced through its system is inevitably arbitrary. Therefore, it believes that nothing is natural, given, and essential, because everything is made arbitrarily.

The main task of such “suspecting” study, then, is to show arbitrariness of knowledge, of discipline. Such insistence, however, allows the concept itself to be vulnerable to its own critiques – the arbitrariness of the study in unpacking the established system of knowledge. When reading Foucauldian studies, regardless its incredible contribution, I found that uneasiness because, finally, we are faced with another unsatisfying, constructed, and no less arbitrary, criticism.

Edward Said does realize that possible problem when he finds it hard to find a point of departure. “The idea of beginning, indeed the act of beginning, necessarily involves an act of delimitation by which something is cut out of a great mass of material, separated from the mass, and made to stand for, as well as be, a starting point, a beginning” (p.16). Like the discourse he wants to uncover, Said also has to relay on the arbitrary episteme. While Michel Foucault, whose work he is greatly indebted, paid no significant role to the authors with regard to discourses; Said does “believe[s] in the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous collective body of texts constituting a discursive formation like Orientalism” (p. 23). To me, this is an arbitrary taking of Foucault idea. If we follow Foucault and other post-modernist, including Derrida, individual has no role in determining the discourse because he/she has no choice in what Said calls “the system of for citing works and authors” (p. 23), the system of reference and representation.

They do not have a choice because, at least, three reasons (all of which are also Said’s arguments). First, there are no such beginning authors and works, and Said believes it though. In arguing for the importance of an author, Said puts Edward William Lane’s Manners and Customs of the modern Egyptians as an example of popularly cited author/work. However, what Said forgets, Edward William himself does refers to episteme already existed when he was writing his work.

Second, an author is working to represent something out of him/herself and for the audience that force him to follow the rule of audience. He does not talk with himself at all. When an author talks about the Orient he has to write in the language, the dictionary, the lexicography, known by his audience. To make them understand the Orient, the author is forced to write in their way of understanding (episteme). An orientalist is constrained by more than strategy to deal with the Orient. It is true that he has to determine, “how to get hold of it [Orient], how to approach it, how not to be defeated or overwhelmed by its sublimity, its scope…” (p.20), but also “who my reader is, what they need to know, how I present the fact, when the right time is” in the Occident context.

Third, after all, it is the audience who will give the meaning and interpretation. The same text by Bernard Lewis saying that there is no “native secularism” in the East is put by Said as one of the examples how the Orientalist treats the Orient generalization (p. 341). However, the same text would be the argument for some Muslims (on behalf of whom Said is writing) to reject secularization in the Muslim country. On the fate of his book, Said says, “Orientalism, almost in Borgessian way, has become several different books” (p. 330 with my emphasize).

He (as other author does) has no control on how the audience gives the meaning and finding the intention of his book. Therefore, for one who believes in the power of discourse, it is odd that Said wants to “correct misreadings and, in a few instances, willful misinterpretations.” (p. 330), because, as he argues for his very book, what matters is “not correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original” (p. 210), rather the different setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstance of the audience that are different with his own.

For the Orient

It is interesting to find that Said wants to “help” the silent Orient to speak. “My hope is to illustrate the formidable structure of cultural domination and, specifically for formerly colonized peoples, the dangers and temptations of employing this structure upon themselves and upon others” (p. 25).

I would argue that such an effort is to no avail. Firstly, the Foucauldian study, which Said bases his critique on, does not lend itself to the task of formulating an alternative; it is only deconstruction without reconstruction. After knowing all the manifest and latent Orientalism Said has described in his book, what next? In Foucault’s analysis, according to Bryan S Turner, “there is no discourse-free alternative since extensions of knowledge coincide with the fields of power. We are thus constrained to ‘the patient construction of discourse about discourse, and to the task of hearing what has already been said’.”[1] What we can do is only unsealing the structure of established (said) knowledge, not to reestablish an alternative.

Secondly, without disregarding some changes in the level of academic society that make Said seemed happy in his final sentences of his “Afterword” (written seventeen years after the first publication), the imperial cultural leadership (hegemony) of the Occident over the Orient seems never change and get worse. The fact makes Said angry and emotional in his “Preface to the Twenty Fifth Anniversary Edition”, written four months before his death. “I wish I could say, however that general understanding of the Middle East, the Arabs, and Islam in the United States has improved somewhat but alas, it really hasn’t” (p. xviii). The explanation of this is simple, because knowledge and power are inseparably intertwined. As long as the economical, military, technological, cultural powers remain in the Occident, few, if any, will change. His criticism may have changed the academic Orientalism, but not its imaginative level embedded in popular culture — media, TV, films — he has addressed in his book Covering Islam.

----------------------------------------
[1] Bryan S Turner, “Orientalism and the Problem of Civil Society in Islam” in Orientalism, Postmodernism, and Globalism, New York: Routledge, p.31

Why Muslims Hate America?

2006-01-04T22:50:00.000-08:00

The Jakarta Post, January 4 2006

I was surprised recently when I was going to downtown Seattle. A friend of mine working there told me, "Here is the place we observe Friday prayers". The fact that he was a pious White American Muslim was pretty surprising; but what made me more surprised was the place he showed me: It was not a mosque, but a church!

The church, attended by its congregation mainly on the weekends, provides one of its rooms for Muslims in downtown Seattle to observe Friday prayers. While the Muslim community does rent this room, the fact they can share the church would be unimaginable in the Indonesian context.

There are many cases we can learn from. At Boston University, according to Ulil Abshar Abdalla, Muslims observed tarawih last month in a hall called Sacred Place where believers of any faith can observe their prayers and services.

During Ramadhan, in the program called Fast-Thon, hundreds non-Muslim Americans joined the Muslim Student Association in my university to fast for one day. Like Muslims, they did not eat or drink from dawn to dusk.

The U.S. is very tolerant of any religious life. Its constitution, particularly the First Amendment, guarantees all citizens the right to have and express their faith.
While some Muslims in other parts of the world want an Islamic state to guarantee the right to practice their religion, some American Muslims I have met said they do not need an Islamic state.

Why? America gives them most of what they need to be a pious Muslim without it being an Islamic state. For sure, it is not a perfect country. However, has an Islamic state existed and given anything better than what America has?

In the U.S., Muslims of Somalia, Cambodia, and Palestine have found asylum and help. They live a better life and are more secure in this non-Islamic country. Thus, why do Muslims hate America? Why is America and its interests the target of Muslim hatred?

The answer is that, in fact, Muslims do not hate America, but rather the interventionist policy of the U.S. government. The presence of U.S. troops in Muslim heartland, Saudi Arabia, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, was the supposed reason behind the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq are the main reason for the many suicide bombings in the last three years.

It seems that both Muslims and the U.S. government do not pay attention to where their relations intersect.

In relation to the Muslim world and the U.S., actually there are four entities involved: The American Government and the American people on the one hand; and the Muslim world and American Muslims on the other.

In the country named the United States of America, there is a government that does not necessarily represent Americans as a nation. In the Muslim world, there are American Muslims, the citizens of the hated America.

Unfortunately, these four entities have been lazily simplified into two polarized entities: Muslims and the U.S., my side or your side, my interests or your interests.
The neglected interconnectivity is complicated and costly to both sides.

The beautiful picture of Muslim and U.S. relations mentioned above has been overshadowed by the negative aspects of those two worlds: the bad foreign policy of the American government toward Islamic countries; and the bad reaction of radical Muslims.

The victims of neglected interconnectivity, we may expect, are always the good parts of both entities: non-radical Muslims and anti-Bush Americans.

The victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack were innocent Americans, non-Muslims as well as American Muslims. They might not agree with their government and they did not deserve to die in the attacks.

On the other hand, the victims of the war on terrorism are innocent Muslims. In the U.S., many innocent American Muslims are arrested without due process. In Europe and Australia, a number of mosques were closed by the government.

In Indonesia, many pesantren (Islamic boarding schools), orphanages, and Islamic foundations, have lost financial aid from wealthy Middle Eastern countries as the U.S. government has forced its allies to cut the suspected relationship between the flow of riyal and the terrorist network.
We should not wait any longer to realize these complexities. The hatred in the Muslim world proliferated by the interventionist policy of the U.S. government in Islamic countries and the overreaction of U.S. government policy triggered by terrorist actions should be stopped right now.

The radical Muslims have to realize that their project has brought more disadvantages than benefits to the Muslim world. If they really want to fight for the Muslim world, they need to recalculate what Muslims have experienced after Sept. 11.

The U.S. government needs to understand, as many American political experts have recommended, that their interventionist policy has triggered more hatred and induced more young Muslims to become suicide bombers.

Muslims may hate Bush for his interventionist and arbitrary policies, but they are not alone in arguing against Bush's policy; many Americans do too.

Muslims should not hate America because Americans are not Bush; and because American Muslims do love their country. What should American Muslims do if Muslims in the rest of the world hate their beloved country?

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Indonesian May Revolution

2005-12-15T22:43:00.000-08:00

As most parts of the world now are moving toward democratic path, it is interesting to read again Barrington Moore’s work on the origin of democracy and dictatorship. In his book, he explained roles played by the landed upper classes and the peasantry in the transformation from agrarian societies to modern industrial one. He discovered various historical conditions under which both or either rural groups have become important forces behind the emergence of Western parliamentary versions of democracy and dictatorship. His thesis is, to put it shortly, those classes had a role in the bourgeois revolution leading to democracy, in the abortive bourgeois revolutions leading to fascism, and the peasant revolutions leading to communism.[1]

The question is “What is the case in the contemporary world?” There remain, if not many, non-democratic and non-industrial countries in the world. Will we witness the same role played by landed upper class and the peasantry in the contemporary transformation? If not, who play the same important role in the democratic transformation in the contemporary world?

I think it is interesting to study recent democratic transformations to compare them with those Moore studied. Democratic transformations in Philippine and Indonesia, for example, are worth to be studied for their revolutionary nature. The revolutions of “People Power” in Philippine (1986)[2] and “Gerakan Reformasi” (1998)[3] in Indonesia occurred in the different global system than revolutions Moore discussed in his book – in which new global system arose from these very revolutions. Thus, it would be interesting to test his thesis in such contemporary revolutions.

It is my contention that in the contemporary global world, with its interdependency, we can no longer rely on the explanations Barrington Moore gave. His thesis tends to treat revolutions merely as an internal dynamics, rather than inter or transnational dynamics. I find him discussed England and France in isolation. He did not mention such external factors bearing significant influence on the revolution. English Revolution occurred in England and by English. France Revolution occurred in France and by Frenchmen. He did not refer to any external agent play as important role as the internal one did.

Probably, those were the cases in the old world. However, since the 1990s, mainly, it is implausible to understand change in a country merely as a fact isolated in the given country. A transformation from a non-democracy to a democracy is no longer relies merely on social classes struggle. Interdependency among countries is obvious not only in the term of economy, but politics, culture, law, and even every single aspect of our life (food we eats, shoes we use, cloth we wear, etc). Hence, analyzing transformation, change, and revolution require more globally sight.

Therefore, in this paper, I will present the most recent revolution in the world, “Gerakan Reformasi” in Indonesia, to elaborate who play important role in this democratic transformation.
I am going to discuss the topic on four parts. Firstly, I will elaborate interdependence nature of the contemporary world to show how, in this interdependent world, any change in the other part of the world can change the rest of the world. Because my focus is to present the case (Indonesian case), I limit this theoretical discussion briefly. Secondly, I will elaborate the effect of monetary crisis in neighboring country to Indonesian; particularly its economic and sociopolitical condition that enabled the political change. Thirdly, I will describe why the both or either working and bourgeoisie classes did not play significant role in the revolution. Finally, I will analyze why student movement play are able to play the role supposedly played by working and bourgeoisie classes.

The Global Interdependence

According to Diamond, food production was ultimate factor of the divergence among people of the world. Food production enabled food storage, specialization, dense sedentary and stratified societies, and leaded to the three main approximate factors that has always been change the world: gun, germ, and steel.[4] I would argue further, following the argument he made, that it is also the case for the contemporary global interdependence.

In nomadic hunter-gatherer life, one relatively relied on himself or his small group (band). He experienced, as Diamond put it, egalitarian life.[5] Egalitarian life also implies independent life. Their simple lives required no more than food to eat. Interdependency to another people, if any, was not as significant as in the sedentary food-producing life. In the later, people life in a more structured society requiring its member to play a certain specialized role. Specialization implies job division among members of the society. In job division system, individual only produces certain product among other products he need to live; while the rest of his need, he obtains from others through barter and other forms of barter.

In Wallerstein’s world economy, job division extended beyond individual relation. In world economy, job division also included division among areas within the world system. Wallerstein proposes four different categories: core, semi-periphery, periphery, and external.[6] The categories describe each region's relative position within the world economy and their respective roles. Except the external areas, interdependency in the world economy, among core, periphery and semi-periphery areas of World System, where the core supply product and high skilled job to the periphery, while the periphery provide raw good and non skilled job for the core.
In the globally modern world, this job division and interdependency become more obvious. In recent days, a decision made by the Federal Bank in New York influences all part of the world. The political and security crisis in Iraq, one of the biggest oil suppliers in the world, influences world oil prices and then influence world economy in general. The change in one part of the world really influences other part of the world. Monetary crisis in 1997 East and Southeast Asia may be best explained on this context.

Crisis from the Neighbors

1996 Indonesia was one of the new tigers of Asia.[7] Its economy was almost perfect. The country achieved an average growth rate of 7.1 percent between 1985 and 1995, reduced its poverty rate from 60 percent of the population to 11 percent, and made an enormous overall improvement in general living standards. Indonesia was seen as a "model of development". and seemed well positioned for continued strong economic growth.[8]

That is why when in the mid of 1997, while monetary crisis hit Thailand, Korea, Philippine, and then Malaysia, Indonesian decision makers assured local market that monetary crisis would not hit Indonesia. They seem over confidence and miscalculated the interdependence nature of world economy and its domino effect. No more than a month, the “monetary Tsunami” hit Indonesia. Rupiah was falling rapidly, from Rp 2,300.00 per dollar to Rp 15,000.00 during the worst weeks.

The crisis soon revealed the underlying weakness of the Indonesian financial sector. The collapse of private sector trapped in foreign debt, the collapse of banking system, the most widespread effect of the economic crisis on the people of Indonesia has been accelerating inflation (from 6% in 1996 to 11% in 1997)[9], and finally the collapse of the overall Indonesian economic structure.

Since economics is the most important pillar of a state, the collapse of economic structure brought about the collapse of other structural pillar of society. Soon, political, social, and cultural structures of Indonesia follow the fate. Seemingly, now, the strong authoritarian regime of Soeharto, gripping the power for 30 years and would possibly continue for the at least five years later, could not stand strongly anymore to sustain those multidimensional turbulences. This gave the momentum for political change.

However, I believe that momentum and concussive structural conditioned arose from the monetary crisis will not bring about any change in political level without agent who play and use the momentum to make a change. Why? There was no political change in the neighboring countries without this agent of social change. The country with almost as authoritarian regime as Indonesian, Malaysia, did not witness such democratic transition. In addition, it confirms what Moore argued for the role of economical classes in social change.

In the next part I will describe how this economic crisis had opened the way for democratic transition in which student movement, not for the first time in the Indonesian history, played important role. However, it is better to begin with briefly description on some “fail” pro-democratic struggles before the crisis to account roles plaid by other groups, particularly the bourgeoisie and worker class.

Momentum for Democracy: Where were the Working and Bourgeoisie Classes?

Since the beginning of 1970s, attempts to resist the regime and to open space of democracy had been done. A tendency to be an authoritarian regime had been felt as the regime attempted to win unfairly the first election of 1971 through its pseudo-party of Golkar. Small and sporadic resistances erupted in the capital of Jakarta as well as in the remote far localities of Indonesia. [10] In Tanjung Priok (1984), triggered by religious abuse, thousand people led by local religious leader, attacked military office and burned stores owned by Indonesian Chinese. Settled by military fire and gun, hundreds people died in this riot.[11] In Nipah and Kedung Ombo, the peasants lead by local religious leaders resist dam project built on their land without their consent. In such and other cases, however, those social eruptions didn’t make any significance political change. Its local nature and limitation of the issue they posed made it impossible to be a greater movement for political change.

Let us now see the working class. During Soeharto administration, there was no freedom of union. There was only single union in almost in every single sector of economics and professional. There was only one union for the teacher (PGRI), one union for the journalist (PWI), and one union for the farmer. It was also the case for the worker. Worker union was limited by the government and only one was legally allowed, SPSI (Serikat Pekerja Seluruh Indonesia or All Indonesian Worker Union). Often led by government poppet personality, SPSI necessarily was coopted by the regime.

Attempts to break the limitation were not absent. While Indonesian journalists, who deny to join the legally acknowledged union PWI, established AJI (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen or The alliance of Independent Journalist); some workers established an alternative union SBSI (Serikat Buruh Seluruh Indonesia: same English translation, but in Indonesian while “pekerja” is general word, “buruh” is for the underpaid worker).

Under surveillance and repression of the regime, however, it was difficult for SBSI to be a real alternative effective movement. Its members were not a high skill worker with high competitiveness in the market. The company, pressured by the government, could easily fire those who involve in such movement. Marsinah, not belong to SBSI but may be best example what to be put on stake if a worker organize other workers, had to paid with her life only to demand better wage.[12] Hence, few workers want to pay such an expensive cost for political good such as democracy; most prefer silence to dead. Demonstrations organized by SBSI, then, were only limited on issues related to worker interest: wage improvement and not democracy.
The Indonesian working class at that time was far from being like English working class described by Thompson. I would argue that while English Working class arose from a revolutionary change of society – marked by the shift from hand-mill to steam-powered mill[13] – that enable them to be revolutionary; the supposed Indonesian working class during Soeharto regime was born in the established industrial world, it is not revolutionary anymore in nature.
1990s worker did not experience revolutionary social change enabling them to achieve same level of ideological conscience required to be a “class” – as Wallerstein put it.[14] Lack of ideological consciousness, hence, caused the absence of idealized working class conceptualized by Marxists.

Another explanation that I would argue is the absent of space to consciously radicalize themselves: to learn or read inspiring Marxist work that has made working class in Europe consiounse of their class.[15] Soeharto regime, after the Communist coup de tat, banned any materials with Communist content. Therefore, ones who had access in foreign languages can not obtain the materials, let alone the poor and illiterate workers.

The Indonesian middle class, the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, were worst than the working class. According to Sulistyo, what might be called “middle class” in Indonesia is only “statistical middle class” rather than “sociological middle class”. They have a middle class income, but in fact they were “rent-seeker” who depended on the strong state.[16] They were not entrepreneur who based his business on their own talent and merit; rather they were doing business through nepotism or collusion with the regime and its cronies.

With such characters, the Indonesian middle class was, again, not a “class” in the term of Thompson’s class. Instead of being agent of social change, they were opportunist who would use their existing economical resources and capital to bribe whoever in power, shifting their dependency from established regime to the successive regime.

Without any group merit to be the classical Class, social change then will provide opportunity to any temporary grouping, across social class, such as interest group, religious community or student, to fill the space. In the later section, I will deal with student movement, the most prominent group in Indonesian political change.

The Student Movement: New Sociopolitical Class?
In the pre-independence Indonesia, student movement organized in the name of “Young Movement” lead the national movement.[17] In 1966, student movement enabled political change and power transition from Soekarno to Soeharto. And this very student movement obviously played significant role in the May 1998 Revolution.
Why does student movement play more significant role in Indonesia than other groups? As the one who once involved in the student movement, including the “fail” movement against Soeharto in the first half of 90s, I would argue that at least there are three characters inherent with student movement.

First is class consciousness. In the way that Thompson or Wallerstein emphasize the importance of this consciousness to be a class, students, thanks to their level of education and access to knowledge, have enough resources to persuade this required consciousness. Discussion among activist, contacts with intelligentsia, and working in the grass root activity and advocacy, are among other things that build the class consciousness among student. Since the first year of freshmen, students had been ensured by their senior (during orientation and inauguration days) that they have a par excellent social role, agent of social change, and they have to take side of oppressed, their fellow Indonesian.

Second is non partisan nature of their movement. It gave them legitimacy in the public level. The criticisms of partisan group, political as well as religious, fail to get public support because, what ever issue they pose, are deemed for the sake of their own political goal and interest. Criticisms comes from student movement, on the other hand, are believed as the voice of society, voice of truth because the student will not take any immediate advantage from the issue they blow up.

Third is the relative absent of economical constraint. In Indonesia, as long as youth is learning in the college, he/she commonly has full economical support from the family. It gave students time to train themselves and to use some of their time to work on an “expensive good” such as democracy – the good that working class would not do for its price in authoritarian regime.

While there are few studies on the student movement, we need deeper and more comprehensive studies on the issue. A study on a new class category, instead of working class or bourgeoisie class, is required as long as Indonesian democratic revolution is concerned. This paper, for its limitation, didn’t do so far and expected doing so in the next quarter.(*)

[1] Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1993, p. xxiii.
[2] For further account, see Eva-Lotta Hedman and John T. Sidel (eds.), Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century, London: Roudledge, 2000.
[3] For book well records the 1998 transition, see Hermawan Sulistyo, Lawan: Jejak-jejak Jalanan di Balik Kejatuhan Soeharto, Jakarta: Pensil-324, 2002
[4] Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.
[5] Ibid., p. 265-95, particularly the table 14.1 of p. 268-69.
[6] Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and The Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century, San Diego: Academic Press. Inc., 1974.
[7] In those years, there were 7 countries considered as new tigers in Asia: Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
[8] CountryWatch.com, sources: IMF (www.imf.org) and CountryWire, downloaded from Yahoo Finance, http://biz.yahoo.com/ifc/id.html (accessed on December 9, 2005).
[9] See Stephen Sherlock, “Crisis in Indonesia: Economy, Society and Politics”, http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/cib/1997-98/98cib13.htm#INDO (accessed on December 9, 2005).
[10] For study on the movements during Soeharto administration and their failure, see Arief Budiman and Olle Törnquist (eds.), Aktor Demokrasi, Jakarta: ISAI, 2001.
[11] ELSAM, “Kasus-kasus Pelanggaran Berat HAM”, http://www.elsam.or.id/kkr/tanjung%20%20priok.html (accessed on December, 9 2005).
[12] Account on her murder can be read in the writing of Benjamin Waters, “Marsinah Murder”, in http://www.asia-pacific-action.org/southeastasia/indonesia/publications/doss1/marsinah.htm (accessed on December 9 2005).
[13] EP Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Ventage Book, 1963, pp 189-190.
[14] According to Thompson, it was “… the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all these diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes”. Ibid., p. 194; while Walerstein argued, “Class always exist potentitally (an sich). The issue is under which condition they become class-conscious (für sich), … operate as a group in the politico-economic arenas …” Wallerstein, The Modern World System, p. 351.
[15] Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, New York: Vintage Books, 1989, p. 118.
[16] Hermawan Sulistyo, Lawan…, p. 49.
[17] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London & NY: Verso, 1991; where he deal with what “youth” meant in the pre-independence Indonesia.

Panacea for Terrorism

2005-12-10T22:38:00.000-08:00

The Jakarta Post, December 09, 2005

In his book, Dying to Win, Robert A. Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and a columnist with the New York Times, presents interesting and useful facts to explain the phenomenon of suicide terrorism.
Collecting data from around the world from 1980 through 2003, he found these surprising facts:
First, suicide terrorism is not just the product of Islamic fundamentalism.
Second, the world's number one practitioners of suicide terrorism are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka -- a secular, Marxist-Leninist group.
Third, most suicide terrorist attacks occur as part of political-secular objectives.
Many Islamic leaders and intellectuals in Indonesia share the assumption of a direct link between terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. They believe a misinterpretation of jihad has brought about terrorism. After watching a video of three terrorists' last testament before committing suicide bombings in Bali in October, a senior ulema said the terrorists had misinterpreted Islam. Jihad, according to him, is not suicide.
In fact there is no such misinterpretation of jihad. If we agree to use "interpretation" as a cognitive activity, then let us distinguish between two different levels of observing religious belief: Interpretation and actualization.
To be a religious action, a religious text must be interpreted or constructed, and then implemented in actuality. To be an action of zakat (alms), religious texts are initially interpreted into a concept of zakat, and then Muslims bring the concept into practice.
Distinguishing these two different levels, we would find that both moderates and hard-liner have a similar conceptualization of jihad, but differ in its implementation. They indeed share the meaning of jihad, but they have different rationalizations for doing or not doing jihad.
We need to distinguish between these levels because many Muslim intellectuals, especially those who consider themselves moderate and liberal, assume that hard-liners do not understand what jihad is. The moderates divide jihad into two forms: violent and nonviolent jihad. They insist that the hard-liners should observe the higher level, nonviolent jihad rather than the lower, violent one.
But do they think that suicide bombers in Palestine and Chechnya do not understand this concept? If we read Imam Samudra's book, in Indonesia's case, we find that he understands very well the two forms of jihad. However, he chose the violent form because he found the justification for it (his personal experience in Afghanistan may be one of his justifications).
Now, assume that the moderate and liberal Muslims who advise the hard-liners to observe the nonviolent form of jihad are living in oppressed Chechnya, would they give the same advice?
Thus, I would argue that the "experience" of the oppressed contributes more to suicide terrorism than the supposed misinterpretation of jihad.
There is an example on how experience and context contribute more to radicalization than interpretation. In the next example, the very fatwa (interpretation) remains valid until today, but the observation of the fatwa has dramatically changed.
No one deny that Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest Muslim organization, is a moderate and tolerant group. It stands in the fore in defending the plurality of the Indonesian state. The NU is exemplary in showing the rest of the world that Indonesian Islam is different from Middle Eastern Islam.
However, when we refer to the fatwa (edicts) the NU issued during colonization and the preindependence era, we would find NU not that moderate.
Like today's hard-liners who are not willing to wear western-style cloths, the NU had a fatwa about this. It ruled that wearing western-style clothes was haram because it made Muslims similar to the infidels. According to the Hadith upon which the fatwa was based, Muslims should not look like infidels. While the NU never annulled the edict, many of its members no longer observe it.
During the independence struggle, the NU issued a heroic (or radical?) fatwa obliging every Muslim to join the battle (violent form of jihad) against the British army in Surabaya.
While many Islamic leaders say that suicide is not jihad, what about a civilian equipped only with the legendary bambu runcing (sharpened bamboo) going into battle against the fully equipped British army? Is that not suicide? Look at the number of people who died in the battle. Roeslan Abdulgani once estimated the battle cost the lives of 10,000 Indonesians.
No doubt that they were heroes and not foolish suicide fighters.
The NU never annulled this edict, but instead reads it out every year as one of its greatest contributions to Indonesia. Its concept of jihad remains the same, but the context has changed. There is no colonial power anymore in Indonesia, and the NU finds no justification to observe its fatwa. Thus, has the NU become moderate because it has moved from a radical interpretation to a moderate one?
Moderatism is not a panacea for terrorism because the supposed fundamentalist misinterpretation is merely manipulated to achieve a political objective (such as Pan Islamism or independence). As Robert Pape puts it in his book, before Israel's invasion of Lebanon there was no suicide terrorist campaign against Israel; before the Sri Lankan military moved into the Tamil's homeland, the Tamil Tigers did not use suicide attacks.
The writer is secretary of Mabarrot NU Yogyakarta and is a student at the School of International Studies, University of Washington.

The Age of Empire

2005-11-28T22:36:00.000-08:00

Among books we have already discussed in the class, I would argue that Hobsbawm’s work could be the conclusion of all — giving more comprehensive analysis, and combining all what we can find elsewhere. To some extent, he may not really offer new points, but the way he presents his work is more convincing and explanative than others.
He makes similar point with Wallerstein on the idea that capitalism did not develop under perfect market as it had been suggested. While Wallerstein based his conclusion on the international trade in which the middle men, people whose business exploited lack of information between distance regions, play significant role; Hobsbawm refers to the growing convergence between politics and economics. He noted, after 1875, there was growing skepticism about the effectiveness of the autonomous and self correcting market economy.

I like Hobsbawm’s way of using number in this book. Unlike Pomeranz who relies too much on numbers, Hobsbawm uses it in critical way. He makes a nice footnote when he compares GNP of The age of Empire and other ages, “The figure measuring per capita is purely statistical construct… While it is useful for general comparisons of economic growth between different countries and/or periods, it tells us nothing about the actual income standard of living of anyone in the region or about the distribution of incomes in it…” I would say that this is the case. I lived in the US with an income tenfold of my original income in Indonesia, but I don’t live in the better standard of life here. Many Indonesians I meet in the US agree that higher absolute income they receive in the US mean nothing if in Indonesia they have a job with tenfold less of their income in the US.

Another interesting thing I found is his linguistics analysis. More than once, he builds his argument by referring to the use of a term in a given time to achieve a convincing conclusion. For example, To convince that the word “imperialism” is some thing new, a novelty, he explain how it once had neutral term and then acquire pejorative content. “Unlike democracy, which its enemy even like to claim because its favourable connotations, imperialism is commonly something to be disapproved of and therefore done by others” (p. 60). We can find the similar way in his discussion on progress, evolueé, and liberal (p. 30)

As a Marxist historiographer, it is norm to find his similarities Hobsbawm with two other writers before: Wallerstein and Thompson. But, as I insist before, he almost combine all the ways to interpret the history. I certainly agrre with one critics who comment on Hobsbawm’s, sequential work on nineteenth century (The Ages of Revolution, The Age of Capital, and The Age of Empire, plus a work on his own time, The Age of Extremist), “These four volumes are probably the most widely admired of his works -- not simply because of their erudition and bold analysis, but for the author's conviction that historians must write large-scale interpretations of the past without minimizing its diversity and complexity and, at the same time, make them readable, jargon-free, and accessible to non-professionals.”

The Age of Empire

He accounts the Age of Empire (1875 – 1914) as era of stability and unparallel peace, era of the massive organized movements, and an era of identity crisis and transformation either politically and economically. He argues that this era was an era of paradox.

Politically, this was an era of extensive growth of bourgeoisie. Hobsbawm, however, seem give his own emphasize on what is bourgeoisie. When he refers to “bourgeoisie society”, he means freedom and equality of individuals. Democratization is the key feature of such bourgeoisie society and his explanation of democratization, for me, is very interesting and answered my curiosity when last week we discuss violence as a precondition of democracy. Democracy, for him, as fort Aristotle, is government of the mass of public. The mass were, mostly, poor. Problem, then, rise: First, different interest between the poor mass and rich elite, the privileged and unprivileged. Second, easily imagined, what would happen when the masses of people, ignorant and brutalized, unable to understand the logic of Adam Smith’s free market, controlled the political fate of State? In this point, I am really impressed, because it necessarily explains the relation between democracy and violence and it is also able to explain what happen in Indonesia during its reformation.

It was an era when political and cultural institutions of bourgeoisie liberalism were extended, but the cost of forcing its main class, the liberal bourgeoisie, on to the margins of political power. For electoral democracies, which were inevitable product of liberal process, liquidated bourgeois liberalism as a political force in most countries. Its very existence as a class of masters was undermined by the transformation of its own economic system.

Another paradox was economical paradox. On the one hand most contemporaries, as it was reflected in the literature of the time, fear of economical depression. On the other hand, the fact that we can find shows incredible growth of economics. It was the time when American and Germany industrial economics advanced with giant step. Foreign investment in Latin America reached the dizziest heights in the 1880, as the railway system In Argentina and Brazil attract 200,000 immigrants per year. Hobsbawm himself call this age as the change of economic gear.
However difficult it is to understand likely “collective delusion” of economic fear, the results were important for the age. It least there are three important reaction to the assumed economic depression. The first is protectionism of national economy. Unlike what market economy might assume, protectionism for that time was positive for the local market. Because it intensified and concentrated the capital into local market and made it extending.

The second way to depression was the use of “scientific management”, that is: (1) by isolating each worker from the work group and transferring the control of the process from the worker to the agent of management; (2) systematic break-down of each process into timed component; (3) various system of wage payment.

The third way was imperialism. The pressure of capital in search of more profitable investment, as of production of markets contributed to the policy of expansion — including colonial conquest. It is a matter of debate, but Hobsbawm insist his account that imperialism is a result, not cause, of expansion of capitalism.

The Most Explanatory Work

I have talked with one of my classmates that up to last week I didn’t really have all answers for the guiding questions of final paper in the syllabus. Reading Hobsbawm, however, most of the picture of modern world is now beforehand for me.

Diamond explanation date too far to the pre-history and give irrelevant answer for the contemporary world. Wallerstein’s work is more focused on economics explanation. Pomeranz relay too much on numbers and tend to exaggerate the similarities between Western world and other world. Moore’s work is comprehending in topics but not really satisfying in the term of academic standard. Thompson’s work is beautiful, human, and explanatory enough, but limited to the English case. Now, we have Hobsbawm who combines all of the above mentioned work: he did explain the root of contemporary world and it is still relevant to read what happen in this era. If I have more time, I would read it again and read his other three relevant works.

The Great Divergence

2005-10-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

Reading the beginning chapters of the book, I am confused by the fact elaborated in the book that there is no such great divergence in Europe and Asia. Most of the book is provided to explain that pre-1800 world is polycentric, no hegemonic and dominant Europe. No fact we can relay on to believe that we can find the great divergence in that time. So, we have to underline that the title of the book refer not to pre-industrial world, instead the current world — where we are induced to ask why do we find this great divergence today? (Another form of Yali’s question)
There are many ways to answer. Diamond answer the question by emphasizing on gun, germ, steel, and Wallerstein explained it by implementing his world system theory. Kenneth Pomeranz, writer of the book discussed this week, tries to answer the question as he compared West Europe and China.

Among trends in European economic history, Pomeranz realizes that his approach is similar to recent trend with some different points. First, he acknowledge the exploitation of non-Europe an access to overseas in general as one of motor of European hegemony from 19th on, but not as a sole motor, it is only a way through which European achievement of its economic institution — particularly various labor saving technologies — achieve the breakthrough.

Secondly, he uses both comparative and integrative approach. On the one hand, at some levels, he treated parts of the world as separate unit of comparison, realizing the fact that “we can not understand pre-1800 global in the term of full centered world system; we have instead, a polycentric world with no dominant center.”

In this issue of regional approach, he prefers Europe to, what is common, Britain. His reasons are: first, recent research has found well-developed markets and other “capitalist” institution far back during “feudal” period. It meant that Western Europe, not only England, was launched on uniquely promising path well before it begun overseas expansion. Second, the more market dynamics appear even amid supposedly hostile medieval culture and institutions, the more tempting it has been to make market-driven growth the entire story of European development, ignoring the messy details and mixed effects of numerous government policies and local customs. Third, the ongoing process of commercialization touched much of preindustrial western Europe. By positing “European miracle” instead of a British one, it make extra-European connection seem less important. Most of western Europe was not so involved in extracontinental trade by Britain, thus if it was Europe rather than Britain whose commercial growth led to industrial growth, then domestic markets, resources and the like must have been adequate for that transition.

A World of Surprising Resemblance

Reading this passage, we are convinced, sometime exaggeratedly, that what is assumed to be naturally great divergence is deniable.

He presented arguments widely accepted to convince that European growth to industrial revolution was not unique at the time compared to other areas according found by recent literature. Comparing European capital accumulation, resource allocation, and market demand in the economy as a whole, he found that, at many cases, they were not better off. Even, to convince his readers, Pomeranz many times said that Europe was under Asia. For instances, in the case of land market and land use, China were more open than one of Europe. Japanese living expectation was longer than British one — the most prosperous country in Europe. Women in China, instead of no access to free labor market and worked on home industry, had more access to the trade market than their counterparts who worked in guilt.

Finding that there is no such unique fact to argue European superiority, he invited the readers to move to what he calls “commanding heights” of economy. Despite an apparent lack of important differences in these areas, there could be differences affecting the ability and inclination of well-to-do households to accumulate capital and to stimulate economic changes in European ideas of self, the cosmos, and other subjects exogenous to the economy. Explanations of such Protestant ethic, ascetic capitalism, and European attitude toward consumption, are the examples. Other similar argument suggest that European political economy was uniquely hospitable to commercial capital and allowed financial resources to be more easily gathered, better preserved, and more productively, employed than elsewhere.

Just as in the first part, he again convinces us to believe that there is no such unique “commanding heights” allowing Europe to be better prepared to embark to an industrial revolution. He concludes that some differences do appear, but they seem too small to explain much, except in one way. Both luxury demand and political economy of capitalism had much to do with allowing Europe to gain control over the New World. So, what makes at all now divergence anyway?

Environmental Constraint and Windfall

The answer begins from the environmental constraints these areas faced. Both areas had a sam problem in the term of ecological constraints. Despite being less densely populated than China and Japan, Western Europe faced comparably serious ecological problems. Both in Western Europe and East Asia, there was relatively little room left by the 18th century for further extensive growth to occur without significant institutional change, new land saving technology or and vastly expanded imports of land intensive commodities.

Theoretically, Europe more room left than did East Asia to sustain further population growth by increasing the labor intensity of its land use; but the nature of European farming made it unlikely that it would ever fully exploit these possibilities. Thus, they would not follow the path, if they did, it seems that Denmark, who followed this way stagnated in its population and per capita consumption, and didn’t has foundation for major breakthrough.

Being faced by the cul de sac of economic growth, the relatively similar pre-industrial condition of these areas were waiting a miracle: a decisive momentum in the cross road to be trapped in the stagnancy or to find a windfall way to achieve a new level of development.

Here is one of those cores was able to escape the proto-industrial cul de sac and transfer handicrafts workers into modern industries, as the technology became available. It could do this because the exploitation of the New World made it unnecessary to mobilize huge the huge number of additional workers who would have been needed to use Europe’s own land in much more itensiv and ecologically sustainable ways. New world brought both “real resources” and precious metals.

Other cores, India, China, and Japan, finding no room to expand, were trapped in the cul de sac and forced to employ another unlucky strategy: adopting labor-intensive approach to that ecological pressure and found that adjustment made capital intensive, energy intensive industrialization more difficult later.

Convincing Argument?

To some extent, Pomeranz convinced me because he use so detailed number in presenting similarities of Western Europe and East Asia, but at the same time there is a problem of putting different sources, which imply different research approach, in the same table.

He is also not consistent in the very crucial point. When he discussed luxury demand and political economy of capitalism, and found the differences between West Europe and East Asia, he undermines significance of those differences. He said, “it was too small to explain much”. But, when he did realize that “expansion to the new world” is not so big to explain much, he apologies, saying that he is forced to use “chaos theory” of butterfly beating its wings in Africa and changing the weather in Greenland — finding no way to convince the reader?

Wallerstein and World System (II)

2005-10-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

The Core, The Periphery, and The External

In the chapter 5, Wallerstein set out to discuss his main idea of economy world system. In this context, understanding what was going on in England is very important because here was in England we find the most prominent form of industrial transformation depicting the second 16th century onwards — the industrial transformation that, in its turn, become the very pillar of the new world economy existing nowadays.

What happened in England, then, that make her so important? While heavy industry in other parts of Western Europe drastically declined, in England there was an expansion of heavy industry and, consequently, of her output — for which there had been no precedent. While many consider England backwater of the continent, in the last part of 16th and the outset of 17th centuries, the position had been reversed.

There was a major shift in the composition of England’s export trade. From 14th, cereal play important role, but by the 16th century it was cloth the major export of the country. The English textile had two important features very important for the emergent world economy. First, it was rural industry, meaning that it only required underpaid worker and cheaper cost of production (particularly in the water factor). Second, it naturally was expanded industry with abroad-market oriented when purchasing-power of the market was declining because of the declining industry in the continent.

That textile-based trade was also supported by the fact that taxation in England is lower than that of other centers of commerce (such as Flanders and northern Italy)

In the political context, England internally was unified from early period. On the one hand, the form of medieval social structure has lent itself to the development of strong monarchy. On the other hand, natural geography of insular England posed fewer obstacles to the centralizing thrust the country than others on the continent.

Combined advantaged of economic and politics provided strong base for England to depart in 16th century, particularly with its Henrician or Tudor Administrative Revolution which included a new mode managing finance, the centralization of administration under the principal secretary, the organization of privy council, and the realization of the king’s household.

The result is very striking: England was able to develop strong capital as a cultural and economic unifying force. While the continent was trapped on war, England was success in creating peace in her land. This internal peace and no standing army also meant a lower need for taxation and of a bureaucracy swollen beyond its efficient size by the sale of offices. However it is also important to note that there is a problem in managing the land: the dilemma of king’s double roles: as a king and as a landowner. As a king, he sought to maximize his income from the landowners and as a landowner he needed to maximize his income from the land. There was not solution fro this and it end with the internal instability.

This internal instability and internal peace seems problematic, but this was indeed the secret of England relative’s success.

Another thing happened in England at that time was increasing number of her population. There are two ways to handle the problem of surplus population within a country: remove them from the city or remove them from the country altogether. And in Tudor-England, the both were tried. On the one hand, they pushed the poor to the rural areas. On the other hand, it is just at this time that England begins to think overseas colonialization — from Ireland to North America and the West Indies.

The expansion abroad permitted the local bourgeoisie to obtain control over international commerce and extract capital surpluses from this trade for their own benefit. As the rural population expanded, the small but increasing number of landless wage earners provided labor for farms and manufacturing activities. The switch from feudal obligations to money rents in the aftermath of the feudal crisis encouraged the rise of independent or yeoman farmers but squeezed out many other peasants off the land. These impoverished peasants often moved to the cities, providing cheap labor essential for the growth in urban manufacturing. Agricultural productivity increased with the growing predominance of the commercially-oriented independent farmer, the rise of pastoralism, and improved farm technology.

Another important core state was France. While England has begun to position their status as a core state since the second half of 16th century, France were still in his internal problem: she was faced with one major problem in seeking to reorient herself to new European world after Cateau-Cambrésis. It was neither empire nor a nation-state. It was geared half to land transport, half to sea transport. Its state machinery was at once too strong and too weak. His economic is behind England and almost similar to Spain. Unfortunately, I find that Wallerstein didn’t pay so much attention to France. He only present her as comparative of England.

Periphery versus External

While it is easy to define political boundaries, it is indeed difficult to define the boundary of world economy. Hence, Wallerstein make this definition to distinguish between two criteria: The periphery of world economy as the geographical sector of it wherein production is primarily of lower-ranking goods (that is goods whose labor is less rewarded) but which is integral part of the overall system of the division of labor, because the commodities involved are essential for daily use. The external arena of a world economy consists of those other world-systems with which a given world economy has some kind of trade relationship, based on the exchange of preciosities.

Wallerstein points out three differences between periphery and external areas:
(1) a difference in the nature of the trade,
(2) a difference in the strength and role of the state machinery;
(3) a difference in the strength and role of the indigenous bourgeoisie.

These external areas maintained their own economic systems and, for the most part, managed to remain outside the modern world economy. Russia fits this case well. Unlike Poland, Russia's wheat served primarily to supply its internal market. It traded with Asia as well as Europe; internal commerce remained more important than trade with outside regions. Also, the considerable power of the Russian state helped regulate the economy and limited foreign commercial influence.

But, my problem is, when he discussed Asia, especially South and Southeast Asia, he said that it was an external arena where “trade” is the way the relation between core state and external state. In this context what is the meaning of British and Dutch Colonialization of those areas?

Walllerstein and World System (I)

2005-10-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

Wallerstein is identical with theory of world system. He elaborates the theory in his classic work, The Modern World System; Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century where he develops a theoretical framework to understand the historical changes involved in the rise of the modern world.

How to understand modern world?

First, we need to understand his main theory in this work where he proposed the theory of world system. By “world system” he means “a social system, one that has boundaries, structure, member groups, rules of legitimacy, and coherence.” Social system is like living organism that change in some aspects and remains stable in others. Its special character is self contained and internal dynamic. According to him, there are only two “types” of social system. One lives in such remote areas, untouched by “the world”, i.e., the small and subsistence communities; and the other one is “the world” itself.

He suggest that the world system has two different types: world empire and world economy. The differences between world empire and world economy lie in that the world empire has single centralized political control. It is a political entity, and “… primitive means of economic domination” (p. 15). While world economy has no such single control, it encompasses political boundaries.

The Structure of Argument

Wallerstain builds his argument on three level of analysis:
- Organization of production
- State machienery
- Social groups relation

Finishing those three level of analysis, he gives a special discussion the the origin European economic and political crisis. He said that many would feel the “crisis” of fourteenth century and the expansion of the sixteenth could be account for climate, epidemiology, and soil condition. He himself chooses to explain that the crisis can be explained in three main ways:

1. That it was the product of cyclical economic trends. The optimal point of expansion given the technology having been reached, there followed a contraction.
2. That it was the product essentially of a secular trend. After a thousand years of surplus, appropriation under the feudal mode, a point of diminishing return had been reached. While productivity remained stable (or decline as a result of soil exhaustion) because the absence of technology, the burden to be born by the producers of the surplus had been constantly expanding because of the growing size and level of expenditure of the ruling classes. There was no more to be squeezed out
3. Climatological change that lowered soil productivity and increased epidemics simultaneously.
According to Wallerstein Europe begun their the establishment of a capitalist world economy to ensure their economic growth. This effort includes the expansion of the geographical size of the world in question, the development of different modes of labor control and the creation of relatively strong state machineries in the states of Western Europe.

In response to the feudal crisis, by the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the world economic system emerged. This was the first time that an economic system encompassed much of the world with links that superseded national or other political boundaries. Prior to the modern era, it was true that there many world-economy. But, unlike the modern one, they were highly unstable structure which tended either to be converted into empires or to disintegrate. The “new” world economy, as I describe above, differed from earlier empire systems because it was not a single political unit. Empires depended upon a system of government which, through commercial monopolies combined with the use of force, directed the flow of economic goods from the periphery to the center. Empires maintained specific political boundaries, within which they maintained control through an extensive bureaucracy and a standing army.

It is peculiarity of the modern world system that a world economy has survived for 500 years and yet has not come to be transformed into a world empire — peculiarity that is the secret of its strength. This peculiarity is the political side of the form of economic organization called capitalism. Capitalism has been able to flourish precisely because the world economy has had within its bound not one but multiplicity of political system. Different with classic theory of capitalism, Wallerstein defined capitalism as a system based on the constant absorption of economic loss by political entities, while economic gain is distributed to “private” hand.

The new capitalist world system was based on an international division of labor that determined relationships between different regions as well as the types of labor conditions within each region. In this model, the type of political system was also directly related to each region's placement within the world economy. As a basis for comparison, Wallerstein proposes four different categories, core, semi-periphery, periphery, and external, into which all regions of the world can be placed. The categories describe each region's relative position within the world economy as well as certain internal political and economic characteristics.

Comparasion with Diamond

Diamond’s book is the first work I read on international studies subject. I was amazed by his words and argument. However, reading this book of Wallerstein, I find a more comprehensive and “socially scientific” work than Diamond’s is. Here I can find how Diamond as a biologist writes the history human society no more than biological being. When he did emphasize on the gun, germ, and steel, it imply that he discuss about human instinct to pass the law of survival of the fittest, using gun and steel technology to kill or conquer their competitor, and it is the fittest who survive from germ.

Here, without referring to the pre-historic human’s history, Wallerstien gives more comprehensive understanding about what happened in the modern world. We can not understand recent global world without understanding capitalism, and Wellerstein help us to do this.

However, with the same couriosity to Diamond’s neglecting religion, I still have question about the way he compare what happen in Europe with China. Why China and not Islamic world? He said, “the apt comparison is of Europe and China, which had approximately the same total population from thirteen to sixteen centuries.” Only for this population related reason?

In fact, when he maintain the importance of Portugal as the pioneer of expansion, he did refer to the fact that “it was ironically that it was least absorbed in the zone that would become the European world economy, but rather tied in a significant degree to Islamic Mediterranean zone.” But why he did not continue this by comparing what Islamic world had been achieving at that time with Europe? Isn’t it interesting to question why Europe that is modernized and not Islamic world—the one that, at that time, had been more advanced and monetized?

From SIS 500 class

Unanswered Question in Guns, Germ, and Steel

2005-09-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

A couples weeks ago, I was shopping books required for this quarter at the University Book Store, this book was one of two books that I had not bought yet. Firstly, because the title was not interesting for me (“It would talk about guns, germ, and steel? What is their relevance to the origin of global system” I said in my mind); and secondly, the used book of this title was not available.

So, the way I bought the book was like buying “a last minute ticket” from an airline company (buying without full expecting to leave, but also at a low price).

Those impressions finally disappear as I bought and read the introduction of the book. Jared Diamond, in his introduction, even though not really convinced me on his arguments, has successfully convinced me to read and to keep the book in my personal library. His style of writing is fluid and laid-back, makes the reader read the history not as necessarily story of the past, but somewhat story of our daily life (he begins with Yali’s question that is similar to my Indonesian friend’s question, “Arif, why Americans so developed and we are not?” ).
Diamond posed many puzzling questions, which invite the reader to read line by line of his book, sometime without giving the answer.

Guns, Germ, and Steel
Answering Yali’s question, on the contrast life’s style of white Europeans and the New Guineans, the author refers firstly to existing ways to answer the question. The first way to answer is assuming biological differences, i.e., innate ability. Technologically primitive people were considered, under Darwinian perspective, as evolutionary vestiges human decent from apelike ancestors. The displacement of such people by sophisticated societies imply only the law of survival of the fittest. Genetically, by recent rise of genetics, European is also considered more intelligent than Africans and other backward societies. Diamond says that such racist answer is not only loathsome, but also wrong. People of a somewhat “backward” society, as they learned it, master it better than white people do.

The second popular answer refers to climatologically reasons. Because people in Europe live with severe climate, they are forced to be creative, to invent more tools to survive, while people of friendly climate are not forced to do so. Although this explanation is based on some anthropological findings, other anthropological findings also show what in reverse.

The third answer lists the immediate factors that enable Europeans to conquer other people: those are European guns, infectious diseases, steel tool, and manufactured products. Diamond is in the same line with this argument. From this point, he tries to give explanation for what he considers as a proximate explanation. In short, as the title implies it, guns, germs, and steel become the key argument to explain discrepancy among different parts of the world.

To elaborate this argument, he explains what happen along thousands years of human history. From Africa, human begin their evolution and then spread around the world, to Eurasia and other part of the world. To make his point quickly, he only spent 20 pages for this long part of history.

Then he starts to explain his points in Cajamarca, the place of the meeting between the Spanish conquistador Pizarro and the Inca Atahuallpa in 1532. This is a contrast meeting between to completely different worlds and resulted in Pizarro's victory, despite a numerical disadvantage, and the capture of Atahuallpa. The proximate causes of this were germs, technology (guns and steel weapons, ships), domestic animals (horses), and writing.

Underlying these immediate causes, however, is what Diamond sees as the central key to understanding human history — food production, or the domestication of plants and animals. In an excellent summary, Diamond explores the origins of agriculture. He describes where and when food production originated, how it spread with demographic expansion and by emulation, and why it never took off in some regions. He also mentions some new job division resulted by this food production and storage: including bureaucrats, religious leader, and other social positions.

We can not deny his argument on the importance of those three immediate factors in the human history. But, making those as the sole argument is neglecting something that move human civilization along the history: religion.

Religion always play an important role in the human history. If we considers old temples in Indonesia, Maya, Inca, Egypt, India, Cambodia, and other parts of the world, will find how religion influence people life. Islamic civilization, the first global civilization that scratched from Spain in the west edge of the “old world” through Indonesian islands in its east edge, is based on religion.

The almost enduring crusade, the real clash of civilization, between West and East, also provide another proof how religion in those respective civilization become source of power to defeat each other.

We can also find this argument in the book, on the scene of meeting between Pizzaro and Atahuallpa. Along the reports written by eyewitnesses, we find so many religious vocabularies. It is the bible that fire up the collision. Thus, why Diamond only mentions religion as the justification of conquer and war?

I think, it was religion that made Europeans leaved Europe and explored the new world, to preach their religion to another world. Hence, he needs to add -- beside of guns, germ, and steel -- God here. It does not necessarily mean that God intervenes the course of history, but the very concept of God and its implication to human history is very important: whether we believe it or not, but many people in the history believe it and are motivated by it. Don’t we need to consider recent changes in the world caused by actions of view “religious” men related to 911 attack (the terrorist who act in the name of God, and also Bush who reacts in the same Name)?