Robina Saha | CRCS | Article
Robina Saha is a Shansi Fellow to Indonesia. She taught english at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University Yogyakarta from August 2014 – to June 2016.
I first visited the city of Banda Aceh in the spring of 2009. As I stepped out of the airport and drove into town, I was greeted by a quiet Indonesian city framed by a gorgeous vista of mountains to the south, glittering coastline in the north, and tranquil rice paddies in between. Smooth, wide roads and fresh-faced buildings were the most telling signs of the city’s destruction at the hands of the 2004 tsunami and the investment that flowed into Aceh in its wake. The hotel where I stayed displayed photos of boats that had crashed into houses miles away from shore, some of which remain in situ today as memorials and tourist attractions. But it was hard to map these images of debris and desolation onto the clean, quiet little space I traversed between the hotel and the public school where I taught for a week.
At sixteen, I knew little about Aceh apart from its destructive encounter with the tsunami. Although I was born in Indonesia and lived in Jakarta for the first six years of my life, Aceh was geographically, culturally and politically as far removed as any other country. Until 2005, the region had been embroiled in a bloody conflict between the Indonesian military and the separatist Free Aceh Movement; at the time, travel to Aceh was rare and required special permits. Growing up in metropolitan cities where headscarves were rare and the vast majority of Indonesians I knew were from the island of Java, Aceh was something we only heard about on the news in relation to sharia law and ongoing violence. Looking back, I went to Aceh with an image not dissimilar to the one most Americans have of the Middle East, or Indians of Kashmir: Islamic fundamentalism and destruction.
Upon actually arriving in Banda Aceh, I felt a little foolish for being surprised, half-expecting to be accosted by the sharia police at every corner. While all the Indonesian women wore jilbabs (headscarves), I was never made to feel uncomfortable for leaving my frizzy nest of hair exposed. If anything, in a city more accustomed to Western NGO-workers, my face and arms were of interest mainly in order to determine whether I was possibly related to any Bollywood stars (specifically: Kajol; answer: I wish). Like many cities in Indonesia, there are mosques on every street, and I enjoyed seeing the variety of styles and sizes, from simple neighbourhood masjids to the toweringly beautiful Baiturrahman Grand Mosque. At prayer time, the entire city, warungs and all, would shut down, often leaving us to order room service nasi goreng or head to the lone Pizza Hut where we would sip on bottles of Coca Cola and wait it out.
In other words, my prevailing impression of Banda Aceh was of a quiet, conservative, and surprisingly lovely Muslim city populated by Indonesians just as friendly, curious and warmly hospitable as any other I’ve met. Later, upon reflection, I realised that as a visiting foreigner it was easy to glance over the strict policing of moral codes when I wasn’t the target. I never crossed the sharia police in their khaki uniforms, prowling the streets in pick-up trucks and lying in wait at roadblocks in search of unmarried Indonesian couples and uncovered Muslim women. After reading more about the region’s turbulent history, I came to appreciate that I had barely scratched at the surface layer of a city grappling with the process of constructing a contemporary social and political Islamic identity. The after-effects of a natural disaster popularly viewed as a punishment from Allah for decades of civil war had etched themselves far more deeply in the Acehnese psyche than I could have shallowly perceived.
Although I was born in, come from, and grew up in countries with significant Muslim populations, this was in many ways my first conscious confrontation with the blurred convergences between the Islam I saw in the media and what I observed on the ground. At times it can feel like staring at a double-exposure, trying to figure out where one image ends and the other begins. Looking back, although I wouldn’t have said it at the time, many of the decisions I made over the next six years—learning Arabic, studying Islamic culture and politics, writing my senior thesis on the post-9/11 display of Islamic art in Western museums, and ultimately coming back to Indonesia as a Shansi Fellow—could potentially be traced back to this first encounter with contemporary Islam and the questions it sparked in my mind about the representations and realities of Muslims around the world.
When I was first offered the Jogja fellowship in November 2013, I was deep in the process of writing my senior thesis, which was in part a critique of the Islamic art field for its exclusion of most non-Middle Eastern Islamic cultures. Having grown out of European colonial paradigms of Islam, the Middle East and Asia, what we call “Islamic art” is largely limited to the art and architecture of the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and India. Islam first arrived in Southeast Asia through trade as early as the 12th century, and today the region makes up a quarter of the world’s Muslim population. It’s also one of many areas that are conspicuously absent from introductory textbooks, museum displays and courses of Islamic art. Specifically in the case of Indonesia, this too can be traced back to the impact of Dutch colonial scholarship, which focused on the archipelago’s Hindu and Buddhist heritage at the expense of its contemporary Islamic culture—partly as a way to delegitimize local Islamic resistance groups. Over time it became an accepted truth that Islamic cultures outside of the European-defined Orient were simply a corruption of the “real” Islam.
In a post-9/11 context where the international image of Islam is largely informed by the puritanical Wahhabism propagated by Saudi Arabia and the fundamentalist extremism carried out by ISIS, I argued in my thesis that the inclusion and visibility of Islamic culture from traditionally peripheral regions like Southeast Asia in displays and discussions of Islamic culture would help challenge the common misconception of a singular Islam located solely in the Middle East. At 200 million and counting, Indonesia has the single largest population of Muslims in the world, and yet most people would struggle to find it on a map. The Islamic culture that developed and spread here in the 15th and 16th centuries is certainly different and more syncretic in character due to its intermixing with pre-existing Hindu and Buddhist religions of the time. But to me this speaks more to the diversity of Islam across the world than the predominance of a single, “original” interpretation that has come to dictate the mainstream international discourse.
Jogja, as the heartland of Javanese culture and the seat of the last major Muslim kingdom in Java, with a majority-Muslim population and a thriving contemporary art scene, presented what seemed like a perfect opportunity to test the ideas I had put forward in my thesis. Despite having grown up in Southeast Asia, I still knew shamefully little about its history of Islamic culture, and I was about to spend two years in the heart of it all. This time, I wanted to come prepared with questions that would frame my thoughts and conversations here.
In the last 15 years, it seems that Indonesia has undergone a sharp Islamic revival, particularly among the younger middle-class generation. When my family left in 1999, it was still relatively rare to see women wearing jilbabs; indeed, for decades, the government had actively discouraged it as a threat to the pluralism that is enshrined in Indonesia’s political doctrine. These days, it’s uncommon for Muslim women not to wear one. Everyone I spoke to in the weeks leading up to my departure, from professors to old family friends, warned of increasing Muslim conservatism, even in a relatively liberal university town like Jogja. I was sharply reminded of my pre-Aceh expectations and the lessons I had learned since, but nonetheless packed a few scarves just in case.
The truth, as always, is a little more complicated. Islam here is certainly more visible than it has ever been. Schools are increasingly adopting policies that emphasise Islamic religious practices and uniforms, even in public universities. In any of my classes, out of roughly twenty-five students it’s rare to see more than two girls without a jilbab. According to a Muslim feminist activist I met a few months ago, this is a marked change from the Suharto era, when jilbabs were banned on school grounds and students and teachers alike could be expelled for wearing one. Wearing a jilbab in the Suharto days, it seems, became a form of symbolic resistance to the regime.
And yet, for many of the young Muslims I meet in Jogja, overt religious piety seems to function more as a public uniform that marks their identity and allows them to fit in. I still remember meeting my friend Imma at a café late one night, who turned out to be a student at the graduate school where I teach. Dressed in a chic powder-pink blouse, she wore her hair uncovered in a pretty shoulder-length bob. Upon discovering that I worked on the same campus as her, she grinned conspiratorially at me and said, “You probably won’t recognise me at school because I usually wear a jilbab.” When I responded with a confused blink, she laughed, explaining that she views the jilbab as a formal uniform for campus the way we wear blazers and heels to work in the West. As a Muslim woman she exercises her right to choose to cover up without compromising her beliefs. For her and her female Muslim friends, choosing not to wear the jilbab has become the new form of public resistance.
It was easy for me to think of Imma and her friends as an exception to the rule. Yet over the past two years I’ve met so many young Indonesians with their own approaches to the way they practice Islam, ranging from Muslims who cover their hair to those who sport chic haircuts; Muslims who identify as queer, gay and transgender; Muslims who have ringtones reminding them to pray during the day yet still drink alcohol at night. As I’ve come to know these people over extended karaoke sessions and late night café hangouts, it’s become clear that the way they practice their faith also constitutes a rejection of the idea of a single interpretation of Islamic law and culture.
A few months ago, Indonesia attracted international attention when it was featured in a New York Times article that described a film made by Nadhlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisation, which denounces the actions of ISIS and promotes tolerance—or, as the author Joe Cochrane puts it, “a relentless, religious repudiation of the Islamic State and the opening salvo in a global campaign by the world’s largest Muslim group to challenge its ideology head-on.” The film is designed to introduce the world to NU and Islam Nusantara, or Indonesian Islam, as a tolerant and moderate alternative to fundamentalism and Wahhabist orthodoxy, rooted in traditionalist Javanese approaches.
Islam in Indonesia certainly can provide a model for tolerance and pluralism within a global Islamic framework. And like any other religious society, it also has its own tensions and fault lines. In Jogja it’s common for pro-LGBT and feminist events and film screenings to be shut down or cancelled by threats from radical groups like the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and the Front Jihad Islam (FJI). Many of these communities have been forced underground, and news is most often spread by word of mouth for fear of retaliation. My friends have been threatened and beaten at parties where the police have stood by and watched as FPI thugs lay waste to the venue. Just a few months ago, the city was plastered with anti-LGBT propaganda, and Pondok Pesantren Waria Al Fatah, an Islamic school for transgender Muslims, was forced to shut down amidst waves of extremist-led homophobic rallies.
In discussions about Islam and extremism, I often hear non-Muslim friends, family and colleagues calling upon Muslim communities to reject Islamic fundamentalism. That it is the responsibility of the moderate Muslims of the world to provide proof that they exist, to drown out the noise of radicalism that has dominated the airwaves. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with this idea because it ignores the fact that Muslims themselves are already the single largest victim of fundamentalist violence and oppression. For every beating, cancelled event and anti-progressive demonstration, there are Indonesian Muslims fighting back on the ground and on social media, rejecting the actions of these groups as un-Islamic—a word that continues to shift its meaning every time it is used.
Last December, I went back to Aceh to visit the Shansi fellows there. In many ways it was like being there for the first time; there was so much more to see and learn about beyond my limited initial experience. This time, armed with a motorbike, friends on the ground, and the ability to speak Indonesian again, I could finally start to fill in the outlines sketched in my mind six years ago with colour and complexity. One thing I didn’t notice the first time was the absence of cinemas, which were banned across Aceh under post-tsunami sharia law; men and women are not allowed to sit together in dark spaces, and foreign films are considered too promiscuous for Muslim audiences. The nearest movie theatre is in Medan, a fourteen-hour bus ride south.
Yet Acehnese film culture is far from dying. One night while we were staying in Banda Aceh, my co-fellow Leila was asked to judge a few short documentaries made by local filmmakers. We drove to a small studio tucked away on in a quiet street corner, where a group of young Muslim men greeted us with salak fruit and bottles of water. The corridor outside the screening room was lined with posters of short films and documentaries that, it turned out, had been organised and often produced by the same group. They provide resources for young filmmakers, run workshops, and organise screenings and programs like the Aceh Film Festival, which features short films and documentaries from Aceh, Indonesia and abroad. When I asked about the ban on cinemas, they expressed frustration at being unable to screen their films in a local theatre, but it hasn’t deterred them. If anything, the indie film scene has flourished in the wake of conservatism both in quantity and quality; Acehnese films are increasingly gaining recognition at national and international festivals.
In the six years I’ve spent studying Islamic culture and politics, I’ve learned that every one of these seeming contradictions constitutes a small part of the fascinating picture of the global religious, political and cultural phenomenon of Islam. When we allow the rich variety of opinions, practices and traditions across Islam’s broad geographic spread to be reduced to a single interpretation, we lose the shades of variation between depths and shallows, beauty and ugliness, tolerance and extremism. These last few months in particular—revisiting Aceh, travelling to Kashmir for the first time, and witnessing Jogja struggle visibly with surges of intolerance—have served to reinforce the importance of experiencing the broad spectrum of Islam firsthand. And the Islam I encounter in Jogja is as different from Acehnese Islam as it is from Kashmiri Islam, or Saudi Arabian Islam, or Iranian Islam.
I came to Indonesia with so many questions about Islam, and I will almost certainly leave it with just as many. But living here, witnessing the different facets of Islam Nusantara everyday has forced me to continuously confront my conceptions of Islam in a way that simply studying it from afar never could. Learning to recognise, understand and embrace these distinctions, contradictions and complexities has been a defining theme not only of my fellowship, but my entire understanding of contemporary Islam. Wherever my life takes me after Shansi, I hope I can continue to encounter Islam in all its various, beautiful, troubling, complex forms.
This article also published in http://shansi.org/
Arsip:
CRCS
Abstract
Saluang jo dendang, flute with song, is one of the most important arts of the Minangkabau heartland, celebrated for its refined poetry based on allusion and sad songs that induce tears in a listener. Performed late at night into the wee hours of the morning, two to three singers deliver a series of 40 or so songs according to the requests of the attendees, choosing from a repertoire of hundreds. In this genre, songs are defined by the melodies, not the lyrics, which are variable from one performance to the next. Singers choose texts from stock verses memorized and create them anew in the moment of performance, all delivered in pantun and therefore rhyme with verse lengths varying from 4 to 22 lines. The knowledge, skill, and nimbleness demanded of the performers is considerable.
A.S. Sudjatna | CRCS | Interview
Sejak tahun 2015, Dr. Kimura Toshiaki, associate professor Program Studi Agama, Universitas Tohoku, Sendai, Jepang menjadi salah satu pengajar mata kuliah ‘Sains, Agama dan Bencana’ di Program Studi Agama dan Lintas Budaya (CRCS), UGM. Membincang bencana di Jepang sangat menarik karena Jepang adalah negara dengan kesiapan bencana yang sangat tinggi. Menjadi lebih menarik ketika memasukkan agama dalam perbincangan bencana di negeri Sakura itu. Bencana adalah sesuatu yang sangat akrab bagi masyarakat Jepang, tapi agama? Sesuatu yang dihindari pada awalnya tapi perlahan diterima karena bencana. Berikut wawancara tim CRCS dengan dosen yang akrab dipanggil Kimura Sensei ini mengenai bencana, agama, dan studi agama di Jepang.
Kimura Sensei, bagaimana masyarakat Jepang memahami relasi antara agama, bencana, dan sains?
Mayoritas orang Jepang menganggap persoalan bencana ini hanya seputar sains, material, medis atau teknologi belaka. Namun menurut saya, bencana juga memiliki nilai-nilai agama, dan agama dapat membantu orang-orang yang menjadi korban bencana. Para korban bencana itu tidak hanya memiliki masalah-masalah pada wilayah material ataupun psikologis, tetapi juga masalah pada wilayah spiritual. Dan, persoalan spiritual inilah yang seolah dilupakan di Jepang. Faktanya, di Jepang walaupun bantuan material sangat banyak diberikan oleh pemerintah, misalnya bantuan tempat tinggal dan biaya hidup yang cepat dan mudah dari pemerintah setelah bencana terjadi, namun tetap saja banyak korban bencana yang hidupnya merasa susah, apalagi pasca gempa dan tsunami lima tahun lalu (gempa dan tsunami tahun 2011). Hampir delapan ribu orang yang bunuh diri di wilayah-wilayah terdampak bencana tersebut. Artinya, menangani persoalan yang bersifat material dan medis saja tidaklah cukup. Saya berpikir ini mesti ada persoalan spiritual yang juga harus dibantu penyelesaiannya, dan ini pasti membutuhkan peranan agama. Nah, di dalam konteks inilah kelas religion, science and disaster diadakan. Mengenai persoalan hubungan bencana, sains dan agama, saya sedang melakukan penelitian untuk membandingkan persoalan ini di Jepang dengan wilayah lain, yakni di Indonesia, Turki dan Cina. Sehingga nanti dapat ditemukan formula yang tepat dalam menggunakan agama sebagai mitigasi bencana.
Apakah ada perbedaan antara respon Bencana di Jepang dan Indonesia?
Menurut saya sangat berbeda. Karena di Jepang, pemisahan antara agama dan pemerintahan sangat kuat. Sehingga kadang-kadang bantuan yang bersifat sekular lebih gampang sedangkan yang bersifat agama sangat sulit. Sedangkan di Indonesia peranan agama lebih kuat dalam membantu korban-korban bencana. Di Jepang kesan-kesan terhadap agama sangat negatif sedangkan di sini sangat positif.
Sebenarnya, kondisi agama di Jepang itu sendiri seperti apa, Kimura Sensei?
Kondisi agama di Jepang sangat berbeda dengan di Indonesia. Bisa juga disebut terbalik kondisinya. Di Jepang, kata-kata agama seperti sesuatu yang tabu. Masyarakat Jepang sangat takut dengan kata-kata agama. Saat saya mengatakan kepada orang tua saya bahwa saya akan belajar di religious studies (Studi Agama), mereka melarang. Mungkin mereka takut jika anaknya punya hubungan dengan agama. Bahkan kalau melihat hasil survei, lebih dari tujuh puluh persen masyarakat Jepang mengatakan bahwa dirinya tidak memiliki agama. Hanya dua puluh persen yang mengatakan bahwa dirinya beragama. Namun uniknya, jika melihat hasil survei lainnya, bisa dilihat bahwa kira-kira delapan puluh persen masyarakat Jepang pergi ke kuburan untuk bersembahyang. Kuburan-kuburan tersebut biasanya berada di kuil-kuil Budha dan orang-orang biasanya meminta para biksu untuk mendoakan orang-orang yang telah meninggal. Dan di dalam rumah mereka, hampir lima puluh persen masyarakat Jepang bersembahyang kepada dewa-dewa agama Sinto atau agama Budha. Delapan puluh persen dari mereka pergi berdoa ke kuburan dan lima puluh persen dari mereka setiap hari bersembahyang di rumah namun mereka tidak pernah menganggap hal itu sebagai agama. Orang Jepang berbeda dengan orang atheis. Orang Jepang melakukan beragam praktik keagamaan namun tidak mau mengakui hal itu sebagai praktik agama, alasannya macam-macam, salah satunya yaitu orang Jepang menganggap bahwa kata-kata agama itu adalah impor dari Eropa, dan mereka menganggap bahwa agama itu seperti agama Kristen, ada gereja dan ada organisasi yang kuat dan harus memilih satu agama saja. Hal itu tidak sesuai dengan praktek dan kepercayaan orang Jepang. Sehingga, walaupun mereka pergi ke kuburan dan melakukan sembahyang di rumah namun mereka berpikir hal itu bukanlah agama seperti agama Kristen. Konsep agama dalam pandangan orang Jepang sangatlah sempit.
Lantas, bagaimana respons generasi muda Jepang saat ini terhadap perkembangan agama?
Soal agama-agama baru sebenarnya pasca Perang Dunia Kedua sudah mulai ada, saat masyarakat Jepang berada dalam kondisi yang susah. Waktu itu agama-agama baru mulai tumbuh, dan sekitar tahun 80-an agama-agama baru ini tumbuh di dalam kampus dan menjaring banyak pengikut. Namun sejak tahun 1995, saat terjadi aksi terorisme oleh anggota agama Aum Sinrykyo yang menyebarkan gas sarin di subway, masyarakat Jepang menjadi takut dengan agama baru. Menurut survey, pengikut agama-agama baru itu kini tinggallah orang yang sudah tua-tua dan jumlahnya sudah menurun. Namun, jika melihat hasil survei terbaru, kita bisa lihat bahwa sejak tahun 70-an, jumlah anak-anak muda yang percaya agama terus menurun, namun pasca gempa 2011 agak berubah, mulai agak sedikit naik. Mungkin di generasi muda saat ini sudah mulai tumbuh pandangan positif terhadap agama dibandingkan dengan generasi terdahulu.
Apakah ada perbedaan pandangan orang Jepang terhadap agama sebelum dan setelah tsunami, terutama tsunami besar yang terjadi belakangan ini?
Pasca bencana gempa dan tsunami pada tahun 2011 silam memang ada perubahan cukup berarti dalam cara pandang masyarakat Jepang terhadap agama. Bencana tersebut menelan korban lebih dari lima belas ribu orang meninggal dunia. Di dalam sejarah Jepang, bencana dengan korban sebesar itu sepertinya tidak pernah terjadi sebelumnya. Nah, ini rupanya mengguncang sisi spiritual masyarakat Jepang. Saya mendengar langsung sebuah cerita dari kawan yang seorang dokter dan bertugas mengurus para korban tsunami besar tersebut. Ia ditanya oleh korban selamat dari tsunami tersebut, “Suami saya telah meninggal oleh tsunami, sekarang suami saya kira-kira berada di mana?” Sebagai petugas medis, teman saya waktu itu tidak mampu menjawab. Ia bercerita pada saya dan merasa bahwa untuk menjawab pertanyaan itu bukanlah peranan seorang di bidang medis melainkan agama. Dan selama ini di Jepang, wilayah itu kosong. Nah, saking banyaknya persoalan semacam itu, kini masyarakat Jepang sudah mulai berpikir untuk mencari solusi, salah satunya lewat agama.
Selain itu, media juga sudah mulai berubah. Jika dulu media tidak mau memberitakan perihal agama karena tidak mau campur tangan di dalam persoalan agama, kini setelah gempa dan tsunami besar tersebut, media Jepang mulai banyak memberitakan perihal agama, misalnya memberitakan LSM-LSM agama yang membantu para korban bencana. Mungkin sekarang pikiran masyarakat Jepang sudah mulai berubah. Dahulu masyarakat Jepang berpikir, jika ada bantuan datang dari lembaga-lembaga keagamaan maka itu adalah usaha untuk menyebarkan agama baru pada korban bencana. Namun sekarang mereka mulai memahami bahwa hal itu adalah memang murni untuk bantuan kemanusiaan.
Apakah perubahan pandangan terhadap agama pasca bencana ini juga berpengaruh terhadap minat mahasiswa Jepang terhadap studi agama?
Jika di masa saya, studi agama menargetkan menerima sepuluh orang mahasiswa pada setiap tahun ajaran, tapi paling hanya dua atau tiga orang yang mendaftar. Namun, kini hampir setiap tahun ajaran ada sekitar dua puluh orang yang mendaftar dan sepuluh orang saja yang diterima. Jadi sejak tahun 2000, sudah mulai banyak calon mahasiswa yang mau belajar di jurusan studi agama. Ini tidak hanya terjadi di Universitas Tohoku tetapi juga di universitas-universitas lainnya di Jepang. Jadi, mungkin generasi muda saat ini sudah mulai tertarik mempelajari masalah-masalah agama.
Apa yang diajarkan di jurusan religious studies di Jepang?
Religious studies di Jepang juga mengajarkan hal yang sama seperti di Indonesia, seperti di CRCS. Religious studies mengajarkan teori-teori dari Eropa, semisal sosiologi dan antropologi. Namun memang sejak sebelum terjadi bencana gempa dan tsunami besar pada tahun 2011, studi agama ini lebih banyak berkutat di wilayah teoritis, hanya berputar pada sisi teori-teori saja. Namun pasca 2011, kajian ini mulai menemukan wilayah praktisnya. Sekarang jurusan studi agama mulai banyak menjalin kerja sama dengan LSM-LSM agama atau lembaga agama, tidak seperti dulu yang terkesan menjauhkan diri dari agama. Sekarang studi agama mulai berpikir ke arah kerjasama dengan lembaga agama di dalam menangani persoalan korban bencana.
Apakah kerjasama antara program studi agama di Jepang dengan program studi agama di universitas lain juga termasuk bagian dari itu? Seperti kerja sama antara Tohoku University dan CRCS UGM?
Iya, MoU kerjasama antara Tohoku dan CRCS UGM ini berfungsi seperti payung hukum saja, sedangkan jenis dan bentuk program-program penelitian ataupun pertukaran mahasiswa bisa didesain sedemikian rupa nanti. Pertukaran mahasiswa bisa dilakukan antara mahasiswa CRCS UGM dan Tohoku dan bisa transfer mata kuliah, sedangkan biaya kuliah cukup dengan membayar di home university saja. Secara umum, kerjasama antara Tohoku University dan CRCS UGM ada dua macam, yaitu tentang kerja sama penelitian dan pertukaran mahasiswa. Di bidang penelitian nanti bisa ada kerja sama dalam proyek penelitian, penelitian tentang agama dan bencana salah satunya, dan jika ada penelitian di Jepang nanti ada bantuan fasilitas dari Tohoku University.
Sebagai penutup, bisa sedikit bercerita mengenai pengalaman mengajar di CRCS?
Ini adalah tahun kedua saya mengajar di CRCS. Saya sangat senang mengajar di sini karena setiap tahun mahasiswanya terlihat selalu semangat. Responsnya banyak. Tidak seperti di Jepang. Kalau di Jepang, selesai kelas saya harus menunjuk satu-satu mahasiswa agar mau bertanya. Kalau di sini mahasiswanya aktif bertanya. Jadi diskusinya bisa lebih dalam. Awalnya, sebelum saya mulai mengajar kuliah disaster ini, saya sempat khawatir apakah materi yang akan disampaikan cocok atau tidak, namun ternyata banyak mahasiswa yang tertarik dengan materi yang disampaikan dan kelasnya menjadi hidup. Saya jadi senang sekali.
Arigato Gozaimasu, Kimura Sensei!
Ali Ja’far | CRCS | Artikel
“Perubahan besar-besaran pada Klenteng-Vihara Buddha terjadi setelah peristiwa 1965, dimana semua yang berhubungan dengan China dilarang berkembang di Indonesia. Nama-nama warung atau orang yang dulunya menggunakan nama China, harus berubah dan memakai nama Indonesia” kata Romo Tjoti Surya di Vihara Buddha kepada mahasiswa CRCS-Advanced Study of Buddhism, yang melakukan kunjungan pada selasa 22 Maret 2016. Beliau menjelaskan juga bahwa pada waktu itu, umat Buddha juga harus mengalami masa sulit karena banyaknya pemeluk Buddha yang berasal dari China.
Salah satu dampak anti China ada pada Klenteng-Vihara Buddha Praba dan daerah disekitarnya adalah pada nomenclature. Pada awalnya, toko-toko itu mengunakan nama-nama China, tetapi mereka harus mengganti nama itu menjadi nama Indonesia. Begitu juga pemeluk Konghucu disini, mereka punya dua nama, nama Indonesia dan nama China. Bahkan bertahun-tahun mereka harus memperjuangkan keyakinan mereka sampai pada akhirnya Presiden Abdurrahman Wahid mencabut pelarangan itu dan Konghucu diakui sebagai salah satu agama resmi di Indonesia.
Tempat pemujaan yang berusia lebih dari 100 tahun ini merupakan gabungan dari Klenteng dan Vihara. Klenteng berada di depan dan Vihara berada di belakang. Penyatuan ini karena adanya kedekatan historis antara pemeluk Buddha dengan orang China di Indonesia. kedekatan Buddha dengan China bisa dilihat dalam rupang Dewi “Kwan Yin” dalam dialek Hokkian yang merujuk pada Avalokitesvara, Buddha yang Welas Asih. Selain itu juga ada kedekatan ajaran, dimana dalam Buddha, label agama tidaklah penting, yang paling penting adalah pengamalan dan pengajaran Dharma. Selama ajaran Dharma itu masih ada, maka perbedaan agama pun tidak masalah.
Vihara Buddha Praba sendiri adalah Buddha dengan aliran Buddhayana, yaitu aliran yang berkembang di Indonesia yang menggabungkan dua unsur aliran besar Buddha, Theravada dan Mahayana. Aliran Mahayana berada di Utara dan Timur Asia yang melintas dari China sampai ke Jepang dan lainya. Sedangkan Theravada menempati kawasan selatan, seperti Thailand, Burma. Namun begitu, Budhayana melihat dua aliran ini sebagai “Yana” atau kendaraan menuju pencerahan seperti yang diajarkan sang Guru Agung. Penggabungan Theravada dan Mahayana dalam aliran Buddhayana awalnya juga dilandasi alasan politis dimana terdapat asimilasi antara agama dan kebudayaan yang ada.
Dalam Kunjungan ini, mahasiswa CRCS diajak untuk keliling Klenteng-Vihara dan mengenal ajaran Buddha lebih dalam, terutama bagaimana Vihara ini bisa bersatu dengan Klenteng, melihat budaya China lebih dekat dan mengenali ajaran Buddha yang lebih menekankan pada penyebaran Dharma dari pada penyebaran agama.
Vihara kedua yang dikunjungi adalah Vihara Karangdjati yang beraliran Theravada. Berbeda dengan sebelumnya, Vihara Karangdjati tidak bernuansakan China, tetapi lebih ke Jawa, dimana terdapat pendopo untuk menerima tamu dan ruang meditasi yang khusus. Pak Tri Widianto menjelaskan bahwa pokok ajaran Buddha bukanlah ajaran eksklusif yang tertentu untuk pemeluk Buddha saja, tetapi untuk seluruh umat manusia. Bahkan di Vihara Karangdjati, ada juga dari agama lain yang datang saat meditasi.
Hal yang sering disalahartikan selama ini adalah meditasi hanya milik umat Buddha, tetapi tidak. Meditasi adalah laku spiritual untuk mengenali gerak gerik otak kita dan mengasah mental menghadapi masalah. Ini adalah latihan mengolah kepekaan yang tidak dibatasi oleh agama tertentu. Pengolahan kepekaan ini penting karena betapapun banyaknya kata bijak yang kita miliki, itu tak ada manfaatnya ketika tidak dipraktikkan.
Didirikan pada tahun 1958, usia Vihara Karang Jati yang juga berlokasi di desa Karang Jati, lebih tua dari pada usia kampung itu. Sehingga, meskipun mayoritas penduduk sekitar beragama Islam, tidak pernah ada keributan atau gesekan antar agama. Hal ini karena Vihara Karang Jati selalu menekankan keharmonisan dan perasaan kasih (compassion), pada seluruh umat manusia.
Vihara Karang Jati menaungi Puja bakti, pusat pelayanan keagamaan, dan pendidikan. Khusus untuk meditasi, kegiatan ini dibuka untuk umum. Artinya, siapapun dan dari agama dan golongan manapun boleh mengikutinya. Kegiatan yang dilakukan tiap malam jumat ini bahkan pernah diikuti oleh beberapa turis mancanegara.
Abstract
My thesis is a critical analysis of the galleries of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York as a case study for contemporary understandings and representations of Islam through the display of Islamic art in a post-9/11 context. I explore the revival of Islamic art exhibitions since the events of September 11, 2001, where museums across the world have found themselves tasked with building and reconfiguring the display of Islamic art objects to provide visitors with a counter-narrative to the widespread fear of Islam propagated by mass media. By tracing the intertwined histories of the Islamic art discipline, colonial and post-colonial collecting practices, Orientalism and the universal survey museum, I situate my critique of the galleries within the complex realities of cultural heritage management in order to address the problematic limitations of this curatorial counter-narrative.
Speaker
Ruby Robina Saha is a Shansi English Language Teaching Fellow at Universitas Gadjah Mada. She divides her time between CRCS, where she co-teaches the Academic English course and the preparatory Summer Intensive course, and the English Language & Literature Department in the Faculty of Cultural Sciences (FIB). Prior to her appointment as a Shansi Fellow, Ruby received her BA(Hons) from Oberlin College, where she majored in Art History and Middle Eastern Studies. In 2013, she was awarded the Laurine Mack Bongiorno Prize for Art History majors, and she studied Art History and Politics at the University of Paris, where she carried out research on the galleries of Islamic art at the Louvre Museum. She wrote her graduating thesis on the politics of displaying Islamic art in Western museums after 9/11. Ruby has worked as an editor and contributing writer for several publications including The Wilder Voice, The Oberlin Review and Jurnal Humaniora. Since returning to Indonesia, her research interests have shifted to the intersection between culture and education policy, contemporary art and alternative media. After her fellowship, she plans to continue working in education and culture and intends to pursue a graduate degree in Arts Education in 2017.
Abstract
Elsewhere argued that the line divides the “real,” offline realm and cyberspace is blurred. Both realms are becoming interpenetrative and as demonstrated in many cases such as the Arab Springs, the United States and Indonesian Presidential elections, the composite power of the two may determine the socio-political direction of a region. Following this observation and considering the dramatic expansion of Indonesian cyberspace, in term of internet penetration, mobile subscription, and social media fluency, it is timely to look closer to it as an emerging religious public sphere. The present presentation focused on the younger generation religious expression. Younger generation, the “Millennials” generation (18-34 years old) as some researches framed it, is considered among the main steams behind this space, among others as the arena of their quest for individuality, and to a degree for the enhancement of their piety. Indonesian cyberspace is complicated with the audacity of religious expression and the tangled governance by the state in the post-New Order, hence understanding younger generation perception on religion might reveal the shifts that are happening in the Indonesian society. The preliminary assessment of the issue displayed a nuanced and complex presentation of religiosity of this generation, beyond the argument of superficiality, put forward by some other observations. It is furthermore showed an intersection issue of religious authority, imagery of pluralistic society, and transnational religious phenomena.
Speaker
Leonard C. Epafras is a core doctoral faculty in the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies, UGM Graduate School, Yogyakarta. He won the Endeavour Scholarship Fellowship 2015 to conduct his post-doctoral research as well as presented the ongoing research project initiated by the ICRS, the Indonesian Interfaith Weather Station (IIWS). His research interests are including history of religions, inter-religious interaction, and digital humanities/humanities computing.
