Farish A Noor
It has been many years, more than two decades in fact, since I last enjoyed celebrating Eidul Fitri anywhere in the world. Over the past decade Eid has always been a poignant moment for me, as I reflect on how badly things have deteriorated for Muslims the world over. It is sad, to say the least, that despite all the efforts of legions of progressive Muslim academics, activists and leaders the world over the image of Islam and Muslims worldwide has taken such a battering in the wake of 11 September 2001. During my long stay in Europe Ramadhan was often a testing time when academic-activists like myself would be drawn into public debates about how Islam constituted a ‘threat’ to European identity (while of course the fact that the capitals of Western Europe have been colonised by scores of McDonalds and KFC outlets is seen as something perfectly normal, as if Chicken fried ala’ Kentucky state was as European as croissants, bratwurst or fish and chips…)
After twenty-one years of living in Europe and watching the slide to the extreme right in the politics of countries like Holland, Austria and Germany, it makes a huge difference to be back in Asia and in Java in particular, the home of my ancestors. The past two months however have been laborious as I was trekking across all of Java as part of my research project. Finally, after eight weeks of non-stop travel and fieldwork, I found myself tired, smelly, dirty but contented as I nestled back in my adopted hometown of Jogjakarta, just in time to catch the takbir that announced the end of Ramadhan and the coming of Eid.
What followed can only be described as spectacular in the most over-stated way: Within an hour of the maghrib azan, the streets of Jogja was crammed and overflowing with thousands of motorbikes as the student body of this campus-based town spilled into the streets. Boys and girls from Jogja’s many universities and c! olleges took to their bikes, claiming the city as the urban landscape turned into a riot of colours. Spontaneous street parades popped up from nowhere, neighbourhood street bands and school bands marched up and down every street and alley, fireworks popped and fizzed in the sky and every home was lit with a plethora of colours. The atmosphere was gay and electric, and in the main square a pop concert was held as rock musicians and religious preachers took to the microphone singing songs of God and Love. God and Love: this is the Islam that seldom, if ever, gets coverage in the international media that seems more obsessed with the image of Islam as a religion of hate and violence.
[Read full article...]
Farish A Noor
This week marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan and the celebration of Eid’ul Fitri the world over. For more than a billion Muslims all over the planet the month of Ramadhan has been a time of personal reflection, contemplation and deliberation over their deeds and achievements over the year; a time of restraint and introspection; a time of reckoning. One only hopes that the leaders of the Muslim world have also taken this time off to do some serious soul-searching as well, and in particular to reflect on their deeds and misdeeds in the course of running the respective countries they have been elected to govern. (That is assuming that they were elected in the first place, for the quaint peculiarity of the Muslim world today is that quite a number of Muslim leaders have never been elected, and many of them regard the position of high office as if it was a God-given right to them and their families.)
During this month of Ramadhan quite a number of peculiar events have taken place all over the Muslim world. In Malaysia, the fasting month began with a right-wing leader of the conservative UMNO party making some rather repugnant remarks about the Malaysian Chinese community, referring to them as foreigners who can go back to China if they don’t like things as they are in the country. Odd that such a remark could mark the start of the month of Ramadhan, when Muslims are meant to be controlling their emotions rather than letting them run riot in public. Odder still that a leader of the UMNO party can even make such a historically inaccurate and unqualified remark, oblivious to the simple fact that not only have the Chinese in Malaysia - and the rest of Southeast Asia - been in the region for more than five hundred years, it was also thanks to the missionary efforts of Chinese Muslim scholars that Islam came to some parts of the region like Java for instance.
The month of Ramadhan also witnessed a string of rather uncharitable actions being per formed in the glare of the public eye: Teresa Kok, a member of Parliament and one of the leaders of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) of Malaysia, was arrested and detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) on the grounds that she had made some inflammatory remarks concerning the volume of the azan, or call to prayer, emanating from the mosques in her constituency. The member of Parliament was then detained under the ISA on the grounds that her own remarks were ‘provocative’, despite the fact that much of the hoo-haa that led to her arrest came from the pro-UMNO vernacular Malay media. During the course of her detention Teresa Kok maintained that she had never made any of the remarks or statements she was accused of, and that she was the victim of an orchestrated media campaign aimed at defaming her character instead.
[Read full article...]
