USIPP Day 4

Our first agenda today were visiting the Office of DKI Jakarta’s Governor. While waiting for meeting time, we visited Museum National popularly known as Museum Gajah which is located nearby the office. Though I have come to Jakarta many times, that was my first time to visit this museum. The story behind the name of Museum gajah is that, right in front of the building, they have an Elephant (Gajah) statue. The bronze statue itself was a gift from Thailand’s King when he was visited Indonesia in President Soekarno’s Era. We did not have much time, thus we were only seeing the first and second floor of the main building. The first floor consist of statue of Indonesia’s cultural figures made by stone such as Hindu’s Gods, etc. In the upstair, they have a gold museum which is relatively new.

After that, we went to the Governor office where the Vice Governor of Tourism and Culture, Mr. Sukerti Martono, greeted us. We had a nice lunch there and continued our visitation to the Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi). It was impressive. Judge Harjono basicly explained the authority of Constitusional Court

1. Settle the dispute dealing with authority between state’s body (Lembaga Negara).

2. Judicial Review.

3. Dealing with dissolution of political party.

4. Election issues.

5. Involving with impeachment of the President.

He also mentioned that Pancasila is a part of the Preambule and is not subject to be changed. It is the articles that are subject to be changed. Furthermore, he elaborated how the Constitutional Court keeps their body clean from corruption, bribery, and such. Here are some of the explanations:

1. They have 9 judges which 3 of them are appointed by the President, 3 more are appointed by Parliament (DPR), and the rest are appointed by the Supreme Court (Mahkamah Agung).

2. Most of the judges have academic background, which away from politics/ briberies.

3. When the Constitutional Court was built, there was no significant political power and that was a good environment to grow.

 

Jakarta, July 7, 2012

USIPP Day 3

Today we have pretty tight schedule. We visited some official offices such as the Ministry of Higher Education (DIKTI), Forum for Interfaith Discussion (Forum Kerukunan Umat Beragama-FKUB), Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), and the last but not least one was Muhammadiyah.

The first visitation was to DIKTI where Mr. Purwanto, the Secretary of DIKTI welcomed us and kindly explained about the roles of DIKTI in order to ensure the achievement of the quality standard of higher education in all over Indonesia. Furthermore, to internationalize (to make the world acknowledge Indonesian’s univerties or education). they have several programs like a joint program with USA which called DIKTI Fullbright Scholarship Program, Sandwich Program which offers academic staff to experience student exchange program for 4 months), and SAMI (Academic Mobility) for PhD to visit overseas universities or to conduct a joint research.

Next, we went to FKUB and were warmly welcomed by several figures from each different religion in Indonesia. FKUB has 21 members from 6 religions, they are: Islam, Christianity, Protestant, Budhism, Hindu, Kong Hu Chu. FKUB exerts 5 main tasks as stated below:

1. Conduct the interfaith dialog.
2. Welcome aspirations from people of Indonesia.
3. Deliver the aspiration to the government.
4. Socialization of policies in regard to religion.
5. Recommend the worship place (rumah ibadah).

The different that FKUB felt in regard to the New Order Era and today is that in the New Order, you had top-down approach. According to FKUB, what was happening in Indonesia regarding chaotic situation which involved religion actually isn’t merely because of different religions we have. There are some parties who stir the situation to gain political power or personal interest.

The discussion in FKUB was very lively and enlightening. Not only the USIPP’s participants but also the FKUB members themselves benefited from the discussion. They were pretty excited to ask what is going with the Moslem population in United States, how the US government protect each individualto practising their beliefs, or how the US perceptions regarding religious pluralism in Indonesia, and so on. The discussion improved our (both side) understandings about each other perceptions and clarifying things in regard to religious pluralism in US and Indonesia. This is vital because US is a significant player in the world including the one who play a role in Palestine which is a very sensitive issue for Islamic-populated country such as Indonesia.

In NU, we have Prof. Zaki Mubarak as the spekaer along with other 2 or 3 persons. NU is the oldest and the biggest Islamic organization in Indonesia which embracing the local cultures in preaching Islamic teachings. They believe that their position is in between the hardliner and the liberalist. According to them, the hardliner uses only “hard verses” and leaves the soft one. Meanwhile the liberalist is quite the opposite. Thus NU try to redirect them by providing a complete verses in Al-qur’an along with As-Sunah and Ijtihad in order to give a comprehensive understanding.

NU’s preaching methods is actually similar with Wali Songo’s (9 Saints) in Central Java’s coastal areas. They proclaimed that even (believe it or not) the founding fathers and the leader of NU itself was decendants from Wali Songo. This is interesting because there was a long debate in matter of whether Wali Songo are Chinese. However, the politic condition in that time, make it impossible to acknowledged the truth. In that time, there was a discrimination related to Chinese especially in Soeharto Era. That explains why almost all Chinese in Indonesia have their Indonesian’s name beside their Chinese one. Interestingly, if the claim of NU’s members is true (that their leaders are decendant from Wali Songo), then it may be true that Wali Songo is the Chinese decendant because as we know, the former Presdident Abdurrahman Wahid was the leader of NU and he was Chinese. Well, it still needs to be clarify with the historical evidents though.

The last destination was Muhammadiyah. Muhammadiyah is the second largest Islamic organization in Indonesia based on the amount of members. The provide four major services to the community such as:

1. Education: Muhammadiyah currently operated more than 14.000 schools and higher education institutions in all over Indonesia ranging from elementary schools to universities. In some places such as Palangkaraya and Nusa Tenggara, more than 70% of their students are non-moslem students. For those students, they provide them with religion study based on their own religion. This is proven that Muhammadiyah embraces differences in religions and tolerant toward others.
2. Health services by building hospitals and clinics in alll over Indonesia.
3. Economic empowerment through microfinancing, including bank.
4. Disaster management and rescue.

You must  be wondering how they generate the money to conduct all of their agendas which requires a huge funding. Generally, they have 3 main sources of fund as below:

1. Member’s donation
2. Partnership with other Non or Islamic organizations.
3. Profit from the schools, universities, institutes, and hospitals.

Responding on Ahmadiyah issue, Muhammadiyah said that actually Muhammadiyah’s leader has a strong relationship with Ahmad Ghulam who later become the leader of Ahmadiyah. There was also a hospital in West Java owned by Ahmadiyah which only want to be sold to Muhammadiyah. I just found out that in 1932, Muhammadiyah has issued a Fatwa stated that Ahmadiyah is not Islam but they FORBID ummah to conducted any  violantion to Ahmadiyah and encouraged a peace dialog with Ahmadiyah.

In conclusion, we may see that in some cases, mass media plays a big role on blowing up a certain issue. Like in the case, we saw that Ahmadiyah has been existing since a long time ago yet the issue itself just came up recently.

 

Jakarta, June 6, 2012

USIPP Day 2

The journey of USIPP 2012 has just actually begun today. I and Shannon were woke up early this morning and had a nice conversation. I really appreciate that. We started the day at 7 am with breakfast then an hour later we took a campuss bus to UI’s library. They have an impressive library, all in one. It is a new and the only library in UI. They have like 8 floors, the two-last floor are used occasionally for meeting or official event hold by the campuss. In the first floor, they have “times” bookstore, travel agency office, tupperware and kitchen stuffs, the cinema, the bank, music studio, and they also have starbucks!! Yes, they seems like having a mall inside of their library. Wow!

 

Worth to be noted that they also have some old documents like the old testament which written in Old Ducth, Lontar (made from leaves and covered by two slices of wood) written in Balinese or Old Javanese about ceremonial thing in Bali, and the last one (that they showed us) was the copy book of Chinese 3 Empires.

Mr. Junaedi, the Head of International Office, was kind enough to give us a mini tour. The last room to visit was the “Meditation Room”, yes that’s how I call it. It’s a place of 100 rooms to “seriously” work on your dissertation, reseach paper, etc. Doctoral students and lecturers are allowed to book the room for 3 months.

 

The rest of the day was filled with two lectures from Prof. Maswadi Rauf and Mr. Muhammad Fuadi, continued with a discussion with religion-affiliated student’s organizations, and we end the day with shopping session in Margo City.

 

I’m going to discuss a little about our discussion and lectures today. So Prof. Maswadi started the lecture regarding Democratic Society in Indonesia: The Issues and Challenges. He went through a brief history of democracy in Indonesia to a lively discussion about the true meaning of freedom, individual democratization, and Special Region of Yogyakarta case. There was an interesting issue on how we define the so called “public interest”? Is it the interest of the majority people? If the answer is yes, then how can we believe that  democracy not come in to majority rule?

He personnaly thinks that a freedom should not violate other’s interest (either public or individual one). The interesting thing is, how can we ensure that everyone doesn’t has a conflict of interest? Cause if they do, then it gets hard not to confront other’s interest.

Regarding the Special Region of Yogyakarta matter, he stated that we should distinguish the role of Sultan and Governor. His opinion is that the Sultan can be a symbol of culture, meanwhile the Governor has to play a political role. So we do have to hold an election to determine who’s gonna be our political leader. This issue reminds me to my previous discussion with a political and science lecturer in UGM. She told me that the legal status itself is being questioned since in the post-independence day’s agreement between President Soekarno and Sultan HB IX, it stated the specific name of a person that is Sultan HB IX, not only Sultan of Yogyakarta or something like that. So, does the agreement also prevail for his next generation?

 

My response was “why don’t we just have the election and the Sultan can also participate in it, can’t he? So if people really want him to be their leader, they’ll definately know who’s to vote.”

And her answer was, “the case is, the Sultan is not elected. They are inherited.”

Well, I was sort of “hmm..that can be true. nice answer.” but then now, I’ll ask more, “We don’t vote for the Sultan’s position, we vote for the Governor. And the Sultan will still be the Sultan.”

It MUST be noted that my responses don’t mean that I pick a side. I’m just trying to make sense of the matter..

 

The second discussion by Mr. Muhammad Fuadi was about the role of Muhammadiyah and NU, the two biggest Islamic organizations in Indonesia. It gave us some interesting informations related to those two, like I just notice that we don’t have many schools or hospitals under the name of NU but we do have some under Muhammadiyah. In short, Muhammadiyah tends to purify the Islamic teachings from cultural values that is not relevant to Islam, knownly as reformist. Meanwhile NU is more embracing the cultural side. He also went through about Alm. Abdurrahman Wahid’s idea on Islam in Indonesia. Then continued with Q&A session.

The last one, we had a fruitful discussion with students from many religion’s organization in UI which comprises of KMHD (Keluarga Mahasiswa Hindu Dharma), KMKUI (Keluarga Mahasiswa  Katolik UI), Islam, and Kristen. Unfortunately, we didn’t have Buddhism but it was quite interesting topic we discussed though, such as the Lady Gaga (L) matters, their activities, and such. I was also asking about the experience whether they had been intolerated in any ways by other religion’s believer. And the answer was pretty sad to me cause unfortunately, we still preserve the intolerant attitute toward differences including in religion. Like it or not, a research conducted by Australian researcher showed that some schools, public as well as private, still practising “unrealized-intolerant-attitude” toward their students, like for some schools they require their student to wear hijab for example though they are not moslem, or Christian school ask their student to take a class on Christianity, or such. Those cases shows that we need to change our early education if we would like to make a change for Indonesia especially regarding tolerance toward others. Sadly, the religion’ teachers do play a part on this matter. We need a  more formal action, could be from the Government. And this is a true story conveyed by the Hindu student, she said that when she was in the elementary school, her friend making fun of her belief by saying, “you are worshiping a stone.”

 

That was really mean, in my opinion. and a kid said that. Something really need to change.

Well, that’s all for today. Can’t wait what they have for us tomorrow! Gotta get some sleep. Nite all! 😉

 

Jakarta, June 5, 2012

USIPP Day 1

USIPP 2012 is officially started today’s evening with a delicious opening dinner at a restaurant in UI. I and Gita were picked up at the Soekarno-Hatta International airport by two student volunteers from Universitas Indonesia namely Arum (Psychology 2010) and Widya (English Literature 2008) at around 16.00 wib. Despite of some misunderstandings at pre-departure, everything was going pretty well today. They took us to Wisma Makara, inside the complex of Universitas Indonesia, Depok. We had an hour free time, well, actually more to prepare ourselves for the dinner. In this program, we will be paired with the US partners and live in the same room. One room for two. Really nice to get to know each other better. Mine is Shannon Cassidy, a sophomore of Social and Political Sciences from Lehigh University. Oh ya, I get to inform that for this year we have Universitas Indonesia (Ola and Ui), Universitas Gadjah Mada (Cindhi and Gita), and Lehigh University (Shannon, Ellie, Theresa, Angela). Yeaaa finally I memorize their name!!!!

That was the only agenda we have today. The real step is only about to begin…

Jakarta, June 4th, 2012