Someone asked me why my posts condemning, criticising, cursing, and overall wishing harm upon the state government and/or present-day and past imperial powers are always invoking divine judgement and using Islamic concepts. They pointed out that it doesn't happen exclusively with Muslims; they said their "totally secular" Indonesian Hindu progressive friend also does the same thing, always invoking karma, divine judgement, all that jazz.
They also said something along the lines of "It's politics, not some religious discourse. The issues are grounded in material conditions, affecting actual human lives. Justice or consequences should be immediate and material, not spiritual and fuck knows when, yada yada yada," with their whole self-proclaimed radical chest.
Yes, they're from the metropole, if you're wondering.
So I was like, nah, man, you Westerners are just not mad enough, not pissed off enough at your imperial overlords. You think invoking divine judgement means we're spiritually bypassing material justice, or that we only say that online?
Bruuu, we also take it to the streets. We say it to their faces. Heck, we even wish for Prophet Isa (Jesus) to descend soon 😂 Don't piss off Indonesians. We will wish harm upon you in this life, in death, and the next.
In all seriousness, Indonesia has never been a secular country. What kind of secular nation-state declares divine oneness as its first and foremost principle in its national ideology?
The state may practise hypocrisy, authoritarianism, corruption, patriarchy, bootlicking, even genocide, but the language of divine accountability is already baked into the national moral grammar. People are not randomly "bringing religion into politics." The state did that at the foundation, then got mad when the people used it against power.
Hence we're pretty upfront with our words when expressing our frustration. If we die, we die. Our curse lives on alongside our hopes and dreams for a just future.
Also, stop universalising your Western moral framework born from centuries of religious wars between Christians in Europe specifically, then exported as everyone's problem, even in the land where Christianity was born. Secular-liberalism is your theology; we don't really care about that. We also get that your audacity and paternalism are the byproducts of the same lineage. Have you considered deconstructing that reflex and what it's actually serving, maybe?
And stop universalising it wherever you go; either through colonialism like what your imperial overlords still do, or through social-justice/anti-imperialist activism discourse, ironically.
TL;DR – learn non-Western history for fuck's sake.
#politics #history #morality #WesternImperialism #secularism @indonesia #pluralism #Indonesia
