Run Away World

(This article previously published in Indonesian on 4/10/2004)

I just wrote this brief piece yesterday morning at my home on the outskirts of Jakarta. It arrived in the editor’s hand the moment after I finished it. I needed no envelop for this article. I did not have to go to the post office to send it to the editor. I needed no stamps. What I’ve done is very simple, as simple as “kun fayakun” (Allah’s saying in Koran which means: Be! And it is). All I did was connect to the internet, attach the file, click the mouse and the file was on the editor’s desk in less than two minutes. Some things in the world have become so fast, so simple.

When my wife went on a pilgrimage this year, a simple event occurred which amazed me. It has been on my mind ever since. Many people may consider it trivial. During her two weeks in the Holy Land, my wife sent me short message service (SMS) each day, telling me about the progress of her pilgrimage. She was like a journalist reporting an important event every minute to an editor. Although at home, I seemed to be in the middle of millions of pilgrims in the Holy Land such that an event at one place can be ‘moved’ into another place rapidly, in a simple way and – last but not least- at a low price.

We have recently experienced a presidential election the results of which were known quickly by the quick count method. Before the election, there was another interesting “election” in which the audience joined a popular referendum to select the best singer in the country. They voted in a unique way: by sending an SMS. Within a moment their votes were recorded and determined the fate of the contestants each week.

I envision that someday, through technological progress in telecommunication, we will be able to vote for the president through cell phones. We will need neither voting room nor witness. All we will have to do is send the SMS in the morning, and the selected president will be known by noon. The campaign would be low-cost only because parties would send their platforms and visions to the constituent’s electronic mailbox. Of-course this would be possible only when all Indonesian citizens have their own personal computer, telephone line, and e-mail address.

Speed, speed, and speed. It is the keyword in our lives - a prominent British sociologist, Anthony Giddens, has called it a “run away world”.  Let us think about some matters regarding this run away world. First, the human capacity to achieve progress is incredible. We have to highlight this fact to answer the cynicism of religious people (mainly fundamentalists) who underestimate the potency of human reason. They always say that reason is limited. Yet we’ve never known where the limit is, therefore it is right to say that human’s reason is unlimited.

Second, what is the Muslim worlds contribution to this rapid technological progress? Islam is recognized as a pro-knowledge religion. Nevertheless, the progress of science and technology in the Muslim world is slow. What Muslim scholar has ever obtained a Nobel Prize in science except for professor Abdussalam from Pakistan and an adherent of the Ahmadiyah sect? The Muslim world’s challenge is thus to develop education as far as possible since only by this means can it ‘fight’ the West (if it is right that the “West” must be fought though to me the should be considered a comrade to learn from).

Third, such rapidity will have a broad impact upon the social structure and lifestyle of modern society. Some of the impacts will be positive, some will be negative. Social values and norms will change fast: some will get better, some will get worse. The Prophet has said that God will send a reformer at the beginning of each era. The birth of a social reformer occurs, according to the hadits, every hundred years. This hadit is relevant to pre-modern society where transformations were slower though of course the cycle of social transformation in the age of the internet, email, and SMS, is fast. Muslims needs reformers in every field, every year, every month and every week.

(Translated by Lanny Octavia, edited by Jonathan Zilberg)