Text and Identity

(This article previously published in Indonesian on 20/9/2004)

According to structuralism the subject is only a player in a structure which constrains his or her actions. The individual’s subjectivity is either denied or neglected (Cahoone, 1996). How do structuralist perspectives comprehend the role of religious texts in the formation of individual world views? Is it possible to escape structural shackles?

There is a great distance between the ideal world and reality. Reality affects the interpretation of ideas so that ideas are always being transformed and adjusted (Habermas 1996). If text –mainly religious text- is read literally while ignoring the reality of context, it will produce dogmatic thought or ideology. In this perception the text is reality. Without getting involved in a debate between structuralism and existentialism, we can say that text contributes to the formation of individual and group worldviews, and that this worldview will be socialized sometimes as a form of indoctrination. 

Text as the Identity Maker

Religious text inherited by previous ulemas contained messages affirming that Islam is a comprehensive point of view which includes morals and norms for individual and social life and for the implementation of states. Here text must be left as it is. However in order to adapt it to the current context, it needs contextualization. Otherwise, a dogmatic conception will result since those texts are taken as an ideal reality. This reading is possible by observing the language of the holy book (religious text) as demotic language (Fryee, 1962) in which text is understood as reality itself.

This model of reading makes those religious texts blue prints of an ideal reality. Any different interpretation is considered an abuse of religion. Such textual reading has been the case for centuries in the Muslim world despite the existence of other readings such as Sufism. But the textual model of reading dominates Muslim discourse.

The Islamic message is seen as a set of values and regulations for social order as actualized in the life of the Prophet and during the first generation of Muslims at Medina. These regulations were ‘codified’ through classical religious texts and afterward sacralized. With time, they became dogma. A dogmatic interpretation of the Koran is the main discourse underlying Muslim political attitudes. 

One can say that ‘religious politicization’ is based on a classical episteme which romanticized a better past though some say it is naïve to think that classical reasoning cannot go beyond dogmatic reasoning (Arkoun 1992). The dogmatic vision observes reality darkly and demands that it must be changed. It resists rational dialog and does not benefit democratic discourse in which any discourse has the right to be followed. Instead there should be a consensus based on common sense and equality.

Today, this dogmatic ideology incites conflict. This statement is based on the fact that the politics of identity – ethnicity, race, religion and class- still dominate collective awareness. It is frightening that in dogmatic ideology there is no mechanism for dealing with conflict except through violence. We must realize that every era has its own episteme, certain ways of reading reality. One needs to have the courage to allow for scientific thought. We also have to emphasize the Sufi view of religious spirituality as the main foundation unaffected by politics, since their esoteric reading emphasizes the essence of religion rather than religious formalism. This will lead to the formation of a broad, tolerant and inclusive mentality.

(Translated by Lanny Octavia, edited by Jonathan Zilberg)