The Ban of Minaret Hardly Stirs Controversy in Muslim World

It took me by surprise that news on the ban of erecting minaret passed recently through a referendum in Switzerland has stirred a scant attention and comment among Muslims, including in Indonesia. It seems that news on a recent bank scandal that plagued the country over last few months has overwhelmed Muslims in Jakarta and other major cities in Indonesia.

As I perused through national and local newspapers, comments by Muslim figures was hardly heard on this “incidence” in Switzerland, neither on electronic, nor on print media. The ban itself might not qualify to be an “explosive” issue that strike the Muslim nerve. Apparently the incident pales in comparison to Rushdie Affair, for instance.

However, the fear has been circulating in Switzerland right after the referendum that it will provoke an aggressive response from Muslim world as people learned from the past incident of Danish cartoon on the Prophet Muhammad. The French controversy on Muslim scarf has been a household topic all over the Muslim world. The scarf controversy received massive coverage on media. But not this minor incident in Switzerland.

The news came to my attention not through Indonesian news service, but through an English newspaper brought to me by a friend who just came back from Singapore. Few moments later, I stumbled on some notes on Facebook made by some of my friends on the incident. But the incident itself hardly made its way into the front pages of Indonesian newspapers and magazines.

The only response I paid attention to was from the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr. Ali Gomooah. He was quoted as saying that the ban is a sheer violation of religious freedom. None of Muslim clerics or scholars in Indonesia has lent their voice to protest the ban.

Why is the minaret incident in Switzerland not on the head-line of newspapers in Muslim world? The question has intrigued me as I expect that it might be symptomatic of a minor change in the way Muslim respond to any occurrences in Western countries that might irritate their religious sensitivity.

As far as Indonesian Muslim is concerned, it seems that the ban is in no way to beat the domestic controversy around a big bank scandal that many here speculate to lead into the unseating of the Vice President Boediono. However, the puzzle still lingers somewhere else as it didn’t make a way into the headlines in other Muslim countries. Why?

The easiest shot is that the incident in Switzerland is not explosive enough to stir a wide controversy. At the end of the day, it is just a minor one. However I don’t buy this. There were past instances in Indonesia where a minor religious incident turned into an entire mess that took the whole country by surprise.

The furor and violence in some of Muslim countries that ensued after the Danish cartoon was not an isolated incident. The cartoon itself was obviously explosive, but it is not by itself capable of being turned into an explosion unless an agent comes along the way to make it one. The social and political dimension of a controversy is also very important to take into account. In many cases, a minor religious incident turned into a gross mess as it benefits certain groups or even a ruling party to turn the people’s eye from another daunting issues.

Another possibility is that Danish cartoon controversy taught Muslim a good lesson. The whole mess that has been conducted in the name of defending the Prophet after the outbreak of Danish cartoon controversy seemed to have tarnished the image of Islam. Instead of of doing a good service to the Muslim interest, in plays into a “dirty” game played by many right-wing movements that mushroom in Western countries recently. It fuels also the existing image of Muslim as a “riotous umma”.

There is a also another positive development that shouldn’t slip out from our sight. The fact that the Grand Mufti of Egypt used the language of religious freedom (i.e. his comment that the ban is in violation of religious freedom) might be seen as a positive development. We can see it, in a way, as a “secularization” of religious discourse.

Others may argue that the use of a secular discourse here in not out of a principled commitment to democratic values that entail, among other things, a respect for religious freedom. It could be suspected as a pragmatic appropriation of a secular language dictated by a temporary exigencies.

But, don’t ever take this pragmatic appropriation lightly. The history of religious tolerance in European land as well as in the US has evidenced that the adoption of the idea of tolerance was primarily motivated by the pursuance of a pragmatic solution to the protracted religious conflicts.

Tolerance is not simply a Platonic idea, but rather a pragmatic concept that’s seen as the most reasonable way to get out from the raging religious war. Parties that come to a truce that ends the religious conflict might not be a true believer in the virtue of religious tolerance. But that’s not the issue.

I am completely aware that there is a sort of playing a double standard here. When non-Muslim hurts the Muslim’s religious freedom, Muslim leaders rush into using the language of right. When it come to Muslim mistreating religious minorities in Muslim lands, they shut their mouth. Isn’t a sheer hypocrisy? Yes, no doubt.

But as Muslim come to the realization that the language of religious freedom is the most pragmatic language that serve their interest in protecting their fellow Muslim minorities in Western countries, we may expect that sooner or later this language becomes “the only game in town” in Muslim world. What started as a pragmatism might turn into a principled commitment.[]