By Hera Diani
Conservative and liberal Muslims in Indonesia are taking their fight for
hearts and minds to Twitter. Is that good or bad?
It's Saturday, which means it's time for Muslim scholar Ulil Abshar Abdalla
to greet his nearly 10,000 followers on Twitter and discuss the religious
issues of the day. Ulil, who is affiliated with the Islamic Liberal Network,
jokingly calls it `TweetFatwa', a dig at the conservative Indonesian Ulema
Council, which frequently issues fatwas against anything from Hollywood
movie 2012 (for depicting Armageddon), to women using hair-straightening
products (a desire to improve physical appearance can lead to immoral acts),
to women riding on motorcycle taxis (close physical contact with the
opposite sex).
Ulil's Tweets usually focus on grassroots issues tied to Islamic
jurisprudence, or fiqh, such as why eating pork is forbidden in Islam,
female circumcision and interest at banks. He promotes pluralism and
religious tolerance, but also Tweets about football, donuts and Luna Maya,
his favorite Indonesian actress.
Why is a scholar a goat and who's calling who a `girly man'?
Click here to read the Tweets.
Ulil is part of a growing number of Indonesians turning to Twitter to spread
their message. The social networking site, which currently has more than 100
million users across the globe, continues to take Indonesia by storm.
Earlier this year, Sysomos, an international social media monitoring firm,
ranked Indonesia sixth globally in terms of number of users, after the
United States, Brazil, Britain, Canada and Germany.
Indeed, Thailand-based media consultant Jon Russell recently named Jakarta
the `Twitter Capital of Asia.'
`With a population of 230 million plus, Indonesia is a huge potential market
for social networking, just in numbers alone,' he told Reuters, adding that
Twitter's popularity is largely due to the low cost of mobile Internet
devices and increasing demand for smartphones.
This popularity has not gone unnoticed by Muslim commentators in a country
that also has by far the largest Muslim population in the world. The
mainstream camp includes Ulil's colleague from the Liberal Islam Network,
Luthfie Syaukanie (2,691 followers); noted Muslim cleric Quraish Shihab
(28,862 followers) and Komarudin Hidayat, a Muslim scholar and rector of the
State Islamic University in Jakarta, (2,661 followers).
But conservatives aren't shying from the Twitter debate either. Information
Minister Tifatul Sembiring, for example, has 52,658 followers, while fellow
leaders of the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party and activists from
Islamic hard-line group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia also have a presence.
`My friends urged me to join Twitter. I'm enjoying it so far, as it's easier
and simpler to share ideas compared with other social media sites,' says
Komarudin, who has passed the 2500 followers mark despite having only joined
on May 24. `It's also more interactive, so I can reach a wider audience.'
Many Indonesian Twitter users, affectionately known as `Tweeps,' are
thrilled to be able to interact with moderate Muslim figures in the comfort
of cyberspace where, in real time, they can discuss their hopes and
anxieties—including that Indonesia is becoming more religiously conservative
and intolerant.
Bali-based writer Rudolf Dethu says that while he's agnostic, he follows
moderate Muslims' Tweets, as they show that Islam is actually more flexible
and responsive to current issues than its popular image often suggests.
Screenwriter Ginatri S. Noer agrees, saying she has gained a greater insight
into different points of view on Islam by following Ulil and Quraish.
`I'm glad to have found Ulil on Twitter,' she says. `My father opposes the
[Liberal Islam Network] so much, and [those views are] what I had heard for
years before following Ulil on Twitter'.
The network has come in for criticism from many conservatives who don't
agree with its message of pluralism and liberalism—they accuse it of
spreading a defiant tenet of Islam. One group, the Islamic Community
Brotherhood Forum, went so far as to declare in 2005 that Ulil's blood is
halal, or permitted under Islamic law, meaning that it was acceptable for
Muslims to kill him.
These voices are finding Twitter a useful tool with which to spread their
message. Hard-liners from Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, for example, which wants
to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state, constantly take to the Web to warn
of the dangers of secularism, pluralism and liberalism.
`There are a bunch of Tweeps who loathe, or at least are suspicious of, the
very idea of pluralism and tolerance,' Ulil says. But he adds that what he
has found most surprising on Twitter is that many urban dwellers who seem
easygoing and love to go clubbing, for example, turn out to lean towards the
strongly conservative side when it comes to religious issues.
`It shows how people still take religious teachings for granted and refuse
to use reason,' he says. Ulil points to his decision to criticize the public
furor over the `Everybody Draw Mohammed Day' competition on Facebook, which
he says prompted numerous critical comments despite him having also
criticized those who like to provoke Muslims by insulting their religion.
Indeed, as the attacks mounted in May, Ulil lost his patience and said he
wouldn't Tweet about religious issues anymore, lashing out at one Tweep who
asked him about interfaith marriage, saying that he `couldn't care less'
(although he apologized the next day, saying he had learned a lesson about
Tweeting in a bad mood).
Ulil, who used to be known for his verbal sparring on TV and radio with
radical Islamic clerics over interpretations of the Koran, toned it down for
a few days, but reemerged with a vengeance following the deadly military
attack by Israel on a Turkish vessel purportedly carrying humanitarian
assistance for Gaza. Ulil condemned the attack, but urged people not to link
the Israel-Palestine conflict with religion because it's a political issue.
Not surprisingly, all hell broke loose as dozens of Twitter users bombarded
him with angry tweets.
But conservative Muslims aren't immune from attacks either, including
Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring (who some would argue has it coming
with controversial statements such as blaming the country's frequent
earthquakes and other natural disasters on immorality).
Tifatul, whose twitter ID is @tifsembiring, has complained that the negative
Tweeps are excessively harsh, but this didn't stop him launching a
mischievous competition in November to find his harshest critic after his
ministry blocked a Web site displaying cartoons depicting the Prophet
Muhammad.
The winner was Aribowo Sangkoyo, who Tweeted, `Nazis is now spelled PKS,
@tifsembiring (they) are the Joseph Goebbels of our time!' Aribowo won a
Nokia phone as a prize, although he turned it down because he didn't `want
him (Tifatul) to feel that he had won.' Indeed, he has continued his attacks
on Tifatul and the PKS, frequently dismissing them as camel traders because
of their tendency to follow Middle Eastern traditions.
The battle between moderate and conservative Muslims on Twitter is a
microcosm of the global difficulty of fostering constructive dialog among
opposing religious views.
Komarudin plays down the Twitter wars, saying that it's all just part of a
process of people becoming more mature. `People are free to express
different opinions, but some of the harsh comments on Twitter show that
people still have a superficial understanding of religion and tolerance,' he
says. `Let them be. I believe their numbers are low.'
But Roby Muhammad, a social media observer and psychology lecturer at the
University of Indonesia, says that while the Internet can be a tool for
democracy through giving people a greater voice, it also polarizes debate
between moderate and conservative Muslims.
`The Internet brings freedom, including the freedom to choose
friends/users/news that justify our opinions,' Roby says. `So, people just
choose to make friends with people who share the same views as them.'
http://the-diplomat.com/2010/06/22/twitter-wars-in-asia/
http://the-diplomat.com/2010/06/22/twitter-wars-in-asia/2/
http://the-diplomat.com/2010/06/22/twitter-wars-in-asia/3/
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