Ini tentang Opini Saya

Pembelaan Diri. 

Sekian lama halaman ini dibiarkan kosong. Sekian lama ide ini dibiarkan menguap bebas. Entah mengapa pikiran dan kemauan untuk menulis, menggenapi kepuasan pun tiada bertemu mula apalagi muka. Namun, pada minggu ini, batin saya tersentil untuk membayar kepuasan yang telah lama terabaikan, mulai merangkai kata menjadi frasa, membebaskan jari untuk berekspresi memilih huruf dalam sistem qwerty.

Uap Ide yang Tertangkap.

Pagi ini, dengan sengaja, saya mencoba membuka jejaring sosial tereksis abad ini. Niatnya memang hanya ingin tahu siapa yang berulang tahun hari ini. Texting to her/his timeline and wishing something blessed for her/his blissful day. Namun, tak dinyana, ternyata saya mendapati status seorang teman lama yang sangat debatable for someone who placed emotion above mind. Ia memutuskan untuk berpindah kewarganegaraan yang otomatis mengubah seratus delapan puluh derajat kultur hidupnya. Ia termasuk vokal dalam memperjuangkan idealismenya untuk mengubah kondisi negara hampir sama dengan negara maju lainnya. Karena ketidaknyamanan sistem yang ia rasakan dalam kehidupan serta tingkah laku para pemimpin negara yang egois dan mau menang sendiri ditambah koar-koar media massa tentang oknum suatu agama yang tingkahnya secara tidak langsung mengadu domba hubungan manusia, maka negara maju adalah pilihan terbaik untuknya.

Status di sosial media, memang ajang yang paling empuk untuk menyuarakan apapun. You’re free to speaks and comments. Anggaplah saya kepo –knowing every particular object- minded. Lagi-lagi niatnya ingin berkunjung. Masa sih, teman lama tidak bercengkarama? Angin segar pun ternyata mendukung niatan saya dengan status yang terpampang jelas di layar gadget. Status yang ia tulis, sebagian besar bertujuan baik. Ia ingin mengubah kultur negara yang amburadul ini menjadi lebih tertata, disamakan dengan kultur negara maju yang saling menghargai, jujur, dan continuous improvement minded. Namun, cara yang ia tuangkan, terkesan frontal dan cenderung terpengaruh hasutan media, mencap buruk suatu agama mayoritas warga Indonesia, yang sebenarnya ia pernah anut sebelum keyakinannya berbalik menjadi pengecaman. Sangat disayangkan, apabila kita membaca dengan cermat berita-berita luar negeri, sebagian besar mencoreng nama baik muslim dengan teroris, front pembela Islam, dan oknum muslim lainnya yang melakukan tindakan melanggar norma hingga asusila nan radikal sebagai objek pelaku serta umat agama lain sebagai objek penderitanya. Mari kita baca berita mengenai atheis yang dilansir oleh New York Times berjudul For Indonesian Atheist, a Community of Support Amid Constant Fear dibawah ini :

JAKARTA — Karina is an atheist, but her friends jokingly call her “the prophet.” That is because she is helping nurture a community for unbelievers in predominantly Muslim Indonesia, where trumpeting one’s disbelief in God can lead to abuse, ostracism and even prison.

 “It’s very normal for atheists to be paranoid because the environment does not support them,” said Ms. Karina, 26, who uses only one name. But, she said, “in this group people don’t need to be afraid.”

Indonesian Atheists was founded with a Facebook page in 2008 and now holds regular gatherings. The Internet has offered its members a safe space to air their opinions, and the feeling of community has made them braver about gathering in public. But recent prosecutions of people who made online comments deemed blasphemous by the country’s courts have stoked fears that they too could come under attack.

“Members’ growing outspokenness and courage does not indicate that other people increasingly accept us,” said Karl Karnadi, 29, the group’s founder. He lives in Germany and is candid about being a nonbeliever on Facebook and Twitter. Inside Indonesia, atheists are circumspect about their views, he said, and refrain from public criticism of Islam or any statements that could run afoul of the country’s blasphemy law. Still, he said, that is an advance from a time when people were fiercely secretive.

“At first people think they’re alone,” Mr. Karl said in a Skype interview. “But after we meet each other, we feel like we’re accepted. We’re together if anything happens to us, and that feeling of community is very valuable.”

While the Indonesian Constitution enshrines freedom of religion, legal protection is afforded only to six official faiths — Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. Citizens are required to list their religion on national identity cards. Violating the country’s blasphemy law by insulting or interfering with the practice of one of the official faiths can bring a five-year prison term.

Concerns about the application of that law against religious minorities have risen amid an increase in religiously motivated violence that rights campaigners say is threatening a tradition of tolerance in Indonesia.

A recent report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch said reported cases of religious violence in Indonesia had increased by 20 percent since 2010. The Setara Institute, a research organization based in Jakarta, documented 264 attacks on religious minorities last year.

Those perpetuating the violence are largely militant Islamists who have an “uncompromising view of religious purity,” said Phelim Kine, a deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “Compounding that is a complete failure by the Indonesian government to confront this violence and put a stop to it.”

Officials say that while, under the Constitution, each citizen is entitled to whatever private belief he chooses, religious activities outside the home must be controlled by the state to maintain public order.

“Someone who belongs to one particular religion has also to respect other religious communities,” said Nur Kholis Setiawan, head of the center for research and development of religious life at the Ministry of Religious Affairs. “The state has an authority and an obligation to manage religious life in the public forum.”

It has done so, however, through several regulations that Mr. Kine says have been used against religious minorities, including a ministerial decree that has prevented Christian groups from opening churches and the 1965 blasphemy law, which courts have used more than a dozen times since 2005 to prosecute Shiites, Christians and atheists.

Last year Alexander Aan, a civil servant in West Sumatra, was charged with blasphemy for posting “God does not exist” along with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on a Facebook page he administered dedicated to atheism. Months later another man, Sebastian Joe, was charged under the same law for insulting Islam, also on Facebook.

Both men were eventually sentenced to prison under a separate electronic communications law that prohibits the transmission of defamatory information through the Internet. Mr. Alexander was sentenced to two and half years for “disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred.” Mr. Sebastian was sentenced to five years.

A report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, a global organization representing atheists and freethinkers, listed Indonesia among a number of Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh and Egypt, that have stepped up prosecution of religious expression in social media. According to the group, which submitted its report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Feb. 25, more than a dozen people, in 10 countries, were charged with “blasphemous” statements on the Internet in 2012.

Despite concerns about attack or arrest, Ms. Karina is among the more than a thousand members of Indonesian Atheists, many of who are increasingly speaking out. In 2011 some members started another group, You Ask Atheists Answer, a forum that aims to facilitate discussions about atheism in the hope of breaking down hostile stereotypes.

Because the forum is open, many Indonesian Atheists members use aliases to post comments that might offend militant Islamists who have attacked those they consider apostates.

Members’ paths to atheism have varied. Some say they are from families whose unbending embrace of religion caused them to rebel, others say their more moderate upbringing allowed them to question religion’s role in their lives. Most say the Internet has been a gateway to readings and discussions that have affirmed their disbelief.

Offline, they say the group is more than a collection of like minds. It is a source of friendship, a support network and a safety net. When Muhammad Ikhwan, who goes by Matthew Edison because his birth name is “so Islamic,” needed money to repay a debt to his estranged father, he said members collected 30 million rupiah, or about $3,000, to help him.

As the community has grown, however, so has the attention. An administrator of You Ask Atheists Answer said that he receives death threats and frequently gets messages demanding that he dissolve the group. He now uses a pseudonym on Facebook.

Some atheists say that if militant Islamists can violently attack other Muslims they deem heretical — referring to raids on Shiite villages and members of the Ahmadiyah sect — worse things could happen to them. “We cannot expect that the government will protect us,” Mr. Edison said.

In February 2011, for example, hundreds of militant Islamists attacked an Ahmadiyah community in West Java and beat three people to death. A district court sentenced 12 of the perpetrators to jail terms of three to six months. The following month the same court sentenced an Ahmadiyah man wounded in the attack to six months in jail for inciting the violence. More recently, officials in Bekasi, West Java, sealed an Ahmadiyah mosque in a crackdown on what they called a “deviant” branch of Islam.

“The government is doing something wrong by not protecting constitutional rights,” said Philips J. Vermonte, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. The state has an obligation to defend the rights of minorities, he said. “But that’s what we don’t have right now in Indonesia.”

Mr. Karl, who said he had gradually renounced Christianity after years of reading books about science and religion and disillusion with religious groups who use faith to justify intolerant behavior, says that, as long as the law is used to attack those outside the religious mainstream, Indonesian atheists should be careful.

In the meantime, said Ms. Karina, group members will continue to gather, in the manner she applies to her own life. “I’m open,” she said, “but I’m not broadcasting.”

Pada paragraph pertama pun sudah dibuka dengan tagline buruk soal muslim dimana apabila terdapat non-God believers selain Islam menyuarakan ketidakpercayaannya pada Tuhan, maka akan berdampak pada penyiksaan, pengucilan, hingga menjadi buronan. Lalu, pada paragraph lima pun terlihat bahwa negara Indonesia hanya mengakui 6 agama yaitu Islam, Kristen, Katolik, Hindu, Buddha, dan Konghucu. Apabila ada warga yang ingin membuat KTP atau surat lainnya maka pastilah ada kolom agama yang harus diisi dengan pilihan keenam agama tersebut. Atheis ya tidak dianggap oleh negara.

Tergambar jelas bahwa atheis membenci sistem negara Indonesia yang sangat agamis. Semua harus mengidentifikasikan agama yang ia anut, padahal keyakinan itu hak tiap orang, jadi tidak etis rasanya apabila diumbar ke khalayak ramai. Ya, memang, keyakinan adalah hak tiap orang yang menjadi warga negara. Seperti yang termaktub dalam UUD 1945 Pasal 29 ayat 1 dan 2 dimana negara menjamin kemerdekaan tiap-tiap penduduk untuk memeluk agamanya masing-masing dan untuk beribadat menurut agama dan kepercayaannya itu. Kemudian, untuk dasar negara Indonesia pun menggunakan Pancasila, dimana sila 1 adalah Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa. UUD 1945 dan Pancasila dapat dijadikan sebagai patokan setiap warga, baik itu elite politik yang menjadi wakil rakyat maupun masyarakat awam. Sila 1 Pancasila menjelaskan bahwa semua penduduk yang menjadi warga negara Indonesia wajib memiliki agama atau theisme. Nah, agama yang dianut itulah yang dijamin kemerdekaannya untuk bebas berpindah, beribadat, bebas dari tindak diskriminasi, dan bebas untuk berserikat.

Pada paragraph lain dikatakan bahwa seseorang pernah menggambarkan sosok Rasul lewat kartun yang dibumbui dengan banyolan. Gambar tersebut disebarkan lewat sosial media. Polahnya, jelas menistakan agama Islam. Coba saja kalian pikir, bila agamamu dibuat candaan, Tuhan dan Nabimu dijadikan tokoh kartun sebagai bahan tertawaan. Bagaimana perasaanmu, wahai penganut agama? Kemudian, bahasan pun berlanjut menjadi soal penyerangan Ahmadiyah. Dimana kebebasan beragama yang digembar gemborkan? Demikian atheis bertanya. Sebenarnya, secara akidah dan syariat, Ahamdiyah sudah keluar dari ajaran Islam yang murni dan kaffah. Apabila ditelaah, Nabi terakhir Ahmadiyah bukanlah Nabi Muhammad. Inilah yang menjadi dasar bahwa Ahamdiyah sangat berbeda konteks dengan Islam. Ahmadiyah telah masuk ke dalam pasal penistaan agama. Apabila ia tidak men-judge dirinya Islam, maka tidak ada tindakan hukum yang menghakiminya. Lalu, mengapa mereka diserang dengan sadis hingga meninggal? Oknumlah yang melakukannya. Tidak semua umat Islam seperti oknum tersebut. Kami memang menentang, namun dengan cara yang tidak anarkis. Hubungan masih tetap baik, beribadah sesuai keyakinan masing-masing dan menghindari provokasi dari kedua belah pihak.

Sebenarnya bila kita bahas satu demi satu, takkan cukup waktu yang digunakan untuk menelaah poin demi poin berita tersebut. Namun, satu yang pasti bahwa semua agama mengajarkan perdamaian umat manusia. Demikian halnya Islam yang menjadi objek pelaku di atas. Islam mengajarkan Habbluminallah dan Habluminannas, jaga hubungan baik dengan Allah dan manusia, hubungan horizontal dan vertikal. Apabila ada penindasan, penyiksaan, hingga pembunuhan yang dilakukan oleh umat Islam, maka bisa dipastikan bahwa oknum yang berbuat demikian, tidak dapat digeneralisasi oleh perbuatan nista tersebut ke seluruh umat Islam. Sesuai dengan Firman Allah pada surat Al-kafirun ayat 6 : Lakum Diinukum Waliyadiin, untukmu agamamu dan untukkulah agamaku. Wallahu’alam.