Managing Primordialism in Maluku, Towards Conflict Prevention and A Better Social Life

Abstrack:

History has proven that despite different religious identity labels, people have been able to live in harmony, and sharing care and love with each other. The life story of Domminggus Willem Syaranamual who was struggling against separatism in Maluku till the end of his life and died on the caring hand of Muhammad Malawat and his family in Mamala village illustrates this point. Primordialism was the basic idea to utilize religion as a reason for a massive rebellion in many places in Maluku for around 3 years starting in January 1999. Almost all aspects of a harmonic interaction between people has been broken since then. The Malino Agreement proved to be the momentum for a ?ceasefire? and the termination of physical confrontation between the conflicting communities. However, the impact of the conflict still remains. It is argued that dichotomies fertilize primordialism. This paper employs a couple of cases to study the penetration of primordial practices in Ambon (Maluku). As a former conflict area, these primordial ways of thinking must be managed in an appropriate conflict-prevention strategy for the sake of people welfare, if we do not want the time bomb to explode sometime in the future. Golden time and story that Maluku used to be a land where tolerance and love across religions was cultivated must be succeeded again.

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