- Authors: Azis Anwar Fahcrodin
- From: Center for Religion and Cross Cultural Studies Graduate School Universitas Gadjah Mada
Abstract:
Among the challenges faced by those involved in the struggle for justice and equality for adherents of indigenous beliefs in “religious countries” such as Indonesia is, besides the political system of the country, the very definition of religion. There has been the view?and this is believed by some Indonesian religious authorities as well as government officials’ that Indonesia’s indigenous beliefs (aliran kepercayaan) are not religion because they are not yet fulfilling the requirements to be considered religion, that is, having the idea of God, prophet-like founding figures, and scripture. In turn, due to this monotheism-biased paradigm in defining religion, Indonesia’s aliran kepercayaans are categorized merely as “culture”. As a result, the adherents of indigenous beliefs are regarded as not yet having any religion, causing their inability to get full civil rights as compared to the adherents of the officially recognized six religions. This paper challenges this paradigm and argues that considering those indigenous beliefs to be religion is, instead, theoretically valid. The main argument is that because the definition of religion is always evolving and politically contested and that the common understanding (including that which is embraced by the Indonesian government) of religion is actually “world religions”-biased and, thus, a modern construction, the word “religion” is highly possible to be redefined in a way that can include the indigenous beliefs; and such a redefiniton is scientifically legitimate.
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