The role of Democratic Society in Regulating and controlling religious activity

Background
The world, nowadays, seems to have single ideology that is democracy. In any country, the spirit of democracy is now blown and regarded as highest accepted ideology. However, the world with its plurality, is now facing the challenge of having a peaceful world to live in. The challenge of religious truth claims lead most thinkers to provide the third language to facilitate alternatives on toleration among the truth claimers. The idea of secularism has emerged as an object of academic argument and of practical dispute. This is the growing interest in questions of modernity. However, most anthropologists continued to show little interest in question of secularity and secularization. Most thinkers believe the need of new model of religion and modernity. Such great thinkers name arise like Talal Asad, John Hick, Sayyed Nasr, John Rawls, Diana Eck, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Jurgen Habermas, etc. In Indonesia we also know such name like Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), Nurcholis Madjid (Cak Nur) who are dedicating their research to create a bridge or third language where every people could harmoniously living together despite of their Religious affiliation, race or skin colour.
Modernity, which has been reach by Western civilization, is centrally taking the role that influencing this new idea of secularism. Modernity with all tools altogether with its indicators such as technology, industry, and science take the most responsibility in influencing the global change all over world population jump hill to the culture, values of the society and the way civilian think in the third world civilization even the global warming. Modernity has successfully driven people to live in smaller world and within plurality that undoubtedly unavoidable.
Nowadays we frequently heard news about clashed mass almost happened all over the world and every day. Something jumped into my mind when I heard this kind of news. Why people do so? Religion supposed to bring peace rather than violence or brutality. I finally found the answer that is lied in the media releases the news itself. Media have very widely broad in scale of conveying ideas to the audiences or spectators. These media have chances to generate culture, either the good one on conversely to the bad one.
Democration
The idea of Democracy was firstly used by Socrates (469-399 bca) who has been sentenced to death because of his idea was againts the monarchy (Athena) system that was ruling in that era. The basic fundament of democration is freedom and equality. Democracy is a concept, which is flexible eventhough it comes from western secular societies. This concept could be absorbed and considered as the most human approaches over centuries. Democracy put everybody equal as in every individual people inherit human right. It is acknowledge in the declaration of human right, Including freedom of religion. The principle of freedom of democratic country is freedom itself. People should live freely. If people do not live freely mean that they are slaves. Include in this freedom is choosing religion and doing whatever people’s believe, of course in the corridor of respect each other. In this democratic atmosphere people could live in pluralistic way. Pluralistic in culture, in nature, in religion, in races and so forth. Even in doing their liturgy.
Most of the religious thinker suggested that religion was not supposed to be exposed in public sphere, but let it become a personal matter, as it happened in Western societies or America. There, people could live in the same neighborhood for such a long time without knowing what other people’s religion is. In my opinion this condition is not totally correct. There is nothing wrong to know about people’s religion, since by then we know what they like and they don’t. for example when we invite other for having dinner, if we know that our neighbor is Moslem we could avoid to serve pork or any kind of meat from a pig, that is considered forbidden for Moslem to eat. According to Paul F, Knitter and Hanskung, what we supposed to develop is correlation and responsible interfaith dialog globally. He explained that people should accept the plurality of the religion honestly and more serious rather than like what we have done in the past.
Today people live in globalizing world in wich the world’s societies are rapidly becoming interconnected economically, politically and culturally. There are fewer than 190 autonomous nation state in the contemporary world, although many of these states contain communities that maintain old fashion ways of live based on hunting and gathering, preindustrial agriculture, animal herding or some combination thereof.
The Relation between Religion and State
Before discussing the role of a democratic society in regulating and controlling religious activity, we should see the type of the relation between religion and the state. In fact on its journey this relation also experiencing evolution, which in the end resulted civilization. Civilization paradigm has its own pattern, which is always bound in time and situation. It comes, rises and then gone. This is mainly because of two reasons, which are; 1. The dynamic of human mind, and 2. society needs itself . This relation could be mapped into three Paradigms:
1. Integral Paradigm
In this paradigm, Religion and state are integrated. The area of religion is covering politic or state. State is also play role as religious institution as well as politic. The ideology is divine sovereignty. This such system is usually Theocracy, since the sovereignty is in God’s decision.
2. Symbiotic Paradigm
The relation in this paradigm is symbiotical mutualism. Religion and state are completing each other. In this relation, Religion needs State to be able to develop, and in another hand the state also need religion since by then state could be developed comprehensively, not only its material but also spiritual, social and keep the people to have morality in daily activity.
3. Secular Paradigm
State and religion are separated in this paradigm. This paradigm mostly used by Western secular states.
In my opinion, the best paradigm approach, which is possibly used for Indonesia is the symbiotic paradigm. Indonesia is secular from the perspective of legacy, but in reality (de facto) Indonesians are religious. Indonesia is known as the country with biggest Muslim population all over the world. From all of the population, about 80 % are Muslims. People live their life with religion as identity, but still can live together in tolerance way. Naturally, people are respecting each other. In fact, this is the indigenous nature of most Indonesian people. Culture that has been perpetuated over generation. The question which raises is how such nature transformed in almost all Indonesian people?. Sigmund Freud has the explanation over the similar question. When he was asked to explain memories which is “remembered” by the whole human race over religions. The answer lies on collective memories, that is possibly inherited. The notion of collective memories in unconsciousness itself was influenced by lamarck, a French philosopher, which holds that an experience acquired during one’s live can be biologically inherited by descendents. We can observe, from that point, the nature of Javanese are mostly similar to each other. This is also happened to Batakneese or any other ethnicities in Indonesia. This natural similarity according to Durkheim created people commitment to their society. The nature and culture, has restored a sense of community, of shared identity and purpose, to a neighborhood of otherwise poor, isolated, even disillusioned individuals . Durcheim asserted : The idea of society is the soul of religion.
The idea of state itself is rooted in the formation of the community., and community consist of Individuals with all of their uniqueness. The fact, that people of Indonesia are religious, can not be ignored in choosing kind of relation which is going to be developed. The most vital contribution of religion toward ethical awareness draws into two aspect; vision and energy. Religion gives hope to its adherent that they can change and transform the world, which is full of hatred and enmity, into the better world where people could work and live together in harmonious mutuality and love. The hope produces the energy which unite people to gain that goal together. All of religion brings metanoia internal change, enlightment which produces something we never imagine before.
Symbiotic paradigm approach is acceptable to be implement in Indonesia. In fact, Pancasila which has been chosen by Indonesia’s founding father as the state ideology for Indonesian multi-religious and multi-cultural society, has effectively proven itself as a modus vivendi
Religion as Social Capital.
Strong state requires morality and good behavior from its citizens which is mostly influenced by religious values. The civilization can only be developed by these virtues. For instances, the notion to help each other, giving the charity, helping the needy voluntary are rooted in religious norms. Such activities are named as philantropic activities which simply means love and care. The influences of religious norms are dominant here both in theory and practice. In “Rigveda” (Hindus holly book) there is a teaching of “Danaa”. “Danaa” is a teaching which encourage its adherents to give something to Monks, Nuns, Brahmins and also to the needy. This is also touch in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In Islam, helping other especially the needy one is an obligatory and always interconnected in Muslim’s faithfulness. The concepts of Zakat , Shodaqoh , infaq are evidences that Islam has developed the idea of social development in order to build civilized society. These all are in accordance with what Paul F Knitter explanation above about
But, religious norms, which Fukuyama classified it into hierarchycal process, is, of course, not the only source of the morality. Franciscus Fukuyama explained that morality can also be tracked from the idea of spontaneous order or arrangement. This notion is based on Darwin’s idea of evolution. By quoting Kevin Kelley, Wired magazine’s editor director, Fukuyama explained the phenomenon of a flock of bees, which showed a very complicated behavior of working together in a harmony, without any of them are acting as administer. This group of bees is organized, because each of them is obeying their simple rule such as: get over flower’s bud, avoid obstacles and stay close each other. He named this kind of process as “adaptive complex system”.
I would like to say that religion has it own importance position, characteristic and role in development of the nation. It is a kind of resources as natural resources, or human resources. In fact it is the way people conduct their live in such a long period of time. Social evolution told us how people struggle very hard to find the meaning of live. From the era of “Totem and Taboo” until animism and now monotheistic believe, people still urge to disclose the resource within human bodies and minds. Social capital which could be derived from my explanation above are, disciplines (including obeying law and respecting the agreement), helping values, care each other, toleration, and so forth which eventually develop civilization.
Democratic Freedom in Boundary and the role of the state

In democratic society, people are equally free, no matter what their ethnicity, religious affiliation, gender etc. State should guarantee this as human basic right. In fact, there are not only few citizens but millions of them, then, how state possibly satisfy each citizens, of course it will be impossible for a state to give satisfaction to their every single citizens. There must be a consensus among people regarding this matter, which include what to do and not to do. This consensus is the clue for citizens of how they should behave to each other, to know what their right and others right at once. In general term, people should learn to respect other’s right by mean of respecting his or her own respect. The boundary, which is developed, is creating respectful manner in which people could choose certain behaviour to be adapted in their social relationship. This needs a very hard effort from all members within the society.
The government should create agendas of social construction, which is integrated within the whole country’s development strategies and practices. Indonesia founding fathers, for instance, had taken such effort in order to maintain stability of the nation with its plurality of ethnic, religions and tribes. Choosing pancasila as national consensus reflected their wisdom in accommodating all citizens interests. Even in the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia (As amended by the First Amendment of 1999, the Second Amendment of 2000, the Third Amendment of 2001 and the Fourth Amendment of 2002), in Chapter XI about: Religion, Article 29, mention :
“(2) The State guarantees all persons the freedom of worship, each according to his/her own religion or belief.”
Now it is our turn to relay and perpetuate their agendas as well as keeping their spirit.
The government should also use all tools to propagate tolerance culture. TV media, for instance, with its widest covering range in term of catching the audiences, is a very effective as well as powerful instrument to use. We can see the impact of this media in changing characters of our young generations, which is in the tip changing the culture, the relation among people in community, materialistic behaviour, individualistic and any other impacts. Despite of those bad impacts, of course, there are also good impacts. This is just common effect, which always leaves two side of impacts, which is good side in one hand and bad side in the other. Its all depend on how seriously we do the effort in maximizing all instruments available and use it to gain the goals.
Developing local wisdom is also effective as well as powerful. In this case, some areas in Indonesia could be target as model. What I mean by model here is that we could learn and take lesson from what have happened in these areas. Such areas like Ambon, in Sulawesi, and Solo in Central Java, which famously called “short wired city” since religious or ethnic conflicts easily ignited, have experiences in curing and reconciling. Learn from Yogyakarta, demographically, the relation among people are stronger compare with those in solo. In Yogyakarta, a lot of social organisations are developed base on their hobbies and interest. For instance, turtledove (local: perkutut) lover club and old cycle club, which spread all over Yogyakarta, are clubs base on hobbies. The member can be everybody regardless the ethnicity, religious affiliation or social status. People within the club share experiences and even expertise in favour of their hobbies. In fact, it tightened the relation among people within plurality. When they meet each other, they already have something to talk, some thing they can share in common. In my opinion, local government of Solo should learn from people of Yogyakarta. By propagating local wisdom, the distance among ethnicities, religions and social status could be decreased.
We also could learn and share with other country such as New Zealand. According to Prof. Simon Rae, New Zealanders are now also facing challenges that is to define a place for religion in such a secular society; a place that will ensure that those who do continue to value and practice their faiths are respected and not subjected to gratuitous insult under the guise of ‘free speech’, and that public space is accorded to those religious communities that aspire to contribute to society and its development – including the religions of those who have come to live in New Zealand under the more recently liberalised migration patterns and who have enlarged the range of religions in our community and strengthened some existing religious communities to the point where they are no longer ‘invisible’. It is obvious that Religion is a real phenomenon eventhough it contains a lot of abstract things and some time irrational. What we can learn is that government should guarantee that people are not step over other’s right while enjoying their own right. To respect to each other is something to be implement from the very beginning. School could be the best place to be used to cultivate tolerant sense.

Conclusion
Anthropologists are having a hunch that human beings are the outcome of their history. Social structure has constructed men’s personality. Leaving the result of the long social process is just like purifying the opium from the blood of the addict. However, if the person successfully did it, he or she is actually not really free from their built up experiences, it remains in their unconsciousness, and Freud himself pointed that the more a person put thing into his or her own unconsciousness the more neurotic they will come. Freud is unique. He has his different view of overcoming the problem of illness (neurotic); he said, to begin to leave it behind is the first signal of health. According to himself the more things men put into human unconsciousness the more neurotic a person will come.
The role of state is to guarantee the freedom of it’s citizen and also open and create chances to cultivate tolerant culture among people within the country. Democracy can also be mean as equality before the law, so that Law enforcement should be upright. People must respect the consensus. Government should guarantee that people are not step over other’s right while enjoying their own right. If the government is able to maintain this condition, then we have nothing to worry about. People could still embrace their chosen religion and do religious activities. In fact it gives more positive impact since religion generally propose their adherents to have good behaviour base on their religious teaching. In this global world, plurality is unavoidable thing. For that reason we should work together hand by hand to develop civilized society. Society in where people could live together in harmony. Let see deeper inside our heart, we will see what we really like to have in our society. We might claim our religion as the truth one, but we should also realize that other adherents will think the same way. Then who is going to judge, which is really the truth one. Religion is the way to find the ultimate reality. People can choose their own way, which might be diverse even within same religion. “that everybody should honour their God according to the belief given to him or her by God, without hatred of the other or causing trouble, and the rest will be entrusted to God who is the judge over all belief and all souls.” I Wish people could live in happiness and harmony. [ ]

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