A Peaceful, Religious Group, but Threat Other Violently

STUDENT URN NUMBER

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MODULE NUMBER
PSYM013

ASSIGNMENT TITLE
Essay

WORD COUNTS 1643

The word jihad had dramatically change since what happened in November 11th, a lot of
innocence people died in vain at the world trade centre tower. Most people would relate
Muslims into something that is horrifying, such as Terrorist, Suicide Bombers, and
Violent (Schuett, 2006). Despite the fact that the actual word of jihad has a very
contradictory meaning from what people assume what it is.

There are reasons why jihad seems to be the kind of act that cause violence instead of
peace, one of them because there are a lot of misunderstanding between each scholars in
interpreting the word jihad itself, which leads to multiple translation, or meaning of the
word (Harb & Fischer, 2013). The true nature of jihad is actually all about struggle, to hold
on, to survive, and to be defensive, instead of attacking the opposite side. It is written in the
holy Quran, that to do jihad is to defend the truth of Islam with ones life, but also stated in
another verse it is forbidden to harm or even a suicide bombing (Harb & Fischer, 2013;
Schuett, 2006). Theoretically, it should be a loving and peaceful religion, but in reality it is
the other way round. Worst-case scenario that happened is some people relate the word
jihad is to protect Islam and its followers from any harm, and keep everything as written in
the Quran by any imaginable ways, even if it is necessary is to kill the sinner.

In 2002, ex American President George W. Bush once said that To all Americans must
recognize that the face of the terror is not the true face of Islam. Islam is a faith that brings
comfort to billion people around the world. Its a faith that has made brother and sister of
every race, its a faith based upon love, not hate (Fair, Malhotra, & Shapiro, 2012). The

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Majority of Muslims in all of country oppose the violence act in the name of Islam (Acar,
2009; Tessler & Nachtwey, 1998).

The one who deserve the blame is not the whole entity of Muslim people, but this is just act
from a certain group of people, that use Islam as their vehicle which jihadi scholars can
take advantage from it, like for example what happened in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden
used Jihad to promote and justify military action against the Soviet Union (Schuett, 2006).
Taking every measure imaginable just to get personal gain or even a large group of
community. As an example, an extremist group Indonesia called Islamic Defenders Front or
by most people knows it by FPI (Front Pembela Islam).

This particular group has been around for more than 15 years in Indonesia. Famously well
known as violent group of people who are feared even some people thought that they are
even above the law, that even police officer are not capable stopping their act. What is sad
about these facts, despite all the violence that they have done, They have done quite a lot of
charity work toward the people in need, in such of event like natural disaster, they are one
of the first group of people that available to help. What the public see is purely the violence
act only, all of the volunteer work, helping out people, all of those things are over
shadowed, and seems insignificant compared to what bad things that they had been doing
until now. The entire image that the public see is as a total violence, brutal, fearful group of
people.

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There are a lot of examples where FPI not only forcing their ideology into others, like one
case in Bekasi (Indonesia), was a statue that was being defaced just because the statue did
not meet the requirement on what is appropriate or not. The sculptor, Nyoman Nuarta
replied to this tragic event by saying We need to start developing a way to counter this
kind of Talibanization. This is bad precedent for artist in this country (Tedjasukmana, n.d.).
Mainly because even in the realm of art, people are not able to freely express their creation.
Although on this particular case, the artist had followed all the regulation, but still FPI
thought that it is not fit for our Indonesians culture.

One key factor that makes FPI is not welcome, or even hated in a country with a majority of
Muslim people, is because of the way they solve their issue, which is through a violence
way. As two reported cases in Tempo magazines where they disturbed the public by doing
an illegal raid, and attack a local store in Cimaggis, Indonesia (Tirta, 2014). And the other
case is where they deliberately attack police officer every time the do a protest against the
inauguration of non Muslim governor (Hermawan, 2014). It is as if a fist can solve any
problems they face.

In the first part of this essay, we have already established on a simple understanding on
what is jihad is all about, the question that is raised on this occasion is what had happened?
What caused all of those bad tragedies? What made them behave that way? Then we can
asked our self this question, Is it acceptable? Is it okay letting those people do whatever
they want? Answering these questions can be quite tricky, because it depends on what
point of view that we use to see the problems. The first thing to do is to put our self in the

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position of the victims. See how you would react if you were treated that way; is it
something that you want? Being treated unfairly even with good reason, is not something
that we want. In order for us to know exactly whether it is acceptable or not, we can
measure its appropriateness their behaviour toward us, and how far is off from the norm
that we believe in (Schultz, Nolan, Cialdini, Goldstein, & Griskevicius, 2007).

Different culture, faith or religion, can lead into different systems of norms, there will be
debate on which is appropriate or not. For norms to be social, it has to be shared by the
people, despite the fact that it might not be agreed by all the people (Elster, 1994). With
this issue of differences, if it is handled carefully, there will not be any problem that will
rise.

Another main issue that needed to be tackled is not about whether what FPI does is
morally correct or not, but what is more important is the way they manage their followers
and how they manage their dispute with another group that believes on different social
norms. A group may be a social entity that influence social behaviour in a similar way
(Jetten, Postmes, & McAuliffe, 2002), this issue needed to be handled with a lot of respects,
because humans are a social living things that lives among different people, regardless the
faith they believe, or to a point where some people do not believe in any kind of religion.
But one thing for sure, everybody wants peace in their life.

Based on the study that was conducted by Muluk, we can found in his paper on the reason
why an extremist group (FPI) in Indonesia, or even to any type of extremist religious group

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act this way. In general Muslims are treated unfairly by non-Muslims, a lot of outside of
parties trying to give Muslims bad influence, in form of something that can make a Muslims
do a forbidden thing according to the holy Quran, International campaign against
terrorism is merely a camouflage to attack Islam and its followers, and the last factor is
through the roads of politics, the voice of a non-Muslim minority is more powerful than the
voice of Muslims majority (Harb & Fischer, 2013; Muluk, Sumaktoyo, & Ruth, 2013).

There is one thing to remember when take this study furthermore, according to (Harb & Fischer,
2013), the reliability of the study will be quite low, this is mainly because of the very low source
of the instrumental are unpublished Master theses, or may not be identified at all. This will be
very hard if we want to explore deeper on the case why people become a jihadi (an individual
who do a jihad cause). There are a lot of factor behind that phenomenon, and all of them are
something that invisible to the naked eyes, such as, people that got influenced from this extremist
group, then he or she can be attached to the group, and more likely that person will turn the
group into some sort of guidance for his or her behaviour (Jetten et al., 2002), and follow any
kind of rules that is needed to be the part of the group.

Another added reason why a person can fall becoming a jihadi, the reason can be very simple;
Somebody had paid for it. With the current economy situation where finding a job is getting
harder and harder each day, and we can not deny the fact that almost everything in our life cost
money, and it is a plausible idea that some people would do anything just for the sake of his or
her family to have a meal for that day, and to the extreme point, to do something that might cost
a life.

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In conclusion to all the misunderstanding on why this evil deeds might happen, especially to a
peaceful religious such as Islam, what is needed to be explored is their core concept of their faith
itself, people need to go back to their roots and start to all over again. There is not a single
religion on this earth that teaches violence as a means to solve an issue. Having differences
among people is natural, what is more important is not looking at what makes us different, but
the best way to deal with this issue is to look for similarity instead.

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