Page 72 - Demo

Islam, Democracy and Human Rights in Contemporary Indonesia55Islam could aggravate between Muslim majority countries inAsia and the Middle East, with the Western countries.Followers of any religions tend to be fundamentalist %u2014 andeven become terrorists %u2014 if they are faced to hard pressuresand inequality, which are difficult to be solved, while they alsofeel that the world are not on their side. This is the root problem faced by the Palestinians and other Muslim communities inAsia, which sometime were labeled by the westerners as %u201c theterrorist movement%u201d. In this situation, religious teaching willbecome the source of inspiration, motivation, and justificationto do every thing that they believe could free themselves fromsuppression and inequality. I understand that this facts aremaybe difficult for the Japanese society to understand. Becausethe process of political secularization in Japan has taken place along time ago, and the country has achieved an extra-ordinaryeconomic development compared with other Asian countries.But I would like to remind the Japanese society in particularthat during World War II, Japanese saw that the Muslims inAsia were also tend to be fundamentalist, same with today, whenthey struggle to fight against colonialism, and made them aspotential allies in facing the Western military forces. But afterthe war, when Japanese government focused more in economicdevelopment and gradually cause Japan began to be moreclose to the West. So, the Westerner%u2019s prejudice that Islam is%u201cdangerous%u201d %u2014 a matter that is difficult for them to forgetbecause the %u201cthe holy crusade%u201d between the Christians of Europeand the Muslims of Arab and Turkey centuries ago, started toinfluence Japan%u2019s view towards the Muslim community in Asia.Whereas the Muslim community in South East Asia expectJapan to put more attention on the Asian economic