9/11 Legacy and its Aftermath: Perception and Education

by
Roma Ulinnuha

As noted by Noorhadi Hasan and Bernard Adeney Risakotta, the particular moment of 9/11 has attributed different perception in different times and spaces. While Hasan pointed out ‘the tension between the proponents of radical Islam and Liberal Islam has turned into open clash’ in Indonesia context (p.317), Adeney-Risakotta argued that there was a need to clarify some differences between the perception of Westerners and South-East Asian Muslims’ (p.342).
I firmly argue that Islam and the West as entities are not in single representation. What have been ‘borrowed’ by terrorists and who have been ‘accused’ as them is not an absolute perspective. Muslim perception in South East Asia is diverse but they are, indeed, together in ultimate mindset. The tightly-bounded framework is against injustice, unfairness and oppression.
9/11 uproar is intolerable, but the more miserable things are false prejudices, and mounted hatred among any entities. Political bias, economic greediness, cultural backwardness and social pathology, I believe, are on the corridor of almost every tension. The tension is even worse, when on the traffic of the corridor, those aspects are engineered by any forms of religious icons directly or indirectly.
On the one side, the tragedy will always happen in the present and the future, but the most sound-ways of efforts is rethinking perceptions among Islam and the West. When media is both promising and evading, there is a need to share a little room where every entity is present. A fair contestation then should start.
Among serious issues should address is the portrayal of Islam and the West as seen in media—TV, Movies, and News papers—as one of the vast contributors constructing the mindset of the people. When media is balanced, I believe, it can work prospectively with the line of educational-type of strategy. Therefore one of the ways to enhance a better perception is educating people, particularly on the relation between Islam and the West.
What we can do now, in this regards, is delivering and accelerating opinions, ideas, and works in any religious basis to promote the notion of inclusiveness, tolerance and plurality. Those words have never been cliché, since some history has proven written in horrible notions by the state, organization, institution, including religious entity as the result of different perceptions in different times and spaces. The challenge is waiting before us.

Readings:
Hasan, Noorhaidi, “September 11 and Islamic Militancy in Post-New Order Indonesia”;
Adeney-Risakotta, Bernard, The Impact of September 11 on Islam in Southeast Asia’.