“Nobody’s perfect, but I am a lifelong learner!”
Ruwaidah is a name that my big family gave to me. It is from the Arabic spelling and mentioned in the Al-Qur’an. The meaning is a girl who walks gently. I was born in a little town called “Bima: the waterside city”, because we are surrounded by a beautiful coastline and rivers with low hills.
I was raised in two great traditions. The first tradition is a local belief tradition that comes from my mother and father. Both are shamans. My mother was a helper for women giving birth when our village did not yet have a modern health center. Meanwhile, my father was a healer of people affected by witchcraft. However, I did not inherit my father’s knowledge, because he died when I was very small.
The second tradition is the Islamic tradition. After my father was gone, I felt the need to connect with him. My mama told me that one way to connect with him was by learning Al-Qur’an because there were some prayers that helped me to remember my father. At the age of seven I started learning from a Tuan Guru (an Al-Qur’an Teacher/Ustadz/Shaikh) in my village and I am one of those who is quick to learn.
When I was in middle school which is in madrasah tsanawiyah (Public Islamic Faith Based School), I was close to several Muslim friends who are very close to extreme movements. I clearly remember how we gathered and admired the perpetrators of the Bali Bombing crimes. We went to the internet cafe to see pictures of the bombers who died. The internet describes them as mujahid. I corrected this admiration when I grew up. They are not mujahids. They are people who are burdened by circumstances and manipulated by incorrect religious experiences, because Islam never allows murder or bombing people who are different from us. Islam highly respects life.
In my first year of college, I was still inclined towards Islamic thoughts that did not respect diversity. I joined the student movement that supports an Islamic state. I was against all the ideas that come from Europe and America such as democracy, gender equality and individual freedom. I hated white people because they fund wars, grab indigenous lands through mining, and drive developing countries into debt.
In my second year of college, I tried to study Islam and Politics, and how it related to the Pancasila ideology which is the basis of the Republic of Indonesia. I found two big names: Professor Djohan Effendi and Professor Ahmad Syafi’i Ma’arif. Both of them explain very comprehensively about Islam, the State and Pancasila, especially about the way of Islam that sets us to live in the diversity of religions, backgrounds, and races and how to put Islamic values to work in personal beliefs and in social movements.
I think I can’t just read their thoughts. So I decided to join the Islamic Student Association, a student organization which Professor Ma’arif and Professor Djohan Effendi joined when they were my age. I wanted an intellectual experience like they had. I wanted to interact with the many diverse Islamic communities around me.
After three years of experience at the Islamic Student Association, I was recommended by my dean to join the interfaith school program organized by the Institute for Interfaith Dialogue in Indonesia (Interfidei). This program is a collaboration between Islamic, Catholic and Protestant-based campuses and is facilitated by Interfidei. Through this program I got interfaith dialogue experiences. I started to speak directly with religious leaders that I didn’t like before, such as priests and monks. I didn’t like it because I didn’t understand what their religion and beliefs were. After the program ended, I decided to become a volunteer at Interfidei. They gave me some tasks, like taking notes from all their interfaith meetings and they asked for my help to facilitate if needed from an Islamic perspective about interfaith dialogue and movements.
In 2019, I was sent by Interfidei to attend Friends Peace Teams International Peace Training in Pati. My friends and I were in the same car as Mislan and Legiani traveling from Yogyakarta to Pati. They are also International Peace Training participants from Barak Induk, North Sumatera. As I know Barak Induk is a settlement of refugees from the Aceh conflict. It was my first real experience interacting and having conversations with war survivors.
When I arrived in Pati, I shared a room with West Papuan friends, Thea & Rori. I felt strange, Thea was reading the Bible, on the front of Thea’s bed there was Venera from Chechnya who was praying. I witnessed two people from different religions in one room praying to God. It was an expansive sight, because it couldn’t possibly happen in a public place. I was amazed. The next morning, we said our morning prayers in our own way, and it was very beautiful. That’s a feeling I hadn’t had in my previous interfaith experiences.
While training at Peace Place Pati, I witnessed many people from various races and languages coming together. They are from Nepal, Korea, England, Chechnya, Philippines, Kenya, Maori from New Zealand, West Papua, Java, United States, and Eastern Indonesia. Everyone sits in a circle according to their own comfort. Some sit using a chair, some sit on the floor. We enjoy every session with enthusiasm.
When I was taking part in the training, I was actually experiencing a mental block, where I felt like I underestimated myself and didn’t have hope or desire for many things. I felt useless as a young person and felt unprepared to transition from college to work. I had a very intimate interaction with the late Thea. She gave me lots of positive affirmations and often told me to respect myself. After training, I tried to care more about myself, such as getting enough sleep and having a dialogue with myself, especially about things that give me low self-esteem and reconnect me with childhood traumas. I began to see how to recover and be creative.
As time went by, in April 2019, I practiced Creating Cultures of Peace with friends from Bima who were studying in Yogyakarta. We rented a hall and practiced Creating Cultures of Peace for 2 days. In August, Petrus invited me and some friends to practice together in Peace Place. That year, I came to Pati three times after the training in January. I felt a big transformation in myself. I sum it up as follows:
- It turns out not all white people are bad. There are many of them who also work to end wars and ensure that justice and peace persist.
- Experience proves knowledge. Learning about diversity and differences is not enough. Meeting each other and interacting is very important. It’s okay to learn the culture and language of others, learning from each other is fun and connects us to one another. Prejudices dissolve when we slowly open ourselves up to unravel them.
- The diversity of religions, languages and ways of life is a beautiful thing that should be accepted, celebrated and loved. – We love every language. “ Feel free to use your own language and please somebody translate,” said Nadine Hoover in International Peace Training ( 2020)
Now, I am really enthusiastic to share peaceful Islam as the meaning of Islam itself. I don’t want the hatred to be in our hearts. I really believe that all faiths teach us about goodness and conscience. Let’s practice culture of peace and justice as our way to stand with the realities around us. Our power of good can heal the moral injury caused by war or by injustice.
Ida (blue veil) with CCP Friends taken by Candy Diaz at Peace Place Pati, January 2020