Brodin, not his real name, remembers that August 28, 2012, Sunday, was a really cold day.
It was the rainy season, after all, and during these months, their small village of Karang Gayam, in the Sampang Regency, on Madura Island, off the northeastern coast of Java, Indonesia, was always drenched.
Like the rest of the country, Sampang is overwhelmingly Muslim. But the regency is split into two opposing religious factions whose split dates back to the death of their prophet. On one hand is the majority Sunni, on the other are the Shia, to which Brodin and his village belong.
Charged differences in faith, as well as political friction, have kept the atmosphere in Sampang tense.
Brodin was just 13 at the time, and he had spent the day before busily preparing for Lebaran Ketupat, more familiarly called Eid Al-Fitr. Celebrations were scheduled for Sunday and the kids his age were in charge of decorating the stage. All night long, he and his friends were trying their very best to make the stage as beautiful and as festive as possible.
Lebaran Ketupat is a big deal for Karang Gayam. Households dig deep into their recipe books and serve their family’s most prized dishes, and festivities would last for as long as the sun stayed in the sky. Then their day would end solemnly, with a prayer and a sermon from their leader, Ustad Tajul Muluk.
On that day in August 2012, Brodin woke up, as he always did, as the call for their dawn prayer resounded through the village. Afterward, he sat steeped in excitement, watching the minutes tick closer to eight o’clock, when the celebration was scheduled to start. He never once thought that it would become the darkest, most fearsome day of his life.
March 2021. After being violently kicked out of their hometown in Karang Gayam, the Sampang Shia have stayed at the refugee camps in Puspa Agro, forced to live out days and years in uncertainty.
In the opening seconds of the event, the majority Sunni group – which had a history of dispute with the Shia – barged into their village and started angrily attacking homes and residents blindly. Some threw stones at the houses, while others brought torches and set homes on fire.
The mob did not spare the residents. They swung their sickles and threw their stones, and punched and kicked and shoved. One villager was killed and four ended up critical.
In the middle of all the chaos, Brodin froze. He was stunned, he admits, and he was terrified. Luckily for him, one of his neighbors found him and immediately picked him up. He shudders to think of what might have happened otherwise.
“I felt as if the angel of death was in front of me,” Brodin recalled as he took a deep breath of his cigarette. “I am also amazed and grateful to be able to survive death. But the trauma made an impression. It still haunts me to this day.”
Not long after the Lebaran Ketupat attacks, the Shia Muslims were driven out of Karang Gayam Village. Residents sought refuge over 100 kilometers away, at a flat in Puspa Agro, at the Sidoarjo Regency, in East Java. For nearly a decade, Brodin and the other Shia refugees counted long, uncertain days stuck in the refugee camp.
The long journey home
Late last year, on November 11, 2020, in a bid to finally return home, nearly 300 Shia refugees attended a Bai’at, a sacrament of mass allegiance to the Sunni. It was held in their hometown in Sampang.
On the place where they all once shared the same beliefs, the refugees vowed to have turned their backs on Shia teachings, and converted into Sunnis, commonly known as the Aswaja (Ahlussunnah wal Jamaah). Among them was Tajul Muluk, the village’s former leader.
“I moved to Sunni on my own accord,” he says, adding that in the process, he had been called a traitor and had even received threats be from other Shia believers. “I also realized that when we were being persecuted in such a way, the Shia [outside their village], seemed to leave me alone. No help whatsoever. I learned a lot from this incident.”
But despite turning their backs on the Shia doctrine, the converts remain shut out from their village in Sampang, and reconciliation efforts have reached a deadlock.
Tajul Muluk confirms this. He claims to have already known beforehand that their conversion wouldn’t be enough to pave the way for their return to their village, anyway.
According to Slamet Junaidi, the sitting regent of Sampang, the local government is reluctant to let Tajul Muluk and his group return because the local Sunni residents continue to be unaccepting of the Shiite converts. As it turns out, even after professing their beliefs, the ultimate fate of the Shia lies in the hands of the locals and of the ulama, the guardians of religious Islamic beliefs.
Despite all of this outright persecution, the national government has done nothing to try and even out the scales of religious inequality. Tajul Muluk says that the state has taken no steps to guarantee the safety of the new converts, nor to allow the peaceful return of the remaining Shia refugees to their hometown.
Instead of actively trying to mediate between the two factions, the government would rather stay out of it and let the conflict resolve on its own, nevermind that in the process, minorities are often bullied into obeying the wishes of the majority.
March 2021. After nearly a decade in Puspa Agro, the elderly Sampang Shia have grown weary, while their youngest have never known life outside the refugee camps. Nevertheless, many remain resolute, determined to stick to their faith until the end.
Siti Hanifah, a peace activist from The Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN) Indonesia, agrees. In an interview with BBC Indonesia, Siti Hanifah explained that the way the conflict between the Shia refugees and the Sunnis was handled just shows that the government has turned its back on freedom of religion and belief in Indonesia.
But to Tajul Muluk, none of that matters. Gazing far away and in a low voice, he said “No matter how bad it is there – no matter how bad it is – I still want to go home. I want to grow old in the land where I was born.”
Not up for debate
Back at the refugee camps, Brodin remains resolute. Even though their leader has turned his back on them, Brodin continues to hold fast to his faith and believes that Shia is the path of light. Converting to Sunni never even crossed his mind.
He knew that the offer of the Sampang Sunnis was disingenuous, anyway. “It’s just a form of gimmick,” Brodin says. “The problem is, we are a minority there, and being forced to follow the majority is not fair.”
“I mean, even after pledging, we’re still not allowed to go home, right? That’s just political interest. The majority only wants to show their power,” he says.
Brodin insists that being forced to convert is a breach of their freedom of religion. As he understands it, matters of faith are not up for debate. Everyone has the right to choose their own way of seeking God.
Unfortunately, Brodin is just one of thousands upon thousands of minorities in Indonesia whose most personal sacred spaces are violated routinely, and who the State doesn’t even bother to protect. He knows that the future of religious freedom in Indonesia is hazy.
“Since that incident, I have seen that death is something that can greet us at any time,” Brodin says. “We can see how this country treats minorities, who are just different people. The stakes are our lives.”
Despite his frustrations – his anger, his exhaustion, his deep longing for his hometown – Brodin is determined. There’s still a lot of fight left in him. He’s young, and he doesn’t mind if he loses a few more years of his life stuck in the refugee camps. But he also knows that his neighbors and loved ones deserve so much better.
“Let me just stay here. It’s alright. But, my grandmother is old. Let her experience relief and a peaceful old age in the village where she was born and raised; in Sampang Shia,” Brodin says. ●
Reno Surya is a freelance writer based in Surabaya, Indonesia, who focuses on culture, human rights, and urban issues. He has been actively writing since 2014, when he was still an undergraduate student. His work has also been featured in various outlets, including VICE Indonesia, The Jakarta Post, and New Naratif.
