Keeping a Sound Mind Amid the Clamor of Religion and Politics
In a country that is hardly ever free from debates about religion and politics, keeping our reasoning sound has become a quiet labor that grows heavier by the day. Social media is flooded with instant interpretations, harsh diction, and knots of truth claimed as absolute. In a climate like this, common sense easily slips into a tool of legitimation—not to understand, but to point fingers.
Noam Chomsky, in Media Control (2002), once said, “If the public loses the ability to reason, then politics will only become a stage for emotion and manipulation.” Polarization that initially formed from differences in political views has now spread into the more private realm of faith. Not a few equate disagreement with betrayal. Religion is turned into a framing device to attack or defend certain figures, rather than a path to soothe and enlighten the public.
Yet in the history of classical Islam, difference is part of scholarly dynamism. The scholars disagreed in creed, jurisprudence, and exegesis—without manufacturing hatred. Imam al-Shafi‘i even advised, “Difference is a mercy, as long as it is conveyed with adab.” Here is where we have lost an important inheritance: the ethics of thinking and the ethics of disagreeing.
What we often face today is not a contest of ideas, but a war of diction. Whoever is the loudest, wins. Whoever delivers textual proofs without context, is deemed pious. Yet religion is not born from the violence of the voice, but from the serenity of meaning.
Within the frame of electoral politics, religion is indeed frequently used as an electability commodity. Gus Dur, in My Islam, your Islam, our Islam (2006), reminded us, “A religion that is used as a political tool will lose its function as a moral guide.” But as a sane society, we cannot keep normalizing this. We need rooms for calm reflection, balanced dialogue, and the courage to say: “I don’t know; let’s find out together.”
Keeping a sound mind does not mean being neutral without a stance. It means placing reason and etiquette in their proper positions. In a world that is increasingly noisy, sometimes silence and thinking echo louder than shouting without direction. Franz Magnis-Suseno in Basic Ethics (1987) wrote, “Silence is a fertile place for thinking.” In quiet, there is a kind of honesty we often forget.
Author Bio
Choiril Anwar is a freelance writer who pays close attention to issues of society, religion, and popular culture. He believes that writing is a quiet space to keep the mind healthy amid the crowd of public opinion. He is currently active on the Cahya Pena platform, writing reflections on life and wisdom.
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