Blogger Indonesia of the Week (73): Tasa Nugraza Barley

Blogger Indonesia of the Week (73): Tasa Nugraza Barley

On Being Credible and Impartial

Credibiity is earned through stages and various ways. In real life, a credible person connotes to someone whose words are not at variance with one actions and he or she does it in a relatively consistent way. As far as blogging, or writing, is concerned, in order to be credible in the eyes of one’s peers, a blogger should hold to a particular universal values and ethics and stick to them. Note that credibility should be differentiated with scientificity. And the highest universal values in the writing/blogging world is none but impartiality.

It’s at this point that I regard Tasa Nugraza Barley as among those impartial, and thus credible, Indonesian blogger I’ve ever seen. To be impartial is to liberate oneself from any attachment of reference; be it reference of own’s religion, race, nation or political and cultural affiliation. It’s not easy. Since it requires not only a good will, honesty and humility. To have an impartial and good judgement one is required to have a sufficient understanding of matters one is talking about to attain a sort of analytical sharpness. That’s one of his strong point.Let’s see for example one of my favorite post here on How to distinguish a good book from the bad one:

I think mainly there are two perspectives that differenciate the “Bad” Books and The Enemy At Home as the good one:

1. Dinesh D’Souza in The Enemy At Home divides muslim into two kinds: radical muslims and traditional muslims while the bad books basically bash all muslims, they see all muslims are the same. The bad books think all muslims all around the world are retarded as they are willing to follow an old-fashioned religion. The bad books say that Islam is the source of problem, it is a religion that teaches its believers to put bombs on their bodies and explode their heads up in the crowds. At the same time, Dinesh D’Souza is wiser in describing the situation that Islam is facing right now. He thinks that more than 80% of muslims are the traditional ones and they are basically against of radical muslims’ thoughts and ideas especially for such issues like jihad. The problem he says is that the radical muslims are the ones who get the most attention from the West medias since they are the ones who think jihad is about killing the infidels. In his book, Dinesh D’Souza mentions that Taliban was a joke even to Mullahs in Iran and yet The West was so amazed to see how Taliban Regime was treating women in Afghanistan which led them to think that Taliban was a representation of Islam in general.

2. The bad books can’t differentiate between Islamic values and cultural values, and I think this is so misleading. Bad books think that if muslims act something then it must be told by the Koran. One example is how Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her book exploits the practice of female circumcision in muslim countries like Somalia where she is originately from. Although it is true that there are muslims who believe that female circumcision is allowed or even supported by Islam as they have a hadith that justifies the practice but at the same time there a lot of muslim scholars who think that the hadith has a little credibility and authenticity. The authors of the bad books wrote their books mostly based on their experiences in the past which they are so emotionally attached. For example the author of Because They Hate Brigitte Gabriel wrote her book based on her childhood experience as a Christian Lebanese during the civil war where her family had to live in a terrible condition.

Or his anger on the Indonesian corrupt bureaucrats:

The only reason why this messed up country has not been able to move to a better condition over more than 60 years of its independency is because those people on high level don’t feel like doing it. It is not that hard to make Indonesia as one of the next giants in Asia with all those resources that we have, China and India are doing it. But those people with their fancy cars and big houses in Menteng or Pondok Indah don’t feel like sharing the wealth. They want to keep us stupid and retarded. I know they all like to see us fighting against each other. I hope they rot in hell.

Tasa Nugraza Barley I think, should write a lot more often on those kind of topics to enlighten us in Indonesia as well as those English speaking readers. His readers will certainly benefit from not only matters he talks about, but also from the way he look insighfully into them.

Unrelated notes:

1. I’ve been a bit busy these days doing tetek bengek things and that’s the main reasons that prevent me from making a regular post. I hope I can make a better time-management in the days ahead.

2. Template of this blog is back to normal again. Thanks Blogger.Com. Good news for blogrollers I’m able to blogroll you again, let me know if one of you haven’t been bloggrolled.