West Java PDIP's Response After Hearing Khalid Basalamah's Statement Puppets Are Haram And Must Be Destroyed

Chairman of the West Java PDI-P DPD Ono Surono. (ANTARA/HO-Humas DPD PDIP West Java)

JAKARTA - The chairman of the West Java PDI-P DPD Ono Surono reacted after hearing Ustadz Khalid Basalamah's statement that said puppets were haram and had to be destroyed because they were not in accordance with Islamic teachings.

According to Ono Surono, the statement that said wayang was haram and deserved to be destroyed was an attitude and action that was not very Pancasilaist and did not know history and did not understand Indonesia.

"This proves that there are systematic efforts that are being and have been carried out by several elements to obscure the traces of civilization or the journey of the archipelago's culture," said Ono Surono in a written statement, Monday, February 14, quoted from Antara.

He said, nation and culture are two things that cannot be separated. A nation that will be able to survive the competition in the current era of globalization is a nation that is able to keep up with world developments but does not let go of its cultural identity and identity as a nation.

"Currently we have been influenced by the culture of other nations, so it would be ironic if we actually degrade the traditional arts of the archipelago, which are very diverse and rich," he said.

Ono, who is also a member of Commission IV of the DPR RI, said that as is well known, wayang plays a major role in shaping society in the archipelago and especially in West Java. Attempts to eliminate him, he said, were inappropriate and unintelligent actions.

He assessed that efforts to blur the traces of cultural history are a new style of colonialism by eliminating and manipulating the collective consciousness of the community.

"Actually, as intelligent Indonesian people, we don't easily accuse the results of thought that is manifested in the form of art, especially wayang, being considered heretical. Because actually culture without religion is not good, religion without culture is not right, so if together, culture and religion will certainly be balanced. and very well."

Furthermore, he said that having a personality in culture is something that cannot be separated from the history of the nation's journey.

That's because in fact culture, especially wayang is the whole of the results of people's thinking and physical processing to live life as cultured humans, where in wayang art there are proper values and we need to absorb them together.

History, said Ono, has proven that religion and culture can go hand in hand without dwarfing each other

"In many historical literacys, we can find the fact that the Puppet Tradition Art has become one of the media for the spread of Islam in the archipelago, especially for the Sundanese people in West Java," he said.

"Islam is widespread in the archipelago with a cultured approach, hopefully this can become our collective awareness as a nation," he continued.