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Why is there no love for Valentine’s Day in Indonesia? – Johannes Nugroho

February 20, 2016

Opponents of Valentine’s Day were out in full force in Indonesia’s major cities last weekend, with youths from conservative Islamic groups holding public rallies to denounce it.

They don’t object to it because of its overly commercial nature. Rather, their objection is based on religious doctrine.

In essence, what the protesters say is that Valentine’s Day is un-Islamic because it has historical roots in the feast of an early Christian martyr, St Valentine of Rome.

The view certainly finds support in Malaysia, where the Islamic Development Department issued a fatwa and subsequently Muslim couples caught celebrating the day were detained.

But is it justifiable to say that Valentine’s Day, the modern-day feast of love, is a Christian holiday?

While the name Valentine did belong to a Christian saint, there is sufficient proof that the festival predated Christianity.

In Rome, where Christianity replaced earlier pagan religions, the fertility festival of Lupercalia had been celebrated between February 13 and 15.

Mid February also marked the sacred Greek month associated with the divine marriage between the god Zeus and the goddess Hera, both of whom were revered by the Romans as Jupiter and Juno, two of the three most important Roman state deities.

However, the church never designated St Valentine as patron of lovers. Historical records suggest that the feast day of St Valentine only began to be associated with the notion of romantic love in 14th century England, coinciding with the rise of the age of chivalry and courtly love as popularised by the bards.

Sharing a parallel timeline with the appearance of Arthurian legends, St Valentine gradually became what we know him to be.

The festival was well-entrenched in 18th century Britain and was exported to the United States of America in the following century.

The fact that it nearly took a century before the British custom of marking Valentine’s Day took off in America is in itself interesting.

It is doubtful that the early American colonists, many of whom were British Puritans who migrated to the New World to escape what they saw as “decadent” England, would have approved of the profane nature of romantic love as worthy of revelry.

It took America’s confidence in its 19th century prosperity to put the pursuit of pleasure and play in the ascendancy.

And it is exactly this theme of pleasure and play which has continued to characterise Valentine’s Day as we know it today.

It is essentially an American export to the rest of the world, made possible by the United States’ global prominence as a superpower, which in turn entails enormous soft power at the disposal of its culture.

The American Valentine’s Day was literally born for the sake of the market, a popular old folk festival made even merrier with the sale of greeting cards, chocolates and gifts to turn the wheel of the economy.

There was nothing remotely religious about it except in its roots as a saint’s feast day. What’s more, the predominantly Protestant America would not have acknowledged let alone celebrated a Catholic saint’s feast day as a religious observance.

As a global power, it is understandable how American cultural imports such as Hollywood, a white, snowy Christmas and Valentine’s Day have found acceptance worldwide. It is, after all, human nature to imitate the successful and powerful.

The importance of soft power should not be alien to the Muslim world.

The famous hadith, “Seek knowledge even if you have to go as far as China,” attributed to Prophet Muhammad, is a fine example of the same forces at work.

The mention of China in the hadith may have puzzled Muslims in the last century. The advances of knowledge and science were then firmly associated with the West rather than China.

But the Middle Kingdom was in fact one of the world’s superpowers at the time of the prophet.

The reputation of China as a centre of knowledge and the producer of first-rate products would have been established among the Arabs who often acted as the trade go-between for Europe and China in those days.

Similarly, the US garnered the same admiration from the Muslim world in the early part of the 20th century.

As the American journalist John Gunther observed in his 1939 book "Inside Asia," quite a few leaders and intellectuals in the Muslim world thought well of the US for its prominence in the sciences, its prosperity and its reputation as the least imperial of Western powers.

The perception, however, was to change dramatically after World War II.

In Indonesia, the apathy of political Islam towards the increasingly imperial US became prominent in 1990s when then-president Suharto started courting it to prop up his own slipping grip on power.

Muslim leaders like Amien Rais strongly condemned the US-led multinational forces that liberated Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi invasion forces. America the beautiful became the international bully.

The campaign in Indonesia against Valentine’s Day must also be seen in this light. It is resistance against American cultural hegemony.

Unfortunately, it is being presented to young Muslims as a moral jihad against anti-Islamic forces, a misleading call that could only contribute to their radicalisation than anything else.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to preserve one’s own cultural identity, if only it could be done using rational means. – Jakarta Globe, February 20, 2016.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.