REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, PONOROGO -- President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) expressed concerned with "loss" of identity, characters, and values as Indonesians marked with courteous manner, optimism, hard working, respecting each other and being Islamic.
"If we see in the social media, Twitter, Instagram, and comments in online media, there are a lot of blasphemies, ridiculing, and insulting each other. Is it the Indonesian values of Islam?," Jokowi said when attending the 90th anniversary commemoration of the Modern Gontor Islamic Boarding School in Ponorogo, East Java on Monday.
Jokowi asked the students especially the teachers of the boarding schools all over the country to maintain the typical values of Indonesians.
The president said there were no such behaviors of condemning, insulting, and ridiculing each other among Indonesian people and leaders 40-50 years ago.
"You just see in our social media. There was erosion and degradation of the values I just mentioned. We have not talked about hard work, optimism, and struggle," he said.
The President said he was sad to see the behaviors of many people as reflected by what they said in social media and comments in online media.
"I am confident such is not our values. There are values which have infiltrated into us without us being aware of. Those foreign values are feared to take the place of our original values, characters and identities as a nation," he added.
The president said has ordered the Education and Culture Minister to give ethics, morals, and courteousness a bigger portion of education for elementary and junior high schools.
"Without those values we would lose our identities," he said.
Meanwhile, a leading cleric in East Java Timur, KH Afifuddin Muhajir said he felt called on to speak about the forthcoming gubernatorial election in Jakarta that PDIP, the ruling party that has the largest number of seats at the Jakarta City Council (DPRD) should has its own candidate and the candidate should be a Muslim, who make up the vast majority of the city population.
"For Muslims, Islam is everything including in selecting leaders. It is reasonable if Muslims want a Muslim leader. Certainly one who is fair," KH Afifuddin said in a statement made available to Antara here on Monday.
Muslims in Jakarta should not easily believe the jargon that a fair non-Muslim is better than an unfair Muslim as if Muslims are identical to unfairness, the leader of the Salafiyah Syafiiyah Islamic boarding school in Sukorejo, Situbondo in East Java, said.
"I strongly support the statement of KH Ahmad Hasyim Muzadi and KH Shalahuddin Wahid (both NU leaders) that PDIP should come up with own candidate and team up with other political parties concerned with the fate of Muslims and the nation," he said.
KH Salahuddin Wahid, the leader of Tebuireng boarding school in Jombang, East Java, said recently that PDIP considered suggestion of KH Hasyim Muzadi that the party should name a candidate from its own ranks to contest the gubernatorial election in 2017.
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