Smoking and Religion in Indonesia

A few months ago one of my links posts mentioned a 4 year old chain smoker in Indonesia (here’s the post). Now, an interesting followup as I saw a news story about the scary extent to which smoking is prevalent in the country. This is especially a problem since Indonesia already has very high air pollution with lots of deaths from it. Here’s the video:

Video link

One thing that I thought was interesting to explore is the religious aspect of it. According to the video, Imam Anwar Ibrahim (one of the most respected Islamic scholars in Indonesia) issued a fatwa banning women and children from smoking. He speaks of the Quran mandating that people take care of themselves in matters of health. There are similar movements in other religions. In Judaism, there seems to be a consensus of Orthodox rabbinical rulings emerging since the 70s that prohibit smoking altogether on account of self harm (see this Wikipedia article for a basic primer).

Of course I have mixed feelings about this. On the positive side, it probably has some health benefits. While it may not be very successful for people who are already addicted (and may even do harm in causing extra guilt which may complicate quitting), I think it’s likely that it may at least put a dent in the number of religious people taking up smoking. The negatives are that this only entrenches religious authorities in positions of being the arbiters of people’s daily lives. It also infantalises people, making their health contingent on the capricious nature of religious laws. Which probably leads to some ill-effects down the line.

Ultimately I think it’s a no brainer. I’m pretty skeptical of the view that we must always address root causes of problems. It can easily come at the expense of not doing anything. So sure, the root cause for smoking may be a lack of rationality, a variety of social and emotional reasons and whatnot. But if someone comes in offering a small patch to improve the “surface” symptoms, I’ll take it with a smile, thankyou very much. This is especially true for religions where the scholars already control large aspects of the followers’ lives (eg. Orthodox Judaism, many forms of Islam, LDS etc). Refusing to work with clerics on this issue will hardly cause people to abandon the broader religious teaching in droves, it will just result in more people dying.

The other thing this shows is just how much of a blank slate religion is. It’s quite obvious that Imam Ibrahim has his own views on smoking (influenced by wider society) for which he then searches for material in the Quran. And of course he will find it, because you can find anything given the right interpretation. In this way, I’m starting to agree with Dennett’s view on trying to make religions less toxic, rather than going via the rationality route. Broader societal changes tend to filter through, and then religions find a way to contort themselves into the new mindset. So if the broad change is for the better, religion will follow. Of course with smoking it’s easy since it’s not some dogmatic cornerstone of any major religion. When it comes to actually overturning existing attitudes that’s a different story…