Monday Fasting reminder: We Don’t Want Peace, We Want Justice - Indonesia and Palestine
In Jakarta, the armored trucks of Brimob crushed a 21-year-old ride-hailing driver, Affan Kurniawan, as he attempted to cross a street during protests. In Gaza, Israeli tanks and helicopters unleashed fire as the state re-activated the Hannibal Directive, a doctrine that orders soldiers to kill their own rather than let them be captured by Palestinians. Separated by continents, these events are bound by a shared logic: the militarized state, inheritor of colonial violence, will kill the poor, the precarious, and even its own, to protect the ruling class and its illusion of order.
False Peace, Real Violence
In Indonesia, politicians awarded themselves housing allowances nearly ten times the minimum wage. Citizens, students, and workers rose up, torching parliament buildings in Makassar and blocking roads in Medan. The elite demanded “peace.” But what they meant was silence—order imposed through Brimob batons, bullets, and armored trucks. Affan’s death stripped away the euphemisms: peace without justice is merely violence renamed.
In Gaza, Israel frames its project as “security” and “peacekeeping.” Yet its logic is equally genocidal. By activating the Hannibal Directive, the Israeli state announced to its soldiers and to the world: we would rather kill our own than let Palestinians live with leverage. For Palestinians, “peace” is occupation, blockade, famine, and daily bombardment. As in Jakarta, “peace” is an order that defends only the powerful, not the people.
Justice as the Demand
When Indonesians chant and burn, when Palestinians resist with ambushes in Zeitoun, they are not rejecting peace itself. They are rejecting false peace—the quiet of hunger, dispossession, and militarized order. Their demand is justice:
For Indonesia, that means dismantling elite allowances, reversing austerity, holding Brimob accountable, and redistributing resources to workers and communities.
For Palestine, that means ending siege and occupation, recognizing sovereignty, returning land, and dismantling the settler-colonial system that denies life itself.
Both cases reveal the same truth: peace without justice is submission.
Global Resonance
The cry “We don’t want peace, we want justice” echoes across continents. It is heard in Jakarta’s burning parliaments and Gaza’s streets under bombardment. It is a rejection of Western liberal narratives that prize “stability” and “dialogue” while concealing the structural violence of capitalism, austerity, and settler colonialism.
Decolonial struggle insists on naming perpetrators—Jakarta’s politicians and militarised suppression mechanics, Israel’s military and state—and dismantling the systems that protect them. Only then can peace be more than silence. Only then can it be justice.
Monday Sunnah fasting
Tomorrow, as we observe the Sunnah fast of Monday, we carry not only personal devotion but collective remembrance. Fasting is discipline, patience, and solidarity with the hungry, the oppressed, and the dispossessed. It sharpens our awareness that true justice demands sacrifice and steadfastness.
The hunger we feel is a shadow of what Palestinians endure under siege, and what Indonesian workers endure under austerity.
May Allah gives us ease and accept our deeds.
Written in preparation of Sunnah fasting on Monday, 9 Rabiulawal 1447 United Global Hijri Calendar (UGHC) or 1 September 2025 AD
This is so beautifully written. As someone who is trying to do Monday and Thursday fasting regularly, this sets a new goal for me. To remind me a collective resistance and struggle. Thank you sister Salma. Panjang umur perlawanan.