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Our communications minister, Tifatul Sembiring, continues his run as a relentless attention-grabber in President Yudhoyono’s cabinet. Previously notorious for commenting on a link between natural disasters and immorality, as well as making fun of people with HIV/AIDS, last week he thrust himself into the headlines in America and Indonesia over the incident now known as “handshakegate.”

As a conservative Muslim, Tifatul has made a big point of declaring he will not touch any member of the opposite sex who is neither his wife nor part of his family.

Some Indonesian conservative Muslims follow bukan muhrim, which refers to those people whom a man cannot touch.

However, when the US first lady, Michelle Obama, warmly extended her hand to greet him at a state function in Jakarta last week, he responded eagerly by reaching out and taking her hand.

Sharp-tongued Indonesian Facebookers and tweeters criticized him as being hypocritical.

Coincidentally, the columnist Anand Giridharadas wrote in The New York Times last month how the act of greeting in our global social encounters is a truly delicate business.

In greetings across the world’s cultural landscape we find American handshakers, Japanese bowers, European air-kissers, Indian palm-pressers and even Eskimo nose-touchers around us.

Now say that I, a handshaker, meet a male bower and a female palm-presser in the land of nose-touchers. Should I do the greeting his or her way? Or the local way?

I cannot but ask myself about where I am, whom I’m encountering and what signal I will send.

Not so very long ago we saw President Barack Obama heavily criticized by his fellow Americans for bowing before the Japanese emperor during a state visit to Japan.

Obama could have played his American card and shaken hands, but instead extended the courtesy of greeting the emperor in the local fashion.

Look at what he was accused of compromising: his nation’s superpower pride. Who says being nice is easy?

I guess this was our minister’s situation and he simply opted for the modern way of greeting: handshaking. And despite his religiosity, doesn’t he live in the modern world after all?

I find it hard to see what is wrong with our minister’s choice. The fact that he is religious does not mean he has to articulate his religious identity in every single situation.

Human identity is multifaceted and, like with language, he can code-switch depending on the situation.

Our minister merely was being a modern global citizen for a moment.

In the pursuit of some scholarly explanation, there was a classic debate among anthropologists on the disposition of a religious body.

Clifford Geertz, a prominent anthropologist who did extensive work involving Javanese Islam, once said that religion provides moods and motivations to human disposition.

In other words, religion governs us to some extent in how we behave and express our attitude in different contexts.

Religion is apparently not the only power that directs, for instance, how people shake hands.

Talal Asad, another influential anthropologist, followed up on Geertz’s reasoning by pointing out the various powers that shape individual disposition.

Tifatul’s encounter with Michelle Obama was hardly a religious one and certainly not in a religious situation.

It was in fact a very modern, if not state ceremonial, situation.

Our minister had the choice of avoiding shaking hands with the first lady and pressing his palms before his chest — the way most of my friends with headscarves turn down my handshake — or to lean forward to accept the hand and smile cheerfully with utmost friendliness.

I am glad he did the latter. He spared the first lady an awkward and even embarrassing moment.

It was diplomacy of the highest level: putting aside individual sentiment for the virtue of being a stately host.

And let us also not forget how Barack Obama, tactful leader that he always is, tried his best to both honor his hosts and feel at home in Indonesia by saying either assalamualaikum or salam sejahtera in giving his greetings.

Obama is not a Muslim, but does the fact that he offered a traditional Muslim greeting stir condemnation of hypocrisy in his country?
 

Gde Dwitya Arief is a graduate student at the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.