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Reality check on Islam in Indonesia Michael Vatikiotis, Singapore Indonesians like to say that the less time a foreigner has spent in the country the more he understands it. By the same token, the recent vintage of Indonesia's democratic transition has persuaded many outside observers that they know exactly which direction the country is headed and the alarming consensus seems to be that Indonesia is turning into a conservative Islamic state. This of course is nothing new. Indonesia has been on the verge of Islamic statehood since the country's birth in 1945. Yet at every turn, the country has rejected extremism in favor of moderation -- either at the ballot box, or at the point of a gun. Today, just as 60 years ago, the constitution guarantees freedom of worship and secular civil and criminal law rules the land. Not that historical consistency deters those bent on proving their thesis. The larger context of clashing civilizations has set the stage for this latest assault on Indonesia's identity. Being the fourth largest country in the world, and the largest single Muslim population makes Indonesia a prime target for those bent on weaving an apocalyptic scenario for secular liberal values against the colorful tapestry of rising Islamic fundamentalism, woven mostly by the media for the past six years since al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks on the U.S. Indonesia simply has too many Muslims to be left out of this fanciful equation. And so one of those enduring clichid stories was born; one that usually starts with the reporter savoring Jakarta's sleazy night life, juxtaposed with scenes of crowded mosques and threats from conservative clerics to have all those pretty girls in the discos cover themselves up and stop drinking beer. The small number of violent Islamic extremists, probably fewer in number than those in the United States who believe that the four horsemen of the apocalypse are on their way and non believers in Christ will literally burn where they stand on the day of judgment, are presented as a credible threat to civilization, and an elderly eccentric cleric in Solo is styled the emir of a movement that wants to establish a new caliphate in Asia. Let's be clear. There is no question that dangerous extremists lurk in Indonesia and have been able to recruit and train Indonesians -just as they have managed to do with Muslims living in Britain and other parts of Europe. But there is no evidence of growing popular support for the militants; religious faith and blind fundamentalist fervor are two different things. Furthermore the government has made significant progress tracking down and capturing these terrorists. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. Many of those chronicling Indonesia's supposed lurch towards fundamentalism will have been quietly disappointed that a Jakarta district court has acquitted the editor of Indonesian Playboy magazine of charges that he published indecent material. Earlier the parliament's decision to water down a pornography bill that would have made kissing in public illegal passed almost unnoticed. Westerners seized with notions of the threat to liberal society posed by Islamic extremists are understandably fixated on the clumsy interplay between traditional views of Islam as a way of life and modern standards of global governance in one of the world's newest democracies. But lost in all this is a sense of perspective. When Indonesia's President (a practicing Muslim) holds a mass prayer in the national mosque, he is accused of pandering to conservative Muslims; when he respects local autonomy laws by not cracking down on the 42 districts which have introduced Islamic Sharia law, he is accused of doing the same. It's time for a reality check. Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation, with more 195 million of the country's 220 million people professing Islam as their religion. What is the President expected to do? The point is that viewing Indonesia solely through the prism of religion is a dangerous distortion of reality. It is certainly true that there has been a marked increase in religious observance among Muslims, as there has been among Hindus, Buddhists and Christians across the region. Witness the explosion of church building in Singapore, for example. All this religiosity is not, as many media stories would have you believe, an insidious incitement by Wahabi fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia, but rather an incremental by product of the social and economic stress generated by rapid urban growth and consequent inequality. Some of the same trends in religiosity are detectable in the United States, where in some states there are moves to make school prayer mandatory and abortion illegal. Just like the United States, increased religiosity in Indonesian private life does not translate into making political choices that favor religious rule. In 1999 people who voted for Islamic parties weighed in at only 16 percent and only slightly increased to 22 percent in 2004. To be sure there has been periodic tension and violence between religious communities, which is not unique to Asia's plural societies, although India's more pronounced and protracted Hindu -Muslim tensions receives less publicity. The striking thing about Indonesia has been the remarkable resilience of society. At the turn of this century a brutal war between Christians and Muslims in the far flung Maluku island chain cost the lives of perhaps more than 10,000 people but was settled internally with a domestically negotiated peace agreement that has held firm. In other areas of the country, new found freedom has sometimes been conducted along sectarian lines, resulting in violence, as in Central Sulawesi. But after three decades of political paralysis and no mature political parties with responsible or meaningful platforms, where else was this new found energy expected to find an outlet? In most cases, religion has been exploited for purely political gain; there is no evidence of a potent clique of dogmatic mullahs on the rise. Rather these so-called champions of Islam are mostly shabby political operators with rather grubby secular histories. Some of the more charismatic spiritual leaders have been unmasked for corruption or adultery. For the enemies of democracy in Indonesia are not only those few misguided extremists who persuade ignorant Javanese youths to blow themselves up in crowded tourist spots on Bali, but also those in the West who believe that secular values should prevail, using force if necessary, so that liberal society elsewhere can be protected. If George Orwell were alive today, he might say it's a case of "four legs good, two legs bad." The writer is the regional representative based in Singapore for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. printer friendly
