Jakarta Journo: SBY’s Legacy Soiled On Freedom of Faith

LIFE & TIMES

Jakarta Journo: SBY’s Legacy Soiled On Freedom of Faith

Armando Siahaan | March 20, 2011

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will be remembered for a lot of things, but being a bastion of pluralism is definitely not one of them. Just look at the recent spate of religious violence — chaos left nearly unchecked by the national government, which seems afraid to touch issues such as the Ahmadiyah with a 10-foot pole. It’s enough to make me question if things have actually improved at all since the Suharto era.

Suharto’s New Order regime severely curtailed religious freedoms, tearing apart the 1945 Constitution, which guaranteed citizens the freedom to adopt any religion, thus changing Indonesia into a country that recognizes just five official faiths. Then in 1978, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a directive obligating all Indonesians to disclose their religious affiliations on their identity cards and, bizarrely, forcing us to pick from one of five recognized religions.

But the real root of the country’s religious intolerance is the 1965 Blasphemy Law, which was drafted under Sukarno, but adopted and enforced by Suharto.

The law prohibits any alternative interpretations of the official religions, giving the government the right to restrict and ban deviant sects, and imprison their followers for faith crimes. The Blasphemy Law effectively destroys the separation between church and state, which many argue is a necessary component to a functioning democracy.

Moreover, through totalitarianism and his draconian foot soldiers, Suharto made sure that religious groups, including Muslim hard-liners, were never given the chance to grow into influential forces in society.

Post-Suharto Indonesia has been praised by many foreign commentators as a poster child for democracy in Southeast Asia and the Muslim world. But as recent events suggest, religious freedom has been left in the dust on our glorious march to democracy. A truly democratic Indonesia would revoke the 1965 Blasphemy Law, but reality suggests institutional support for the law will not wane anytime soon.

In fact, instead of rescinding the law, the administration issued a 2008 joint ministerial decree on the Ahmadiyah, based on the law, which severely curbs the minority Islamic sect’s rights.

A series of violent attacks against the Ahmadis followed the decree, and hard-liners felt the attacks were completely justified because of the law. Yudhoyono repeatedly condemned the attacks, but consistently defended the 2008 anti-Ahmadiyah decree.

In the latest development, dozens of Ahmadis in East and West Java converted to mainstream Islam, with widespread rumors that the military pressured the sect’s followers into renouncing their faith. The government and the military denied this claim.

The conversions may represent a triumph for hard-liners, but they are certainly a massive blow to our country’s democratic image.

The corrosion of our religious freedoms has generated criticism both here and abroad. The United States and the European Union have conveyed concern over the escalation of religious tensions in light of the recent killings of three Ahmadis in Banten and the burning of churches in Central Java. Furthermore, a group of 27 US lawmakers last week sent a letter to Yudhoyono demanding that the government overturn the 2008 decree on the Ahmadiyah, as it “runs contrary to the principles of international human rights.”

Suharto severely limited religious freedom, but also prevented religious extremists from harassing minority groups. Yudhoyono’s administration has not only failed to repeal Suharto’s discriminatory laws, but has also given unchecked freedom of speech to all major religious groups, giving hard-liners a megaphone to voice their hate speech and a free pass to act on it.

If Suharto’s era was marked by out-and-out tyranny, it seems Yudhoyono’s era will be remembered for allowing the tyranny of the majority. He still has three years left to make things better, but I’m not holding my breath.

Copyright 2010 The Jakarta Globe
URL: www.thejakartaglobe.com/lifeandtimes/sbys-legacy...

Indonesia and Religious Violence

August 11, 2010

Indonesia and Religious Violence

Arresting radicals like Abu Bakar Bashir is only half the battle.

Indonesia notched another big victory in the antiterror fight this week with the re-arrest of Abu Bakar Bashir, the al Qaeda-linked spiritual leader linked to the 2002 Bali bombings, as the Australian National University’s Greg Fealy explains on a nearby page. If only the country’s leaders would pursue Islamic vigilante groups just as aggressively.

Since Suharto fell in 1998, these thugs-for-hire have proliferated in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. The most prominent, the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), yearns for a Shariah state, and has been fingered for burning down Christian churches; attacking the Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim sect; and beating up peaceful NGO activists. The latest misadventure came Sunday when goons beat up 20 Christians in Bekasi, West Java. (FPI denies involvement.)

Far from distancing themselves from this kind of behavior, public figures have recently started to court the group. Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo and Police Chief Timur Pradopo attended FPI’s 12th anniversary celebration Saturday, giving the group a taste of political legitimacy. The governor even invited FPI into the capital to police Muslims’ behavior during Ramadan, which began on Wednesday.

Thankfully, the majority of Indonesians are moderate and perceive the real threat FPI presents to their way of life and precious civil liberties. Twitter groups, editorial pages and NGOs erupted in protest over the Jakarta governor’s invitation. FPI head Habib Rizieq was forced to back down and pledged to let the police enforce Ramadan laws.

That’s all to the good. But what happens the next time FPI hooks arms with the police and local politicians? President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has voiced “concern” over violence against minorities, as he did after Sunday’s attack, but has largely bowed to the police to enforce the rule of law. Parliament has made similar noises. The result? As the Wahid Institute has chronicled, attacks are creeping upward, to 60 incidents last year from 55 in 2008. And that doesn’t even count attempts to impose Shariah through legislation, which has proliferated in recent years.

This cycle won’t be broken until President Yudhoyono exerts some leadership. This could be tough for a president who has tried to court the hardline Muslim vote since he first took office in 2004, from freezing the activities of the Ahmadiyya to enacting a radical antipornography law that limits free speech.

But as Yenny Wahid, the daughter of former president and respected cleric Abdurrahman Wahid, told us earlier this week, groups like FPI “carry the banner of Islam; therefore they act with impunity.” Surely that makes the violent FPI just as dangerous as men like Mr. Bashir.

URL: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704...articleTabs%3Darticle

Islamic group gains power in Indonesia

- International Herald Tribune

By Peter Gelling
Published: October 7, 2008

JAKARTA: In a sign of its growing prominence, Indonesia’s Council of Ulemas moved its headquarters from the basement of a major mosque here into an expensive new office tower in the heart of downtown.

The council was established in 1975 as a quasi-governmental body of Muslim scholars by Suharto, the country’s leader for three decades, partly as a tool to keep politically minded Islamic organizations in check. But in the decade since the dictator’s fall, the group — whose leaders have increasingly espoused a radical form of Islam — has worked to establish itself as an assertive political force.

The group, known as MUI, built an impressive network of offices throughout the country, staffed by people who promote the council’s view of Islam. It logged its first major political success this summer when the government agreed to severely restrict the activities of a Muslim sect that does not believe that Muhammad was the last prophet.

Advocates of religious tolerance worry that the council’s new clout could signal the start of religious radicalization in a country known for its moderate brand of Islam.

“Islamists use the MUI as a major base of operations, coordinating support for the Islamist agenda,” said Holland Taylor, founder of LibForAll Foundation, an American and Indonesian nongovernmental group that promotes religious pluralism.

Among the goals of some prominent council members is the imposition of Shariah, or Islamic law, throughout traditionally secular Indonesia.

But other experts, even some concerned about the council’s conservative leanings and newfound influence, see the broader radicalization of Indonesian Islam as unlikely. They point out that Indonesia’s largest Islamic association, the Nahdlatul Ulama, promotes tolerance and religious pluralism and that Islamic political parties have struggled to gain ground in recent years.

Beyond that, broad antipornography legislation, which had been championed by the Council of Ulemas and its allies in Parliament, has been scaled back after a public backlash that included large street protests.

“I don’t think the Council of Ulemas is going to turn Indonesia into the Sudan,” said Sidney Jones, director of the International Crisis Group in Jakarta, citing “many other balancing forces.”

The council is an umbrella group that represents established Muslim organizations. In addition to advising the government on religious issues, it distributes fatwas, or religious directives, advising Muslims on how to practice their faith. Its fatwas are nonbinding.

Maruf Amin, the council’s deputy chairman, describes it as a moderate organization that represents the views of more than 60 Islamic groups in this overwhelmingly Muslim country.

“Our job is to communicate to the government the aspirations of Muslim people in Indonesia and to protect the Islamic population here from any bad influences that might lead them to deviate from their faith,” he said in an interview.

But some analysts who have studied the group say Islamic hard-liners have had an increasingly dominant role in the council in the last few years.

“The council has a long history of moderation, but lately it has been infiltrated by some hard-liners,” said Azyumardi Azra, director of the graduate school at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta. “I have told its leaders that if they want to remain a representative organization, they need to be aware of this infiltration.”

The growing prominence of radical voices is partly a byproduct of the transition to democracy. Radical religious leaders who were often silenced during Suharto’s rule now have the freedom to propagate their views and have often proven adept at using the democratic system.

The growing relevance of the Council of Ulemas is partly a result of a budget some analysts believe is growing. (Neither the council nor the government would provide numbers.) Besides government financing, the council has sole authority to license halal food and medicine.

More recently, the council has tapped into Indonesia’s lucrative Islamic banking industry. It acts as one of several organizations overseeing banks that refuse loans to companies in businesses that run contrary to Islamic values, like those producing alcohol or selling pork.

These financing sources have allowed it to purchase its new office tower and to operate more than 150 satellite offices.

But analysts say the group has also benefited from its relationship with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Although the president is considered moderate, he said last year that after the council issues any fatwas, “the tools of the state can do their duty.”

“Hopefully our cooperation will deepen in the future,” he said during the speech, according to translations by the International Crisis Group.

Some experts said they suspected he was supporting the Council of Ulemas to shore up Muslim backing in elections next year. A coalition of Islamic political parties backed him when he first ran for president in 2004.

The council’s biggest coup so far was Yudhoyono’s decision in June to restrict the practices of Ahmadiya, a minority Muslim sect.

The council had been calling for a ban on Ahmadiya since 2005 when it issued two fatwas, one against the sect for not believing Muhammad is the last prophet and another calling on Muslims to reject “pluralism, liberalism and secularism.”

On June 1 in Jakarta, opponents of Ahmadiya, some affiliated with Forum Umat Islam, an organization formed to promote the council’s fatwas whose leaders include several prominent council members, clashed with demonstrators supporting the sect. Dozens were injured.

Despite an outcry over the incident, the government ordered Ahmadiya members to “stop disseminating interpretations that deviate from the main tenets of Islam” or face legal action. The government then asked the Council of Ulemas, with its network of chapters, to monitor Ahmadiya’s compliance.

A report in July by the International Crisis Group, which analyzed the conditions leading to the decree, laid significant blame on the dominance of radicals within the council and the council’s growing influence.

Several of those members are leaders of groups blamed for burning mosques and houses belonging to Ahmadiya adherents.

In its annual report on religious freedom in September, the United Sates State Department singled out the Council of Ulemas as “influential in enabling official and social discrimination” against minority religious groups in the last year in Indonesia.

Still, most of Indonesia’s Muslims remain moderate, and some have begun to fight back.

Taylor, whose group promotes religious tolerance, said moderate groups would need to try to take control of the council or press the government to privatize or dissolve it.

URL: www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/07/asia/07indo.php