Indonesia's
moderate Islamic image under threat
By Dean Yates
JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Joining a group
of young Indonesian
intellectuals who hold liberal Islamic views was once just
a ticket to
controversy. Now, it could be life-threatening.
Since Indonesia's top Muslim council issued
religious edicts in late July
that banned liberal interpretations of the faith, death
threats against
members of the 4-year-old Islamic Liberal Network, known
as JIL, have poured
in.
The fatwas that JIL says triggered the hate
campaign coincide with the
closure of numerous unauthorized Christian churches by hardline
Muslim
groups and the jailing this month of three Christian women
for inviting
Muslim children to church events.
The developments have hurt Indonesia's image
as a moderate Muslim nation and
reflect a backlash against liberal opinion as well as a
push by Muslim
conservatives to reassert themselves after the failure of
political Islam to
gain traction during last year's elections, experts say.
"The fatwas have had a snowball effect,"
said Nong Darol Mahmada, a
co-founder of the Islamic Liberal Network who has received
dozens of death
threats via e-mail and text messages.
"People believe that JIL is banned and
that it is now legally permitted
(under Islamic law) to murder us."
Police guard the Jakarta office that houses
JIL after one militant
organization threatened to attack the group, which has never
shied from
controversy since its inception in 2001.
It has been quick to poke holes in the arguments
of militant clerics and
take the lead in debates about issues from marriage to the
role of religion
in politics, often using radio to reach a broad audience
across the world's
most populous Muslim nation.
IN THE CROSSHAIRS
To some analysts, JIL was a key target when
the Indonesian Ulemas Council
(MUI) issued its non-binding fatwas on July 29.
Apart from attacking liberalism, the council
forbade pluralism and
inter-religious marriage.
"We are seeing a conservative high tide
which is a reaction to several
things, but a common view that Muslim liberals have taken
things too far,"
said Greg Fealy, an expert on Indonesian Islam at the Australian
National
University in Canberra.
Fealy said he did not believe such a backlash
meant the end of progressive
Islamic thought in Indonesia, where Muslims have embraced
democracy and have
more freedom to express their views than in just about any
country in the
Islamic world.
While it was clear Indonesians increasingly
identified with Islam, last
year's elections showed voters did not care for Islamist
parties that
support strict Islamic Sharia law.
Those parties won 23 percent of parliamentary
seats last year, up from 19
percent in 1999.
"People are more self-consciously Islamic
but it doesn't mean anyone is
saying ... we should make Indonesia an Islamic state,"
Fealy said.
Many Indonesian Muslims, especially on the
main island of Java, infuse the
practice of Islam with local tradition influenced by Hinduism
and mysticism.
Indonesia is also officially secular and recognizes
Christianity and several
other religions in addition to Islam.
That has not stopped Islamic militants in
the past two years from closing
down some 25 unlicensed churches that operate from homes
and shops.
Christians say the growth of such churches
underscores the difficulty of
getting a permit, which requires approval from local communities
where they
are usually a minority. Police have said they cannot act
because the
churches are illegal.
In another religious case, a court in West
Java this month jailed three
Christian women for three years each for inviting Muslim
children to church
events without parental consent.
UNFINISHED STORY
JIL was not actually banned in the MUI fatwas,
but the message was clear,
said Mahmada, 31, an articulate graduate of Islamic studies
from Indonesia's
most prestigious Islamic university, as she sipped a bottle
of iced tea.
"I am pretty pessimistic about Islam
in Indonesia," she added.
Down the road at the Al-Muslimun mosque, Imam
Pambudi, 41, a local Islamic
community leader, said JIL had to leave the area.
"At first we had no problems but after
the MUI fatwa, the people here were
shocked that something considered haram (forbidden) by the
MUI was among
us," said Pambudi.
Despite what appears to be a series of blows
to Indonesia's Muslim liberals
and the country's image in general, analysts like Fealy
and Merle Ricklefs,
another prominent Australian expert on Islam in Indonesia,
remain generally
optimistic.
"This is a story without an ending, but
there are grounds for thinking that
the progressive liberalism of Indonesia has withstood the
attack," Ricklefs
wrote in the Australian Financial Review on September 2.
"With its reactionary fatwas, MUI may
indeed have sidelined itself within a
rapidly changing society." (IM)
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