On 29 May 2014, seven people
were injured during attacks on a Catholic prayer service in Sleman, Yogyakarta.
In June 2014, stone-throwing Sunni hardliners attacked a nearby church claiming
it did not have a building permit. On 4 August 2013, a bomb exploded in a
Buddhist temple in Jakarta, injuring three people. The following day Molotov
cocktails were thrown into the yard of a Catholic high school in Jakarta.
Some of the most ferocious
attacks have been directed at Indonesia’s Ahmadi and Shi’ite communities. On 6
February 2011, an angry crowd in Cikeusik, Banten, murdered three Ahmadi men
while a local policeman looked on. On 29 August 2012, more than 1000 Sunni
villagers attacked a Shi’ite community on Madura Island, off the northeast
coast of Java, burning homes and killing two people. The villagers were forced
to seek refuge in a local stadium where they remained in temporary shelters for
10 months. On 20 June 2013, Sunni groups and religious leaders staged a mass
protest to rid the stadium of the ‘blasphemers’, forcing the desperate leader
of the Shi’ite community to agree to relocate the community to a town two hours
away on the island of Java.
Rising intolerance
toward religious minorities in Indonesia is a product of the spread of Sunni
takfiri (extremist) ideologies, as well as the increasing activism of Sunni
hardliners in Indonesia’s democratic politics. State laws and regulations also
facilitate intolerance and religiously motivated violence.
Indonesia’s constitution
guarantees freedom of religion but a range of national and local laws undercut
the constitutional safeguard and provide a cover for religious bullies. The
primary legal enabler of abuse against religious minorities is the 1965
Presidential Decree on the Prevention of Religious Abuse and/or Defamation
(Blasphemy Law) which defines and criminalises ‘deviant’ religious practices.
The Blasphemy Law remains in place despite the fact that Indonesia ratified the
International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights in 2005.
Indonesia’s highest Muslim
clerical body, the Ulama Council, has also become increasingly active in
identifying ‘deviant’ behaviour and issuing fatwas. On 21 January 2012 the
Ulama Council of East Java declared that Shi’ism itself was blasphemous. This
prompted a gubernatorial decree that imposed penalties on anyone who
‘propagates blasphemous teaching’. The decree effectively legitimised violence
against the Shi’ite community.
The preceding administration
of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) was routinely criticised for its failure to
protect the rights and welfare of Indonesia’s religious minorities. At times
the SBY government even appeared to encourage intolerant behaviour. In 2006 a
Joint Ministerial Decree established the Inter-religious Harmony Forum, a
council of religious leaders whose job was to facilitate the permit process for
places of worship, but mounting evidence suggests that the Forum often hindered
applications for Christian church permits.
More provocatively, in 2008
the government announced a Joint Ministerial Decree restricting Ahmadiyah
activities outside of Ahmadi communities. SBY also appointed religious
conservative ministers to parliament. They included Gamawan Fauzi, the minister
for home affairs, who suggested relocating minorities rather than bringing
their intimidators to justice, and Suryadharma Ali, the minister for religious
affairs, who publicly declared that Ahmadi and Shi’ites were heretics.
Hopes are now high among
religious minorities that Indonesia’s new President, Joko Widodo (Jokowi), will
restore Indonesia’s reputation as a tolerant and pluralistic Muslim majority
nation. Jokowi has a record of taking a pluralistic approach.
As governor of Jakarta, he defended a Christian district head when radical
Muslims attacked her credentials. He was also known for his close working
relationship with his deputy governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who is Christian
and of Chinese descent. Significantly, in his 2014 presidential campaign Jokowi
identified ‘intolerance and crisis in the nation’s character’ as one of the
three main challenges facing Indonesia.
Jokowi’s pluralism and
religious tolerance are demonstrated through his political support base. He is
backed by secular pluralist parties, such as the Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle and the National Democratic Party, and pluralistic Islamic scholars.
He is also backed by the National Awakening Party, which is closely affiliated
with the largest moderate Islamic
organisation in Indonesia — Nahdlatul Ulama.
Although Jokowi has yet to
make any public statements on the question of religious minority rights, at the
end of 2014 his newly appointed Minister for Religious Affairs, Lukman Hakim
Saifuddin, announced plans for new laws to protect religious communities. This
is a promising step but, unless the 1965 Blasphemy Law is rescinded, it is
unclear how much impact the new law will have.
It also remains to be seen
whether Jokowi will be able to shepherd such a law through Indonesia’s rambunctious
parliament. With only 37 per cent support in the parliament, passing any
legislation will be difficult for Jokowi. And there is no sign that the
protection of religious minorities will be a legislative priority. The
minister’s bill could languish for years. It will be even more difficult for
the Jokowi administration to deal with the often discriminatory Sharia-based
by-laws passed by regional governments.
If Jokowi believes that
‘intolerance and crisis in the nation’s character’ is one of the biggest
problems the country is facing, it is not yet clear how he plans to solve it.
Ihsan Ali-Fauzi is the
Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Democracy at Paramadina
University, Jakarta. Ben Hillman is a Senior Lecturer at the Crawford
School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. This
article appeared in the most recent edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘Asia’s Minorities‘.
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