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  Sliding Towards Conservative Islam: Indonesia's Secular State under Siege

Sliding Towards Conservative Islam Indonesia's Secular State under Siege

By Jürgen Kremb

Part 2: "A Political Catastrophe for our Country"

But not everyone welcomes the advance of the Islamists. "If the anti-pornography law is enacted, it will be a political catastrophe for our country," says Eva Sundari, a member of parliament who sits on the legal committee. Until now religious tolerance has been a distinguishing feature of Indonesia, a nation scattered across more than 18,000 islands. Under the so-called Pancasila, or "Five Principles," instituted by the country's founder Sukarno, the government expressly guarantees freedom of religion.

Sundari is wearing a short, pleated skirt and a tight T-shirt. "The radicals want to force Indonesia to take on a different face," says Sundari. But despite her combative stance, Sundari senses that she is increasingly supporting a losing cause. "There are days," she says, "when the PKS representatives in the committee simply start speaking Arabic" -- in lieu of the official national language Indonesian. When that happens she leaves the room in protest, which at least temporarily prevents the committee from adopting resolutions. But the PKS, as the unstable government's coalition partner, is in demand these days. "If President Yudhoyono wants to be re-elected," says Syafi'i Anwar, director of the Jakarta-based International Centre for Islam and Pluralism. "He'll need the Islamists to get his majority." Yudhoyono's party holds only about 10 percent of seats in the parliament, while the other major parties plan to put up their own candidates in the presidential election two years from now.

In other words, an increase of conservative Islam influence seems unavoidable, but just how far the process will ultimately go remains a question. It is being spurred on by imams from Saudi Arabia who preach Wahhabism, a particularly strict form of Islam. Every year they flood Indonesia with millions of free books that promote their interpretation of the Koran with mosques and the religious boarding schools known as pesantras gratefully accepting the literature. Riyadh also selectively hands out grants to radicals from the Islamic universities, including people like FPI founder Rizieq.

But even the government feels uneasy about all this missionary zeal. "In the past there was no question that our country stood for openness," says former journalist Yenny Zannuba Wahid, 32. "Today we must increasingly justify our openness to the West."

Yenny is one of Indonesia's most politically influential women. When her father, the blind Islamic scholar Abdurrahman Wahid, better known by the name Gus Dur, was president from 1999 to 2001, she was his right hand. Today Yenny is an advisor to President Yudhoyono and heads a center for inter-religious dialogue. She is also one of the leaders of her father's party, the political voice of the country's largest Muslim association Nahdlatul Ulama, with its 30-million members.

Victim of the United States

Yenny wears a silvery green silk scarf over her hair to suggest a headscarf. Without the jilbab, admits Yenny, who was educated in the West, she would no longer be accepted, not even in her organization, which is considered liberal. "The religious agenda is shaping more and more areas of daily life," she says. She is especially concerned by the fact that the radicals are far more successful in rural parts of the country than in urban centers.

Central Java is one of those rural areas. It's evening in Solo, and Imam Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, an elderly man with a handlebar moustache, leads the prayers in the house of a well-known publisher who specializes in schoolbooks. More than 500 prominent citizens in this old city of Sultans are in attendance, their Mercedes and BMW limousines lined up outside the villa.

Intelligence agencies are convinced that Ba'asyir heads the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. He also runs Al-Mukmin, an Islamic school on the city's outskirts where many of the October 2002 attackers were educated. He acquired even more respect at home when, despite strong objections from the West, he was pardoned after being imprisoned for almost two years on charges of conspiracy. "The emir is merely the victim of the anti-Islamic policies of the United States and Australia," says the publisher and host, defending his prominent guest.

Ba'asyir wants to re-establish the caliphate -- the Islamic form of government which once united the Muslim world. And in some parts of Indonesia, other aspects of conservative Muslim rule have already been put in place. The province of Aceh at Indonesia's northwestern tip, devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, has been administered by Sharia law since 2001. At the time, the government granted the deeply religious region this special right to prevent Aceh from seceding. But nowadays the only ones in Aceh who monitor compliance with the religious rules are radical clerics.

When women refuse to wear headscarves, their heads are shaved in public as punishment. An adulteress has already been stoned. And the boyfriend of a French aid worker who was recently caught kissing her in a car was subjected to the humiliation of a public caning.

Aceh stopped being an exception long ago. More than 60 regional administrative bodies throughout the country have already established their own religious rules. One of them is Padang, a large city in western Sumatra where schoolgirls, female university students and female public servants have been required to wear headscarves for some time. Fauzi Bahar, the city's 44-year-old mayor and a former member of the Indonesian navy, has even barred Christian restaurant owners from opening their businesses in the daytime during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Harmless soap operas

And in Tangerang, a large city just west of Jakarta, special police units patrol the streets every night searching for women they believe to be prostitutes. Their victims are promptly thrown into reformatories.

That was how Lilies Lindawati, a 35-year-old teacher, ended up in police custody. A mother of two and pregnant with a third, she was picked up as she was walking home from work in the evening. As evidence of her supposedly amoral way of life, the police cited the fact that they found lipstick in her purse.

The mistake was discovered and Tangerang's mayor apologized to Lindawati. But the discussion on Muslim morality triggered by the incident spread quickly to the capital. Anjasmara, the actor photographed with a nude Jahja for the controversial poster, apologized to the radical Islamists of the FPI for the transgression and promptly denounced "Western decadence." Since then he has only appeared on Indonesia's TV screens in harmless soap operas.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan