A perilous moment in Indonesia
A SURGE of hardline Islamist sentiment has shaken Indonesia, the world’s most-populous Muslim-majority nation and a long-standing model of religious moderation and tolerance. Whether the country’s political leadership is able to steer a genuinely pluralist course through local and presidential elections over the next two years poses a critical test of whether the secular government in Jakarta will remain a bulwark against radicalism.
Home to roughly 209 million Muslims, about 13 percent of the world’s total, plus influential Christian, Buddhist and Hindu minorities, the Southeast Asian country has staked a claim to its national motto: “Unity in diversity.” That hardwon achievement is at risk, as is the stability of the world’s fourth-most-populous nation.
A particularly worrying episode was the recent conviction on blasphemy charges of Jakarta’s governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama – a Christian and Indonesia’s most prominent ethnic Chinese politician of the past 20 years. His offence, as he campaigned last fall to retain his post, was to warn Muslim voters not to be fooled by Islamist voices who were citing a Quranic verse suggesting a prohibition against voting for Christian or other non-Muslim candidates.
Purnama, a no-nonsense anti-corruption campaigner, was a clear electoral front-runner until then, but his remark triggered a backlash, including violent demonstrations led by extremist Islamist groups demanding he be prosecuted. Concerningly, a number of establishment politicians sought to appease the extremists. In a runoff election, Purnama was ousted as governor of Jakarta, a city of 10 million.
That opened the door to Purnama’s conviction last month and his sentence to two years in prison, which is a travesty. A UN group of experts has appealed to Indonesian authorities to release Purnama, but that looks unlikely.
Now, some Islamist hard-liners, emboldened by their victo- ry, are starting a push to impose Shariah, or Islamic law nationwide, hoping for further gains in dozens of local and provincial elections next year, and even plotting strategy to capture the presidency in 2019.
If successful, that would mark a sweeping reversal of Indonesia’s relatively easygoing pluralist democracy, in which millions of Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and others, who enjoy equal status with Muslims in Indonesia’s constitution, have felt comfortable amid the Islamic majority. Race, religion and ethnicity are now wielded as cudgels by opportunistic hard-liners hoping to capitalise on a sluggish economy, widespread corrup- tion and popular resentment of ethnic Chinese tycoons regarded as cosy with the nation’s governing elite.
It’s a fragile political moment, made more volatile by fake news designed to exacerbate working-class Muslim resentments and by mainstream politicians who have been willing to coddle extremists in a misguided attempt to co-opt them. The country’s fault lines threaten to become open divisions, and many ethnic Chinese are particularly worried. It will take inclusive leadership by the incumbent president, Joko Widodo, and other moderates for Indonesia to steer away from bitter sectarianism.