Many Americans coming to Indonesia, whether for business or pleasure, are nervous about Islam. On the one hand they hear that Indonesia`s tropicalized Islam is warm and friendly, not like the harsh desert variety. On the other hand they read about bombings and communal violence in places like Poso, wherever that might be.
The situation is complicated by the fact that most of us lack even stereotypical understanding of Indonesia, of the kind that we have for India and China, for example. Indonesia was never mentioned in our high school world history courses and we are not sure where it begins or end on the map. Do there really have to be so many islands?
A sampling of easily available punditry doesn`t help much. We learn that Indonesia is still largely poor and uneducated, that it has been prone to dictatorship and Years of Living Dangerously, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes and too many plane crashes, and that its capital goes completely under water periodically. No wonder all those "tribes" and religions don`t get along.
The better informed among us may know that Indonesia`s new, blissfully unguided democracy has been doing quite well, and that the current president and his running mate seem to be quite a capable pair, rather more so than the leadership we are experiencing at home.
But we are in a "Yes, But" frame of mind. Tell us that country X is doing well, and we are likely to reply "Yes, But what have they done for us lately?" and then produce a new list of worries: Corruption, unreformed judiciary, environmental disasters, and so on.
And so, regarding Islam in Indonesia, we are not satisfied that the fever chart of regional conflict has trended downwards since it peaked about five years ago, not least due to the major achievement of peace in Aceh. The same goes for the consistent inability of the Islamist parties -- those who would try to replace Indonesia`s multicultural model with an Islamic State -- to win more than a small minority in every national election since 1955. (We have no idea of exactly what an Islamic State might be, partly because its advocates don`t agree on that issue, but we assume it would mean oppression of women, cutting off thieves` hands, and worse.)
We dismiss the election results with the "Yes, but" notion that since the Islamist parties (with the Prosperous Justice Party or PKS in the lead) can`t win openly on Islamist platforms, they must be plotting behind the scenes to "Arabize" Indonesia without daring to say so out loud. Locally they are already at work, taking advantage of Indonesia`s decentralized democracy to enact sharia-inspired regulations in somewhere between five to ten percent of all cities and districts.
Fear of creeping "Arabization" tinged with paranoia is shared by quite a few foreigners who know the country relatively well, and also by some Indonesians. It reminds me of the way we Americans used to feel about the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) before it was eliminated in 1966 (granted that given its mass base on Java, the PKI probably had a more numerous following than the Islamists do today). Many foreigners fear that outward signs of religious observance -- the growing use of headscarves, the proliferation of prayer rooms in public places, and so on -- are signs of Wahabi-style fundamentalism, the intellectual underpinning of terrorism.
Think of Indonesian society as a huge tapestry, with many colors and patterns but also with quite a few loose threads. You can grab any one of them and pull, and you may not be sure exactly how much of the thread will break off in your hands, but you know that the entire fabric is not going to unravel.
It is a curious fact that Americans, of all people, have a hard time understanding Indonesian diversity despite our own relevant national experience. Obviously our diversities differ somewhat. Except for newly arrived immigrants, ours is a fairly well liquefied melting pot, whereas Indonesia`s is still more gado-gado in consistency. Our national mottos, Bhinekka Tunggal Ika and E Pluribus Unum, mean the same thing.
I am told by John MacDougall, an American anthropologist currently working on a study of Darul Islam, that Bhinekka Tunggal Ika comes from am ancient Indian epic that assumes an inherent tension between "unity" and "diversity."
Indonesians I interviewed emphasize that when Islam arrived, it encountered many highly varied cultures. Numerous blendings of local and imported religious practice were the result. Now people everywhere like to think that their variant "is Islam," I was told.
But they also know that in other regions, people have their own ideas about how Islam should be practiced beyond the five basic pillars of the faith. And they realize, having grown up in gado-gado land, that they cannot impose their religious beliefs on others. More importantly, the vast majority doesn`t want to.
Pick any province in Indonesia and you can find rich examples of deeply- rooted diversity, now in full flower under a truly democratic national regime. One of my favorites is West Sumatra, home of one of the few matrilineal Muslim societies in the world. As elsewhere, Islam settled here on a vibrant structure of Hindu and animist tradition.
West Sumatra has produced a astonishingly varied stream of national leaders over the years -- middle-of-the road first Vice President Mohammed Hatta, Islamist politician and prime minister Mohammed Natsir, Communist leader Tan Malaka, and many more. In addition to fostering local pride, this experience has accustomed the Minang people to acute intellectual diversity.
Visit the Padang museum and you will see, among other things, a guide to the gorgeous customary houses with their horned roofs, stylistically similar to bronze-age forms found elsewhere in Indonesia. You will also see a reverent display of the ancient and equally stunning pagoda-style mosques reflecting Hindu heritage.
When I visited Padang in February the city was just recovering from a comical episode which ensued when members of the city legislature tried to ban women from the streets during hours of darkness. The idea was quickly abandoned because Minang women, none of them shrinking violets, run all the markets and need to be at work before dawn.
While West Sumatra`s diversity is particularly striking it illustrates themes common to the whole country: The long contest between traditional and modern Islam which, just like a shadow play, no one ever definitively wins; the interplay between ancient and less ancient cultural waves, and strong local identity combined with a sense of nationhood which, however imperfectly, embraces both Bhineka Tunggal Ika.
At the moment decentralized democracy, still very much a work in progress, is encouraging fledgling politicians to stretch their wings and play ethnic politics, sometimes with dangerous as well as amusing results. (We are quite familiar with this syndrome in the U.S.) In the long run, and no doubt after much more tinkering, democracy will give Indonesia`s diversity the political breathing space it must have to survive.
The better that foreigners understand the depth and tenacity of Indonesia`s diversity, the less they will be inclined to fear that the country is likely to succumb to ideological or religious regimentation.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com (10 Mei 2007)
