Indonesia- A second look

Indonesia's moderate Islamic image under threat 21/09/2005 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... 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."

This is disturbing news from Indonesia, a country that has long been known as a moderate Muslim country. According to the story above Indonesia's top Muslim council issued a fatwa banning liberal interpretations of the faith. Upon the issuance of this fatwa the Islamic Liberal Network received numerous threats and is now being guarded by Indonesian secuirty forces due to the severity of the threats it has received. As if this wasn't particularly problematic, Asharq Alawsat also reports that this fatwa coincided with the closure of unauthorized Chrisitan churches by hardline Muslim groups, which the government cannot prevent because the churches were formed illegally. This Christians say, is the result of the difficulty in getting permits to build these churches as to do so you need permission from the community were invariably Christians are a minority. I've said before in this blog that Indonesia is one of the main keys in this war on terror. At the time I stated that the war we are fighting is not one where our actions will matter much unless Muslims fought against radical Islamism. This remains the case today and it seems as if we are losing. There are some positive views however. In the same piece in Asharq Alawsat two Australian Islamic scholars argued that the moderate Muslim movement survived and would eventually thrive against the Islamist intolerance. In fact they argue that the fatwa was "a push by Muslim conservatives to reassert themselves after the failure of political Islam to gain traction during last year's elections." The fact that Rohan Gunaratna, the Sri Lankan terrorism scholar was allegedly expelled from Indonesia does not fill me with confidence in the optimistic assesment above. Not to be too pessimist either, this news comes from the state department which asserts that "The most important and encouraging trend in recent years has been the strengthening of democracy. In the last few years, elections have taken place not only in established democracies -- the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand -- but also in newly democratized Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, and in East Timor, a new nation and new democracy. As democracy has taken on deeper roots, it has brought with it an enhanced respect for civil society and the rule of law." This however is deceptively positive because it fails to acknowledge that many Muslims feel that the Christian West committed an act of aggression against Islam when it separated East Timor from Indonesia. The reason for this is that East Timor is primarily Christian, while Indonesia is Muslim and as such it was seen as an act of the Crusaders securing Christian outposts in the Muslim world. In fact, according to Michael Scheuer part of the reason for the attack on the UN offices in Iraq in 2003 was that Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN representative, had also been one of the people responsible for the partition of East Timor from Indonesia. All this said, there is some positive news coming from the Asia Times online who reports that the US military has been establishing closer ties with the Indonesian military following their cooperation during the Tsunami last year. While there are still issues with regard to the Indonesian military's human rights record, the US government is placing alot of confidence in the new Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It remains to be seen what the repercussions of our involvement with the Indonesian military will be.