Jennie M. Xue

Is Indonesia slipping back from its historic tolerance?

by Jennie S. Bev

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the reformasi movement in Indonesia. Begun with the shootings of four Trisakti University students in Jakarta, a week of violent demonstrations throughout Java followed, and the subsequent political turmoil, including brutal anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta, eventually removed former President Suharto* from power. May 1998 remains an important milestone for the imperfect and sometimes chaotic progress the country has made toward representative democracy.

In this beautiful tropical country, well-founded fears among minority groups have been rampant and rounds of exoduses of persecuted minorities are expected in the near future. This month marks the escalation of two things that the Indonesian government has been consciously imposing on its minority constituents: the politics of avoidance and the politics of listening to the loudest. That is, Indonesia’s government is notorious for avoiding legal actions against human rights abuses and for bending to Islamic extremists and radicals, regardless of the fact that they make up less than 10 percent of the overall Muslim population.

Romancing the Koran in Indonesia

by Jennie S. Bev

Indonesians have been flocking to a wildly popular novel by a young Indonesian named Habiburrahman El-Shiraz, and now an equally popular new movie, Ayat-Ayat Cinta, (translated as Love Verses). At first blush the work sounds hopelessly and religiously romantic, just like Kahlil Gibran’s poems to his mysterious lover whom, in the end, he never even met.

But don’t be fooled. Love Verses is far from a story of innocent platonic love between pen friends. It is about romanticizing polygamy and re-packaging fundamentalism in a modern Hollywood way. Both the book and the film have been embraced by Indonesian Islamists, who may see it as a chance to embed Islamist ideology into the wider moderate majority. Parliament chairman Hidayat Nur Wahid, who represents the Islamist-oriented Prosperous Justice Party, reportedly met with the cast of the film and praised the story because it was written by an author who had attended Islamic boarding schools and could popularize Islamic teaching.

Pandora’s box: shariah law in Indonesia

by Jennie S. Bev

A declaration that existing local shariah laws can stay in place could generate more shariah laws.

In November 2007, Indonesia won the prestigious Democracy Award from the International Association of Political Consultants (IAPC) for its peaceful transition into democracy over the last nine years. It was the first time the award, whose previous recipients had been Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Ky, had ever been given to an entire nation.

The association’s award, however seems a bit hollow after Home Affairs Minister Mardiyanto declared recently that the government sees no need to nullify some 600 shariah-based and -inspired bylaws passed by individual regional governments across the thousands of islands that make up the archipelago.