Religion in Indonesia - Islam
Indonesia is the most populous Muslim-majority nation in the world, and its practice of Islam the world’s most moderate. Islam was the dominant religion by far in Indonesia, with the greatest number of religious adherents: around 143 million people or 86.9 percent of the population in 1985, which when adjusted for 1992 estimates represents between 160 million and 170 million adherents.
According to a 2000 census report, 88 percent of the population of 237 million is Muslim, nearly 210 million. Muslims in the country are overwhelmingly Sunni. The two largest Muslim social organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, claimed 40 million and 30 million Sunni followers, respectively. There are an estimated one million to three million Shia Muslims as of 2010. Many smaller Muslim organizations exist, including approximately 200,000 persons who subscribe to the Ahmadiyya Qadiyani interpretation of Islam. A smaller group, known as Ahmadiyya Lahore, is also present. Other small Islamic minorities include al-Qiyadah al-Islamiya, Darul Arqam, Jamaah Salamulla (Salamulla Congregation), and members of the Indonesian Islamic Propagation Institute.
Within the nation, most provinces and islands had majority populations of Islamic adherents (ranging from just above 50 percent in Kalimantan Barat and Maluku provinces to as much as 97.8 percent in the Special Region of Aceh).
According to orthodox practice, Islam is a strictly monotheistic religion in which God (Allah or Tuhan) is a pervasive, if somewhat distant, figure. The Prophet Muhammad is not deified, but is regarded as a human who was selected by God to spread the word to others through the Quran, Islam's holiest book, the revealed word of God. Islam is a religion based on high moral principles, and an important part of being a Muslim is commitment to these principles. Islamic law (sharia; in Indonesian, syariah) is based on the Quran; the sunna, Islamic tradition, which includes the hadith (hadis in Indonesian), the actions and sayings of Muhammad; ijma, the consensus of a local group of Islamic jurisprudents and, sometimes, the whole Muslim community; and qiyas or reasoning through analogy. Islam is universalist, and, in theory, there are no national, racial, or ethnic criteria for conversion. The major branches of Islam are those adhered to by the Sunni and Shia Muslims.
To a significant degree, the striking variations in the practice and interpretation of Islam--in a much less austere form than that practiced in the Middle East--in various parts of Indonesia reflect its complex history. Introduced piecemeal by various traders and wandering mystics from India, Islam first gained a foothold between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries in coastal regions of Sumatra, northern Java, and Kalimantan. Islam probably came to these regions in the form of mystical Sufi tradition. Sufism easily gained local acceptance and became synthesized with local customs. The introduction of Islam to the islands was not always peaceful, however. As Islamized port towns undermined the waning power of the East Javanese HinduBuddhist Majapahit kingdom in the sixteenth century, Javanese elites fled to Bali, where over 2.5 million people kept their own version of Hinduism alive. Unlike coastal Sumatra, where Islam was adopted by elites and masses alike, partly as a way to counter the economic and political power of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms, in the interior of Java the elites only gradually accepted Islam, and then only as a formal legal and religious context for Javanese spiritual culture.
These historical processes gave rise to enduring tensions between orthodox Muslims and more syncretistic, locally based religion--tensions that were still visible in the early 1990s. On Java, for instance, this tension was expressed in a contrast between santri and abangan (see Glossary), an indigenous blend of native and Hindu-Buddhist beliefs with Islamic practices sometimes also called Javanism, kejawen, agama Jawa, or kebatinan. The terms and precise nature of this opposition were still in dispute in the early 1990s, but on Java santri not only referred to a person who was consciously and exclusively Muslim, santri also described persons who had removed themselves from the secular world to concentrate on devotional activities in Islamic schools called pesantren--literally the place of the santri.
In contrast to the Mecca-oriented philosophy of most santri, there was the current of kebatinan, which is an amalgam of animism, Hindu-Buddhist, and Islamic -- especially Sufi -- beliefs. This loosely organized current of thought and practice, was legitimized in the 1945 constitution and, in 1973, when it was recognized as one of the agama, President Suharto counted himself as one of its adherents. Kebatinan is generally characterized as mystical, and some varieties were concerned with spiritual self-control. Although there were many varieties circulating in 1992, kebatinan often implies pantheistic worship because it encourages sacrifices and devotions to local and ancestral spirits. These spirits are believed to inhabit natural objects, human beings, artifacts, and grave sites of important wali (Muslim saints). Illness and other misfortunes are traced to such spirits, and if sacrifices or pilgrimages fail to placate angry deities, the advice of a dukun or healer is sought. Kebatinan, while it connotes a turning away from the militant universalism of orthodox Islam, moves toward a more internalized universalism. In this way, kebatinan moves toward eliminating the distinction between the universal and the local, the communal and the individual.
Another important tension dividing Indonesian Muslims was the conflict between traditionalism and modernism. The nature of these differences was complex, confusing, and a matter of considerable debate in the early 1990s, but traditionalists generally rejected the modernists' interest in absorbing educational and organizational principles from the West. Specifically, traditionalists were suspicious of modernists' support of the urban madrasa, a reformist school that included the teaching of secular topics. The modernists' goal of taking Islam out of the pesantren and carrying it to the people was opposed by the traditionalists because it threatened to undermine the authority of the kyai (religious leaders). Traditionalists also sought, unsuccessfully, to add a clause to the first tenet of the Pancasila state ideology requiring that, in effect, all Muslims adhere to the sharia. On the other hand, modernists accused traditionalists of escapist unrealism in the face of change; some even hinted that santri harbored greater loyalty towards the ummah (congregation of believers) of Islam than to the secular Indonesian state.
Despite these differences, the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama (literally, Revival of the Religious Scholars, also known as the Muslim Scholars' League), the progressive Consultative Council of Indonesian Muslims (Masyumi), and two other parties were forcibly streamlined into a single Islamic political party in 1973--the Unity Development Party (PPP). Such cleavages may have weakened Islam as an organized political entity, as demonstrated by the withdrawal of the Nahdlatul Ulama from active political competition, but as a popular religious force Islam showed signs of good health and a capacity to frame national debates in the 1990s.
The Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI) has power to issue fatwas (religious decrees), although MUI opinions are not legally binding. Some MUI fatwas were largely ignored, such as one banning smoking. Nevertheless the MUI's edicts or fatwas were considered moral guiding principles for Muslims, and the government took them into consideration when making decisions or drafting legislation.
Numerous regional branches of the MUI have released fatwas on the issue of "deviance" from mainstream Islam, including recommendations to ban the Ahmadiyya. These have been influential in enabling continued official and social discrimination against the Ahmadiyya and other minority religious groups. In July, following its national conference, the MUI issued fatwas on a number of topics, including on the human organ trade, sexchange surgery, and marriages of convenience. In another fatwa the MUI declared sperm banks to be contrary to Islamic beliefs. The MUI also issued a fatwa allowing pilots to break their fast while on duty as long as they pay compensation, and another approving the usage of breast milk banks. The MUI additionally called for the revision of national legislation to enhance the ability of law enforcement to track down wealth of questionable origin in the fight against corruption.
Although not specifically classified as Sharia ordinances, many local governments follow Sharia as the inspiration for their ordinances. According to the Indonesian Women's Coalition, local governments have issued at least 100 such ordinances. Although these regulations are only sporadically enforced and apply only to Muslims, many Muslim scholars and human rights activists claim that these ordinances create or increase discrimination against women. In some cases these laws require Muslim women to wear headscarves in public and prevent Muslim women from receiving government services if they are not wearing headscarves. Regulations also mandate elected Muslim officials, students, civil servants, and individuals seeking marriage licenses to be able to read the Qur'an in Arabic and prohibit Muslims from consuming alcohol and gambling.
The initial rise of Sharia by-laws in the years after the 1998 fall of Suharto coincided with Indonesia's political decentralization -- and a lack of capacity in local governments to address social problems. This was not Islamization so much as not knowing how else to cope with social problems. Politicians understandably promoted Shari'a in areas with a historically strong Islamic identity such as Aceh and South Sulawesi. In areas that had a strong Islamic identity, it would seem natural as a politician to play on that identity, to use it to your advantage, to use Shari'a to get more votes. Shari'a law promulgation has decreased in recent years, however, because constituents and politicians have found that implementaton can be difficult, costly and controversial.
Aceh remained the only province for which the central government specifically authorized Sharia law. Presidential Decree 11/2003 formally implemented Sharia law and established Sharia courts in Aceh. Since that time the provincial government has passed three Sharia laws, one governing relations between members of the opposite sex and two others banning alcohol consumption and gambling. Christians and other non-Muslims are specifically exempted. Since 2007 Aceh overall has steadily reduced enforcement of Sharia law. However, officials in West Aceh have expanded the numbers of Sharia police, particularly after the Head of District (Bupati) Ramli issued a regulation in October 2009 against women wearing pants considered too tight. Religious police detained Muslim women wearing pants and compelled them to change to a long skirt or to wear a skirt over the pants. Some women complained that the law makes it uncomfortable for them wearing a skirt when riding on a motorcycle. Other districts in Aceh that do not have a law against women wearing pants also sporadically enforced this requirement in the wake of the West Aceh law.
The penalty for more serious violations of Sharia law can include caning. Persons subject to caning in Aceh are fully clothed--sometimes with several layers of clothes. There are also regulations effectively limiting the amount of force that may be applied during a caning. Acehnese canings do not break the skin.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
