Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia

1. Introduction by Greg Fealy and Sally White

 1 Introduction Greg Fealy and Sally White Western perceptions of the character and role of Islam in Indonesia have shifted dramatically in the past decade. Much of the literature during the twentieth century portrayed the Muslim community in largely benign terms. There were several interlinked aspects to this approving commentary . The first remarked on the myriad ways in which local Muslim communities had ‘indigenised’ Islam, blending it with pre-existing religious practices to produce richly distinctive variants. Moreover, this Indonesianised form of Islam bore none of the severity and rigidity attributed to Middle Eastern forms, earning it praise for its moderation and tolerance . Some scholars even approvingly observed that large numbers of Muslims appeared lax in their devotions and heedless of all but the most basic requirements of Islamic law. This was especially so for Java, where social scientists carefully recorded the heterodoxies of Muslim thought and behaviour. This favourable portrayal of Indonesian Islam began to change in the late 1990s as many scholars and commentators wrote with concern about the perceived rise of radical and sectarian tendencies. Bloody Muslim– Christian conflict broke out in various parts of the archipelago—most notably in Ambon and Halmahera in Maluku and in Poso in Central Sulawesi—resulting in thousands of deaths on both sides. Attacks on Christian churches and clergy also leapt, exceeding by some estimates several hundred per annum in 2000–01. Militant Islamist groups, including violent paramilitary groups such as Laskar Jihad and Laskar Jundullah and vigilante groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), also proliferated from 1998. These developments prompted the American anthropologist Robert Hefner to write in 2000 of the growing strength of ‘uncivil Islam’ and the concomitant threat to Indonesia’s pluralist Islamic culture.    Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia The perception that Indonesian Islam had dangerously radical elements sharpened dramatically following the October 2002 Bali bombings in which 202 people died, most of them Westerners. The 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had already made Islamic terrorism a central preoccupation of the United States and its allies, and following the Bali bombings Indonesia was added to the list of countries with groups that posed a significant terrorist threat. This impression was reinforced by three major terrorist strikes against predominantly Western targets in Indonesia between 2003 and 2005. As a result, terrorism has become the main prism through which much of the West views the Muslim world. Governments and the media have tended to portray Muslims according to the threat that they perceive them to pose. Thus, Muslim leaders, groups and even entire societies have been classified as either friendly or hostile using binary categories such as ‘moderate’ or ‘mainstream’ versus ‘radical’ or ‘extremist’. Accompanying this has been the rise in the media of commentators on Islamic issues whose main field of expertise is not Islam or Muslim society and politics, but rather security issues and particularly terrorism. Their research and analysis are driven primarily by security pre­occupations, and they tend to show little interest in other aspects of Islamic life, such as cultural and economic developments, non-Islamist political trends, intellectual activity and social discourse, except in so far as these can be interpreted as decreasing or increasing the ‘Islamic threat’. Thus, much of the recent literature and commentary on Islam has been reductionist and underpinned by assumptions that reflect Western concerns rather than understanding of Muslim communities on their own terms. The purpose of this book is to take a broader view of what is happening within Indonesian Islam. One part of this is indeed Islamic militancy and jihadism—addressed by Ian Douglas Wilson and Ken Ward in Chapters 11 and 12. But the main aim of the book is to explore the many ways in which Islam reaches into and shapes the daily lives of Muslims. These may be spiritual, economic, political or cultural. Although almost all Muslims have in common their adherence to the five pillars of faith, in Indonesia today Muslims express their faith in diverse ways. Some don traditional Islamic dress, buy only halal products, put their money in  Examples of this genre include Rabasa (2003), Abuza (2007), Singh (2007) and Dhume (2008).  The pillars of Islam are the five formal acts regarded as obligatory for all Muslims. They are: the declaration of faith that there is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God; carrying out the five daily prayers (shalat); paying the wealth tax (zakat); fasting...