The Obama administration has correctly labeled Indonesia with the fourth largest population in the world as an "increasingly important partner" and with President Obama having spent four years of his youth in Indonesia, he is well poised to foster this partnership. Yet, his recent decision to cancel his trip to Indonesia for the second time is a poor public diplomacy strategy for the world's largest majority Muslim nation.
According to President Obama, Indonesia is "a potential model for the kind of development strategies, democracy strategies, as well as interfaith strategies that are going to be so important moving forward." Indeed, with nearly 240 million inhabitants (80%) of whom are Muslim, and a constitution that officially recognizes six religions- Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, Indonesia is regarded as a bastion of tolerance and pluralism in Southeast Asia. However, does Indonesia warrant such high praise for religious freedom- or is this comparative enthusiasm because of the low religious freedom standard of many other majority Muslim countries?
According to a recent Pew Forum report on global restrictions on religion, Indonesia ranks among the world's highest both in terms of governmental restrictions on religion and societal hostilities involving religion. For example, any religion falling outside of the six constitutional religions is considered illegal. Similarly, under Article 156 of the criminal code spreading heresy and blasphemy are punishable by up to five years in prison. Typically, such heresy and blasphemy prosecutions focus on "protecting" Islam.
In April Indonesia's Constitutional Court dealt a blow to religious freedom advocates by upholding the constitutionality of Article 156, concluding that it was a legal restriction of religious freedom on the basis that it helped maintain public order. Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia Director of Human Rights Watch said "... the decision on the blasphemy law poses a real threat to the beliefs of Indonesia's religious minorities...It hangs like a ‘Sword of Damocles' over the heads of religious minorities and those who practice traditional religions."
However, if anything the law has created social unrest and uncertainty. Islamic radical groups, some supported from the Gulf region, persecute religious minorities, who, in their view have a heretical or blasphemous belief. For example, in 2005, the Indonesia Ulemas Council (MUI) issued a fatwa condemning the Ahmadiyya as a heretical sect, a community who consider themselves Muslim, though they do not believe that Mohammad was the last prophet. Under Article 156, many local governments banned the Ahmadiyya and radical groups vandalized and forcibly closed Ahmadiyya mosques. A June 2008 joint ministerial decree banned Ahmadiyya proselytization and practices that it deemed deviant. Mosques and adherents of this same group were recently victims of vicious bombings in Pakistan which had set the stage by banning them.
Moreover, according to the 2010 Human Rights Watch report, more than200 local laws based on Sharia (Islamic law) are on the books throughout regencies in Indonesia. Some mandate dress restrictions for women or permit civil servants to refuse government services to women not wearing headscarves. Others mandate the ability to recite the Quran as a prerequisite for promotion in the civil service. Muslim clerics and Islamist militants also continued to invoke a 2006 decree requiring anyone building a "house of worship" to obtain "community approval" as a justification for forcibly blocking the building and operation of Christian churches.
These trends should concern advocates of religious pluralism and are tied to "conservative" Islamic trends. According to a 2009 Rand Corporation report on terrorism in Southeast Asia, there are currently three types of radical militant groupings; (1) nationalist Islamists who advocate further religious "purification" of Indonesia through laws such as Article 156, (2) antistatist Islamists who seek to establish a theocratic caliphate, and (3) nascent jihadist militias.Qualified as a jihadist militia, the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an Al-Qaeda sponsored terrorist organization, has been responsible for several bloody attacks in Indonesia. The most recent was a July 2009 suicide bombing in Jakarta killing eight people and the most deadly was a 2002 Bali nightclub attack that killed 202 people.Though the strength of JI, and other militant groups, has been weakened religious violence is clearly still a problem.
Indonesia's democratic political system and the generally moderate nature of Islam in the country have helped temper a radical outbreak of the Islamic extremism epidemic. Nonetheless, when President Obama does make it to Indonesia he should advocate for promotion of religious freedom which is a bulwark against threats by Islamic radicals against Indonesia and the United States and our interests.
