Indonesia Update Series. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2019. xviii, 280 pp. (Tables, graphs, figure, map.) US$29.90, paper. ISBN 978-981-4843-46-1.
Once regarded as a hopeful model of a Muslim-majority democracy, Indonesia in recent years has seen its global image fade. Ethno-religious violence in the early years of the “reform” era (reformasi, 1998–today) and a much-discussed conservative turn in Muslim society blemished the country’s democratic credentials. So too have controversies surrounding the subject that lies at the heart of this welcome book: the place of ethnic, religious, sexual, and differentially enabled minorities in contemporary Indonesia.
The papers assembled in this volume were originally presented at the 36th Indonesia Update Conference at the Australian National University in September 2018. The book’s thirteen topical chapters are divided into four parts: History and Law, Disability, Sexuality, and Religion and Ethnicity. The editors open the book with a scene-setting review of the historical and legal circumstances of Indonesia’s minorities. The editors revisit recent events as well, including the 2016–2017 campaign against the Chinese-Christian mayor of Jakarta, Islamist campaigns against LGBT activism, the sectarian targeting of Ahmadiyah and Shi’a, and the growing prosecution of religious “deviants” under Indonesia’s law on religious blasphemy. The authors argue, I think correctly, that lack of legal enforcement and “a growing culture of intolerant Muslim majoritarianism” (10) have worked to undercut major portions of Indonesia’s new democracy.
The book’s topical chapters open with Robert Cribb’s survey of the history and meaning of minority standing in Indonesia from colonial times to the present. Cribb notes that minority standing sometimes carried privilege rather than stigma, as with Indo-Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese in the late colonial period. However, he warns that today Indonesia is “in the midst of a major change in the configuration of Indonesia’s minorities” (19). The change is undercutting Indonesian legacies of civic nationalism and threatens to bring about “a de-integration of Indonesia into subnational cantons, each defined by a specific religion and/or ethnic groups” (31).
In chapter 3, legal scholar Tim Lindsey provides an impressive overview of the legal framework that regulates minorities and shapes patterns of discrimination in Indonesia. His review touches on the 2016 law on disability in Indonesia, a recent Constitutional Court decision on homosexuality, legislation affecting ethnic minorities and customary law (adat), and the legal environment affecting the small but influential Chinese minority. Lindsey concludes that, although Indonesia put an impressive array of liberal-minded reforms in place just after the return to democracy, poor enforcement of the laws has tended to “raise wider questions about the faltering trajectory of reformasi in Indonesia” (53). In chapter 4, another prominent scholar of Indonesian law, Simon Butt, examines the role of Indonesia’s Constitutional Court (established in 2003) with regard to minorities. He singles out two cases handed down in 2017, one dealing with LGBT rights, and the other with legal and constitutional recognition of the country’s many “indigenous spiritual traditions” (kepercayaan). Both court decisions were initially regarded as a victory for vulnerable minorities. But the legal implications of these decisions remain unclear because of the court’s lack of enforcement authority and its recent tendency to factor conservative understandings of Islamic norms into its rulings.
Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the politics and law of disability. In chapter 5, Thusara Dibley and Antoni Tsaputra explore activist efforts to shift public understandings of disability from a “welfare” approach to a “social model” that recognizes the differentially enabled as rights-bearing individuals entitled to structural accommodations. In chapter 7, Dina Afrianty provides an insightful sectoral perspective on the same shift, examining the ways in which Indonesia’s huge Islamic educational sector has slowly but steadily sought to improve disabled Indonesians’ access to Islamic schooling.
The next two chapters examine the plight of sexual minorities. In chapter 7, Saskia Wieringa challenges the myth of Indonesia as tolerant on matters of sexual pluralism. She examines the politics of two periods of “sexual panic” in modern times, the first in the course of the anti-communist bloodletting in 1965–1966, and the second in the 2000s with the rise of Islamist militias. In chapter 8, Hendri Yulius Wijaya explores the changing language and practice of LGBT activism. His analysis offers a casebook example of the ways in which globalized discourses of sexuality and rights are localized in an Indonesia-specific way.
The final five case study chapters deal with religion and ethnicity in minority politics. In chapter 9, Marcus Mietzner and Burhanuddin Muhatadi draw on surveys carried out before and after the 2016–2017 campaign against Jakarta’s Christian-Chinese mayor. The authors show that today a full third of Indonesian Muslims are “strongly intolerant” of non-Muslims and Chinese. In a brilliant and distressing analysis, the authors conclude that, although “lower-class Muslims were the main recruits to the intolerance pool during” recent protests, “rich and highly educated Muslims were the key drivers of intolerance”; this trend is one more sign that “Islamist ideas of politics and society are becoming … mainstream” and contributing to “a slow but perceptible process of democratic deconsolidation” (173).
In chapter 10, Ihsan Ali-Fauzi examines the role of the government-sponsored Interreligious Harmony Forum in managing disputes over places of worship. His case comparisons show that “in each instance, the … [forum] was more of a contributor to the dispute than an institution for resolving it” (177). In chapter 11, Charlotte Setijadi shows how the return of anti-Chinese discourses in public life have also led to a revival of the once legally stigmatized category of “indigenous” (pribumi) Indonesians. In chapter 12, Maria Myutel shows how the small but wealthy Indian Sindhi community has carved out a place for itself by practicing a policy of “mutual disregard” (227) with regard to the state. In chapter 13, Butet Manurung examines the plight of a more typical minority, the forest-dwelling Rimba people of Sumatra.
In the book’s conclusion, the analyst Sidney Jones provides an apt reflection on the book’s findings. Observing that the category of minority in Indonesia is both malleable and politically charged, she touches on a theme broached by most of the contributors to this volume: that minority-majority relations today seem to be in the throes of a great transition marked by the rise of an intolerant Muslim majoritarianism.
In both its breadth and policy implications, this is one of the most important books in recent years on social minorities, majorities, and citizenship in Indonesia. It merits reading by all observers of contemporary Indonesia, as well as by researchers concerned with the promise and perils of democracy and majoritarianism today.
Robert W. Hefner
Boston University, Boston