Cornell Modern Indonesia Project. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. x, 261 pp. (Maps, B&W photos.) US$34.95, paper. ISBN 9781501760440.
The edited volume Religious Pluralism in Indonesia is the outcome of a 2019 conference on the “State of the Field of Indonesian Studies” at Cornell University. It brings together 11 articles from different disciplinary backgrounds that all address the issue of religious pluralism, one of the most contested topics in contemporary Indonesian politics. Since Indonesia’s electoral democratization process started in 1998, questions of religious pluralism—how it was assembled, what was its basis, how has it eroded, what exactly does it consist of—have moved to the centre of political and scholarly debates. The prominence of the debate around “religious pluralism” functions to siphon public attention away from pressing problems such as environmental damage and rapidly growing inequality exacerbated by Indonesia’s entrenched, yet fluid oligarchy. More specifically, new religio-political actors use the contested terrain of “religious pluralism” to re-negotiate power-sharing with state actors. In this sense, Indonesia is hardly an exception to the global rise of nationalism and identitarian politics. Much has been written about the rise of Islamism and the fragile state of Indonesian democracy, and particularly about the increasing pressure on minorities. The articles in this volume summarize and add to these debates, and some of the authors dive deep into individual case studies to illustrate the effects on minorities.
The first seven chapters are dedicated to the topic of growing majoritarianism in the name of Islam, mostly with a focus on Java, where the vast majority of Indonesians live. The remaining chapters discuss the “Islamic turn” in Indonesia’s foreign policy interests and case studies of regions outside Java: Bali, the city of Medan in Sumatra, and Maluku.
Chiara Formichi’s chapter adopts Michael Peletz’s definition of “gender pluralism” and shows how the national credo of Indonesia, the Pancasila, is a contested concept that has been adapted for different political agendas. The second chapter is a highly illuminating piece in which Robert Hefner elegantly synthesizes and solders together various disciplinary perspectives on Indonesia’s political Islamization. He highlights the multifacetedness, plurality, and fundamental political indeterminancy of Islamization. Employing a broader notion of democracy than more standard, pinched liberal democratic theory allows for, and drawing on Vedi Hadiz’s important works on Islamic populism, Hefner deftly maps out the mobilizational potential of Islam, particularly when actors with oligarchic resources lend their support to, and themselves receive support from, Islamist campaigns. Sidney Jones’ chapter offers a telling list of majoritarian statements pulled from campaign speeches and social media postings and identifies several key turning points in the road towards Islamist majoritarianism. Sidney Jones also highlights the dangers that lie in President Joko Widodo’s attempts to counter this majoritarianism with his hasty prohibiting of organizations deemed too radical. Kikue Hamayotsu calls attention to the importance of traditional religious elites and their various coalitions. Focusing on the province of West Java, a stronghold of Islamism, she emphasizes the impact of “intolerant coalitions” between traditional religious elites and radical Islamists. Evi Lina Sutrisno shifts the focus from the majority to one of the minorities and analyzes the case of a Chinese temple in Tuban, a town on the northern coast of East Java. Her case shows the complex ways in which global power shifts affect national discourses, and also analyzes how local communities have resisted “hate spin” by political entrepreneurs. Mona Lohanda zooms in on the case of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the former governor of Jakarta of Chinese and Christian background, who was the key target of the large 2016 protests after remarks that his Islamist opponents declared blasphemous. Lorraine V. Aragon uses a broad historical perspective to explain the complicated ways in which the Indonesian state apparatus classifies “religions” versus “indigenous beliefs” and shows not only how unresolved this classification is, but also how it will likely lead to many more complicated cases in the future. Silvia Vignato uses a neighbourhood in the city of Medan to show the rise of ethnicization of Indonesians of Tamil origins. James B. Hoesterey’s chapter focusses on the efforts of promoting “moderate Islam” in soft diplomacy, and shows vividly the foreign interests and influences that Indonesia’s Islamic leaders weigh to navigate their own strategies. Michel Picard looks at the experience of Balinese Indonesians and how their own religious practice is affected by the Indonesian structures and the rising majoritarianism. Christopher R. Duncan takes a critical look at the discrepancy between public rhetoric on interfaith relations and practice on the ground in Maluku and North Maluku. He highlights the need to differentiate between the presence of religious diversity and deeper religious pluralism and points at proselytization efforts among indigenous belief systems.
Readers interested in Indonesia from a more comparative perspective might have benefitted from more comparisons from farther afield, but they will gain very useful overviews especially from the first two chapters by Chiara Formichi and Robert Hefner, who skillfully disentangle the complicated landscape of religious and political actors. Similarly, Sidney Jones and Kikue Hamayotsu also allude to parallels and differences elsewhere or draw on previous comparative works to discuss the Indonesian case.
Most contributors work in anthropology, religious studies, or history, and so detailed discussions of state actors are, with some exceptions, not in their focus. But it could be argued that unlike in other cases, such as Turkey and Hungary, where politicians with decidedly majoritarian platforms form the government, the Indonesian case is mainly characterized by its fragmented landscape. Hefner’s chapter lays out the importance of understanding the “political” beyond state actors. He urges us to understand politics in the wider sense by looking at non-state actors: “When blocked from progress in the electoral domain, determined minorities often refocus their energies on less state-centric programs of identity politics” (23). Thus, with its focus on the meso level of politics between the state and the individual, this carefully arranged volume is a very welcome collection for scholars and students willing to wade into the complex spectrum of organizations, preachers, and individuals that shape contemporary Indonesia. Readers will be rewarded with a sharper understanding of what happened in Indonesia over the last two decades.
Saskia Schäfer
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin