Penistaan: the debate about the vulnerability of religion

In 2016-7 there was a malicious reli-political action against the candidate for governorship of Jakarta, Ahok. He had quoted a text from the Qur'an, given his own interpretation and then he was accused of penistaan or deprecation/vilification of religion. He was sentenced to two years in prison.
About six months ago there was another case in Tanjung Balai a majority ethnic-Chinese town close to Medan. A Chinese lady, Meiliana, living close to a mosque, complained about the very noisy loudspeaker of a mosque nearby. It was mentioned to the police, she was arrested and 19 August 2019 she was sentenced to stay for 1.5 year in prison, for penistaan/penodaan.

Soon after this strange verdict by a local judge, there came another case of accusation of vilification of religion. A preacher from Pekan Baru, the oil capital of Central Sumatra, one Ustaz Abdul Somad, had given a sermon in a mosque which was recorded and available on the internet. He had said: salib itu dalamnya ada Iblis dan ada jin kafir ('in the cross the devil is present and unbelief; evil spirits are found in the cross). Some Batak Christians went to a court to ask for a case against  this UAS (famous people with long names like to use acronyms since Hamka, SBY and others). UAS, born in 1977, studied for some time at Al-Azhar in Egypt and also took an MA degree in Rabat, Morocco. He is at this moment a lecturer at the UIN, Islamic University Syarif Kasim of Pekan Baru.

The MUI, Majelis Ulama Indonesia, Indonesian Council of Muslim Clerics, called for mitigation in this case: it should be handled outside the legal institutions, through dialogue and mutual understanding. This is understandable, but it should have been more convincing if MUI had shown or preached mitigation as well in the Ahok and Meilana cases. Recent history of Pakistan has shown that vilification processes can bring total disorder to a country. And the present Muhammadiyah leader also rightly stated that the Ahok affair only has brought public and social damage to the country. Religion is strong enough and should not be defended as if it is a weak institution.
Benny Susetyo and Gomar Gulton, from the Catholic and Protestantchurches reacted that if this preacher will not ask forgiveness for his words,  he  anyway will be forgiven by them.

Axial Age,Enlightenment and more nice terminology

Two weeks ago I wrote about the book by Bernie Adeney on encounters he had in Indonesia during the last tw decades. Most of these were not directly related to the great world religions, but to free individual interpretations. In fact, I first came across this book by the review in BKI, 2019:81-4. Gerry van Klinken showed here his surprise that so long after the axial period of 800-300 BCE and also several centuries after the Enlightenment (1700-1800), religion is still an issue,a living culture and  tradition.

Lao Tse, the Buddha, the Jewish Prophets, the first Greek Philosophers they were included in 1949 by Karl Jaspers as the founding speakers of die Achsenzeit. In the review Van Klinken formulated the question: 'Why do Indonesians appear to be still so deeply pre-axial? Why do they still seemingly live in a sacred cosmos even while they enjoy the freedoms of modernity?' He suggests that Adeney's  answer is that Indonesia has a unique open and tolerant form of religiosity (p. 80).

While reading the book myself, I discovered that Adeney gives examples of questionaires he had asked to be filled by some 2000 young people (students), but although divided between the major religious groups,the relevant conclusions and nice stories are not from the questionaires who do not give clear differences between religions. In fact he shows that the great religious and philosophical traditions are still alive, but are re-interpreted again and again with many people not adressing the old formulas, but rather seek answers they like. And it is often not the philosophical discourse, but the narrative sequence which is the power of these great traditions. Karl Jaspers may have found a striking term, the great story-teller Karen Armstrong told his story again and so Bernie Adeney applied this method to his entourage in Indonesia.
In the second paragraph of the Introduction it is stated that 'Indonesia is unique in the modern world..' (page 1).  This is not related to the legal position  of religion through the state ideology of Pancasila. In the late 1980s and during the 1990s when Pancasila had become corrupt, when it was to be included in the first lines of the statutes of all social bodies as asas tunggal, it was somewhat in decline. Is this the reason why he does not mention it as the unique invention of Indonesia?

The pious believers of Bernie Adeney

Last two weeks I have been reading the fascinating book by Bernard Adeney, Living in a Sacred Cosmos, Indonesia and the future of Islam 2018, Yale Southeast Asia Studies vol.66.

Initially it was difficult reading: I was expecting some broad and general theories and observations about Indonesian Islam, how the largest Muslim country takes a different position than the Middle East or India-Pakistan. Or rather: How it is now also developing towards a more 'conservative turn' (Bruinessen 2013, Madinier The end of innocence). But the book is not about Islam as an institution, even not about Islam as a community. In the first chapter only one page (24-5) is devoted to the the more than 50 salafi organizations that have started since 1998, the end of the Soeharto regime. It is not about organizations, it is all about individuals, and most often about personal meetings of Adeney in his Indonesian period, roughly 1993-2013. He was the leader of the postgraduate centre at the UGM, Universitas Gadjah Mada  in Yogyakarta,  where Christians (UKDW, Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana) and UIN, the Islamic State University of Yogyakarta come together as ICRS the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies.
Adeney writes about religious individual experiences not about universal or local Muslim development in leading persons or organizations (and Indonesia is better in organizations than in the great leaders). He gives wonderful interpretations of the creative sensitivity for religious ideas and emotions. He avoids the doctrines and formal organizations.This makes the book sometimes a learned annotated personal diary. It is its weakness, also its strength.
As to formal Islamic learning there is much available in Indonesia and Adeney has not the ability to equal or even to understand them easily. There is one Arab word in Arab script in the book, but unfortunately, the letters are not from right to the left, but the other way round on p.68.When reading the word tauhid or 'Unity of God' here one wonders: did nobody in his office correct him? I have seldom read more awkward Arabic!

But the weakness about 'formal'  or 'official' Islam is corrected by the nice anecdotes, personal stories in this book. Here he often writes more about Indonesians in general than about Muslims more specifically. An excellent example is pp. 237-247 about 'imagination of nature'. It first gives his imression of the dramatic eartquake in Yogyakarta, 27 May 2006, when he saw people saying their ritual prayers amidst the ruins of their house. Then he turns to the tsunami of Aceh, 26 December 2004. It begins with the story of the Protestant minister Elisa who missed his appointment, arrived late in Aceh and found 15 members of his family lost or/and dead. This minister had for some time great problems in accepting God's goodness for his creation, while a Muslim grandmother in Yogyakarta could more quickly put the disaster in her religious imagination. He ends then with a long quote from the Jesuit writer Sindhunata about God as Grandfather Merapi, the volcano north of Yogyakarta: 'With his lava and eruptions that kill, grandfather Merapi demands human victims, but Grandfather Merapi also pays us back with the overflowing richness of nature..'
What has this to do with Indonesia and the Future of Islam? Probably that title was good enough for the marketing of the book. But this is very different from the large amount of studies complaining about the salafi invasion and infiltration in Indonesia and a possible strategy to turn it: that theme is restricted to one page only!