Reashot Xigwin
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By Roger Mitton | Thursday, 05 May 2016
warnings about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia and the threat it poses to the stability of the region’s biggest and most important nation.
Residents of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year at a temple. Aceh is a Muslim-majority area with a small Chinese community who settled there hundreds of years ago. Photo: EPA
They detail a few acts by assertive Islamists, such as blocking clerics from other sects from speaking and assaults on unsanctioned churches in Aceh, and then imply that visiting Indonesia would be inadvisable right now.
Frankly, these cautionary reports are not just startling, but bizarre.
They are comparable, say, to recalling the killings five years ago by Anders Breivik in Norway, and the 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and then urging people not to travel to Scandinavia.
It is ridiculous. In truth, what needs highlighting is the miraculous way that Indonesia is largely free of radical movements and continues to remain harmonious, peaceful and democratic.
Other nations in the region, including Myanmar, which have a unitary land mass and a much smaller population, seem endlessly plagued with the kind of problems that Indonesia routinely deals with on an almost daily basis.
It is indeed a miracle. Indonesia’s 13,000 islands stretch across more than 5,000 kilometres of ocean and are home to hundreds of ethnic groups speaking different languages and practising different religions.
Even multi-ethnic Myanmar appears almost homogenous in comparison.
As the fourth-most-populous nation in the world, Indonesia’s 260 million people make up almost half the entire population of ASEAN.
Most of its citizens are Muslim– about 87 percent – but more than 25 million are Christian and a sizable number are Hindu or Buddhist.
Somehow they co-exist in relative harmony, which is a feat other ASEAN members, such as Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines, would love to emulate.
As well, Indonesia’s 34 provinces each have their own legislature and governor, and they exercise a degree of autonomy that the states of Myanmar can only dream about.
There are many more amazing statistics, but what is truly astonishing and that almost defies logic is the fact that Indonesia is a wide-open, multi-party, secular democracy.
Okay, it is not unique in the region, for there is now a limited form of democracy here that is like the disciplined versions in Malaysia and Singapore; but there is none at all in the likes of Brunei, Laos and Vietnam.
Yet Indonesia, despite its size and endless diversity, somehow manages to respect human rights and allow its people a degree of freedom unseen in much of the rest of the region.
So let us view the recent warnings emanating from various partisan think tanks, mostly in the Christian West and in Singapore, in a more measured and relative way.
Of course, there are occasional outbreaks of communal violence, as there are in Brussels, Paris and Mumbai, and there is religious animosity that sometimes flares into open conflict.
But such incidents are infrequent and quickly stamped out. Certainly, Indonesia has seen nothing recently to compare with Meiktila or even the Little India riot in Singapore.
So it is strange that its social stability has not received the recognition it deserves, and even more perplexing that many potential visitors still view it with a measure of trepidation that borders on fear.
When holidaying in London and other Western capitals last month, I was asked which countries in this region are the safest and most interesting to visit.
My answer was always Indonesia. After all, there is no scenery anywhere in Southeast Asia that cannot be found there, and nothing that can be done in Hanoi or Mandalay that cannot be done in Bali or Makassar.
Most of all, however, there is the fact that Indonesians, men and women, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus, can all speak, travel, pray and vote freely.
And no one’s citizenship is questioned because their ancestors arrived unannounced from Mesopotamia or Mughal India or the Netherlands.
So please dismiss any absurd trepidation and forget the fear of radical mullahs and their ilk.
Of course, as elsewhere, there is a tide in the religious fervour of Indonesians, and there is currently an upsurge in the assertion of Islamic values by some hardline groups.
One of them is the Islamic Defenders Front, whose leaders I interviewed 15 years ago, and who periodically raise their profile by blockading a nightclub or agitating against a sultry songstress.
Like Lonesome Rhodes, they have the courage of their ignorance, but their pantomime acts elicit little public support and almost none in elections.
Still, the headlines they generate can foster a perception among outsiders that Indonesian Muslims are becoming less tolerant of religious minorities and allegedly lascivious behaviour.
And there is some truth to this, for it is part of the democratisation process that has re-established itself across the nation and which allows Islamists, and all other citizens, the right to speak out and protest.
It is only when they cross the line and attack members of other faiths that real trouble arises, and fortunately that happens infrequently.
According to the Wahid Institute, an Islamic research centre in Jakarta, there were only 190 violations against freedom of religion in the whole of Indonesia last year.
The most serious were the burning down of several unlicensed churches in the fervently Islamic province of Aceh, and the harassment of the minority Ahmadiyah and Gafatar religious sects.
Of course, these acts must be condemned and the perpetrators punished. But they hardly compare to the razing of Rakhine villages, the bombing of Bangkok’s Erawan Shrine, or the serial machete murders in Dhaka.
So instead of harping on about these rare incidents as if they indicate the rise of a revolutionary caliphate, we should celebrate the Indonesian miracle and hope that it might be emulated across the region.
http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/opinion/20142-the-indonesian-miracle-is-for-real.html
As a Chinaman born & raised here I can attest to this.
warnings about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia and the threat it poses to the stability of the region’s biggest and most important nation.
Residents of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year at a temple. Aceh is a Muslim-majority area with a small Chinese community who settled there hundreds of years ago. Photo: EPA
They detail a few acts by assertive Islamists, such as blocking clerics from other sects from speaking and assaults on unsanctioned churches in Aceh, and then imply that visiting Indonesia would be inadvisable right now.
Frankly, these cautionary reports are not just startling, but bizarre.
They are comparable, say, to recalling the killings five years ago by Anders Breivik in Norway, and the 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and then urging people not to travel to Scandinavia.
It is ridiculous. In truth, what needs highlighting is the miraculous way that Indonesia is largely free of radical movements and continues to remain harmonious, peaceful and democratic.
Other nations in the region, including Myanmar, which have a unitary land mass and a much smaller population, seem endlessly plagued with the kind of problems that Indonesia routinely deals with on an almost daily basis.
It is indeed a miracle. Indonesia’s 13,000 islands stretch across more than 5,000 kilometres of ocean and are home to hundreds of ethnic groups speaking different languages and practising different religions.
Even multi-ethnic Myanmar appears almost homogenous in comparison.
As the fourth-most-populous nation in the world, Indonesia’s 260 million people make up almost half the entire population of ASEAN.
Most of its citizens are Muslim– about 87 percent – but more than 25 million are Christian and a sizable number are Hindu or Buddhist.
Somehow they co-exist in relative harmony, which is a feat other ASEAN members, such as Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines, would love to emulate.
As well, Indonesia’s 34 provinces each have their own legislature and governor, and they exercise a degree of autonomy that the states of Myanmar can only dream about.
There are many more amazing statistics, but what is truly astonishing and that almost defies logic is the fact that Indonesia is a wide-open, multi-party, secular democracy.
Okay, it is not unique in the region, for there is now a limited form of democracy here that is like the disciplined versions in Malaysia and Singapore; but there is none at all in the likes of Brunei, Laos and Vietnam.
Yet Indonesia, despite its size and endless diversity, somehow manages to respect human rights and allow its people a degree of freedom unseen in much of the rest of the region.
So let us view the recent warnings emanating from various partisan think tanks, mostly in the Christian West and in Singapore, in a more measured and relative way.
Of course, there are occasional outbreaks of communal violence, as there are in Brussels, Paris and Mumbai, and there is religious animosity that sometimes flares into open conflict.
But such incidents are infrequent and quickly stamped out. Certainly, Indonesia has seen nothing recently to compare with Meiktila or even the Little India riot in Singapore.
So it is strange that its social stability has not received the recognition it deserves, and even more perplexing that many potential visitors still view it with a measure of trepidation that borders on fear.
When holidaying in London and other Western capitals last month, I was asked which countries in this region are the safest and most interesting to visit.
My answer was always Indonesia. After all, there is no scenery anywhere in Southeast Asia that cannot be found there, and nothing that can be done in Hanoi or Mandalay that cannot be done in Bali or Makassar.
Most of all, however, there is the fact that Indonesians, men and women, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus, can all speak, travel, pray and vote freely.
And no one’s citizenship is questioned because their ancestors arrived unannounced from Mesopotamia or Mughal India or the Netherlands.
So please dismiss any absurd trepidation and forget the fear of radical mullahs and their ilk.
Of course, as elsewhere, there is a tide in the religious fervour of Indonesians, and there is currently an upsurge in the assertion of Islamic values by some hardline groups.
One of them is the Islamic Defenders Front, whose leaders I interviewed 15 years ago, and who periodically raise their profile by blockading a nightclub or agitating against a sultry songstress.
Like Lonesome Rhodes, they have the courage of their ignorance, but their pantomime acts elicit little public support and almost none in elections.
Still, the headlines they generate can foster a perception among outsiders that Indonesian Muslims are becoming less tolerant of religious minorities and allegedly lascivious behaviour.
And there is some truth to this, for it is part of the democratisation process that has re-established itself across the nation and which allows Islamists, and all other citizens, the right to speak out and protest.
It is only when they cross the line and attack members of other faiths that real trouble arises, and fortunately that happens infrequently.
According to the Wahid Institute, an Islamic research centre in Jakarta, there were only 190 violations against freedom of religion in the whole of Indonesia last year.
The most serious were the burning down of several unlicensed churches in the fervently Islamic province of Aceh, and the harassment of the minority Ahmadiyah and Gafatar religious sects.
Of course, these acts must be condemned and the perpetrators punished. But they hardly compare to the razing of Rakhine villages, the bombing of Bangkok’s Erawan Shrine, or the serial machete murders in Dhaka.
So instead of harping on about these rare incidents as if they indicate the rise of a revolutionary caliphate, we should celebrate the Indonesian miracle and hope that it might be emulated across the region.
http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/opinion/20142-the-indonesian-miracle-is-for-real.html
As a Chinaman born & raised here I can attest to this.
