Islamic lens the wrong way to see Indonesia

Greg Fealy ,  Sydney   |  Sat, 03/14/2009 2:21 PM  |  Opinion

Western leaders have recently been emphasizing the "Islamic" nature of Indonesian society and political life. When US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton visited Jakarta in February she commended Indonesia for demonstrating "so clearly that Islam, democracy and modernity not only can exist but also thrive together".

She also hoped that Indonesia would help Washington "to reach out the Muslim world" as part of the Obama Administration's new "smart diplomacy" strategy. The media and some commentators picked up this theme speculating that Obama may choose to Jakarta to make his promised "speech to the Muslim world".

Similarly, the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, praised Indonesia as a "dynamic Muslim democracy" and "its extraordinary role . in the wider councils of the world". He said religious commitment was a common element in the bilateral relationship and spoke glowingly of the international interfaith dialogue that he and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would co-convene later this year. In this context, Indonesia was seen as a representative of the Islamic world.

In one way, it is understandable that Western leaders might see Indonesia through an Islamic prism. Some 200 million Indonesians profess Islam as their religion, by far the largest Muslim population of any country. "Islamic" issues have also dominated Western perceptions of Indonesia since the 1998 downfall of Soeharto, including the rise of jihadist paramilitary and terrorist groups, the spread of sharia law and the putative expansion of political Islam.

But viewed another way, this focus on Islam is misplaced and quite possibly harmful. To begin with, it is problematic to characterize Indonesia as a "Muslim democracy", as if religion is a defining element in the country's democratization. Muslims played a major role in the post-Soeharto transition to democracy, but we cannot assume that Islamic motivations were paramount.

Indonesia's history shows that many Muslims have drawn a distinction between their religious identity and political behavior. Of the nine general elections held since 1955, for example, Islamic parties have never gained more than 44 percent of the vote - that is, less than half of the "Muslim vote". At the two post-1998 elections, Islamic parties gained only about 38 percent of the vote.

Indonesians do not normally describe their democracy as "Muslim" or "Islamic" and most of its citizens probably see the nation's constitution as ensuring religious neutrality and pluralism. When Western leaders cast Indonesia's democratic achievements in Islamic terms, they risk overlooking or discounting the role of non-Muslims in developing the current political system. One might also ask, how Americans and Australians would respond if their countries were described as "Christian democracies"? Although both countries have large Christian majorities, their democracies are not normally linked to a religion.

Second, the notion of Indonesia being a "bridge" between the Muslim and Western worlds is questionable. It assumes that Indonesia is influential in the broader Islamic world. Regrettably, the reality is that Indonesia seen by much of the Muslim world as geographically, intellectually and politically peripheral.

As many Indonesian Islamic leaders who visit the Middle East or South Asia can attest, few of their co-religionists in those regions have much knowledge of or interest in Indonesia. Numerous attempts to "export" Indonesian Islamic thinking to other parts of the Islamic world or to have Indonesia act as a broker between rival Islamic groupings have ended in failure.

I would argue that Western leaders such as Hillary Clinton and Kevin Rudd are in danger of projecting their governments' preoccupations and anxieties about Islam on to their relations with Indonesia. This might best be described as Huntington's syndrome. In 1993, Samuel Huntington, wrote a seminal article about the "clash of civilisations" which, among other things, warned of post-Cold War conflict between the Muslim East and the Christian West.

The article was immensely influential in policy circles, particularly in the Bush Administration, but was widely criticised by scholars of Islam as reductionist and divisive. Ironically, in the post-9/11 world, Western leaders have been at pains to claim that there is no gulf between Islam and the West and have eagerly embraced nations such as Indonesia as "proof" of this.

But by continuing to define the world in dichotomous Muslim and non-Muslim terms we risk falling into the same error as Huntington; that is, magnifying religion into a primary factor when it is at most secondary or tertiary. Islam explains very little about Indonesia's democracy or diplomacy. If Western leaders persist in placing Indonesia into an Islamic "box" they will betray their own misunderstanding of the country and its politics.

Dr Greg Fealy is a fellow and senior lecturer at the College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. He conveyed some of these remarks to the recent Australia-Indonesia Conference in Sydney.

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