News Analysis: The ruse of diversity: Celebrate plurality, condemn its practice

The holy or profane. The righteous or blameworthy. Human or divine. Divisive distinctions in a spiritually diverse society.

While Muslims habitually flock to visit graves of elders, religious purists attack a procession of the ndok-ndokan ritual in Banyuwangi, East Java, because the ceremony was reckoned to be sacrilegious for citing Koranic verses.

Amidst the household custom of the seven, 40, 100 and 1,000 day tahlil prayers to a dearly departed, a community in South Sulawesi had to suspend their Pa’jukukang and Gantarang Keke ethnic festival because it was deemed blasphemous.

It is too simple to blame institutional intolerance as vestiges of the Soeharto past.

Indonesian history hides a sinister record of us often acting no better than Romans to early Christians, the Quraysh to founding Muslims.

We were sinners long before the devils of the New Order arose.

Unveiling the burqa of the country’s religious bias educates us on the pervasive illiberal mindset of rejecting plural denominations. To comprehend why Minister of Religious Affairs Suryadharma Ali fears new religions and modern prophets.

Or why the Constitutional Court acted like the Nicene Council, ruling on the divinity Christ, when the Court on Monday rejected a petition to review the 1965 Blasphemy Law.

In its primary years, the nascent republic was particularly wary of movements which potentially posed a threat to the vulnerable unitary state. They feared that separatist groups would conceal themselves in a religious guise.

Moreover they recognized that the width of diversity of non-denominational faiths was also a weak link to unanimity.

The Arat Sabulungan faith group in the Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra, for example, posed no real threat but was still banned in 1954 and its followers forced to convert to the recognized religions.

State control can be traced back to the 1950s when prime minister Ali Sastroamidjojo formed the Inter-departmental Review Committee on Beliefs in Society. It was later established as a faith groups watchdog bureau, dubbed “Pakem Bureau”, under the Attorney General’s Office in 1960.

In the wake of the abortive 1965 coup, suspicion heightened as faith groups were suspected as hideouts for former communists. Hence the issuance of the 1965 Blasphemy Law and a 1966 Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly decree defining the recognized religions.

Organized religion became corporatized with the founding of various religious councils — the Indonesian Ulema Council, Indonesian Bishops Conference and the Indonesian Communion of Churches.

To the chagrin of conservative Islamists, faith groups in the early 1970s gained space to move in to some extent because individuals close to president Soeharto were “affectionate” toward these beliefs.

The battle lines between government’s recognition or calculated ignorance of faith groups continued.

In 1978, for example, the United Development Party threatened a walkout in the People’s Consultative Assembly in anticipation of growing acknowledgement of faith groups in state laws.

Despite the Constitutional Court’s contention that freedom of religion is protected, the practical consequence of the blurring of the lines between state and religion, and proliferating biased laws on faith have resulted in forced conversion and the infringement of civil rights since most documents demand a declaration of religion.
There is no concrete data on how many “religions” become extinct, but all the way back in 1993 the Attorney General’s Office acknowledged that over 517 “faith groups” have “died” since 1949.

Most religions in Indonesia are a syncretism of local cultural practices and neo-pagan worship meshed in the values of Abrahamic faiths.

It is a feature recognized by no less than Koentjaraningrat, the father of Indonesian anthropology.

Another integral feature of society here has been the tolerance which the government often advertises, but seems to have forgotten to uphold at home.

Dutch scholar C. Snouck Hurgronje is often maligned in Indonesian history books for helping dismantle the Islamic kingdoms of the archipelago.

But his observations of pre-independence Indonesia was testament to the nature of diverse tolerance: “Islam has had its religious persecutions but tolerance was very usual, and even official favoring of heresy was not quite exceptional with Muslim rulers”.

But modern popular democracy now makes the liberty of faith increasingly isolated towards the conformity of organized religion. Freedom of worship is restricted to state ordained options.

Without a new over-arching law which does not acknowledge, once and for all, any faith over the other, religious issues will be bound by a ruse of diversity: Celebrate plurality, yet condemn its practice.