T

he smiling woman pictured in a black veil, Rosnida Sari, is the lecturer of gender studies at the center of the latest uproar in Banda Aceh. Earlier reports exposed her like a criminal, her jovial face in curls, unveiled and hugging a dog, reportedly from her Facebook account, which she closed following all the pressure. Her sin: engaging in a '€œwild'€ method of teaching, in the words of one Aceh politician, for taking students to a church to hear a pastor explain gender relations in Christianity.

The Ar Raniry State Islamic University (UIN) issued an apology through Rector Farid W. Ibrahim and said Rosnida had not committed an academic violation, but that there were social perspectives to be considered.

Following outcry over what many saw as tramping on academic freedom, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin tweeted that the lecturer should be protected, though the protesters also demanded that the minister more explicitly lend support to Rosnida. A meeting of the Dakwah (Islamic propagation) Department, where Rosnida teaches, recommended that she be suspended '€œfor a semester or two'€, while the young lecturer was '€œguided to better understand Islam and local wisdom'€.

Outsiders might sigh in exasperation, apathy or amusement: '€œWhat do you expect? This is Aceh,'€ the only province allowed to issue sharia-based bylaws following the 2005 peace agreement between the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Thus, no one, the government included, would touch Aceh with a 3-meter pole because even Acehnese critical of the bylaws, including many at UIN, are considered anti-Islamic.

Worse, Rosnida was accused of apostasy, although fortunately there is no bylaw so far on that issue. The uproar followed the publication of her story in early January on the Australia Plus website, where she said she had been influenced by her multicultural surroundings when studying at Flinders University in Adelaide. She had said her students were unexpectedly enthusiastic and raised many questions for the pastor.

But she was later swamped with intimidating messages, even death threats.

We need to support Rosnida and other lecturers trying to instill a critical mind in their students, to stop this bowing to pressure in today'€™s continuous contest for power to determine what'€™s right and wrong in religious and political views.

It'€™s not only Aceh that has become such a battleground since the New Order ended state dominance over defining taboos. Cities outside Aceh are teeming with the highly educated, who are much more timid than one would expect from one of Asia-Pacific'€™s '€œgiants'€.

The Wahid Institute, focusing on interfaith relations, for instance, listed West Java as the most intolerant province with 55 incidents of faith-related violence last year. Have intellectuals and graduates from renowned university campuses been totally helpless? The supposedly tolerant Yogyakarta ranked second, with a drastic increase of one incident in 2013 to 22 last year.

Among such incidents was the dispersal of a screening of the controversial Senyap documentary on the 1960s bloodshed at the renowned Gadjah Mada University (UGM). It was heartening that Rector Dwikorita Karnawati slammed the dispersal. A far cry from the banning of a 2012 discussion at UGM featuring Irshad Manji, a Canadian Muslim scholar, by the previous rector Sudjarwadi.

Thus UGM is also among many institutions needing continuous support to retain academic freedoms given such strong challenges.

In Banda Aceh, a dialog group of pluralism and academic freedom supporters, which met online and also in town on the issue of Rosnida, was voluntarily ended for safety reasons, one of the participating researchers said '€” reflecting both the widespread desire to overcome the threat to openness in Aceh and the strategic decisions necessary for the safety of everyone and their families.

Public support is crucial for freedom of expression and academic freedom as we cannot rely on leaders, including the embattled President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo. Though a champion in bureaucratic reform, he could use a much bigger boost of confidence in backing the battle for the freedom to think; one that is equally, if not much harder to fight than combating corruption and red-tape.

Even with such support, the government would still be tiptoeing on Aceh. Typical reactions would be '€œhere comes Jakarta again'€, mainly by Aceh'€™s politicians. Indeed some Jakarta politicians, backed by military hawks, keep reminding us that the Helsinki agreement was only a memorandum of understanding mediated by a private party, though it led to the 2006 law on Aceh governance.

But even many Acehnese no longer buy the constant blame on Jakarta when it comes to failed expectations in their elected leaders and representatives, such as rushed bylaws said to be based on the Koran, compared to slow realization of election promises.

One might be bemused over today'€™s reports on intense debates in Aceh'€™s capital, such as over which and whose Islamic activities are allowed at the iconic Baiturrahman Grand Mosque, and the ban on New Year celebrations because Muslims should not party over the Gregorian calendar.

But other centers of intellectuals do not have much to be proud of, as long as they do not speak up loud and clear over attempts to dictate dogma in our blossoming democracy, including on their campuses.