Indonesia has its fair share of shape-shifters. The one most talked about at the moment is not a person, but a social organization: the notorious Islam Defenders Front, better known by its acronym, the FPI.

On Dec. 30, 2020, Coordinating Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Minister Mafhud MD officially announced the group’s disbandment.

No sooner had it been done, the FPI’s leader, Rizieq Shihab, nonchalantly said, “Relax, just create a new vehicle”. So, they don’t even need to shapeshift, they simply rename themselves, from Front Pembela Islam (Islam Defenders Front) to Front Persatuan Islam (United Islamic Front). In initials and in spirit, it is still the FPI.

Prodemocracy activists have decried the ban, because it sets a worrying precedent of curtailing civil liberties (see “Crackdown on FPI sets off alarm bells”, The Jakarta Post, Jan. 3).

The Koalisi Masyarakat Sipil (Civil Society Coalition), as well as the University of Indonesia Executive Board (BEM UI), issued similar statements. They state clearly they are not defending the FPI, but express concerns regarding the banning procedure, “as it seems to give absolute power to the executive to simply dissolve social organizations”.

But it’s not just state actors, it’s also civil society members who don’t follow the rules.

Nursjahbani Katjasungkana, chair of the Board of Trustees of the Legal Aid Foundation, one of the signatories of the Civil Society Coalition statement, told me she had been bullied due to her defense of democratic legal procedures. I wouldn’t be surprised if her fellow signatories also experienced the same.

Ariel Heryanto, sociologist and professor emeritus at Monash University, recently said that even after three generations, we were still politically illiterate. But perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that most of us – state and society alike – are pseudo-literate, politically. We are familiar with the tools but don’t know how to use them properly. Are we then just lip-synching, like the pop group Milli Vanilli in the late 1980s?

Is this partly the reason for the appeal of Rizieq – a Trump-like figure who is full of bluster and bravado? Rizieq’s exhortation to violence, his use of crass words, even the raspiness of his voice is not representative of the peaceful essence of Islam. But as long as there is a populist sentiment that makes people follow Rizieq and groups like the FPI, criminalizing them is only going to make their resistance stronger, and banning them, an exercise in futility.

Apart from the very serious issue of observing human rights and democratic procedures, there are two related issues that came up recently: premarital sex and religious tolerance.

Premarital sex came to my attention via a Facebook post by Lies Marcoes, director of Rumah KitaB, a research institute for policy advocacy to fight for the rights of marginalized peoples. She cited a survey by the Indonesian National Commission for Children’s Protection, which found that 93 percent of teens in the district of Depok had engaged in premarital sex.

So, what’s new?  Surveys like this have been conducted since 1983. Each time, conservative Muslims say this is proof that religious instruction need to be ramped up. Wrong. Sex education needs urgently to be taught. Conservatives are dead set against this as they say it will encourage promiscuity and premarital sex. Studies show precisely the opposite but conservative Muslims don’t pay attention to studies, just to their dogmatic interpretation of their reading of the Quran or Hadits.

Sex is a natural urge that arises during teenagehood. If teens can’t learn about sex from responsible adults, they will simply try to find out themselves by doing it. The conservatives’ solution? Child marriage. Great, if you want to set the nation back a few decades!

Anyway, do you really think you can put down rising penises and passions by religious teachings or sharia? Just look at Rizieq’s porn case, which the police plan to reopen.

What? Yes, you read right. There was even a website called Balada Cinta Rizieq (Rizieq’s Love Ballad), containing WhatsApp log chats, an audio recording and the nude photo of a woman called Firza Hussein, detailing their alleged extra-marital affair. The police halted the investigation in 2018 as they had yet to find the individual who spread the chats.

Is this the Rizieq that urged “moral revolution” upon returning to Indonesia after three years of self-imposed exile in Saudi Arabia? Exquisitely ironic, isn’t it?

We focus on unsavory groups like the FPI, which are generally disliked for their violent vigilantism in the name of “Islam”. But what about groups like the Family Love Alliance (AILA), which is more mainstream, but even more dangerous than the FPI due to its acceptability? The AILA is against not just sex education but also against the urgently needed sexual violence bill (RUU PKS) as its members say it encourages promiscuity. Go figure.

Sexuality has become a battleground for the confrontation between advocates of democracy and human rights on the one hand, and anti-democracy forces on the other, which include conservative religious groups such as the AILA and the FPI.

The other issue is religious tolerance. Recently the new minister of religious affairs, Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, stated he would protect religious minorities like Ahmadiyah and Shia. He was hailed as being “firm and uncompromising” to clamp down on hardliners.

First of all, the AILA is as hardline as the FPI, just that that they don’t use violence. Is Yaqut going to clamp down on the AILA, which would also be against Ahmadiyah? Secondly, when has the Indonesian state really been able to protect its minorities, including its religious minorities?

The point is, we need to look at the situation as a totality: the lawlessness, and certainly inconsistency of the state in upholding the law and democratic procedures, and not just single out the FPI.

Or is the banning precisely a state “show of force”? Otherwise, why would Mahfud have to be accompanied by the heads of some of the most powerful state institutions including the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), Home Ministry, Law and Human Rights Ministry, and the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) just to announce the banning of the FPI, which incidentally, worked closely with the military at the beginning of the reform era. Interesting, right?

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The writer is the author of Julia’s Jihad.