Memo to President : Addressing the Rise of Religious Intolerance in Indonesia

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M E M O R A N D U M

TO                  : Joko Widodo, President of the Republic of Indonesia

FROM            : Raditya , Analyst

DATE             : 22 December 2016

SUBJECT      : Addressing the Rise of Religious Intolerance in Indonesia

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Introduction

Situation regarding the growing number of violent confrontation against religious minorities in Indonesia is at a crisis stage.  Violent attacks have been directed at various religious groups such as Ahmadis, Shiites, Christian, and Buddhist by Muslim vigilante and extremist groups.  On the other hand, Muslims have also been the victims of intolerant acts in provinces where they are not the majority like what happened in Tolikara, Papua when Christian mob attacked several mosques last year. I propose two major reforms to alleviate the problem of religious intolerance. First, we need to reevaluate several proposals from Government such as the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs’ Religious Harmony Bill (RUU Kerukunan Beragama), and cancel any local perda that promote religious discrimination. Second, we need to create contending narratives against intolerance and encourage more interfaith interaction especially among local community representatives and youth through campaigns and education.

Causes of Rising Intolerance

Two major causes of rising intolerance in Indonesia. Firstly, according to Ahmad Najib Burhani from Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), the effect of economic globalization and increased interdependence has created economic uncertainty for religious believers. This results in tension and mistrust among themselves and other religious communities.  This often leads to subtle discrimination and direct confrontation to other groups that they perceive as threat or the cause of their suffering. This is shown by the increasing use of civilian court system by conservative religious groups to persecute activists representing religious minorities by accusing them of violating Indonesia’s 1965 blasphemy law, case in point the case of Jakarta’s Governor Basuki Purnama and  more local law (perda) were issued that encourage discrimination against religious minority. Examples of such perda include a decree by the governor of East Java that prohibits Shi’a Islam within his province and a circular signed by the mayor of Bogor that prohibits Shiites from celebrating the Ashura holiday within the city.

Aside from that, violent and direct confrontation directed to religious minority also grows such as what happened in Bandung when a mob of Islamic Group demanded a Christian group to stop their religious service in public convention hall.  According to prospect theory, people tend to act reckless when they are in the domain of loss. Groups who have been economically harmed by liberalization are in the domain of loss, thus often result in the violent behavior that disregard law entirely. The fact that these intolerant groups are the majority of certain provinces also enables them to gain political domination in local government. Local governors were forced to issue these perda to appease conservative Islamic groups in order to secure their re-election prospects and protect their political patronage.

Secondly, a newly released survey conducted by the Nadhatul Ulama-affiliated Wahid Foundation stating that 49 percent of its respondents hold intolerant attitudes toward religious minorities and 7.7 percent are willing to commit violent actions against them which shows that there is growing radicalism among Indonesian Muslims, particularly among university-age young adults. Even moderate Islamic groups such as NU also face the threat of increasing radicalism among some of its members, who have openly challenged its promotion of the moderate Islam Nusantara theology in Indonesia. This social perception bias that blames minority for a problem is particularly caused by the effective campaign of narratives sent out by religious conservative groups who frames certain issue as religious matter thus constructing certain preference among its members to take stance against minority and choosing to act otherwise would label them as ‘betrayer of the religion’.

 Recommendations

1.      Government’s Proposal Reevaluation and Cancellation of Discriminative Local Perda

Although the initial purpose of Religious Harmony Bill is to create a more inclusive classification of which groups should be considered as religious communities entitled to state protection (by including spiritual streams or aliran kepercayaan. Such legal definition would actually backlash its purpose under two reasons. Firstly religious belief is inherently subjective and there are simply too many spiritual streams in Indonesian pluralistic society.  Trying to impose parameters on which belief deserve protection is an unfair blanket policy. Secondly, this legal definition would create hierarchy among religious groups since some would be deemed ‘good enough’ to be classified as religious group while the rest are merely ‘spiritual stream,’ I recommend government to revise above related provision to gain more support from minority religious group who are currently still opposing this bill for above mentioned reasons. 

Moreover, Government should also cancel any local perda that were enacted to promote discrimination against religious minority since the Constitution gives the national government the only authority to regulate religious affair. Intolerant incidents against minority groups only increased after the 1998 Reformasi with more decentralised Indonesian state which means that National Government should limit local author from abusing their power by enacting such perda. It should also reinstate the rights of religious minorities that were undermined under such regulations, for instance, by granting them the right to apply for national identity cards (KTP) that would assure them access to public service and punishing any radical groups irrespective of their religious affiliation. This way, government would be able to restore its role as a neutral arbiter of religious disputes as mandated by the Indonesian constitution.

2.      Creating Contending Narratives and Encourage Interfaith Interaction among local representatives and youth through education

In order to directly counter the manichean and hatred-inducing narrative coming from extremist group, we need to create contending narratives through formal education and informal campaign in local community. This narratives should reframe several issues such as presenting their economic grievances as pure welfare issues and separate them from religious sentiments to correct social perception biases toward certain issues. Government should also present this campaign and education by designing lessons that is appealing to their emotions such as empathy to construct social norms by inducing shame and guilt toward the act of intolerance. This education may be incorporated in our current civic education or it may take place in the form of extracurricular workshops such as scouts or other school/college events. Government also need to held regular interfaith events that facilitate dialogue and forum group discussion in both local representatives and school levels. This is particularly needed for bridging the effort done in civil society to what policies being cooked up in the local representative’s government.

By educating people especially youth, it would be effective to deconstruct their preferences and general biased perception against religious minority. This way, government would be able to spread moderate and progressive values as something that is more preferable than buying into bigoted rhetoric promoting intolerant actions.  

Implementation

In order to implement this reform, Government need to cooperate with several Interfaith Organization and Establish Interfaith Organizations Network on provincial level to better coordinate the implementation standard of the policy. Government need to also empower these organizations by holding various workshops to build their mediation capacity during Interfaith Conflicts especially in provinces that have history of religious conflict.