Diversity cementing unity?

To elucidate this process, the author draws parallels with the history of the West when asserting that its present cannot be apprehended without, e.g., appreciating the significance of the Reformation. Similarly, the Hindu-Buddhist setting in which Islam arrived needs to be grasped before we are introduced to Islam under the Dutch and the Japanese, its subsequent marginalisation under Sukarno, and Suharto's repression that resulted in Islam's resurgence. Within this historical scope, the institutions of Islamic law, education, and organisation are then explored as to their role in current Indonesian life, with due emphasis of the mass associations of Traditionalists (the Nahdlatul Ulama) and Reformists (Muhammadiyah).

The final third of this incredibly rich albeit compact text is about the transition from regional conflicts and violent Islamic extremism that exploded when Suharto was losing his hold on power to the seeming calmness setting in with the election of President Yudhoyono in 2004. Be that as it may, at the local level intolerance, vigilantism and intimidation on behalf of Islamist hotheads prosper. If going by the political popularity of Islam according to pollsters and election results, such militancy can in no way be seen as representing the broad and highly diversified mainstream of Islam in Indonesia. Subsequently, Professor Pringle concludes his work on a note of optimism that highlights the resilience of diversity, and Islam's ability to co-exist, and even help nurture, the life of a modern democratic state.

Comments

Whatever the vicissitudes of Indonesia's era of independence, the country—'too big to fail, too messy to rule'—stuck together, and even progressed to its present constitution of decentralised democracy that Pringle insists on calling 'genuine.' It is on this point and on his optimism about the versatility of this dispensation that I want to give some short comments. First of all, I would have appreciated clarification of the enigmatic epithet 'genuine.' Here, in the Philippines, nobody doubts that we live in a democratic country. After all, we vote to maintain the hegemony of the cosy inner circle of local caciques and national oligarchs, and tolerate that the public realm is appropriated by anybody who can get away with it. Under the Marcos dictatorship, decentralisation and elected positions were established, and with it money politics trickled down to the lowest level.

According to Collins, the structures and persons that maintained the New Order have merely lengthened their tentacles down to the newly decentralised levels of government where local godfathers will be tempted to co-operate with exploitative outsiders. Since the state is considered to be the owner of the natural resources of Indonesia, it is free to do as its rulers and lower level potentates deem fit, even as the exploitation of forests and other god-given wealth degrades the environment, fosters abuse of power, and impoverishes the local population. In other words, as decentralised 'democracy' spreads, it enhances endemic corruption and the abuse of human rights. It results in predatory and corrupted institutions that may provide an invitation to the military to play an interventionist, non-constitutional role.

I agree that the recent resurgence of Sufism or Traditionalism enhances Islam's ability to co-exist, and even help nurture, the life of a modern society. As Pringle has it, "Traditionalist Islam is indeed real Islam, just as Roman Catholicism is real Christianity, despite what the early Protestants said about it" (194). In other words, religion is the tangible expression of the free-floating sense of wonder of insignificant men facing the All. Even so, and despite my initiation to Javanese kebatinan mysticism, my Calvinist background of scripturalism and orthodoxy prevented me for a long time from seeing popular or traditional Thai Buddhism for what it is: religion, pure and simple.

I was not alone in failing to recognise the magic of the rites, the power of recitation, and the mysteries of mysticism as the core of religion. They are many who take dogma, obligations, scriptures and other things on the outside as the 'straight path' to God. On the eve of writing this, the newspaper informs us that Murhali Barda has been freed from jail after serving a sentence of five months and fifteen days for attacking a small Christian community in Bekasi—virtually a suburb of Jakarta—at which one member was stabbed and another clubbed such that both needed hospitalisation. Murhali is the leader of an FPI (Front Pembela Islam, Islamic Defenders' Front) gang of ruffians that enjoys a considerable immunity from justice, or from the army and the police who are clearly intimidated. At the same time, this failure of justice and of respect for the freedom of religion in the Pancasila State can only encourage the religious violence that, according to the Setara Institute, is currently spinning out of bounds. As to inform us on the latest, this morning the letter bombs sent to members of the Network of Liberal Muslims made it to the front page.

Exemplary introduction

In the hope of being mistaken in my scepticism about the political analysis of the last three chapters, the book is first and foremost an academically sound path cut through a jungle of facts, both current and historical, that shows us many trees while visualising the wood of interwoven complexity as the cement of Indonesia's national unity. Through opening windows on Islam in its diversity, the text hopefully contributes not only to a better comprehension of its heterogeneous subject matter, but also to the destruction of the unwholesome stereotypes that cloak the image of Islam in the minds of many outsiders. In order to make the book useful as a desk-top reference, it contains an annotated guide to further reading, an explanatory glossary about major institutions, a list of major political parties, a note on terminology, and a comprehensive index.

Niels Mulder has retired to the southern slopes of the mystically potent Mt. Banáhaw, Philippines, where he stays in touch through niels_mulder201935@yahoo.com.ph

Resources

Collins, Elizabeth Fuller. 2007. Indonesia Betrayed; How Development Fails. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.