Tom Pepinsky

Category: Current Affairs

  • Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

    My meeting at the US Embassy was very interesting indeed.  The embassy is no more secure than the one in Kuala Lumpur, although it is a LOT bigger.  The USAID compound within the embassy along is probably the size of the entire embassy in Kuala Lumpur.  Anyway, when you arrive you have to turn off your phone and leave it at the front desk, along with any sort of electronic devices like an Ipod or a laptop.  That’s annoying.  I accidentally left my notebook in my laptop bag at the front counter, and they had to send a special runner to the security checkpoint to get it.  What a pain.  Most of the people who work in the embassy are actually Indonesians with security clearance.  Everyone was extremely nice, even the five dozen guards with submachine guns and an APC (really) parked on the street in front of the embassy.  The head guard was the first Indonesian I ever met who was clearly Portuguese…his name was Raoul Endarnho, and his last name seems to be a Portuguese version of what looks to be a Timorese root (endar).  Most people with Portuguese last names in Indonesia are Timorese, but most of them live in East Timor, the country that broke off from Indonesia in 1999 after 25 years of Indonesian colonial rule.

    So what I discussed with USAID officials yesterday was the progress of economic reforms in Indonesia since the fall of Soeharto in 1998.  My dissertation focuses on events leading up to Soeharto’s resignation, but I’m also interested in post-Soeharto economic reforms for another project.  The USAID folks claim that there were hardly any real reforms at all in areas like corporate governance, macroeconomic management, and political corruption before the election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2004.  But now, they say that the changes are real, and they heartily support his efforts to raise gasoline and electricity prices, to implement sensible macro policies, and to reform Indonesia’s rampantly corrupt business/politics nexus.  They see signs of success.

    Which is funny because a number of other people that I’ve met are far less sanguine about reforms.  Many people talk about reforms in name that have not been matched by reforms on the ground.  Lots of corrupt officials get hauled before the courts, but very few are convicted, and the ones who are happen to be the most outrageously corrupt ones with strong Soeharto connections.  I wonder how much it is the US government’s policy to be positive or optimistic at all times.  I guess I’ll have to see what other folks think about these reforms.

  • MUI vs. JIL

    The big news in Indonesia these days–so far not reported in the West, as far as we can tell–is the issuance of a set of fatwas by the Council of Indonesian Islamic Religious Teachers, or MUI (Majlis Ulama Indonesia).  The big doozy is this one, the translation of which we quote from the Jakarta Post: "Religious teachings influenced by pluralism, liberalism and secularism are against Islam. The fatwa states that Muslims must consider their religion to be the true one religion, and to consider other faiths as wrong." Despite its name, the MUI does not actually represent all or even most Islamic religious teachers in Indonesia, rather it is a conservative group well known for its intolerance.  It started out as a government body under Soeharto’s New Order, and was relatively moderate, but has since gotten out of hand.

    Indonesia is a plural place, so this fatwa has caused a bit of an uproar.  Every government that has ever ruled Indonesia (that’s not too many, but still) has mandated that ethnic and religious pluralism is a fact of life in Indonesia that the government will protect.  Although governments have times oppressed certain ethnic communities (most often the Chinese), governments have always been tolerant of minority religions (except for Confucianism and animism, and even this was more like just pretending that they don’t exist or don’t count as religions).  Condemning Islamic religious teachings influenced by pluralism as anti-Islam throws down a big challenge to most Indonesians about their relationship to their religion.  These teachings have a long history in Indonesia.  Is Islam in Indonesia going to move towards the Middle East?

    Happily (so far), the public reaction to the MUI ruling suggests otherwise.  Muslim scholars and Muslim public intellectuals have sharply criticized the MUI’s fatwas in the past couple of days, calling them "heretical" and "anti-Islam" themselves.  Others have attacked the fact that the MUI could have issued a fatwa that says that violence against other religious communities is forbidden, but did not–the reference is on an attack by some fundamentalists on the compound owned by a deviationist Islamic sect (Ahmadiya) in West Java last month.  Some of these public intellectuals include former President of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid, current VP Jusuf Kalla, and other well-known Islamist thinkers, including our acquaintance Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, whom we know from the Freedom Institute, and who runs the influential Liberal Islam Network, or JIL (Jaringan Islam Liberal). They have been joined by leaders of interfaith groups, a surprisingly strong element in Indonesia’s crowded post-Soeharto civil society.  A number of groups have called for the government to ban MUI, or at least stop giving it financial support.

    Want to know more?  Unfortunately, the Jakarta Post’s online edition has a dynamic link-changing thingy that makes directly linking to articles a bad idea, but you can browse around and find related articles.  You can also check out Ulil’s writings at the JIL website, which expouses an attractive version of religious Islam that is strong in Indonesia and getting stronger with Ulil’s popular commentary.  You’ll see Ulil’s picture too; he was always smiling like that.