History of discrimination from narrow definition to “religious harmony” in Indonesia.
By Andreas Harsono
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| A statue of Mother Mary and Jesus, still inside a crate in the parish of St. Joannes Baptista in Parung. It has applied to have a building permit for more than two decades. Religious minorities have difficulties securing building permits in Indonesia, especially since 2006 when the government introduced “religious harmony” regulation. © 2024 Andreas Harsono/Human Rights Watch |
On August 16, 1945, the day after Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces in World War II, a 21-member independence preparation committee finished debating Indonesia’s proposed new constitution in Jakarta, the former Dutch colonial capital of Batavia. The debate was about whether an independent Indonesia should be an Islamic state or a secular one.
The committee reached a compromise. Islam would not be the state religion but could be interpreted to mean that the state had a special responsibility to uphold Sharia, or Islamic law. The draft contained seven words in Bahasa Indonesia that, when translated, meant, “Belief in the one and only God with the obligation for adherents of Islam to practice Sharia.” They called this sentence, along with four other principles, the Jakarta Charter.
Early Debates on Religion and State
During the debate, held at the residence of a sympathetic Japanese admiral, who still occupied Indonesia, the committee also agreed to declare independence on the morning of August 17. The members assigned Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, two leading committee members, to sign the declaration “in the name of the nation of Indonesia.” The meeting ended at 5 a.m. on August 17. Five hours later, Sukarno and Hatta read out a brief statement, proclaiming Indonesia’s independence outside Sukarno's house – a few blocks from Rear Admiral Tadashi Maeda’s residence.
The statement didn’t confront the Allied Forces, who expected a return to the status quo in what had been the Netherlands Indies, but also didn’t seek a legal transfer of sovereignty from the Japanese. Instead, it unleashed the energy and emotion of millions of people in the former Netherlands Indies to defend the independence declaration, exploiting the power vacuum and the exhaustion from living a hard life under Japanese occupation since 1942.
The Dutch Kingdom had taken over the administration of the archipelago since 1800 after nationalizing the Amsterdam-based Dutch East India Company – a huge joint-stock company that had established a monopoly of spices in the islands, while also trying to accommodate multiple religious groups, especially Muslims and Christians.
Many young activists soon used the telephone and telegraph to spread the news. Radios and newspapers were still under the control of the Japanese Army. The activists sent word to the cities of Bandung and Yogyakarta. They moved along the streets of Jakarta, putting up banners and scrawling graffiti in English on the walls.
“We fight for freedom, sovereignty and independence.”
“Go to hell, imperialism! Merdeka!”
“We are free, Indonesia is free.”
“Indonesia will never again be the lifeblood of any nation.”
The Malay word “Merdeka” or “Freedom” was soon widely used in urban areas throughout the main Indonesian island of Java.
The same evening, at the elegant Hotel des Indes, several delegates from the islands of eastern Indonesia, covering a vast region from Borneo to Bali, and the Maluku Islands, discussed the new charter and found themselves troubled by those seven words. Andi Pangerang Petta Rani, an aristocrat from the Bone sultanate in southern Sulawesi, said the new state should be separated from Islam. Samuel Ratu Langie, a Minahasan leader from northern Sulawesi, agreed and said, “Eastern Indonesia will make its move.”
Ratu Langie then accompanied Johannes Latuharhary from the Malukus Islands, I.G. Ketoet Poedja from Bali, Pangerang Petta Rani, and two other politicians from Kalimantan to a student dormitory and asked the mostly medical students to approach Mohammad Hatta and tell him that if this draft constitution was not changed, “Eastern Indonesia would not join Indonesia.” They demanded a secular nation-state that separated religion and state.
The group eventually asked three students – Piet Mamahit, Moeljo Hastrodipoero and Tan Tjeng Bok – to meet Hatta. Hatta met with them that evening and found the message important enough to pass on to Sukarno. The students told Hatta that the Sharia provision would relegate religious minorities “to live as second-class citizens in Indonesia.” Separately, Mohammad Hasan of Aceh, another committee member, also told Sukarno that Ratu Langie had said Eastern Indonesia would not be willing to join Indonesia unless the draft constitution was changed.
On August 18, Hatta, who was also not in favor of a state based on Islam, met with four Muslim politicians – Mohammad Hasan of Aceh, Bagoes Hadikoesoemo, Wahid Hasjim, and Kasman Singodimedjo, who represented Islamic groups on Java Island. Hatta, a devout Muslim who believed that Islam could help Indonesia achieve greater social justice, also held a deeply rooted belief in secularism. This reputation helped Hatta persuade the four Muslim politicians. Hasan stressed the importance of national unity. It was imperative not to drive important Christian minorities – Batak, Minahasan and Ambonese – into the arms of the returning Dutch through discriminatory provisions. They agreed to remove the Sharia phrase.
Sukarno announced the removal of the Islamic provisions in the plenary session on August 18. Instead, the plenary agreed on five principles, but it still included the phrase regarding “Belief in the one and only God.” Thus, the Pancasila – a Sanskrit expression meaning “five pillars” – was adopted and included the principles of a just and civilized humanity, Indonesian unity, democracy under the wise guidance of representative consultations, and social justice for all the people of Indonesia.
Hasjim, a committee member and leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama, the biggest Islamic organization in Indonesia, proposed that a Ministry of Religious Affairs be established as a substitute for the reference to Sharia that was deleted. He said that it would be “a bridge” connecting the state and Islam. Latuharhary rejected the idea, but Sukarno and Hatta accepted it.
A Dangerous Definition
In January 1946, the Ministry of Religious Affairs was established. It marked the beginning of a state institution designed to serve the Muslims – with Islamic schools and universities, the haj management and other Islamic affairs – but also facilitates discrimination against religious minorities in Indonesia. However, the new republic first had to deal with the Allied Forces, including the Dutch, negotiating the transfer of power, which would finally take place in 1949. The Ministry’s initial task was to define what religion meant.
In 1952, the Ministry, under Wahid Hasjim, issued a definition to differentiate between “kepercayaan” (faith) and “agama” (religion). In Indonesian vocabulary, “kepercayaan” is officially used to cover multiple minor religions and spiritual movements. The ministry decreed that “kepercayaan” are “dogmatic ideas, intertwined with the living customs of various ethnic groups, especially among those who are still underdeveloped, whose main beliefs are the customs of their ancestors throughout the ages.” Meanwhile, “agama” was defined according to Jewish, Christian and Islamic understandings. If a community was to be recognized as “religious,” it had to adhere to “an internationally recognized monotheistic creed; taught by a prophet through the scriptures.” This discriminated against non-monotheistic religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism and hundreds of local religions and spiritual movements in Indonesia.
On Bali Island, the definition created confusion, even political disputes, among many Balinese whose traditional belief worships their ancestors, local deities, and multiple gods and goddesses, including those that originated from Hindu religion in India such as Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva. The French anthropologist Michel Picard wrote in a 2021 essay that the Balinese had formerly “no generic name to designate that which would later on become their religion.” They simply used the word “agama Bali.” The construction of Balinese religion has been framed by Islam and Christianity “to ward off the pressure of Muslim and Christian proselytizing,” Picard wrote. In 1952, they renamed their religion “agama Hindu Bali,” referring to Hinduism, and adopted the name “Sang Hyang Widhi” to designate the one and only God of the renamed religion. In Kalimantan, ethnic Dayak took steps like the Balinese, reorienting their Kaharingan belief to Hinduism to avoid being associated with Christianity or Islam. “The Hindus have helped us,” said a Dayak leader. “They’re like our umbrella.”
In June 1964, in Kuningan, western Java, the local government declared marriages of members of Sunda Wiwitan, an ethnic Sundanese religion, to be illegal. That move prompted 5,000 Sunda Wiwitan believers to convert to Catholicism, believing that joining the Roman Catholic Church would spare them from religious persecution.
As the Ministry of Religious Affairs grew powerful, various religious factions competed to gain control over it – “traditional Muslims” such as the Nahdlatul Ulama, and “modernist Muslims” such as the Muhammadiyah competed to fill posts at ministerial as well as lower positions, and inside various Islamic education institutions.
Problems for religious minorities escalated in January 1965 when then President Sukarno issued a decree that prohibited people from being hostile toward religions or committing blasphemy, which is defined as “abuse” and “desecration” of a religion. Sukarno decreed that the government would steer “mystical sects … toward a healthy way of thinking and believing in the One and Only God.” The decree, which gave official approval only to Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism, was immediately incorporated into the Criminal Code as article 156(a), with a maximum penalty of five years in prison. This has had disastrous effects until the present. The blasphemy law has been used to target religious minorities, including Christians, Ahmadiyah, Shia Muslims, and political opponents. Hundreds of people have been detained and tried under this law since 1968.
Religion Under Soeharto
In October 1965, Major General Soeharto rose to power, replacing President Sukarno, ruling with the military’s backing, repressing opponents, seizing naturally rich lands, and abusing people’s rights. This was a period of mass killings by Indonesian soldiers, paramilitary groups, and Muslim militias. They killed as many as a million suspected Communist Party members, ethnic Chinese, and trade unionists, teachers, activists, and artists.
Soeharto started out as a different type of leader when it came to religious freedom. David Jenkins’ book, Young Soeharto: The Making of a Soldier, 1921-1945, delves into Soeharto’s early life. What emerges from the details is the story of a man who was not just a Muslim, but also a practitioner of Javanese folk religion, Kejawen, that married animism, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. Soeharto appeared determined to limit the power of Indonesia’s Islamists. In 1978, he created a directorate within the Ministry of Education to service traditional religions, including Kejawen, telling the Indonesian parliament, “These beliefs are part of our national tradition, and need not to be opposed to [established] religions.” Soeharto did not push the Ministry of Religious Affairs to serve local religions like Kejawen, Sunda Wiwitan or Kaharingan, but instead put the mandate under the Ministry of Education, changing its name to the Ministry of Education and Culture. His education minister, Daoed Joesoef, a devout Muslim from Aceh, issued a regulation on state school uniforms to ban the hijab – the head, neck, and chest covering worn by many Muslim women and girls in fulfillment of their religious beliefs. He issued the ban amid the growing influence from the Middle East, first coming from Iran, which promoted mandatory hijab regulation for Muslim women and girls.
In 1991, President Soeharto reversed his approach toward the Islamists, though, after starting to lose the military’s backing. He made a pilgrimage to Mecca, promoted his Islamic credentials, embraced political Islam, and extended his support for the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals, where many Islamists channel their political aspirations. He also backed the Indonesian Ulama Council. The Ministry of Education and Culture issued new guidelines on school uniforms that allowed “special clothing,” which gave birth to policies making state schools allow their female teachers and students to wear the hijab. This marked the beginning of the slippery slope toward greater Islamization in Indonesia, all to protect Soeharto’s continued rule and his accumulated wealth. In 1998, after 33 years in power, Soeharto was forced to step down in the face of massive public protests at the height of the Asian economic crisis.
Post-Soeharto Discrimination and Violence
President Soeharto’s actions of 1991 strengthened the Indonesian Ulama Council, which he had set up in 1975, and it became more powerful and intolerant of other religions. It used its growing influence to promote Sharia, with the more hardline Islamists using violence to advocate their agenda, including multiple bombings against religious minority communities on Bali and Java islands.
In 2004, the Ulama Council supported Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a retired Army general, to win the presidential election, defeating the incumbent, Megawati Soekarnoputri. In return, Yudhoyono promised to consult the Ulama Council in policy making, further decreasing the separation between the state and the mosque. Yudhoyono accommodated the demands to promote Sharia in more than two dozen Muslim-majority provinces, including Aceh, using a new regional autonomy law. His administration strengthened the blasphemy law office –namely, the Coordinating Board for Monitoring Mystical Beliefs in Society (Bakor Pakem), under the Attorney General’s Office. It eventually led to the prosecution and imprisonment of 125 people in his decade in power – a steep rise from only 8 cases in the three decades during Soeharto’s rule.
The Yudhoyono administration also encouraged the proliferation of Sharia-inspired local regulations, ranging from mandatory hijab ordinances to discriminatory rules against religious minorities including Christians and non-Sunni minorities such as the Shia and the Ahmadiyah communities. The first mandatory hijab regulation was issued in West Sumatra province in 2001. Aceh issued the second one in 2002. By 2023, according to the National Commission on Violence Against Women, Indonesia had 120 mandatory hijab regulations. Dress codes forcing women and girls to wear a hijab have fueled widespread bullying that has caused many women and schoolgirls psychological distress. Girls who do not comply have been forced to leave government schools or have withdrawn under pressure, while female civil servants have lost their jobs or resigned to escape constant demands to conform.
In 2006, the Yudhoyono administration issued a so-called “religious harmony” regulation, essentially permitting regional governments to license the construction of houses of worship. It states that the construction should be based on the “real needs” and “composition of the population” in the area. Among other things, a permit requires written recommendations from the local branch of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and from the local branch of the Religious Harmony Communication Forum (Forum Kerukunan Umat Beragama or FKUB).
The problem lies mostly with the FKUB. Governors, regents and mayors decide who will be members of the forum. According to the regulation, the composition of members should be “proportionate” to the percentage of worshippers in each area, creating a mostly Muslim-ulama dominated forum. Jakarta, for example, is 85 percent Muslim, meaning that 85 percent of the 21 members should be Muslim clerics. Most minorities in predominantly Sunni Muslim Indonesia have difficulties establishing or renovating their houses of worship, including Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucianists as well as Ahmadiyah and Shias but also some Muhammadiyah and Salafis.
The 2006 regulation allowed intolerant Muslims to use intimidation and violence to shut down what they claimed to be “illegal churches.” It’s not clear how many churches were forced to shut down as the Religious Affairs Ministry has not published data on this since 2006. According to data from several nongovernmental organizations, between 1,500 and 2200 churches were closed in almost two decades.
In 2008, the Yudhoyono administration issued an anti-Ahmadiyah decree following a 2005 anti-Ahmadiyah fatwa by the Indonesian Ulama Council, declaring that it is a deviant Islamic group and must not propagate their teaching. The first fatwa was issued in 1980 but the Soeharto government simply disregarded it, assuming, correctly, that it was only for internal usage among Muslims. It did not see it as government business. Sunni militant groups used the 2008 decree to justify attacks on more than 30 Ahmadiyah mosques. One raid became deadly in Cikeusik, Pandeglang, in February 2011, when more than 1,500 Sunni militants attacked an Ahmadiyah house, killing three men and wounding several others.
Those two regulations worried many intellectuals in Indonesia. Abdurrahman Wahid, a former president and the eldest son of Wahid Hasjim, a very influential Nahdlatul Ulama cleric, publicly defended religious minorities, including the Ahmadiyah, blaming the Yudhoyono government for such violence. In 2019, Wahid and three other Muslim clerics, plus seven non-governmental organizations, filed a petition against the blasphemy law at the Constitutional Court. They wanted the blasphemy law to be repealed. They argued the blasphemy law is more a political weapon than a law-and-order tool and has been used to incite anger among Muslims. The Constitutional Court ruled against them, in an 8-1 decision on April 19, 2010, stating that the blasphemy law was a lawful restriction on religious freedom because it allows for “the maintenance of public order.”
Human Rights Watch in 2013 published In Religion’s Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia, documenting the Indonesian government’s failure to confront Islamist militant groups, whose thuggish harassment and assaults on houses of worship and members of religious minorities, had become increasingly aggressive.
Four government institutions have played a role in the violation of the rights and freedoms of the country’s religious minorities – the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Coordinating Board for Monitoring Mystical Beliefs in Society, the Religious Harmony Forum, and the semi-official Indonesian Ulama Council.
Rise in Discriminatory Regulations Under Jokowi
In 2014, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s win in the presidential election brought hope to many rights defenders and progressive religious leaders that he would try to defend the rights of religious minorities and undo the regressive measures of his predecessors. Jokowi did not do that. In fact, the biggest rally in support of the blasphemy law took place under his administration when his ally, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian who succeeded him as the governor of Jakarta, was accused of committing blasphemy against Islam. A politically motivated smear campaign against Purnama led over 500,000 people to attend the rally on December 2, 2017.
Ma’ruf Amin, the chairman of the Indonesian Ulama Council, issued a statement against Purnama, declaring that a non-Muslim like Purnama should not comment on Quranic interpretation. It put pressure on the Jokowi government to accommodate hardline Muslims and to send Purnama to prison, altering the political landscape in Indonesia and moving it even further toward religious intolerance.
Jokowi later recruited some of those involved in the rally to join him in his second term, including appointing Amin vice president. Jokowi also appointed Prabowo Subianto Djojohadikusumo, a dismissed Army general who was involved in kidnapping activists in the 1990s, to be his defense minister. Prabowo had backed the 2017 rally in support of the blasphemy law. In 2024, Prabowo won the presidential election to succeed Jokowi. His running mate was Jokowi’s eldest son, Gibran Raka.
The mandatory hijab regulations also victimized more women and girls. In thousands of state schools, non-Muslim girls have also been forced to wear the hijab. In January 2021, Elianu Hia shared a video on Facebook recording his meeting with his daughter’s teacher in Padang, West Sumatra, during which the teacher pressured him to make his daughter, herself a Christian, to wear a hijab. The video went viral, resulting in the Ministry of Education telling the school to end the discriminatory policy against Christian girls. But a social boycott against Elianu Hia caused him to lose his small business.
Meanwhile, continuing Yudhoyono’s foreign policy, Jokowi directed Indonesian diplomats to present Indonesia internationally as a “moderate” Muslim nation, an alternative to the “despotic” and “chaotic” Middle East. But the reality could not have been more different. The number of discriminatory regulations kept growing during the Jokowi administration.
In December 2022, the Indonesian parliament, with the support of President Jokowi and Vice President Amin, passed a new criminal code. Its blasphemy chapter was increased from one to six articles, albeit with a shorter prison term providing for a maximum three years for blasphemy instead of five years. It also includes an article outlawing leaving a religion or a belief as apostasy. Anyone who attempts to persuade a person to be a non-believer in a religion or belief can be prosecuted and imprisoned. The new criminal code is another serious setback to protecting freedom of religion and belief in Indonesia. It bucks the global trend toward decreasing enforcement of blasphemy laws or scrapping them altogether.
The new law also provides that the government will recognize “any living law” in the country, which is likely to be interpreted to extend formal legality to more than 700 Sharia-inspired regulations across the country. Many of these regulations discriminate against women and girls, such as providing for curfews for women, female genital mutilation, and mandatory hijab dress codes. Many of these regulations also discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
A Way Forward
In February 2023, the Nahdlatul Ulama made a surprising, yet positive decision. Mustofa Bisri, a senior Nahdlatul Ulama cleric, at the end of a conference in Sidoarjo, East Java, read their conclusion: “NU is of the view that the old view rooted in classical jurisprudence, namely the ideal of uniting all Muslims under a single worldwide umbrella or a caliphate state, must be replaced with a new vision.” The Nahdlatul Ulama decided to support the United Nations Charter, the founding document of the UN and an instrument of international law, saying the UN served all people equally, “not only Muslims.” "For this reason, the UN charter can be the basis for developing new jurisprudence in order to uphold a peaceful and harmonious human civilization,” Bisri said.
Ahmad Suaedy, also a Nahdlatul Ulama scholar and a former aide to Abdurrahman Wahid, wrote in The Jakarta Post, “Even in Indonesia, whose constitution is not based on a particular religious identity but on the state ideology Pancasila … the Muslim majority is still often involved in discrimination by forcing the state to support them.” This decision by Indonesia’s largest Islamic organization to develop a new approach with the UN Charter in mind should bring fresh air toward religious freedom in Indonesia.
Now, whether Indonesia’s religious minorities will enjoy equal rights, including to practice their religious belief, will depend on what the Indonesian government and the Nahdlatul Ulama, will do to reverse the eight decades of discrimination and violence against them. The government should begin by withdrawing hundreds of discriminatory regulations and taking measures toward accountability for violence and abuse faced by millions of Indonesians simply for practicing their religious belief. They should also redefine what Indonesia considers to be “religion,” using UN standards rather than the narrow definition adopted in 1952.
Andreas Harsono works for Human Rights Watch in Jakarta. He helped found the Jakarta-based Alliance of Independent Journalists in 1994, and in 2003 he helped create the Pantau Foundation, a journalist training organization also in Jakarta. He presented this paper at the third International Interfaith Conference on Peace and Inclusive Communities held in Jakarta, Indonesia on November 21-23, 2023.
It is published in: Sabine Hübner, Andar Parlindungan, Jochen Motte (eds.), Peace among the People. Interreligious Action for Peace and Inclusive communities. Documentation of the third International Interfaith Conference on Peace and Inclusive Communities in Jakarta, Indonesia, November 2023 (For human rights 24), Solingen: foedus-verlag 2024.
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