By P. K. Balachandran
In a sharp turn towards authoritarianism and archaic religiosity, Indonesia’s parliament is expected to pass, later in December, a new Criminal Code that will extend the ambit of blasphemy, ban criticism of State Institutions and criminalize cohabitation and sexual relations outside wedlock.
The proposed code, which smacks of Wahhabi Islam, is rooted in domestic political developments and electoral exigencies. Since foreign policy cannot be totally divorced from domestic political and social concerns, the proposed code will influence Indonesia’s foreign policy and international relations also.
In fact, Jakarta has already incorporated its Islamic predilections in its foreign policy, leveraging its position as the world’s most populous Muslim country (though still formally “secular”).
Controversial provisions
Among the controversial provisions in the proposed criminal code are the following. Blasphemy against Islam is already a crime in Indonesia, carrying imprisonment as punishment, but the draft code extends the ambit of the blasphemy law to cover other religions that are officially recognized in Indonesia, namely, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
The upshot of this would be the possibility of a plethora of blasphemy charges right across the Indonesian religious spectrum.
Under the new code, non-married couples who live together will be committing a crime that carries six months’ imprisonment or a fine as punishment. However, action will be taken only if reported by the couple’s parents, children, or a spouse.
This provision will target members of the LGBTQ community especially. Homosexuality is already illegal in Indonesia.
Sex outside marriage will be deemed a criminal act. The proposed code allows parents or children to report unmarried couples to the police if they suspect them of having sex.
Sex before marriage and adultery will be punishable with a jail sentence for up to a year. The danger in all this is that it will curb the mixing of sexes, which is a key feature of modern society. Co-education may be taboo.
Rise of fundamentalism
In his paper on the rising tide of Islamism in Indonesia, Professor Baladas Ghoshal, former Chairman of the Southeast Asian Studies Center at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, delineates the journey of Islamization in Indonesia in recent times.
He recalls that in 2021, the government wanted to name a road in Jakarta after the founding father of secular Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The renaming was part of an understanding with Turkey which had agreed to rename a street after the Indonesian leader Sukarno. But Indonesian Islamic clerics opposed the deal saying that Ataturk was a heretic. Street demonstrations thwarted the renaming.
In 2017, there was a street campaign against the then Governor of Jakarta, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who was an ethnic Chinese Christian. Ahok was accused of “blasphemy” after he referred to a verse from the Qur’an. There was a widespread feeling that this was done only because Ahok was a Chinese and a Christian to boot. In the last election, Widodo himself was portrayed as a closet Chinese Christian by a powerful opponent, while in fact, he is an Indonesian Muslim.
“Sharia law is spreading in all the provinces of Indonesia. Citizens are enacting their own variations of Islamic laws, and applying them to non-Muslims as well,” Professor Ghoshal points out.
The Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), the highest Muslim clerical council, issued a fatwa in 2005 that banned liberalism, pluralism and secularism, especially secularism. The hold of moderate organizations like Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) has weakened since 2005, and the MUI has come up, Professor Ghoshal says.
And MUI had State-backing under Indonesia’s sixth President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Yudhoyono told the MUI’s National Congress on July 26, 2005, that he wanted to give the MUI a “central role in matters of Islamic faith”.
The MUI issued a fatwa on secularism legitimizing vigilante groups which enforced Islamic morality. In 2005, the MUI declared the Ahmadiyyas as “heretical”, prompting persecution of its followers. In 2006, MUI successfully demanded that the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Ministry of Home Affairs issue a joint decision on regulating the building of places of worship.
“Following this, violence against Christians increased. From then on, hardliners have been dominating the country’s political discourse,” Professor Ghoshal says.
Impact on foreign policy
As Indonesia Islamizes, its foreign relations and foreign policy will also change. The stringent law on cohabitation of unmarried couples will hamper tourism as many tourists from the West are unmarried couples. The sanction against cohabitation and pre-marital sex will adversely affect tourism, which before the pandemic, secured Indonesia USD 15 billion.
The proposed code will also Islamize foreign policy, as Ashutosh Nagda of the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), pointed out in his article in The Diplomat. Nagda recalled that the Indonesian Foreign Ministry had summoned Indian Ambassador Pradeep Rawat “to discuss the riots that have claimed dozens of lives” in New Delhi over the contentious Indian Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The CAA granted citizenship to six persecuted religious minorities from three Muslim-majority countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. But it excused Muslims, because Muslims are the majority community in these countries. Indian Muslims protested widely against this “discriminatory” act. Their long and peaceful agitation ended with the Hindus unleashing violence against them. The violence was condemned in the Western and Muslim countries.
Indonesia publicly and diplomatically raised concerns over the abrogation of the special status enjoyed by the Muslim-majority Indian State of Kashmir in August 2019. The Indonesian Islamic body, the Muhammadiyah, urged the Indonesian government to take the issue to the UN Security Council.
Because of the pressure from Islamic groups, the Widodo government changed its stance on the persecution of the Muslim Rohingyas in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. In the beginning, Widodo was balancing his friendly relations with the military junta in Yangon with humanitarian assistance to the suffering Roingyas. But this changed in August 2017 when the Myanmar military launched its brutal “clearance operations” against the Rohingyas in Rakhine province. The “Aksi Bela Islam” (Save Islam) movement in Indonesia launched demonstrations against Myanmar. So did the “212 movement,” an Islamist coalition, under the banner “Actions to Defend Rohingyas”.
But even before the demonstrations, Widodo changed his Myanmar policy. He asked the Myanmar junta to end the military operations.
However, on the question of the persecution of the Muslim Uyghurs in China, Widodo has been muted, Nagda points out. In fact, his government stated that it would not “meddle in the internal affairs of China,” as it sees Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs as a “legitimate response to separatism.”
“Anti-Widodo Islamists with an anti-Chinese undercurrent did organize some demonstrations, but they did not last long. The government, on its part, summoned the Chinese ambassador and conveyed its concerns just like it did in India’s case, but did not go any further,” Nagda notes.
“The Indonesian government’s limited response to the Uyghur situation had much to do with the fact that mainstream Islamic organizations like the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah accepted assurances that China is protecting religious freedoms after Beijing organized a visit for their respected leaders to Xinjiang.”
This also led to reports of these organizations received donations, financial support, and other forms of assistance from Beijing in return for keeping quiet about China’s treatment of its Uyghurs. But these organizations categorically denied this charge, Nagda adds.
P. K. Balachandran is a freelance journalist based in Colombo writing on South Asian affairs for various news websites and dailies for a number of years. He has reported from Colombo and Chennai for Hindustan Times, New Indian Express and Economist. He has a weekly column in Daily Mirror and Ceylon Today in Sri Lanka.
Factum is an Asia Pacific-focused think tank on International Relations, Tech Cooperation and Strategic Communications accessible via www.factum.lk.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the organization’s.
