Revisiting Amok Crime Scenes: Conflicting Imageries of Muslim Mobs and Christian Violence in Indonesia and Global Media

• In Event: Growing Religious Intolerance in Indonesia: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective

Abstract

International media reporting on church destruction in Indonesia often feature little more than the fanatical "Muslim mobs" and innocent "Christian victims.” These representations often skip contexts of the crime, erase local voices, and remain ignorant of the much longer and more complicated terms of cross-religious negotiations before the violence occurred. They rarely follow-up on the later conviction of these crimes, leaving an impression that civilian attacks on churches is accepted by residents and the authorities, and that the nature of the crime is purely fanatical. Aiming to challenge this simplifying stereotype of fanatical "Muslim mobs," this paper suggests that to understand recurring religious violence in Indonesia, one should prioritize other considerations: the local perceptions of Christian aggression, the evolving civilian policing of vigilantism in Indonesia, as well as (mis)calculated local power plays.

Exploring responses from different local perspectives towards two famous cases, one in Singkil, Aceh (2015), the other in Temanggung, Central Java (2011), I argue that the operations of particular laws, namely IMB (Izin Mendirikan Bangunan, the construction permit for religious facilities) and the Blasphemy Law are important manifestations of the politics of majoritarian legitimacy, but by no means sufficient to explain the local understandings of violence. Privileging local readings of these church destruction cases, I offer an alternative insight into the question of “mob violence” in order to unravel larger question of "violence against the majority" that concerns many Indonesian Muslims yet is often dismissed and discredited in the global media.

Author

• En-Chieh Chao, National Sun Yat-sen University