Growing Religious Intolerance in Indonesia: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, Indonesia has become a relatively successful electoral democracy. However, this achievement is clouded by increasing acts of intolerance and persecutions against religious minorities. Attacks on Christian communities, most seriously in Moluccas and Poso, Central Sulawesi, accompanied Indonesia’s democratic transition in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, persecutions against the Ahmadi and Shiite Islamic minorities occurred throughout Indonesia, while national and local public officials often condoned such attacks by issuing regulations that severely restrict the freedom of both communities to worship and organize themselves publicly. However, religious intolerance is not just committed by Sunni Muslim majority against members of religious minorities. In Papua province, the Tolikara incident occurred in July 2015, in which persecution occurred against Muslim minority and committed by the predominantly Christian population within the region.

What factors explains the growing intolerance and persecutions of religious minorities throughout Indonesia? Does rising religious fundamentalism, particularly among Muslim and Christian communities in Indonesia, play a role in causing them? Or are they the creations of national and local politicians, who are playing ethno-religious sentiments to enhance their electoral opportunities? These research questions are being addressed by members of this panel, all of whom are emerging scholars of religious intolerance in Indonesia. These works come from a diverse range of discipline (anthropology, religious studies, and political science) and utilize multiple methodologies (multi-site ethnography, historical analysis, and linguistic anthropological analysis) in order to present thought-provoking analyses on the causes of religious intolerance in Indonesia.

Area of Study

• Southeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Alexander R. Arifianto, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University

Chair

• Leonard C. Sebastian, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University

Individual Presentations

• Why Now? The Limits of Religious Freedom in Indonesia - Ahmad Najib Burhani, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)

• Revisiting Amok Crime Scenes: Conflicting Imageries of Muslim Mobs and Christian Violence in Indonesia and Global Media - En-Chieh Chao, National Sun Yat-sen University

• The Politics of the Sunni-Shiite Conflict in Indonesia - Ken Miichi, Iwate Prefectural University

• Practicing What It Preaches? Understanding the Contradictions between Pluralist Theology and Religious Intolerance within Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama - Alexander R. Arifianto, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University

• The Discourse of Difference in Democratic Indonesia: Rhoma Irama and the 2012 Jakarta Mayoral Elections Controversy - Nathaniel Tuohy, University of Michigan

Discussant

• Leonard C. Sebastian, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University