Last week's presidential election high-lighted just how successful Indonesia's decade-old transformation from authoritarian state to democracy has been. Although there were some complaints about irregularities, the public knows their ballots were secret and the results legitimate.
Before the Obama administration sends a congratulatory note to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, however, it might want to reconsider the language it uses. A worrisome note has crept into U.S. rhetoric to-ward the country of late. On her first overseas trip as secretary of state earlier this year, Hillary Clinton called Indonesia a "Muslim nation" and commended it for demonstrating that "Islam, democracy, and modernity" can go hand in hand. In June, she said Indonesia might be a "good partner in the U.S. efforts to reach out to the Muslim world." Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called Indonesia a "Muslim country" at a briefing in May.
The United States"”especially President Barack Obama, who spent four years of his childhood there"”should know better. Such language may sound benign. But Indonesia isn't a Muslim state any more than Great Britain is a Protestant one. Indonesia is a secular nation that happens to have 190 million Muslim citizens. And its embrace of democracy has nothing to do with religion.
If anyone should understand that, it's Obama. During his Cairo speech last month, he said he could still remember hearing, during his time in Jakarta, "the call of the azan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk." A keen student of politics, Obama must know that while Indonesians have enthusiastically rejected most vestiges of their former dictatorship, they have maintained one pillar of strongman President Suharto's rule: pancasila, the country's nationalist ideology, which mandates the equal treatment of all the country's religious and social groups.
Such tolerance is vital in a nation of 222 million people, 24 million Christians and Hindus, 17,000 islands, more than 300 different ethnic groups, and some 800 dialects. Islam is just one of five officially recognized religions. Most Indonesians don't define themselves by their faith but by nationalism and regional pride. Religion comes second or third, one reason Muslim-based parties consistently get trounced at the polls, including during April's legislative elections. When the U.S. stresses Indonesia's "Islamic" nature, it undermines this hard-won pluralism.
The Obama administration should embrace that pluralism. And it should avoid touting Indonesia as a bridge to the Islamic world. Previous attempts by Jakarta to mediate the Israeli--Palestinian conflict, the Iraq War, or other Middle East issues have failed, and it's not hard to see why. Indonesia sits several thousands miles away from the Middle East, where it has very little influence. Most Indonesian Muslims practice a tolerant, moderate form of Islam, very different from Saudi-inspired Wahhabism.
Read Full Article »