OBSTACLES OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN INDONESIA

By Agus Miswanto

Nowadays, Indonesia still faces problems to conduct a difference in religious expression. Sometimes it becomes a serious problem throughout the country. Since it can split the unity of the country, and it pulls the country into grassroots’ religious conflicts. Therefore, there must be more serious and strategic effort from the government and all components of the nation. This essay will point out some obstacles of religious expression freedom, and will find solutions for this case.

Indonesia is a home of diversity, and at least,  there are six religions and numbers of belifes officelly acknowledged by the constitution. Unfortunately, the diversity sometimes become crucial and critical issues among groups of citizen. I identify  the diversity of religion and beliefs and found its problem at least  four factors:

First, the religious group does not have a certain mechanism to protect people from violence, even it supports the radicalism. Moreover the religious group can not control and prevent its followers from violence and breaking the religious freedom. In Indonesia there are many religious groups, and it has a number of followers spreading throughout the country. Although its leaders always give guidance and spiritual ethics to their followers, the leaders can not convince certainly their followers to not offend and act crackdown others. Since the guidance sometimes does not function effectively and mostly does not reach to the followers in the grass roots. For example, Muhammadiyah and NU have launched a peace building through multiculturalism and religious pluralism discourse, but the discourse spread limitedly in elite groups, and it never reach to the grass roots. Therefore, many followers of Muhammadiyah and NU do not understand about multiculturalism and religious pluralism, even they reject it as religious anomaly. The situation will become worse, when the groups can not consolidate their organization as well as their followers. Therefore, religious leaders must be pro active to explain policy clearly, so the followers understand what the organization wants. Beside that, religious leaders must reorganize the organization to actualize more effective instrument throughout their followers, not just an organization symbol.

Following a falling the New Order in 1998, there were many religious movements popping up throughout the country. Beside there were many moderate movements, there were  many radical movements as well. The radical religious movements groups have a narrow minded and rigid in interpretation to religious texts. They do not want to receive other interpretations and open mind to other believes. There fore, they threat religious freedom, and offend others accused as not true believe. They involve in crackdown on the name of religious command. They justify what their doing relates to the religious ethics, although they destroy many public and private facilities. Those groups included Islamic Defender Front, Jamaah Islamiyah, NII, and Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia. These group do not have a reluctant to what their doing, even they associate what their doing as true believe. From these situations, moderate groups like Muhammadiyah, NU, and others must build coalition to strengthen the civil society defending from extreme and radical views. They must pay more attention to the strategic propagations to halt the infiltration of the extreme ideology.

Second, law enforcement and government will are very weak to protect people from abuse of religious freedom. Religious Affairs Department as the government officer does not give much more protection to people, even it involves in many cases of rising religious violence in Indonesia. The recent case that the government could not protect the religious freedom was the government involved in banning to Ahmadiyah. The government does not processed cases of religious violence thoroughly and fast. Even it neglects it, for example sealed synagogue case in east Java, destroyed mosque and church. Based on the annually report revealed by the Wahid Institute, during 2008 the constitutional preserve on the freedom of religion and believe for individual rights of citizen as non-derogable right still have a treath from offenders in implementation. Many cases of pluralism contra such as offender rights, violence, and conflict popping up have not been conducted and finished yet properly. Those happened, beside the religious identical enthusiasm apparent in the certain groups that intend to offend others that have different views and religious interpretations, and also the government does not have obvious mechanism and weakness of law enforcement, either central government or regional government.

Third, the political situation sometimes exacerbates a religious violence. Political dispute issues in many regions pull religious conflicts and it can booster deep conflict among the people. Although political parties and religion tend to the different arena, both can collaborate in such issues. The fact, religious symbol in many cases of campaign is used to interest the voters, and to manipulate people consciousness. In the same case, religious symbol also is used to make riots among the society and the proprietor of interest will take the advantage from an unstable situation. In this case, we take an example from the case of Gus Dur resigning from his presidency. When Gus Dur received the impeachment from the parliamentary house, his few followers of NU clerics used the Islamic Law term “bughat” - illegal disloyal people to him - to who declined him from his occupation. On behalf of the religious name, His followers did crackdown and riots in many areas throughout the country, and many of them revealed an edict that Amin Rais blood was lawful. It means that political interest playing with religious symbol to take the advantage from the situation is not wise and very dangerous. From this case, we can take the lesson that politicians, political parties, religious leaders and the government must be careful to take religious symbol as political interest getter carelessly.

Fourth, the economic gap between the have and the poor allows setting up religious conflict that can worsen abuse of religious freedom. The poverty belongs to people in many areas sometimes tending to social jealousy, and it can provoke religious sentiment to other people. It can be seriously dangerous for the unity of community and nation. Many conflicts in many areas in Indonesia most of them were caused by this case. The riots of May 1998 in the end of the New Order power, one of reason was caused by the social jealousy to the economic gab between the have and the poor. The main issue of the new order falling was economic crises and socio-economic injustice. Furthermore the main issues aroused other issues such as racial and religion. We can infer to another conflict a few years ago such as Moluccas Island conflict was also caused by the socio-economic jealousy. It was because the immigrant residents lives more prosperous than the local resident. The consequence of economics boom and trade in 1980's-1997,s stimulated growth of economic wealth among immigrants significantly. Most of them operate in econimic trade and market in Maluccas Island, meanwhile local people preferd to seek job as civil servant or as farmers. The immigrant mostly as Muslim commonly comes from Makasar, Java, and other regions. The condition stimulates the local residents an enmity and hostilities to the immigrant resident. Furthermore, the jealousy of socio-economic condition tends to the religious conflict between Muslim and Christian people rampantly throughout the Island. It means that the socio-economic justice and prosperity can not be neglected to sustain the religious expression freedom.

To conclude this essay, the freedom of religious expression is still a real challenge for Indonesian. Therefore, religious leaders must be more active to stimulate a religious opened-mind of their followers to others. then they have challanging chance to build an instrument to prevent and stop some religious violence’s. Then, the government must conduct a religious conflict wisely, and it must not reveal some verdicts that exacerbate abuse of religious expression. Lastly, the government must pay more attention to cultivate a prosperity and economic justice among the society. therefore, the development of economic must not concentrate in certain region and certain elit people, but economic policies have to be implemented based on equality and transparacy.