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Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Oxford, UKMUWOThe Muslim World0027-4909© 2009 Hartford SeminaryJanuary 2009991

Book Reviews

January 2009991Book ReviewsBook ReviewsThe Muslim World

Book Reviews

Feeling Threatened: Muslim-Christian Relations in Indonesia’s New Order

By Mujiburrahman

Amsterdam University Press, Leiden, 2006

There have been numerous scholarly studies of the development of Indonesian politics and society in the “New Order” period, particularly in relation to Muslim political parties. Mujiburrahman’s contribution to this scholarship is a focused review of Christian and Muslim discourse as both groups sought to influence and find their place in the emerging Indonesian society of the New Order. As he richly illustrates from primary sources, this discourse was complex, involving a variety of Muslim approaches for relating Islam to Indonesian political development along side varying Christian understandings of the key concerns of a religious minority in a dominantly Muslim state.

The title of the book,

Feeling Threatened

, accurately describes the context of Christian and Muslim discourse from Indonesian Independence until the end of the New Order period. The discourse discussed by Mujiburrahman is dominated by Muslim fears of Christianization and Christian fears of the Islamization of Indonesian society and in particular the formation of an Islamic state. Muslim fears in the period are twofold: a fear of Christian evangelization of the Muslim population and a fear of Christian opposition to Muslim efforts to implement Islamic law and values within Indonesian society. These fears arise in a complex context which includes Muslim perceptions that in the post-colonial period Christians would continue the perceived colonialist agenda of making Indonesia a Christian nation. Such fears were exacerbated by a Muslim discourse that asserted that all calls for religious freedom and participation of Christian missions in economic development were a smokescreen for Christian evangelism and the continued presence of foreign missionaries. Such a Muslim discourse could be presented as authentically nationalistic in that it opposed neo-colonialist intervention in the evolution of Indonesian society.

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Christian discourse, on the other hand, was driven by fear of an Islamic state and thus supported the New Order government’s resistance to implementing Muslim demands for the same. The government of Soeharto played an unhelpful role in this discourse of fear, seeking primarily to insure its own power by creating ambiguous laws whose implementation, and thus a painful negotiation about national identity, was left to the distant future or local authorities. Its efforts to sponsor inter-religious dialogue, for example, rarely reached beyond superficial speechmaking. What Mujiburrahman doesn’t state, but seems obvious in this book, is that Indonesian religious discourse was beset by a zero-sum game mentality in which every gain for one religious group was seen as a loss for another. It appears that the Soeharto government could not advance a social framework in which both Christians and Muslims might achieve their goals, and perhaps preferred that they remain both dissatisfied and dependent on it as a broker.

Mujiburrahman’s thesis suggests that the emerging solution to the zero-sum game mentality is the formation of a new discourse that emphasizes a de-ideologized Islam (that does not compete with the official Pancasila ideology), as well as Christian efforts to shape a theology of religious pluralism that will guide social engagement. Perhaps most importantly, both Christian and Muslim efforts to make a shared concern for social justice a primary

religious

goal has led to the prospects of mutual gains through cooperation. In Mujiburrahman’s account the roots of the movement for de-ideologized Islam, pluralist Christianity, and an emphasis on social justice are found in the early New Order, but were intensified and began to come to fruition only in the 1990’s. Elections subsequent to the end of the New Order in 1998 favored non-ideological Muslim parties, suggesting that this particular approach to the relationship between Islam and national identity has the support of the majority of Muslims in Indonesia. However, events subsequent to the period covered by this work suggest that there remains a strong, and increasingly radicalized, movement to implement Islam as a state ideology.

Consonant with his method Mujiburrahman focuses on specific events which triggered Christian and Muslim discourse on the shape of Indonesian society and national identity. The first chapter introduces the initial conflicts of the New Order period. It is unfortunate that many of the roots of this conflict, and of Christian and Muslim understandings of colonialism and neo-colonialism, are only introduced much later in the book. An introduction to the discourse around the Jakarta Charter and interpretation of the meaning of “Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa” would make this chapter, and the one that follows, more understandable. The second chapter focuses on a discourse against Christianization that focused on the government’s role in regulating the

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building of churches, the abortive WCC assembly of 1975, efforts to control Christian foreign aid, and Muslim opposition to joint Christmas celebrations. In the third chapter Mujiburrahman discusses the rise of Christian discourse, and action, against an Islamic state and Christian cooperation with the New Order government. Chapters four and five are essentially case studies of public debate over the relation of religion and state in regulating marriage and forming a national culture through educational policy. Through these Mujiburrahman introduces discourse concerning the varying elements of Indonesian Muslim identity (differences between

santri

and

abangan

, reformist and orthodox) as well as significant differences between Catholic and Protestant discourse in relation to both family law and religious education. Thus we learn that more is at stake in the formation of an Indonesian identity than simply the role of Islam in society. It is unfortunate that Mujiburrahman doesn’t discuss the role of international Islam, and Islam as an international identity, in these chapters. The closing chapter discusses the changing shape and sponsorship of inter-religious dialogue, including that leading to more positive forms of cooperation between Christians and Muslims.

Mujiburrahman’s account leaves one wishing that Indonesian voices, both Christian and Muslim, were more prominent in the discourse on Muslim and Christian national identity elsewhere in the region as well as in international discourse on inter-religious dialogue and religious identity (Malaysian could usefully learn from them and cannot be excused by language). At the very least Muslim theologians like Nurcholish Madjid, Dawan Rahardjo and others need to be part of the discourse on contemporary Islam involving figures better known in the West such as Tariq Ramadan and Khalid Abou el-Fadl. Christians such as J. B. Banawiratm, E. G. Singghi, and Th. Soermartana could likewise enrich the Christian discussion of pluralist theology advanced by theologians such as Paul Knitter, Peter Phan and Amos Yong.

For those who have followed Indonesian political discourse, this book is valuable primarily as a sourcebook, for others as a thorough introduction to the main outlines of that discourse. The final chapter is suggestive of ways forward in other situations of Christian-Muslim conflict over national identity. Finally, Mujiburahman’s approach is suggestive of methods of research and analysis that might be usefully deployed in other situations of Christian-Muslim dialogue and conflict.

Robert Hunt

Perkins School of Theology Southern Methodist University Dallas, Texas