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News Item: 2000 Oct 8 - Irawan Abidin Speech

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2000 Oct 8 - Irawan Abidin Speech	10 Mar 2002
Religion in Indonesia Today A Presentation by Mr. Irawan Abidin Former Ambassador of The Republic of Indonesia to The Holy See At a Conference on "Comparative Perspectives On Freedom of Religion and Belief" Sponsored by The International Academy for Freedom of Religion and Belief and The Brigham Young University International Centre for Law and Religion Studies, BYU, Provo, Utah 8 October 2000 Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure and honour for me to participate in these Conferences on Comparative Constitutional Perspectives on Freedom of Religion and Belief and to exchange views on this important subject with distinguished scholars and officials concerned with issues on religion and law. This is a subject that is very important to both my Government and the Indonesian people who, I am proud to say, are a people with a very large religious consciousness and a deep sense of the spiritual. Before I discuss the role of religion in the national life of Indonesia today and its relationship with the state, it may be helpful for me to mention a few features of the sense of spirituality of the Indonesian people tong before the coming of the worlds great religions into the country. It may also be helpful to consider certain basic facts about Indonesia and its people. Indonesia is an archipelago of some 17,000 islands spanning three time zones in Southeast Asia, the home of some 210 million people, the fourth largest population in the world, divided into hundreds of ethnic groups. The overwhelming majority of Indonesians, like several other peoples in Southeast Asia, are of Malay or Austronesian stock and speak some 500 of the 1,200 or so Austronesian languages. Most of the ancestors of the Indonesians of today came from the southern part of China. These ancestors were animists: they believed that all objects, whether animate or inanimate, have their own life force, with some people, like the shamans and other tribal leaders, having more of this life force than others. Because they believed in life after death, they honoured dead ancestors and many of them were practitioners of ancestor worship. The cultures of the early Indonesians, like our cultures today, are tremendously variegated. We have, after all, hundreds of ethnic tribes, each with its own worldview and ways of coping with the demands of everyday living. But there are common threads in this variegation: a concern for balance in all aspects of life; an emphasis on reciprocity in relationships; a belief in a permanent connection between life and death; the use of rituals to mark a persons passage from one stage of life to another, including death; and a high degree of tolerance for the beliefs of others. These common threads formed a cultural legacy that served as hospitable ground for the coming of the great religions of the world. By the time that the great religions of the world made their appearance in Indonesia, codes of behaviour based on the Austronesian cultural legacy, worldview and traditions have been formulated and become a way of life all over Indonesia. To this legacy the great religions would later form a series of overlays. There is no historical certainty as to exactly when Hinduism and Buddhism came to Indonesia but there is enough evidence to support the view that Hinduism was introduced to Indonesia at during the first century or second century of the Common Era, and after Hinduism, Buddhism soon followed into Indonesia. By the seventh century, there was already in South Sumatra the seat of a maritime empire that also served as a centre of Buddhist learning, the Sri Wijaya. By the 14th century, a weakened Sri Wijaya would be supplanted by a Hindu empire based on Java, the Majapahit. The decline of the Majapahit in the 16th century would coincide with the coming of Islam in full force, particularly into the island of Java, after gaining a foothold on Sumatra and growing in strength there since as early as the seventh century. Muslims from various parts of the Islamic world contributed to the Islamization of the whole of Indonesia, Meanwhile waves of Chinese migration into Indonesia brought about the formation of Chinese communities in Indonesia. Up to this day, these communities practice a mix of various religions that include Buddhism, Daoism, Islam and Christianity. As early as the seventh century, there were Christian communities in Sumatra but it was only during the 15th century that Catholic missionaries began to convert large parts of the population in eastern Indonesia. With the formation of the Dutch East India Company in the 16th century, Protestantism began to gain a considerable number of adherents. During the 20th century, the number of Indonesian Protestants kept increasing as various protestant missionary movements from various countries in the West sent their representatives to Indonesia. Islam, however, has remained the dominant religion in Indonesia. Today some 87 percent of 210 million Indonesians consider themselves Muslims. This fact, however, has not prevented many Indonesians, particularly the Javanese, to practice the traditions of Kabatinan and Kejawen, a form of mysticism, which bears influences from the mysticism of Austronesian ancestor worship, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufi Islam. In any case, the average Indonesian, whatever may be his particular beliefs, is a deeply religious person. It is a reflection of this deep religiosity of the Indonesian that at the height of the struggle for national sovereignty and independence, the framers of the Indonesian Constitution in 1945, decided that the Indonesian Republic should be based on the principle of a belief in one God. This same principle is enshrined in the Panca Sila, the state philosophy on which the Indonesian Republic itself was founded. According to this principle, the Government recognizes the dominant role that religion plays in the daily life of its citizens and the importance of religion in the maintenance of the unity of the nation. The Government is therefore committed to support the development of the spiritual and religious life of all Indonesians. The four other principles in the Panca Sila refer to Indonesias linkage with all other nations on the basis of humanity; Indonesian nationalism; democracy through deliberation and consensus; and social justice. Indonesia is therefore striving to be both a democracy and a meritocracy in which all religions and beliefs are tolerated, but it is not a secular state. It has a religious foundation. But neither is it a theocracy. It calls itself a Panca Sila state and as such, Indonesia is unique. Thus Indonesia recognizes five major world religions: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. Catholicism and Protestantism are recognized as separate religions within Christianity. Certain Chinese religious practices are officially grouped together under Buddhism. Some local religious traditions have come to be officially classified as forms of Hinduism. To be able to fulfill its obligations on the spiritual and religious development of the Indonesian people, the Indonesian Government maintains a Department of Religion as an important part of its administrative machinery. Established in 1946, the Department of Religion has grown into the third biggest government department, after the Department of Education and Culture and the Department of the Interior. Among its major functions are: the promotion of religious harmony and management of conflict that may arise among Indonesias many religious communities; the administration of marriage and divorce among Muslims; and the management of the Islamic pilgrimages. In general, the Department serves as a link between traditional and modem forms of religious life. It also supports cooperation with other countries in the field of higher education. It has sent hundreds of lecturers and students to educational institutions in the Middle East and in Western countries. Thus the history of the Indonesian Republic has been one long pursuit of the ideal of harmony and cooperation among communities of different religions and ethnic origins. And for many years, Indonesians took pride in the success of that philosophy and policy as communities of various faiths and ethnic origins worked closely together in the cause of development and in the spirit of friendship and goodwill. And yet today, unfortunately, Indonesia has formidable problems that threaten its national unity and the social cohesiveness of its people. A number of developments have worked against Indonesias endeavours to sustain unity and to achieve social justice. The Asian financial and economic crisis which broke out in mid-1997 and from which we Indonesia has not yet fully recovered, exposed many weaknesses in Indonesias economic, social and political systems, weaknesses which can only be rectified through a massive and concerted effort at reform in all aspects of the national life. Moreover, today there are forces bent on frustrating this effort at reform by destabilizing the administration. In at least one part of the country, in Maluku, there have been violence and bloodshed between members of the Muslim and Christian communitieswhere before, for many decades, there had been only harmony and cooperation between the two communities. Although the protagonists in this conflict are drawn from the ranks of the Muslims and Christians, it must be stressed that this is not a conflict of a religious character. All the data from the field shows that this is the result of a widespread sense of frustration among a large segment of the local population at the lack of improvement in their economic situation, coupled with the virulent effects of a disinformation campaign by provocateurs sowing religious discord as part of a campaign to destabilize the entire country. It is well known that Muslims and Christians do not normally attack each other: for this to happen there have to be manipulators and provocateurs. And that precisely was what brought about the tragedy of Maluku. The response of the Government has been to strive to bring the provocateurs to justice, to exert its utmost to enforce the law and thereby reestablish peace and order, and to encourage and assist the communal leaders in their endeavours to hold dialogue toward peace and to restore the harmony that they once took a great deal of pride in. At the same time, the resources for social and economic development must be brought into Maluku and these resources should be put to good use, with the communities themselves participating in decision-making on how these resources are going to be deployed. The Government is convinced that only this combination of strict law enforcement, sincere and comprehensive dialogue and socioúeconomic development will work in solving the complex problem of fratricidal violence among the Christians and Muslims of Maluku. In spite of the many challenges that it is facing, the Government of Indonesia continues its long-pursued endeavour to modernize the spiritual and religious life of its citizens and to adhere to a policy of tolerance for all religions and beliefs. in fact, it is the hope of the Indonesian Government that the deep sense of spirituality of the Indonesian will help the nation in the search for solutions to its many and formidable problems. In fact, in recent months, the Government intensified its efforts to promote mutual understanding among religious communities by discussions and studies on one anothers beliefs. It is in this spirit that the Indonesian Government recently convened in Jakarta an international Trialogue of the Abrahamic faithsJudaism, Christianity and Islam. It is also in this spirit that the Indonesian Government has been seeking scholarships for some of its brightest students to pursue graduate studies on Catholic theology in institutions of religious learning in the Vatican and elsewhere. By increasing understanding among Muslim scholars of the teachings of other faiths, the Government hopes that when these scholars come back to Indonesia, they will be able to take initiatives at promoting inter-faith dialogue and cooperation. The President of Indonesia today is himself a Muslim religious leader who has shown great interest in pursuing interúfaith dialogue at the national as well as international level. It is therefore reasonable to expect such a dialogue to be keenly pursued, at least in Indonesia, and there is at least some basis for hope that the dialogue will lead to greater enlightenment among the Indonesian people, and therefore greater inter-faith harmony and cooperation.
David Brewer	Send Email

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