The Islamization of Indonesia

Dear Reza Aslan,

I believe you’ve said repeatedly that countries like Malaysia, Bangladesh and Indonesia are liberal Muslim societies that are largely free of oppression. That, you claim, shows that the bad things people impute to Islam derive not from religion itself, but from culture. And although others have shown you up for the mushy religious apologist you are, just let me add one piece of evidence for you to weigh should you be so foolish as to continue putting your metatarsals in your jaws.

As the Independent reports, an Indonesian woman was recently caned 100 times for “being caught in a private place with a man she was not married to.” Caning may look innocuous and painless, but it’s not unless the cane-wielder deliberately tries to avoid inflicting pain. In this case, the woman was injured so severely that she had to go to the hospital.

As you probably know, Dr. Aslan, parts of Indonesia, in particular the province of Aceh, enforces not just Islamic civil law, but Islamic criminal law. And Aceh was where the woman was caned. The man with whom she sinned was also caned, but. predictably, less severely:

Named only as Mazidah, the 30-year-old’s caning was watched by thousands in Lhokseumawe, a city in the strongly conservative province of Aceh.

It took place after Friday prayers and had to be occasionally paused because she was crying out in agony, Australian broadcaster, ABC reported.

The man she was found with also received a lashing but did not need hospital treatment. A third man found guilty of another crime was also flogged.

Public canings, used as a punishment for the violation of Islamic law, are common in Aceh, with 339 taking place last year, according to the Institute of Criminal Justice Reform, a think-tank based in the country’s capital, Jakarta.

. . . Earlier this year, two gay men were canned 83 times for having consensual sex in private.

Of course, you could maintain, as you always have, that all of this stuff is really just part of of “culture” and not Islam, but then you must explain why this kind of punishment is designated as “Islamic”, and differs from non-“Islamic” punishment meted out elsewhere. And is the culture in Aceh really that different from elsewhere in Indonesia?

I’d also suggest you read the new Wall Street Journal article, “Curfews, obligatory prayers, whippings: hard-line Islam emerges in Indonesia” (it’s free on Facebook), and learn about some other disturbing cultural practices growing in your beloved secular Muslim state, practices that, by accident of course, are correlated with the Islamization of Indonesia.

In the Indonesian market town of Cianjur, new rules require government workers to clock in with their thumb prints at a downtown mosque to confirm attendance at morning prayers. That’s on the order of district chief Irvan Rivano Muchtar, who also wants a 10 p.m. curfew for the town and is sending police to stop teenage girls and boys hanging out without parental supervision.

Of course that’s cultural, too, because we all know that going to mosque is a cultural rather than a religious gesture. It’s just a way for people to be together and express comity. So is keeping men and women apart.

And this, too, is surely cultural, regardless of what its promoters say:

In recent years, lobbying groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front have helped introduce more than 400 Shariah-inspired laws, including those that penalize adultery, force women to wear headscarves and restrict them from going out at night.

They are supported by a popular mood that has turned more religiously conservative. Protesters last month forced officials to cover a 100-foot statue at a Confucian temple they called an affront to Islamic traditions. Over the past year other conservatives have demolished statues in Java and Sumatra depicting characters from traditional, pre-Islamic folk tales.

. . . Women wearing headscarves are more visible, and the wait time for the limited permits to attend the Hajj to Mecca have risen to 30 years, from two years in 2000, according to government data.

Headcoverings, after all, are aspects of culture, for of course the Qur’an says nothing about having to wear them.  It may be a bit harder to write off blasphemy or the destruction of “infidel” statues, which seems to require religion to even constitute  transgressions, but I’m sure you’ll find a way to rationalize things like these:

One hard-line group that has seen success is the Islamic Defenders Front, known locally as FPI. In April it helped engineer the electoral defeat of Jakarta’s governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian and close ally of Mr. Widodo.

The group and other conservative Muslims accused Mr. Purnama of blasphemy, a criminal offense, and organized mass protests to demand his prosecution. He lost re-election, was convicted and is serving a two-year prison sentence.

“The [Jakarta] governor election turned the FPI into something bigger than it had ever been before,” said Ms. Jones. “No one would have thought of it as a political power broker, and now that’s the role it has assumed.”

The FPI’s vision is clear. “The end goal is for [Indonesia] to be based on Shariah,” said Slamet Maarif, the group’s spokesman. That includes being whipped for violating rules concerning alcohol and extramarital sex.

“If you want to practice Islam, you cannot just be cherry picking. You should follow everything,” he said.

Well, I’ll leave it to you, Dr. Aslan, to explain (without invoking religion) the increasing incidence of such malfeasance going hand in hand with the rise and hardening of Islam. Perhaps there’s a cultural change going on in parts of Indonesia.

Oh, and just for your delectation, here’s a photo of a man getting caned in Aceh in May for having sex with another man. That homophobia must also be cultural, even if the punishment is dictated by a sharia court according to sharia law and comports with the imam-approved treatment of gay people in other Islamic countries.

Sincerely,
Jerry Coyne

p.s. I’m sorry about your television show “Believer.”

h/t: Cesar