1 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ______________________ 3 INTRODUCTION _____________________________ 6 OVERVIEW: CONTEXT, CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES ____________________________ 15 BACKGROUND: RELIGIOUS DEMOGRAPHY & HISTORICAL CONTEXT ______________________ 20 CHALLENGES TO RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ____ 24 OPPORTUNITIES FOR ADVANCING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM _______________________ 32 "POSITIVE DEVIANCE" WITHIN THE INDOSPHERE & THE MUSLIM WORLD ______ 37 KEY ACTORS ________________________________ 44 INDONESIA "SWOT" ANALYSIS ______________ 65 PEW RELIGIOUS RESTRICTIONS DATA ON INDONESIA _________________________________ 71 ENDNOTES _________________________________ 73 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY “Indonesia is the most important country in the world about which most people know practically nothing,” observes Southeast Asia specialist Bernard Adenay Risakotta. Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, its third largest democracy, and the fourth most populous country on earth. It is among the most successful democracies in the Islamic world, and the only Muslim-majority country whose Christian Indonesia is the population has significantly grown in numbers and influence since independence from colonial rule. most important country in the Unlike the Middle East, where authoritarian rulers world about which keep religious institutions on a short leash, Indonesia’s most people mass Islamic organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, are independent, self- know practically organizing and free of government control. Both nothing." participated in founding the Republic of Indonesia as a multi-religious and pluralistic (“Pancasila”) nation- state, and remain its primary defenders to this day. Bernard Adenay Risakotta, With some 90 million followers, the NU is without Southeast Asia parallel in Southeast Asia and the wider Muslim world. It has participated in every major phase Specialist of Indonesia’s modern history and consistently determined outcomes, from the defeat of Dutch colonialism in the 1940s to ensuring Indonesia’s successful transition to democracy in the late ‘90s. Most international reports on religious freedom focus exclusively on specific instances and, sometimes, patterns of religious persecution. This Indonesia Religious Freedom Landscape Report brings into stark relief the shortcomings of this largely plaintive, defeatist and superficial approach. Though the report is unsparing in its analysis of Indonesia’s shortcomings and of the complex array of forces that threaten its traditions of religious pluralism and tolerance, it places this analysis within a wider framework that examines 3 “strengths” and “opportunities” as landscape of South and Southeast well as “threats” and “weaknesses.” Asia and the Muslim world is a single civil society institution: the Nahdlatul Despite the existence of major Ulama. Now the largest mass Islamic challenges to religious freedom in organization in the world, the NU was Indonesia, it is nevertheless home to founded nearly a century ago, in 1926, powerful actors that are systematically almost simultaneously with the Muslim and institutionally maneuvering Brotherhood, founded in 1925 in Egypt. to strengthen the prospects for However, while the Muslim Brotherhood religious liberty in Indonesia, South and its numerous ideological offspring— and Southeast Asia, and the world such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hamas, al-Qaeda at large. Viewed from a regional or and ISIS—have consistently pursued even global perspective, Indonesia militant, integralist, and anti-pluralist thus embodies what development agendas, with fateful consequences scholars in the 1960s and 1970s came for Egypt and the world, the NU has to describe as “positive deviance.” become an increasingly robust and creative defender and advocate of Positive deviance is based on the a distinctively Indonesian vision of observation that there are certain religious pluralism and tolerance. individuals and groups in every community whose uncommon At a time when the Islamic State behaviors and strategies enable them group's meteoric rise was destabilizing to solve problems more effectively the Middle East and monopolizing than similarly situated peers. Cases global attention, Nahdlatul Ulama of “positive deviance” offer valuable spiritual leaders mobilized Indonesia's lessons that are rarely scrutinized, Muslim majority, including President analyzed, or disseminated in a form Joko Widodo, around a contrary and that would be of practical benefit to the radically different vision of Islam cause of promoting religious freedom. and its primary message as rahmah (universal love and compassion), With an operational base in the region and had a decisive impact upon the and years of careful networking and 2014 and 2019 national elections. engagement, the Religious Freedom Institute’s South and Southeast Asia For example, NU leaders created Action Team (RFI SSEA-AT) has identified the Islam Nusantara (“East Indies a number of promising local religious Islam”) movement to address the freedom actors and strategies. At the threat posed by Islamist extremism. broadest level, these investigations In 2015, the New York Times described have led SSEA-AT to conclude that a film documenting the birth of this Indonesia is the country in the region movement as “a relentless, religious with the greatest “cultural and spiritual repudiation of the Islamic State and capital” conducive to religious freedom. the opening salvo in a global campaign by the world’s largest Muslim group Though many factors are at work, one to challenge its ideology head-on.” crucial reason that Indonesia is a relative NU leaders popularized the term bright spot within the religious freedom “Islam Nusantara” to describe the 4 indigenous, tolerant forms of Islam gathering of some 20,000 Muslim practiced by the vast majority of religious scholars, that endorsed the Indonesians and rooted in South and concept of a nation-state rather than Southeast Asia’s civilizational heritage. caliphate and recognized all citizens irrespective of religion, ethnicity or creed Building upon the Islam Nusantara as having equal rights and obligations. campaign’s success, NU spiritual leaders Kyai Haji A. Mustofa Bisri and Kyai Haji The 2019 National Conference of Yahya Cholil Staquf founded Bayt ar- Nahdlatul Ulama Religious Scholars Rahmah li ad-Da‘wa al-Islamiyah decreed that the modern nation-state Rahmatan li al-‘Alamin (Home of Divine is theologically legitimate; that there is Grace for Revealing and Nurturing no legal category of infidel (kafir) within Islam as a Blessing for All Creation) a modern nation-state, only “fellow with LibForAll co-founder C. Holland citizens”; that Muslims must obey the Taylor. Bayt ar-Rahmah serves as a hub laws of any modern nation-state in for the worldwide expansion of NU which they dwell; and that Muslims operations and leads the Humanitarian have a religious obligation to foster Islam movement, which seeks to foster peace rather than wage war on behalf the emergence of a global civilization of their co-religionists, whenever conflict founded upon respect for the equal erupts between Muslim and non-Muslim rights and dignity of every human being. populations anywhere in the world. In a major break with Islamic In a region where much wrong is being conservatism, in 2019 Nahdlatul Ulama perpetrated by many governments abolished the fiqh (Islamic legal) and non-state actors, Indonesia is category of “infidels,” those who do not doing something right. Now is a adhere to Islam, which has long cast good time for the rest of us to take a shadow over the faith’s relationship note and learn all that we can from with other religions. The Central Indonesia’s remarkable and multi- Board of the Indonesian movement faceted example of “positive deviance.” published documents, based on a Timothy Samuel Shah, Ph.D. Vice-President for Strategy & International Research Director, South & Southeast Asia Action Team Religious Freedom Institute 5 INTRODUCTION Religion has been integral to the spirit a favorable route, any experienced and culture of humanity for millennia.1 traveler knows, can the journey begin. The cradle of multiple ancient religions, South and Southeast Asia remains one The RFI’s South and Southeast Asia of the world’s most religiously diverse Action Team focuses on eight of the and spiritually vibrant regions on earth. most populous and strategically At the same time, all too many of its significant countries in South and two and a half billion people suffer on Southeast Asia: Bangladesh, Burma account of their religion. The South and (Myanmar), India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Southeast Asia Action Team, an arm of Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Indonesia the Religious Freedom Institute (RFI), and India in particular are the two most exists to advance religious freedom populous, economically robust, and for all people throughout this vast strategically significant countries in the region, especially those who are most region. Together these eight countries persecuted. This landscape report on have a population of about 2.2 billion Indonesia—the world’s largest Muslim people, comprising 86 percent of the country and the second most populous regional population (about 2.5 billion) country in South and Southeast and 28 percent of the total world Asia—constitutes an important step population (about 7.8 billion).2 The whole towards achieving that goal and regional population comprises about represents the combined expertise 32 percent of the world population. of numerous