Quo Vadis, Indonesien - HU Berlin

Challenging the Interpretation of “Religious Violence”I have identified two key factors responsible for conflict escalation in Maluku: agency on the nationallevel, where actors instrumentalized the violence to undermine the reform government, and agency onthe local level where receptiveness for violence and the religious cleavage existed and residents partookin riots. In addition, religious actors, semi-independent from national politicians and the localpopulation, cultivated a discourse conducive to the construction and the instrumentalization of themaster cleavage of “religious violence”. The local discourse was clearly linked to the frames alreadyemployed in Jakarta during the last years of Suharto’s reign. The fighting in Ambon was easily connectedto the conspiracy against Muslims driven by Indonesian Christians, Chinese and Westerninstitutions, the lack of “Muslim proportionalism”, and a new government that did not appear toexplicitly protect the interests of Muslims, but enjoyed support among Christians. The strategy ofemploying internationally recognized terms of religious identity marks the gradual abstraction of theoriginal context conditions towards a general national conflict with international implications.Once the narrative of religious violence became widely accepted, the conflict was shifted to a newlevel of violence with starkly rising casualty figures when Laskar Jihad fighters arrived in Maluku.The successful construction of the label ‘religious violence’ and its linkage to the national power struggleand local existing tensions enabled national actors to orchestrate repeated attacks and voicepolitical claims based on the ongoing violence. The local adoption of the cleavage and the silenceamong some religious actors if not outright support for this interpretation enabled the mastermindersof violence to camouflage their actions.In conclusion, labelling the Maluku violence as ‘religious’ does neither account for the fact that beforeviolence broke out, several cleavages and tensions existed, nor for the observation that the migrantpopulation was overwhelmingly targeted during the first weeks of violence, thus implying othermotives than religious fervour. It neither accounts for the fact that much violence was orchestrated byexternal riot-leaders and later fulltime external jihad fighters, nor for the documented sniper attacks ofthe security forces who killed both Muslims and Christians with head shots and kept conflict simmering.Rather, the interpretation refers to the power struggle that dominated Jakarta politics during andafter the transition and is indirectly linked to the debate of what Indonesian Islam is and how it shouldbe represented politically.The rise of Megawati to the presidency marked the defeat of conservative Islamist politics in Jakarta.Thus, the legacy of the religiously-inspired pro-democracy movement in Indonesia is impressive.Eight years after Reformasi, 85.9% percent of Muslim educators agree that “democracy is the bestform of government for Indonesia”. 154 Noorhaidi Hasan commented in 2002 that “political Islamremains on the political periphery, and may never succeed in changing the strategic landscape of theMuslim world”. 155 In this view, Indonesia stands as a remarkable success for an islamically- inspiredand supported democratic system. Yet, the situation also remains ambivalent. The same survey onMuslim educators view on democracy also documents that 72.2 percent of educators also believe “thatthe state should be based on the Qur’an and Sunnah (..) and guided by religious experts”. 156 Thisreveals that while the Muslim population is strongly committed to values such as democracy and liberalrights, they hold by no means a secularist liberal attitude. The challenge of institutionalarrangements for these ambivalences and possible contradictions is precisely the background againstwhich Muslim politics may indirectly - and in view of radical Islamist groups, directly - facilitate154 Hefner, Making Democracy Work Islamically, 2.155 Hasan, Faith and Politics, 169.156 Hefner Making Democracy Work Islamically, 2.33