Indonesian Pluralities

Description

The crisis of multiculturalism in the West and the failure of the Arab uprisings in the Middle East have pushed the question of how to live peacefully within a diverse society to the forefront of global discussion. Against this backdrop, Indonesia has taken on a particular importance: with a population of 265 million people (87.7 percent of whom are Muslim), Indonesia is both the largest Muslim-majority country in the world and the third-largest democracy. In light of its return to electoral democracy from the authoritarianism of the former New Order regime, some analysts have argued that Indonesia offers clear proof of the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Skeptics argue, however, that the growing religious intolerance that has marred the country’s political transition discredits any claim of the country to democratic exemplarity. Based on a twenty-month project carried out in several regions of Indonesia, Indonesian Pluralities: Islam, Citizenship, and Democracy shows that, in assessing the quality and dynamics of democracy and citizenship in Indonesia today, we must examine not only elections and official politics, but also the less formal, yet more pervasive, processes of social recognition at work in this deeply plural society. The contributors demonstrate that, in fact, citizen ethics are not static discourses but living traditions that co-evolve in relation to broader patterns of politics, gender, religious resurgence, and ethnicity in society.

Indonesian Pluralities offers important insights on the state of Indonesian politics and society more than twenty years after its return to democracy. It will appeal to political scholars, public analysts, and those interested in Islam, Southeast Asia, citizenship, and peace and conflict studies around the world.

Contributors: Robert W. Hefner, Erica M. Larson, Kelli Swazey, Mohammad Iqbal Ahnaf, Marthen Tahun, Alimatul Qibtiyah, and Zainal Abidin Bagir

Sujets

• Regional Studies
• Social Science
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Ethics
• Anthropology
• Asian
• World
• Islam
• Social
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268108632
• Langue: English

Extrait

Indonesian Pluralities
CONTENDING MODERNITIES
Series editors: Ebrahim Moosa, Atalia Omer, and Scott Appleby
As a collaboration between the Contending Modernities initiative and the University of Notre Dame Press, the Contending Modernities series seeks, through publications engaging multiple disciplines, to generate new knowledge and greater understanding of the ways in which religious traditions and secular actors encounter and engage each other in the modern world. Books in this series may include monographs, co-authored volumes, and tightly themed edited collections.
The series will include works that frame such encounters through the lens of “modernity.” The range of themes treated in the series might include war, peace, human rights, nationalism, refugees and migrants, development practice, pluralism, religious literacy, political theology, ethics, multi- and intercultural dynamics, sexual politics, gender justice, and postcolonial and decolonial studies.
Indonesian Pluralities

Islam, Citizenship, and Democracy
Edited by
ROBERT W. HEFNER
and
ZAINAL ABIDIN BAGIR
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
NOTRE DAME, INDIANA
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2021 by the University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020947032
ISBN: 978-0-268-10861-8 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10862-5 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10864-9 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10863-2 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
ONE
The Politics and Ethics of Social Recognition and Citizenship
in a Muslim-Majority Democracy • Robert W. Hefner
TWO
Scaling Plural Coexistence in Manado:
What Does It Take to Remain Brothers? • Erica M. Larson
THREE
Reimagining Tradition and Forgetting Plurality: Religion, Tourism,
and Cultural Belonging in the Banda Islands, Maluku • Kelli Swazey
FOUR
Scaling against Pluralism:
Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia and Islamist Opposition
to Pancasila Citizenship • Mohammad Iqbal Ahnaf
FIVE
“Enough Is Enough”: Scaling Up Peace in Postconflict
Ambon • Marthen Tahun

SIX
Gender Contention and Social Recognition in Muslim Women’s
Organizations in Yogyakarta • Alimatul Qibtiyah
SEVEN
Religion, Democracy, and Citizenship, Twenty Years after
Reformasi • Zainal Abidin Bagir
Works Cited
Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The present book has a long but happy history. Its core aspiration originated in discussions that began a decade ago under the leadership of R. Scott Appleby, in the course of preparations for his multidimensional project “Contending Modernities: Catholics, Muslims, and Secularists in the Late Modern World.” In those years the project was organized out of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. One of the editors of the present book, Bob Hefner, participated in some of the project’s founding meetings and along the way met some of the scholars who went on to play leadership roles in the larger CM program: Ebrahim Moosa, Atalia Omer, and Mun’im Sirry among them.
Although Hefner had earlier been involved in one of the CM projects, “Catholics, Muslims, and the New Plurality in Western Europe and North America,” in 2014-15, Scott, Ebrahim, and Mun’im resolved to open another front in the CM’s multiple projects, this one focused on aspects of religion and plurality in Indonesia and Africa. Scott subsequently invited the editors of the present book, Zainal Abidin Bagir and Bob Hefner, to submit a proposal for a project, which we did in 2015. The project was entitled “Scaling-Up Pluralism: Local-National Collaborations for Civic Coexistence in Contemporary Indonesia.” The book is the product of the collaborative research project carried out from late 2015 to late 2017.
Both of the editors for this book have benefited enormously from the generosity, collegiality, and intellectual counsel of Scott, Ebrahim, Mun’im, and Atalia. We cannot thank them sufficiently for their kindness and support, or for the intellectual vision they have shown in the Contending Modernities project as a whole. We also thank Dr. Toby A. Volkman, director of the Religion and World Affairs program at the Henry Luce Foundation, for her and the Foundation’s generous support of our research and the filmmaking sequel to the original field research. Six films based in part on some of the field sites described in this book are currently being produced and will be available for university and general distribution in late 2020.
Zainal Abidin Bagir and Bob Hefner visited all of the field sites several times over the course of the research and were the recipients of great kindness on the part of many local hosts. Although there are far too many individuals to mention in person, we want at the least to give special thanks to Margaretha Hendriks, Jacky Manuputty, Yance Rumahru, Hasbollah Toisuta, and Abidin Wakono. We also thank our American and Indonesian research partners in the project and the present book. All our colleagues in the research team took time away from their families and careers in Indonesia and the United States to cooperate in this multidisciplinary endeavor. We also thank our friends and colleagues at our respective institutes: Pak Zainal at the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies at the Graduate School of Gadjah Mada University and Bob Hefner at the Pardee School of Global Affairs at Boston University.
Last but not least, we dedicate the volume to the memory of the great Indonesian public intellectual Nurcholish Madjid (1939–2005), who in the 1990s was Bob’s teacher and friend in things Indonesian. Cak Nur, as he was known, remains an intellectual and ethical exemplar for all who care about religion and pluralist recognition in the unfinished but great project that is the nation of Indonesia.
Bob Hefner and Zainal Abidin Bagir
ONE
The Politics and Ethics of Social Recognition and Citizenship in a Muslim-Majority Democracy
ROBERT W. HEFNER
The question of how to live together in a religiously plural society is much in the air these days, and for good reason. In Western democracies, the confluence of mass immigration, ISIS/Daesh terrorism, and alt-right populisms has shaken public confidence in once widely held assumptions as to civility and citizenship in a context of deep social difference (Mouffe 2005). Calls heard in the 1990s for some variety of multicultural citizenship have long since given way to demands for the exclusion of new immigrants and the coercive assimilation of those long arrived, not least if they happen to be Muslim (Joppke 2017; Modood 2007).
What is arguably a crisis of confidence in pluralist recognition and citizenship in the West is paralleled by an even greater sense of alarm in the Muslim-majority world, and nowhere more anxiously than in the Arab Middle East. By early 2013, the hopeful dreams of the 2011 “Arab Spring” had given way to the somber realization that in all but one of the Arab Muslim nations, Tunisia (Zeghal 2016), progress toward pluralist democracy had not merely stalled but ended. Political observers spoke with good reason of a “crisis of citizenship” in the Arab-Muslim world (Challand 2017; Meijer and Butenschøn 2017). As if this inventory were not distressing enough, even in Southeast Asia’s once hopeful democracies, one hears today that, to borrow a phrase from the political scientist William Case (2011, 360), “After a long run of global good fortune, democracy has fallen on hard times.”
It is against this backdrop of democratic hope and challenge that Indonesia today takes on its public and policy importance. With its population of 266 million people, 87.2 percent of whom are Muslim, Indonesia is the largest Muslim-majority country in the world. It is also the third-largest democracy, having undertaken a return to electoral democracy in 1998–99 in the aftermath of thirty-two years of authoritarian rule. Some analysts, including the distinguished scholar of democratic transitions Alfred Stepan, have argued that Indonesia offers clear proof of the compatibility of Islam and pluralist democracy (Stepan 2014). But skeptics are not so sure. They argue that, however impressive Indonesia’s electoral achievements, the larger transition from the authoritarianism of the New Order regime (1966–98) to the democratic politics of the Reformasi era (1998–today) has been so marred by antiminority violence as to discredit any claim to democratic exemplarity (Harsono 2012).
Although the issues at its heart remain vexing, this disagreement has had a salutary effect on ongoing studies of politics and civic coexistence in contemporary Indonesia. The debate has underscored that, in assessing the quality of democracy, plurality, and citizenship in Indonesia today, it is important to examine not just elections and state-centered politics but the less formal but more pervasive processes of social recognition (Taylor 1994; Honneth 2001) at work in this deeply plural society. Social recognition refers to the social-psychological, ethical, and political practices through which actors evaluate, acknowledge, and otherwise