Jakarta Journal: Attack on Playboy Raises Spectre of Violence

JAKARTA — In the sprawling capital of Indonesia — itself a vast archipelago of 13,000 islands — I set off last month to buy a copy of Playboy magazine.

Playboy last year licensed a Jakarta publisher to print an edition for Indonesia — the world's largest majority-Muslim nation. In deference to Muslim beliefs, the Indonesian edition contains no nude photographs.

After the magazine's debut, a conservative group calling itself the Islamic Defenders Front showered the publishing company's office with stones.

The attack caused so much damage that staff finally moved to the Indonesian island of Bali, which is majority Hindu. Later, the Islamic group raided stands selling the magazine and sometimes beat up attendants.

So, I had two goals in my quest to find the local Playboy.

I wanted to see whether the pressure tactics had forced the magazine off the streets of this country of 220 million people, some 90 percent of whom are Muslims.

I also wanted to gauge public opinion about a wider cultural shift in Indonesian society: After the 1998 fall of former Indonesian dictator Suharto, who had restricted religious expression and stressed nationalism, leaders have instituted democratic elections and increased personal freedoms, changes that have led to a growing assertion of conservative Islam.

About 73 percent of Indonesians believe that the role of Islam is growing in the country, while a large majority believes that Islam should play a greater role in politics, according to a 2005 poll conducted by the Washington D.C.-based Pew Research Center.

"There certainly has been a conservative turn in Indonesia (in recent years)," said Greg Fealy, a senior lecturer in Indonesian politics at Australia National University.

While many varieties of Islam have evolved in Indonesia since Muslim traders introduced the religion in the 13th century, the nation's main Islamic organizations — Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, which together have more than 70 million members — have become more conservative over the last two years, Fealy said.

Within the leadership of the two groups, "there is now less tolerance for some of the more liberal thinking," he said.

At the same time, democratic reforms, which included permitting radical Islamists to return from exile and to openly recruit followers, have created a more extreme Islamic fringe. The Indonesian government blamed the terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah for bombing two Bali nightclubs in 2002, killing more than 200 people, as well as for a bomb blast at a Jakarta hotel in 2003.

The government has since jailed or killed several of Jemaah Islamiyah's top military leaders and claims to have seriously weakened the organization, though some experts say it remains a threat.

Besides protesting Playboy's publication, the Islamic Defenders Front has ransacked bars and discos in Jakarta and beaten up patrons, eventually forcing some businesses to close.

Last July, the group filed a police report accusing Indonesia's Miss Universe candidate of indecency because she wore a swimsuit.

The conservative shift has pressured Indonesian politicians to align themselves more closely with Islamic values and support has risen for Shariah law, which employs regulations and penalties prescribed by the Quran and other Islamic texts.

As many as 40 of 450 administrative districts in Indonesia now apply some form of Shariah, including mandatory participation in prayers, a ban on alcohol sales and a requirement that government officials be able to read the Quran.

"It has become politically possible to call for the creation of Shariah in a way that it wasn't during the Suharto years," said Sidney Jones, director of the nonprofit International Crisis Group's Jakarta office.

"The politicians (in areas that have enacted Shariah laws) believe that it behooves them politically to enact these kinds of regulations locally and there's real fear on the part of non-Muslims that this represents a movement toward diminishing respect for other cultures and other faiths," she said.

Ahmad Syafii Maarif, a former chairman of Muhammadiyah, said that a current ban on alcohol sales at most stores in Jakarta was justifiable because "drinking alcohol is against Islamic teachings," though he added that some stores should continue be allowed to sell to non-Muslims.

"In the West you are free in the absolute sense, but we cannot do that here," he said. "We do not make an absolute separation between church and state."

The political shift has been mirrored by a spike in conservative Islamic observance.

Compared with a decade ago, more Indonesian women wear headscarves and veils. Islamic political parties have been strengthened by a perception that they can address social problems, from endemic corruption to gambling and drug use.

"Sometimes local communities welcome Shariah law because they think civil law has been a complete failure," Fealy said.

Meanwhile, imported culture has created a conservative backlash. A recent report by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations found that many Muslims in Indonesia consider American popular culture to be "violent, obscene, and contrary to Islam."

But many Indonesians are optimistic that the country's democracy will uphold individual freedoms and curb the spread of fundamentalism.

A court ruling earlier this year that Playboy Indonesia "could not be categorized as pornography" and was protected by press freedoms attested to that moderation, experts said.

The results of my search?

While several news stand operators in Jakarta said they had stopped carrying Playboy Indonesia because they feared copies would be seized by zealots, a 30-year-old clerk at a stall on a busy street pulled a copy from behind a shelf.

"We don't keep them out in the open, but we still sell them, he said. "There's a lot of demand for the magazine."

At a nearby bookstore selling a wide range of publications covering topics ranging from politics to sex, Iwan Wibisono, a local environmental campaigner, downplayed the significance of Indonesia's conservative swing.

"There are radicals who get a lot of attention, but the majority is moderate," he said.

Said Jones: "The notion that Islam and democracy are incompatible is proven wrong by Indonesia's existence."