New spectre of religious violence haunts Indonesia

Just weeks after winning political freedom Muslim radicals are talking of creating a fundamentalist state

FOR ALL the euphoria which accompanied the end of president Suharto's rule, a nightmare haunts Indonesia and the first inkling of it came two weeks ago, barely a day after the fall of the dictator.

The scene was the Parliament where thousands of students had camped out all week, singing, dancing and chanting slogans. The day before, in response to their demands, Mr Suharto had resigned and the demonstrators were already turning their fire on his vice-president and successor, BJ Habibie. Then, in the early afternoon, the victorious students suddenly found themselves overwhelmed.

Without warning, and within minutes, the Parliament was occupied by 10,000 young Muslim activists who had arrived in dozens of hired buses. Anti- Habibie posters were ripped down and replaced with new ones praising the new president.

There were scuffles, as the demonstrators were driven off the steps of Parliament, and the new crowd cheered as their leaders gave speeches and they chanted slogans rhythmically in Arabic. "For 30 years Muslims had nothing under [Suharto's] New Order, and all the money went to Chinese and Christians," said Darwin Agus, of the Islamic Youth of Indonesia. "Habibie is a good start in preparing for the next step, government by the Koran."

The Muslim crowd departed peacefully, and such scenes have not been repeated. But the incident looked uncomfortably like a portent: hours after the country's moment of freedom, on the symbolic site of its liberation, Muslim radicals were talking about creating a fundamentalist state. More than most countries, Indonesia is haunted by the fear of religious violence, which was put into words this week by Amien Rais, the country's moderate Muslim opposition leader. Referring to the religious carnage which tore apart Bosnia from 1992-95, he said: "It's not impossible that what happened to Yugoslavia could also happen to Indonesia."

Judging from statistics, Indonesia looks like a country ripe for religious conflict. Eighty per cent of its 202 million people are Muslim, making it the largest Islamic country in the world. But that still leaves a 40 million-strong minority, comprising Christians, Buddhists and Hindus. Economically powerful, these minorities are increasingly nervous.

They are unevenly distributed throughout the vast archipelago. In East Timor, Catholics are the majority, and are fighting for independence against a predominantly Muslim army. In Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, Islamic fundamentalists, some trained in Libya, have run an intermittent guerrilla war against the government of Jakarta.

Over the past two years, economic and political discontent has regularly been expressed along racial or sectarian lines. Churches have been burnt down in several cities, and the principal victims of last month's riots were ethnic Chinese, most of them Buddhist or Christian.

But these alarming facts can obscure a striking fact about Islam in Indonesia: its unusually tolerant and accommodating character. Partly this is a factor of history - Islam was introduced peacefully and gradually by medieval Arab traders, and it was filtered through, and mingled with traditional folk beliefs. Some see it also as a reflection of South-east Asian culture and geography. "We are the only Muslim nation in the form of islands," said the Muslim scholar and reformer, Nurcholish Madjid. "We have a green, equatorial climate while other Islamic nations are barren land or desert. That must have something to do with the difference."

But Indonesian Islam has also been affected by the Indonesian political doctrine, or "national ideology", known as Pancasila - "the five principles". On the face of it, the Pancasila are so vague and benevolent as to be nearly meaningless: belief in a divine essence (Islamic, Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist); justice and civility among peoples; national unity; democracy through consensus; and social justice. They have been interpreted in wholly different ways by Mr Suharto and their inventor, Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno. But the vagueness was calculated, and the Pancasila remain a formula for national unity and co-existence in one of the world's most diverse states.

Under Mr Suharto, political unity was enforced: only three parties were permitted and all of them were tools of the president. Throughout his 32-year reign he played rival Muslim leaders off against each other. One of Mr Habibie's most striking concessions to the spirit of reform has been to allow the formation of new parties.

Of the handful that have been unveiled, two are Muslim - Syarikat Islam and New Masyumi, both revivals of parties banned in the 1950s. The question is whether Indonesia is ready for such freedom, and how its fragile unity will bear up to the pressure of strident mass politics in a religious form.