Speaking in Islamic tongues in
Indonesia By Duncan Graham
LAWANG, East Java - For those recently
heaping praise on Indonesia for its moderate
Muslim and emerging democratic credentials,
consider the case of Islamic preacher Yusman Roy.
Last year Roy was sentenced to two years
in prison on blasphemy charges for leading Muslim
prayers at an East Java Islamic school in his
native Bahasa Indonesia rather than Arabic as
conservative religious councils require. In
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim
country, the language issue pitches
modern, liberal
interpretations of Islam, known broadly here as
abangan, against conservative orthodox
views, represented broadly as santri.
Conservative Islam was in the main kept
under the state's thumb under former strongman
Suharto. Today, all Indonesian citizens are
obliged to register under one of five
government-approved faiths, namely Islam,
Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism or Protestantism.
This information is included on state-issued
identity cards and, in a holdover from the
country's authoritarian past, by law every
Indonesian must carry the ID cards at all times.
With Suharto's 1998 downfall and the
subsequent establishment of democracy, Islam is
gaining political expression through faith-based
political parties that have pushed in parliament
for Islamic-tinged legislation, including a
controversial anti-pornography bill that aims to
nudge Indonesia in the direction of strict
religious regimes seen in certain Middle Eastern
countries.
Roy's case is increasingly at
the epicenter of an intensifying debate between
conservative and moderate religious forces. The
Islamic teacher was recently released from prison
for good behavior and has returned to the Islamic
school he runs with his wife in the town of Lawang
in East Java. After spending nearly two years in
abysmal prison conditions, Roy says he is
nonetheless determined to continue leading prayers
in Bahasa Indonesia, the national Malay dialect.
"The problem with many Muslims in
Indonesia is that they don't think for
themselves," he said. "They stand in the mosque
and mumble, but they don't understand what the
clerics are saying because they don't know Arabic.
What's the problem with using Indonesian? God
understands everything we think and say whatever
the language."
Significantly, Roy is not
shying from a fight with powerful Islamic
traditionalists, including the clerics represented
by the rule-making Indonesian Muslim Scholars'
Council. He has recently published and distributed
a little book outlining his philosophy for leading
prayers in Bahasa Indonesia rather than Arabic.
In April 2005, he spent Rp10 million
(US$1,100) to promote a public meeting at the
State Islamic University in the East Java
provincial capital Surabaya to encourage public
debate on the issue of bilingual prayers. There,
he encountered strong resistance from Muslim
fundamentalists, who firmly insisted that God's
instructions to the Prophet Mohammed were made in
Arabic and therefore were sacrosanct.
Roy
takes exception to that strict interpretation and
laments the lack of public debate on such a
significant issue: "Why can't we discuss these
issues? There's no commandment to use Arabic. We
should debate, not fight."
As the son of a
Catholic Dutch woman and a Muslim Javanese who
fathered 11 children with four wives, Roy's mixed
ethnicity has been questioned by conservatives
aiming to undermine his stance. A former boxer and
debt collector, the tattooed Roy converted from
Catholicism to Islam later in life. But Muslim
clerics' use of Arabic in their prayers, which he
couldn't understand, encumbered his conversion.
"It took me about 15 years before I became
fully Muslim," he said. "I saw contradictions
between what was written in the [Koran] and what
people were saying and doing. The clerics were
saying it doesn't matter what you pray as long as
it's in Arabic. That's wrong. We have to know
what's being said when we talk to God."
After last year's seminar in Surabaya,
police called at Roy's home and escorted him to
the nearby town of Malang, where he was arrested
and later sentenced to prison. Hours after his
arrest, three truckloads of angry devotees from
the conservative Islamic Defenders' Front arrived
at his school, apparently bent on violence,
according to Roy's wife.
He faced two
charges: deviating from Islam in his teachings and
inciting hatred by challenging the clerics in the
Muslim Council, who had previously prohibited him
from using the Indonesian language in prayer.
Although Roy, 50, received verbal support from
former president Abdurrahman Wahid, who previously
headed Indonesia's largest moderate mass Islamic
group, the 30-million-strong Nahdlatul Ulama, or
Revival of Religious Scholars, and substantial
legal aid and publicity from overseas, he was
convicted and jailed on the second count of
disobeying the council.
With Roy behind
bars, his wife Supartini ran their free Islamic
school, Pondok I'Tikaf - which from the Arabic
translates to "meditation" - and managed its 300
students alone. In prison, Roy received a new
tattoo with the Indonesian words for patience,
prayer and emotional control on his right arm. The
former pugilist says that when other prisoners
learned why he was sentenced, they often picked
fights with him.
Recently released, Roy
has resumed his Islamic teachings and prayers in
Bahasa Indonesia rather than Arabic. He still
fears the conservative vigilante group the Islamic
Defenders' Front could wreak havoc on his small
school, and says his faith in the same god his
potential attackers invoke will protect him from
religious-based reprisals.
The police have
cut the phone lines to their house to stop the
barrage of anonymous verbal threats, but because
the local police force is clearly on the side of
the Islamic clerics who have challenged Roy's
Islamic interpretation, his school is highly
vulnerable to a vigilante-style attack, he says.
"I'm not afraid of being charged again.
It's the government's job to protect all citizens
whatever their views, and I demand that
protection," said Roy, who now avoids the local
mosque because of the controversy. "The people who
attack me don't know right from wrong. They don't
understand the prayers in Arabic, so they don't
pray properly.
"There's a group in
Indonesia that wants to keep Islam backward," said
Roy. "I'm fighting this cause as a pioneer with my
soul and property. It's difficult being alone, but
I'm sure God will protect me. I'm an Indonesian
Muslim, not an Arab Muslim! Why would anyone want
to stop me?"
It's a question at the heart
of the unfolding contest between conservative and
moderate forces for Indonesia's religious and
democratic soul.
