On Monday May 15, the police in Banda Aceh arrested a woman who allegedly wrote a comment on Facebook about one of the horrific suicide bombings that took place at three churches in Surabaya that day, in which she wrote approvingly, “Truly, it is halal to spill the blood of infidels”.
Police arrested the 37-year-old housewife on suspicion of violating Indonesia’s Information and Electronic Transactions Act (UU ITE), which criminalizes any electronic media communication that could be considered defamatory, slanderous or hate speech. She faces up to 4 years in jail.
I think what she wrote is absolutely vile and I’d fully support the police using it as evidence to investigate her for links to terrorism. But, at the same time, I don’t think she should be jailed just for making that awful comment.
The Indonesian government’s position is that such remarks are not just morally wrong but represent a danger to the community, with hate speech or blasphemy laws acting as a firewall to prevent violence by angry mobs (which is, to be fair, a real concern in Indonesia).
But as many have argued, the draconian nature of Indonesia’s blasphemy and defamation laws (such as UU ITE) also presents a very real and present danger to the country. They have largely been used against either members of minority groups or to silence those who question the use of religion to support acts of intolerance (exhibit A, of course, being the trumped blasphemy case against former Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama). Left unchecked and unquestioned, such acts create an environment where religion can be twisted to justify otherwise unthinkable horrors.
It took the sheer horror of those suicide bombings in Surabaya — carried out by members of three families indoctrinated into radical extremism who detonated explosives strapped not just to their own bodies but those of their own young children — to shock the whole country into a state where a real discussion about religion, extremism and terrorism is now possible.
In the immediate wake of the bombings, President Joko Widodo and other leaders sought to reassure citizens with phrases like “terrorism has no religion” and hashtags like #TerorismeBukanIslam (#TerrorismIsNotIslam) trended on social media, a response seen following previous terrorist attacks linked to Islamic extremism. But it was only after these attacks that I saw a large number of people push back against the idea that religion played no part in it.
https://www.facebook.com/CoconutsJakarta/posts/2143205002633444
Senior officials from NU (Indonesia’s biggest and arguably most influential Islamic organization), academics, and Muslims from all different walks of life wrote messages and opinion pieces arguing why now is the time to finally have a serious discussion about the role religion can play in causing extremism and terrorism and the way Islam is practiced in Indonesia in the hopes that something as horrific as what happened in Surabaya can be prevented from happening ever again.
What makes this so remarkable is that many of the things these people have written could have easily gotten them reported and arrested by the police under the country’s blasphemy and hate speech laws. They still could.
Remember, these laws have been used to report, arrest and even imprison people for making anything resembling a critical comment related to religious practices in the past.
In 2012, a man was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for arguing against the existence of God in a post to a private Facebook group that was leaked to the public. In 2016, a young man was arrested for making a comment on social media about the Indonesian national football team losing a match because they had performed Islamic prayers in Thailand beforehand. And last July a Muslim doctor in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, wrote a Facebook post in which he criticized the 212 protest protests against Ahok by comparing it to the hajj pilgrimage. He was convicted and sentenced to two years in jail.
After the verdict, the doctor told the media, “My message [to the public is], do not think critically, we should follow the community. If you think critically in Indonesia, you will be punished”.
Now, compare that to something that famed (and infamous) University of Indonesia communications lecturer Ade Armando wrote last week. Known as something of a provocateur, Ade has already been reported to the police for blasphemy several times in the past (though none of the cases made it past the investigation stage) and last week he wrote what could be seen as a very provocative Facebook post about the terrorist attacks.
https://www.facebook.com/adearmandosesungguhnya/posts/2151543901788901
Here’s the beginning:
I think Muslims should stop pretending that the various acts of terror that have happened in Indonesia and many other countries (such as ISIS) are not related to Islam.
For me, such an attitude is wrong.
To me, terrorism is clearly linked to Islam.
I do not want to say Islam is pushing terrorism.
But it seems that Muslims have to admit that there are many verses in the Qur’an that if interpreted narrowly will encourage war and, perhaps, terrorism.
He goes on to list some of those verses before arguing that they need to be understood in the specific historical war-time context in which they were written. He concludes by writing:
What I would like to say, if the Qur’an is read in a narrow way, it can be understood that the noble Qur’anic verses are transformed into a guidebook of war and terrorism by certain groups.
Therefore, the key, in my opinion, is Islamic education.
If Islam continues to be taught by leaders who teach the people to simply follow their commands, to simply execute the commands in the Quran in the absence of critical thinking, without dialogue and discussion, Islam can indeed be transformed into a frightening doctrine.
On the other hand, if Islam is taught by a leader who emphasizes the diversity of interpretations, which emphasizes the use of the mind to understand Quranic verses, which believe in dialogue and discussion, Islam can be a teaching that brings prosperity to the world.
It’s a powerful post, but one that I could have easily seen being reported to the police for blasphemy at any other time, simply for making any sort of connection between specific Quranic verses and terrorism.
But, perhaps because it was posted late on Sunday, May 13, his argument seemed far less explosive than the suicide bombings that had taken place earlier that day. While there were many angry comments to his post, it seems nobody reported Ade to the police over it (or at least it didn’t make the news).
Ade was, however, reported to the authorities later that week for a different Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/adearmandosesungguhnya/photos/a.1938901393053154.1073741830.1634750500134913/2151783011764990/?type=3
Islam is clearly not a religion of terrorism! That which makes Islam seem like a terrorist religion are the teachings and behavior of people like Rizieq Shihab and the gang”.
Rizieq Shihab is the firebrand preacher and founder of the infamous Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) that helped lead the 212 protests against Ahok. The police report, filed by one of Rizieq’s followers, said Ade’s post defamed Rizieq’s good name by connecting it to terrorism (the FPI leader couldn’t file the defamation report himself since he’s currently a fugitive from Indonesian law hiding in Saudi Arabia).
It’s telling to me that Ade would be reported for defamation against Rizieq but not blasphemy against Islam for his post citing Quranic verse (he was also once reported to the police for writing “God is not Arab”).
But, in the current post-Surabaya climate, conservative Islamic organizations seem to have been put on the defensive, more concerned with distancing themselves from terrorism and extremism than attacking blasphemers. Groups such as FPI and the Muslim Peoples Forum (FUI), which are known for having spread violent intolerance against minority groups and refusing to condemn ISIS in the past, unambiguously denounced the Surabaya attacks.
As shattering as the Surabaya attacks were, I worry the shock is already fading and the window in which Indonesia can have this important discussion and introspection is rapidly closing.
Less than a week after the suicide bombings, families from the Ahmadiyah community in East Lombok were attacked by and were forced into hiding at a police station after an angry mob destroyed their homes.
The Ahmadiyah follow a sect of Islam that is considered deviant from the mainstream and has been deemed blasphemous under Indonesian law. Groups such as FPI have intimidated, attacked and yes, terrorized, members of the Ahmadiyah community for years and been able to use the country’s blasphemy law as a shield against criminal repercussion.
Fortunately none of the Ahmadiyah in Lombok died during the attack, but what happened to them was an act of terror nonetheless. And yet, after Indonesians came together to collectively and unequivocally denounce the church bombings in Surabaya just one week prior, this act of terror against a religious minority group garnered relatively little attention or sympathy.
A big part of that is because, in the eyes of not just many mainstream Muslims but also the official judgement of the government, the very existence of the Ahmadiyah faith is blasphemous. And when people are told that somebody else’s faith is a direct threat to their own, horrible things can quickly become justified.
Nothing truly good can come out of something so horrific as suicide bombings, but if anything good can come out of what happened in Surabaya it’s that both individuals and Indonesian leaders can take this window of opportunity to take a good hard look at not just at the connections between religion and extremism but also the role that freedom of speech has to play as well.
Upholding truly free speech is difficult — it means defending people saying horrible things like how spilling infidel blood is halal. But if things just revert back to the way it was before — everybody reporting and police arresting anybody who says anything critical about religion — then intolerance and extremism will continue to fester and it’s only a matter of time until another horror hits.
