Amid growing concerns about rising intolerance and terrorist attacks by extremists, the Indonesian government has started a strong pushback against organizations they’ve labeled to be working against Pancasila (Indonesia’s founding ideological principles), starting last month with the dissolution of the Indonesian chapter of Hizbut Tahrir (HTI), an Islamist group with the stated goal of replacing all national governments with theocratic Islamic caliphates.
While the government’s attempt to dissolve HTI still has to be approved by the court system, there have been lingering questions about whether the general public would support the government’s goals.
A new public survey by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC), released yesterday, attempted to shed light on that and related questions, and the results are certainly eye-opening.
According to the survey, 79.3% of respondents stated that the current democratic system of government is the best for Indonesia, while 9.2% said that the current system should be replaced by an Islamic caliphate. The other 11.5% of respondents claimed not to know or chose not to answer.
While 9.2% may not seem like a huge number, SMRC head Saiful Mujani noted that it should be considered worrying given the size of Indonesia’s population.
“The number [of people who think Indonesia should become a caliphate) might be as high as 20 million people, more than all the people living in Singapore,” Saiful said at a press conference yesterday as quoted by Kompas (in fact, given Indonesia’s estimated population of 257.6 million, 9.2% would be about 23.7 million)
However, he was also quick to remind the audience that the number of people who still believed in Indonesian democracy was far greater at about 180 million people.
More heartening were the results of the survey section asking respondents about their attitudes towards ISIS. It found that 91.3% of respondents supported banning the terrorist organization from Indonesia.
Asked about how proud they were to be an Indonesian citizen. 62.5% of respondents said they were very proud to be an Indonesian citizen, while 36.5% said they were somewhat proud. Those who said they were less than proud or not proud to be Indonesian was a mere .5%.
The survey also examined how safe respondents thought Indonesia was. Those who said it was safe totally 61.8% while 14.5% said it was unsafe. When asked what the greatest threat to Indonesia was, 39.4% answered religious conflict. The second most popular answer was poor governance, which was chosen by 19.4% of respondents.
The poll surveyed 1,500 respondents, randomly chosen from across Indonesia, from May 14 to 20. SMRC said the results have a 2.7% margin of error and a 95% confidence level.
