Articles by alphabetic order
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 Ā Ī Ñ Ś Ū Ö Ō
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0


Buddhism in Muslim Indonesia

From Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search



Buddhism in Muslim Indonesia

Karel Steenbrink (University of Utrecht)

Published in Studia Islamika, 2013, 20:1/1-34


Abstract.


This article presents an overview of various ways that Buddhists and Muslims lived together in Indonesia, since the arrival of Islam about 1200. It tells how Buddhism slowly disappeared and became a religion for the Chinese (who until the late 19th century very often converted to Islam). In the early 20th century more Chinese women joined male migrants to Indonesia and a revival of Chinese self-confidence started that promoted Confucianism, but Buddhism was included also. The Muslim revival of the late colonial period had some anti-Chinese tendencies, but it was not directed against Buddhism as a religion. Between 1945 and 2006 only five religions were recognised in Indonesia: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Catholicism and


Protestantism. Only very recently has Confucianism been recognised as an official religion. All religions have to recognize the basis of the Indonesian State in its Pancasila ideology that stipulates the ‘belief in the one and high divinity’. We analyse the role of three key figures in the more recent government-supported revival of Buddhism. These are the Chinese-Indonesian monk Ashin Jinarakkhita, the Balinese lay devotee and government official Oka Diputhera, and the Chinese-Indonesian business woman Sri Hartati Murdaya.

They tried to accommodate Buddhism to Muslim dominated nationalism in modern Indonesia. Special attention will be given to WALUBI, the government-recognised national union of Buddhist organizations; to the tensions between (partly foreign) monks and the laity; to the role of women in Buddhist education and organizations. Muslims saw Chinese Buddhists as competitors in the field of economics, but as to religion there were few efforts to convert Chinese or to incorporate Buddhism into Islamic thinking. The result of the last five decades is that Buddhism received a modest but safe position in independent Indonesia.


The Indian religions, Vaishnava Hinduism, Shivaism, and Buddhism arrived in Southeast Asia from 200 AD onwards. The oldest references are in the (Chinese) biography of the Kashmiri prince and monk Gunavarman (367-431) who is said to have preached in Sumatra. The Chinese traveller and Buddhist monk I-ching (Yijing) was in Palembang, Sumatra, in 687-9 and praised the place and the kingdom of Shriwijaya as a centre of Buddhist learning. He translated some works from Sanskrit into Chinese while staying in Palembang and suggested that pilgrims travelling to Nalanda through the sea-route should visit the kingdom. Buddhism in Shriwijaya was until about 700 dominated by Theravada doctrines, but for later periods we only find Mahayana influence. In several places of Sumatra remnants of Buddhist places of worship still are preserved. About a century later another major Buddhist kingdom of

Sailendra (about 750-850) built the grandiose Borobudur shrine, started by the rival Hindu realm of Sanjaya as a Hindu shrine. Borobudur is clearly inspired by Mahayana Buddhism. Only some decades after Borobudur was finished, the Sanjaya kingdom constructed the Hindu masterpiece of the Prambanan temple at some 30 km distance. Near the Prambanan Temple (devoted to Vishnu and Shiva) is the Candi Sewu (‘Thousand shrines’) with some 250 stupas. This practice of Buddhism living side by side with Hindu

expressions continued to be the general trend of the various Indian influences in Indonesia: a range of Buddhist sects living side by side with traditions of Hinduism. The national device of modern Indonesia Bhinneka tunggal ika (‘in pieces yet one’ or ‘unity in variety’ as a symbol of the many languages, cultures and ethnic identities of Indonesia) has been taken from the writings of the monk and court poet Mpu Tantular, about 1350, in the kingdom of Majapahit. In this formula Mpu Tantular wanted to express that “the truth of the Buddha and the truth of Shiva is one”. In modern discourse the great ruler of the Majapahit Empire Hayam Wuruk (1350-89) is seen as a true follower of Shiva, but his First Minister, the legendary Gajah Mada, as a loyal Buddhist.


At about the same time when the invention of the Bhinneka tunggal ika device was formulated, one of the last Buddhist texts was translated into Javanese, Kunjarakarna Dharmakathana. It is the story of a demon (yaksa) Kunjarakarna who is purified by ascetic exercises and is ordered to pay a visit to hell to see the punishments of the sinners. He sees that for an old friend a cauldron is prepared and returns to warn this friend. It is the Lazarus story, but in a definitely Buddhist garb, although somewhat mixed with Shivaite elements. At that time the Buddhist influence had already stepped back from India. It is quite remarkable that at so late a moment Buddhist elements still could enter Indonesian civilization.


Around 1200 Islam had already arrived in the archipelago, first in the northern harbour towns of Sumatra, and around 1400 more and more Muslim traders arrived on the northern coast of the major island of Java, making converts until influences of Hinduism and Buddhism slowly disappeared.


How Islam eclipsed the Indian religions


The spread of Islam in Southeast Asia went slowly, from the northwest to the southeast and from coastal to inland regions. It was not an absolute process for all regions of the country. The island of Bali retained its Hindu-Buddhist character. There still is a division between Shaivite and Buddhist pedanda or ritual specialists, although they are integrated in the specific religious world of Bali. It has to be said, however, that the Buddhist element nowhere was dominating and the number of Buddhist pedanda always quite small. For the mid 1960s only twenty pedanda boda were mentioned for Bali and since then the number has decrease again. The pedanda boda has a

role in some larger rituals where he takes care for the southern part or the section of death within the temple site. Buddhism is in other divisions of the religious scene, like the Chinese Tridarma, the specialist for burials. In classical and modern Javanese buda is the common word for the pre-Islamic religion of Java. All this has little to do with the Buddhism of Sakyamuni. With the exception of Bali the costal regions of West and Central Indonesia accepted Islam between 1200 and 1700. Many inland regions and smaller islands in the Eastern regions of the country cherished tribal religion until the 20th century and then decided to follow either Islam or Christianity.


Why was Islam more successful than the Indian religious traditions? Scholars have emphasised the network of Muslim traders in the Indian Ocean. This network has even been described as ‘a Muslim Mediterranean’ (Johns 1984, 1993). In order to enjoy the profit of this network, local rulers wanted to become more intimate with these new opportunities for trade. Other motives that are given are the lack of caste

traditions in Islam. This gave new opportunities to people of lower class. Buddhism was part of the Hindu-Buddhist system and is connected to a mild system of class consciousness as is still vivid in the island of Bali. Other motives could have been the superior magic of the Muslim scribes and scholars and their lack of fear for bad spirits. These motives are found in the scholarly literature but also in the superb novel about the arrival of Islam and the eclipse of the Hindu-Buddhist culture, Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Arus Balik (1995 ‘Crosscurrent’, a stream from the north).


In the classical account of the conversion to Islam, a section of the chronicle of the Muslim court of Mataram Babad Tanah Jawi, the Muslim ruler of the coastal region of Demak, Raden Patah, is depicted as a son of the last Hindu-Buddhist King of Majapahit, Brawijaya V. The latter complaints about the negligence of his son to visit the court of his father and to pay homage to his father as a son must do at least once a year. However, Raden Fatah states that ‘it is the rule of the religion that does not allow a Muslim to pay his honours to an


unbeliever [kapir from Arab kāfir]. And it was foretold that Bintara/Demak would become an independent kingdom, from where the conversion of the Javanese to Islam would start.’ Thereupon Raden Patah collected a huge army from several Muslim allies on the north coast and encircled the capital of Majapahit. His father Brawijaya took position at the highest part of his palace, saw his son in magnificent dress

surrounded by his mighty army, ‘and ascended to heaven with all the troops that had remained loyal to him. At the same moment when Lord Brawijaya ascended to heaven, some people saw something like a fireball leave the palace of Majapahit, looking like lightning with a sound like thunder. It fell down in Bintara-Demak.’ This is a typical Javanese harmonising story where the transition went in a smooth and peaceful way under divine guidance. Other legendary stories tell about quite serious fighting between coastal rulers and the prince of Majapahit. The ‘last and deciding fight’ is often placed about 1527.


There may be some truth in the rather general idea that Hindu and Buddhist practices and doctrines spread from top to bottom, from the palace and the officials at the royal shrines to the common people (if they reached the common people at all.) On the other hand Islam may have been spread more from the bottom to the top. From the individual traders in the small coastal towns to the elite in these harbour towns and then inland to the political centres of the great empires, especially Majapahit. In all cases it has to be admitted that the Hindu stories of the great epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata were continued by the Muslims of Java and Southern Borneo) Banjarmasin in the shadow theatre (wayang).


Within the Muslim civilisation of Indonesia some aspects of Buddhism survived. Most prominent is the mythical and ascetic tendency among segments of the new Muslims. A Muslim version of the story of the Buddha as a prince who left his palace and sought a life of meditation and preaching, is preserved in a Malay story, the Hikayat Sultan Ibrahim (Jones 1983). The story tells us about a truly Muslim mystic saint, but the general idea about a sultan who abdicated the throne to live the life of a Sufi mendicant, very much resembles that of the Buddha.


A hybrid Buddhist-Muslim shrine in Semarang


In southwest Semarang, on the northcoast of Central Java, a popular shrine is often visited by Chinese Buddhists and Javanese Muslims alike. It is basically a cave with some altars in traditional Chinese style, and an anchor from a ship of the Dutch East India Company, but believed to be the anchor of the admiral Zheng He, between1405-1433 the leader of a Chinese fleet seeking economic and

political expansion to the south. Local tradition calls him Sam Po Kong and believes that he was a Muslim. Attached to the cave is an impressive Chinese temple, extended and renovated most recently in 2006 in commemoration of the visit of Zheng He to Semarang. The Buddhist monastery of Jalan Dago in Bandung was until recently much more often visited by Muslim devotees than by Buddhists. The monk Ashin Jinarakkhita, in the 1970s and 1980s a frequent visitor to this vihara was not troubled by this religious pluralism.


In 1964 one Mangaradja Onggang Parlindungan wrote a curious book Tuanku Rao on the ‘terrorist war’ of the Muslim Minangkabau of West Sumatra against the Batak people in the mountainous centre of North Sumatra. Under heavy pressure they brought that region to Islam. Parlindungan, himself a Muslim of Batak origin, wrote a book about legends, mixed with much fiction and especially hatred against Minangkabau Muslims. In an appendix to the book (pages 650-672) he published a Malay text on the Chinese origins of

Islam in Java. The book caused much debate and was officially banned by the Indonesian government. The text was also debated in academic circles. Two highly respected Dutch scholars, De Graaf and Pigeaud, wrote a commentary to this text which they labelled as the ‘Malay Annals of Semarang and Cerbon’. Their Dutch academic institute rejected the text as forgery, but finally an admirer of the two and a well established scholar on Javanese history in his own right, Merle Ricklefs, finally published this text in 1984 under the title of Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th and 16th centuries.


As is clear from the 2006 extensions in the Semarang shrine, the story is still very alive and has received new interpretations. The most important of these living memories is that of the possibility of Chinese traders, Buddhists and Muslims alike, living together peacefully, visiting Indonesia in peace and harmony and contributing to the religious history of this country in the early 15th century. Below we will see more efforts to use the past history of Indonesia for modern reconstructions of Buddhism and Buddhist-Muslim relations.


Not only in the Semarang shrine can we see a continuing symbiosis of popular Buddhism and Islam, this is the case with many more Muslims shrines in Java. At the Surabaya shrine of Sunan Ampel (dedicated to one of the nine first preachers of Islam of Java) there is the memory of a Puteri Cina, a Chinese princess, married to the Muslim Saint. In Bayat, at

the grave of Sunan Tembayat, there is a vivid memory of the saint who originated from Semarang and was the first preacher of Islam in the southern districts of Central Java. His grave is frequently visited by huge crowds, among them also many non-Muslim Chinese Indonesians. These are just a few examples of how Chinese Buddhists may easily mingle with Muslims in the so-called popular religion, especially visits to graves. In the following sections we will mostly deal with official religion and key representatives of the communities. We should, however, never forget that conflicts more often a rise from economic, social and political reason than from religious causes and further that popular religion is more inclined to allow syncretic practices than is official religion.


1900-1950 Buddhism as part of a revival of Chinese cultural confidence in the Dutch East Indies

A Chinese traveller to Java in the eighteenth century, Ong Tae-hae, remarked that:

when the Chinese have settled for several generations in foreign countries without ever returning to China, then they easily forget the teachings of their ancestors and Chinese sages. They adopt the way natives eat and dress, read their books. They do not object to call themselves Javanese and become Muslims. Because these people (Chinese Muslims) have become numerous, the Dutch have placed them under a Kapitan who supervises them.


That was the situation of Buddhism in Indonesia about 1900: with the exception of the island of Bali, Buddhist traditions were found only among the Chinese migrants but were not really flourishing. Until 1900 most Chinese migrants (as well as Europeans and Arabs) married local women. After that year more and more Chinese and European (but not Arab) women were among the new migrants and in fact the ‘racial purity’ became somewhat stronger in the first decades of this century.


The peranakan or Southeast Asia-born Chinese showed a remarkable cultural revival in the beginning of the twentieth century. The most obvious sign of this revival was the foundation of Chinese schools, the Tiong Hwa Hwee Koan (THHK) schools with a national Chinese base and Mandarin as the language of instruction, with English added for commercial reasons. In 1901 the first THHK school was founded. The number grew very quickly and in 1905 there were already 75 THHK primary schools with 5,500 pupils. Ten years later THHK managed 442 schools

with 19,636 pupils and 858 teachers, most directly coming from China. In fact, many THHK schools developed from more or less traditional Chinese schools, of which there were recorded 217 in 1899, with 4,452 students for Java and Madura. In these schools the mode of instruction was the traditional one by which the students learned the Confucian classics by heart, reciting from the Chinese characters in Hokkien, usually with a mini¬mum of explanation of the meaning.


There were some conversions to Christianity, from 1880 onwards. There was a clear revival of Confucianism, probably to be labelled as neo-Confucianism and there was much eclecticism (interest in theosophy, use of elements from Islamic mysticism and Javanese magic), but there were virtually no further formal conversions to Islam. It is perhaps exaggerated to say, that Islam became considered as indigenous and outmoded over against Christianity and Neo-Confucianism seen as rational and modern, but there certainly was a tendency towards considering things in this way.

From 1932 onward: Reconstruction of Buddhist denominations, from Kwee Tek Hoay to Ashin Jinarakkhita. The nationalist interpretation.

One important individual thinker and writer in the early twentieth century was Kwee Tek Hoay. He was born in Bogor, south of Jakarta, around 1880, and died in a Cicurug, a small town in West-Java, not far from Bogor, in 1951. As a young boy he spoke and learnt Chinese, picked up Malay and learned English from an Indian teacher. S. Maharadja, engaged by the THHK school of Bogor in 1900. Through his knowledge of English he could read Chinese and Indian classics and also Western literature. His main source of income was the trade in textiles, but he was also

very active as a journalist, writer and translator. He wrote lighthearted romantic stories, but also published a ten volume life of the Buddha, a Malay translation of the Bhagavadgita and a book on the life and doctrines of Confucius. In 1931 he established his own printing and publishing house, where he printed many romantic books, to keep the business healthy, but also many more writings on philosophy, theosophy and religion. In 1933 he founded the Sam Kauw Goat Po or ‘Three Religions Society’ (Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism). Between 1932 and 1942 he published two magazines on religion, Moestika Dharma and Moestika Romans.


While Kwee still worked within the harmony of the three Chinese religious traditions, a more specific Buddhist revival had begun within circles of Javanese, Eurasian and even pure white inhabitants of the Dutch colony, mostly members of the Theosophical Society. They

established in the beginning of the 20th century the Java Buddhist Association as a branch of the International Buddhist Mission with its headquarters in Burma. This was Theravada oriented. They invited the Ceylonese monk Narada Thera to make a trip through the Dutch East Indies in 1934. They also had organized the first Waisak celebration in the modern era at the Borobudur shrine on 20 May 1932.

A member of the Bogor branch of the Theosophical Society, The Boan An (born 1923), would become the most influential figure between 1950-1970. Between 1946-1951 he studied chemistry in Groningen, the Netherlands. He also followed courses of Sanskrit and comparative religion. After his return to Indonesia he became a pupil of the monk Pen Ching at the Kong Hoe Sie temple or klenteng of Jakarta. Here his head was shaven and he became a sramanera or novice in the Ch’an order. In May 1953 he strongly promoted the Waisak celebration at Borobudur as

a national Buddhist festival. Soon after this celebration he wanted to pursue further studies in Sri Lanka, but was not granted funds to go there. Instead, he was gladly received in Rangoon by Mahasi Sayadaw, where he studied Vipassana meditation and was again initiated as a novice, but now in a Theravada order, 23 January 1954. Since then he used the name Ashin Jinarakkhita. The ordination of Jinarakkhita is seen in the history of Indonesian Buddhism as the first ordination of a monk since the fall of the last Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit kingdom in 1527.


Jinarakkhita lived in the time of impassioned nationalism. Among the Chinese population he wanted to show that being a (Chinese) Buddhist is not contrary to Indonesian nationalism. Instead, he promoted the old roots of Buddhism in Indonesia. The Waisak celebration at the impressive Borobudur shrine was quite instrumental in this respect. He also wanted to adjust to the historical compromise about religion between secularists and proponents of an Islamic State through the acceptance of Pancasila ideology in 1945, when belief in

Ketuhanan yang Maha Esa or in the One and High Divinity had been formulated as one of the five pillars of the new republic. He strongly promoted the idea of Sang Hyang Adi Buddha or the Lordship of the High Buddha, as found in the 10th century Old Javanese text Sang Hyang Kamahayanikan as congruent with the idea of the One God as accepted by Christians, Muslims and Hindus for the national ideology. In 1975 the formula for taking an oath was established by government decree as Demi Sang Hyang Adi Buddha (I swear to Sang Hyang Adi Buddha). In

his 1986 catechism the first 17 questions are about this first principle of all being, from which the whole creation developed. Questions 18-20 are about the principle of evil or Mara. While reading it, I wondered whether a Christian catechism with the concept of original sin was at the basis of this beginning, but in what follows no follow-up was given to this emphasis on one deity and an outward source for human weakness. Questions 215-218 discuss the meaning of the veneration of statues of deities, saints and the Buddha in Buddhism and here they are only seen as a simple help for human beings to visualise the love and mercy of the Buddha.


Jinarakkhita wanted to establish a distinct Indonesian interpretation of Buddhism. He called his movement Buddhayana (as different from Mahayana, Theravada and Tantrayana) and held several international debates about this topic. Most outspoken is his

difference of opinion with the Sri Lankan monk Narada who had visited Indonesia in 1934 and later again in 1959 and 1969. Jinarakkhita called his doctrine a Theistic Buddhism. Narada Thera wrote quite often to Parwati, secretary to Jinarakkhita and urged her: ‘Please, tell your teacher that there is no God in Buddhism.’ Jinarakkhita’s reaction was that this could be true for Ceylonese Buddhism, but Indonesian Buddhism cherished a distinct flavour of several blends of Buddhism and would not practise its religion without the concept of a supreme divinity.


Jinarakkhita died in 2002. Until the end of his life he was active in teaching, giving courses and starting initiatives for Buddhism in general and Buddhayana in particular. It is not quite clear how the 0.84% of the Buddhist in the country or slightly over 2 million’s population (2000 Census) are divided between the major denominations. It is my impression that an overwhelming majority visit rather independent shrines that

should be labelled as Sam Kauw or Tridharma (uniting the three doctrines of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism in one compound). If a specific denomination should dominate, the Maitreya sect certainly has many followers amongst the Chinese. Buddhists of Indonesian origin may have more sympathy for Buddhayana, but among the Balinese there are also followers of another stream, the Kasogatan, led by Oka Diputhera, as discussed below.


My first experience of the Buddhist revival in Indonesia was in May 1970, while doing fieldwork in Muslim boarding schools. In the town of Ceribon I visited a Chinese temple and saw an announcement that people could subscribe for a Waisak celebration at Borobudur. On our way from Ceribon to Muntilan the four buses with some 200 people, halted at several Chinese temples. The older people performed traditional rituals, throwing stones to the ground as part of divination rituals. But the younger pilgrims, who had received their obligatory religious education at high school from monks from Thailand, went to special chapels with Buddha statues alone and were sitting some time in silent meditation. They found their parents old-fashioned and superstitious. The cleavage between denominations has not

become so strict as that between Catholics and Protestants for the Christians or between traditional and reformist Muslims (Nahdlatul Ulama versus Muhammadiyah) in Indonesia. Nevertheless, there have been a number of conflicts between various organizations. Jinarakkhita’s Buddhayana was in the 1990s subject of several debates. In 1992 this organization, together with Sangha Agung Indonesia, its

Council of Monks, was excluded from the national union of Buddhist organizations, WALUBI. Buddhayana compared this Council of Monks with the position of religious scholars or ‘ulamā in the Muslim community. A religious decision was therefore called keputusan dharma or even fatwa. In 1999 another public debate started among the Indonesian Buddhists about ‘the arrogance of this small Buddhayana organization to issue fatwa for the Buddhist community’. WALUBI stated that in Buddhism only the scripture of the Buddha is valid and that an institution like a fatwa is not part of the Buddhist tradition.


1959 to the 1990s Oka Diputhera and the bureaucratic integration of Buddhism


Religion is not a private affair in modern Indonesia. It is also a public and a state business. A key institution here is the Department of Religion, established in January 1946. It serves mostly the 87% of Muslims in the country, but for the 9% Christians there are Catholic and Protestant Directorates. In 1960 a Hindu Bali section was established, from where in 1967 a Buddhist office was

founded within this Hindu Balinese administration. Only in 1980 was a special Directorate for Buddhist Affairs established in the ministry. Oka Diputhera was its first director, until his retirement in 1991. In 1959 the young Balinese I Gusti Ngurah Oka Diputhera (born 1934 in Jembrana) became a staff member for this ministry. As a student in Yogyakarta at the Sanata Dharma Teacher Training College (run by the Jesuit Catholics) he felt attracted to the preaching of pure Buddhism by Jinarakkhita and was ordained to become an upasaka or lay devotee.


Under the new order of General Soeharto (1966-1998) religion became a much more visible phenomenon in society. For Buddhism there was the special ruling that Chinese names for persons and organizations as well as Chinese characters were forbidden. This made Buddhism a more Indonesian reality. The Buddhist officials of the ministry became active in the publication of Indonesian translations of sacred scripture. In 1973 the old Javanese text Kamahayanikam was again translated into Indonesian. In the new introduction it was emphasized that this old book of Indonesian Buddhism had a strong tendency towards Tantrayana or Vajrayana in its choice of magical formulas or mantras. We will see that Diputhera in his own Buddhist organization, Kasogatan, also included this third stream of Buddhism. In 2003 a section from Dhammapada Atthakatha (the Appamada Vagga) was published by the ministry.


The most important activity of the Buddhist section in the ministry of religion was the organization of religious education, from Kindergarten to university. In all levels of education religion had become obligatory in the Soeharto period. The ministry started the teacherseducation. Diputhera himself became the initiator for the Sekolah Tinggi Agama Buddha Nalanda in Jakarta in the late 1970s. It is now the major college for teachers of the Buddhist religion, modelled after the State Academy of Islamic Studies. Similar colleges for Muslims were started in eight other places in Indonesia, most of them in Java (among other places in Malang, Semarang, Boyolali), while two are located in Sumatra (Medan, Lampung), while also a State Institute for Hindu Studies was established at the initiative of the government. Only Catholics and Protestants had their own theological schools established.


A full series of booklets was written to fulfil the need of textbooks for pupils and teachers. A quick look at some of these books shows a great difference between the ritual/dogmatic and the ethical discussions. The sections on ritual and doctrine are full of technical terminology in Pali and they must be as strange for Indonesian pupils as the chanting of Arabic for Muslim students. As a religious language Pali received some extra stimulus. Since the 1990s the Buddhist section of the ministry of religion organised a national contest in the reading of Pali scripture, resembling the annual competition in Qur’an reading for Muslims. At Waisak the Piala Presiden or the ‘President’s Cup’ is now given to the winner of this contest in reciting sacred scripture in Pali.


In the sections on social ethics, the books of religious instruction show a quite different style. There it is more Pancasila or nationalist Indonesian ethics. The standard course book for 3d grade Senior High School defines the goal of ethics as the effort to reach a state of manusia seutuhnya or ‘full humanity’. This is elaborated in the schedule of the five pillars of Pancasila. The first pillar, or belief in the One and High Divinity is illustrated with a quote from Udana VIII:3

There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated. If there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born, become, made, fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, emancipation from the born, become, made, fabricated is discerned.

This text is one of the most often quoted of the classical Buddhist texts and serves to combine this doctrine with the Muslim inspired Pancasila ideology of modern Indonesia. Besides, the explanation about this first pillar of the state ideology only stresses that belief in God is something personal and can be found in many expressions that all must be respected.


The second pillar of Pancasila is ‘just and civilised humanity’ and is here identified with Buddhist virtues like metta (love), karuna (care), mudita (empathy) and upekha (inner balance). The third pillar is the unity of Indonesia and here the commentary says that ‘Buddhist love to be united. They are proud of the Indonesian people and nation. In this context of unity the Buddha says: Happy are those who are united; happy are those who remain within their harmony (Dhammapada 194)’. The fourth pillar is ‘democratic socialism’ and is explained with a quote from the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, where the Buddha asks Ananda to take the consultation with the other monks very seriously. For the fifth pillar of ‘social justice for the whole people of Indonesia’ it is stressed that it is forbidden to live luxuriously, at the disadvantage of other people, to forget the poor, not to live in proper relation to partner, parents, friends, employer, monks, society as a whole.


For daily life in the modern cities of Indonesia some specifications are given about the abuse of drugs, abortion, rape, and fighting between schools. This summary of the ethical issues in school books shows that also here a clear Buddhist flavour has been given to the actual issues. But in the ritual and doctrinal this is much more outspoken.


In 1974 a new marriage law was accepted by the Indonesian parliament and this ruled that marriages should be administered according to the religion of the couple. This has brought the civil administration of marriages also under the responsibility of Buddhist officials. In this case the duty is entrusted not to the monks but to the lay Romo Pandita (‘Father Ministers’ a brilliant combination of the terminology for

Catholics and Protestants). Because of the programme of family planning under the Soeharto government, Buddhist organizations also had to support initiatives for birth control. Oka Diputhera was the chairperson of a small committee for the composition of a booklet of 98 pages, supporting the programme. The publication is a nice mixture of elements from governmental instruction with texts from Buddhist scripture and arguments from tradition. It is stated here that Siddharta Gautama in 13 years of marriage only had one child and abstained from the possibility of having more children.


An important element in the religious policy of the Soeharto government was the cooperation of religions in its development programme. Therefore the government wanted to establish harmony between the religions and good procedures for consultation. In 1975 the government took the initiative to establish a national council of Muslim scholars, MUI or Majelis Ulama Indonesia. Catholics already had a conference of bishops and Protestants a Council of Churches, while in 1959 a Parisada Hindu Darma was erected as a Hindu board in Bali. In 1979 Oka

Diputhera as the highest official for Buddhism in the government administration launched WALUBI or Perwalian Umat Buddha Indonesia as Representation of the Buddhist Community in Indonesia. Finally WALUBI is a federation of three councils of monks (Mahayana, Theravada, Vajrayana) and six Buddhist communities. We will not go into detail about the internal struggles, conflicts and developments of WALUBI, but only sketch some elements that are important for this organization within the framework of the religious policy of Muslim dominated Indonesia.


Under Minister of Religion Ratu Alamsjah Perwiranegara (1978-1983) a programme of harmony of religions was developed along three lines: internal harmony within a religion, harmony between the religions, and harmony between religions and the government. The programme was developed through numerous seminars and meetings. One of its peak moments was in 1983 when all civil organizations, including religious bodies, accepted the Pancasila ideology as asas tunggal or sole politicial and social principle for their activities. In this period Diputhera

held at least two seminars for the Buddhist community: 16-18 November 1981 in Medan and 30 August- 1 September 1983 in Bandungan, south of Semarang. As major issues the following can be extracted: 1° The organization of Walubi itself as a representative body; 2° The position of the monks in this structure (Diputhera proposed that they should have a legislative power or ‘shall formulate fatwa about topics like birth control’); 3° National registration of monks and their ordination; 4° Stricter formulation of the Buddhist clergy (rohaniwan) especially the criteria to become a pandita or maha pandita; 5° improvement of religious education in private and state schools; 6° increase of government paid dharma duta or professionals working for dakwah or Buddhist propaganda.


Although Oka Diputhera started his dedication to Buddhism as a pupil of the monk Jinarakkhita, in the 1980s he preferred the monk of Balinese Brahman origin Girirakkhita (ordained in 1959 by Narada Thera and 13 other international monks). He also established in 1975 his own Buddhist organization, called Kasogatan (after the Old Javenese word for the Buddha sugata meaning ‘blessed’). With a length of 1.76m and body weight 90 kg, Diputhera is really a heavyweight in the arena of Indonesian Buddhism. Especially in the 1980s and 1990s he was

often invited to give talks on television. In the 1980s there were only two national channels and the weekly 30 minutes that were set aside for Buddhism were a good opportunity to reach many non-Buddhists. As a respected senior official, Diputhera made official Buddhism a valued partner of the government in ethical and social issues. In 1991 he was succeeded as director for Buddhist Affairs by Budi Setiawan, a high official in the national police. In 1998 the Minahasan convert from Protestantism (in 1972) Cornelis Wowor became the Director for Buddhist Affairs. Although a vast majority of Buddhists in the country are Indonesians of Chinese descent, they are very seldom to be found among the circles of government officials. The Buddhist section of the Ministry of Religion is no exception to this rule.

Early 1990s and later: Mrs. Hartati Murdaya and the socio-economic position of Buddhism

Buddhism was part of the general revival of religions in the post-communist period of President Soeharto. In 1966 the communist party was banned and religion more and more was stimulated, first to balance the interest in communism, but then also to support the developmental goals of the new government. The Islamic revival has been given most attention, but also Hinduism and Christianity saw an increase in their

numbers and activities. Membership of one of the five recognised religions became more and more important. Civil marriage was reduced in facilities and so in quite a few matters people had to choose an established religion. Tribal religions saw people opt for Islam or Christianity and only in a few cases did they manage to reformulate themselves as a branch of Hinduism. This was the case with Dayak tribal religion as Hindu-Kaharingan, or Batak religion as Hindu-Parmalim. For some time there was also a ‘Buddhist adherence’ within the Tengger tribal religion of Java, as a remnant of the ‘Hindu-Buddhist’ period of the kingdom of Majapahit. Finally the Tenggerese embraced formal Hinduism that proved to be more lenient than Buddhism.


With a fast growing number of officials, the Ministry of Religion became an important factor in this general religious revival. Above we have seen how top official Oka Diputhera led the relatively very small Buddhist section in this department. As such he was also a central leader in the first years of WALUBI, as we have seen above. By far the most prominent personality in the world of business and business-related political influence was Mrs Hartati. Born on 29 August 1946 in a Chinese-Indonesian family in Jakarta as Chow Lie Ing she took an Indonesian name as Siti Hartati Tjakra Murdaya. Married to Poo Tjie Gwan (born 1941 in Blitar), the name Murdaya is taken from her husband. The couple is according to the 2006

Forbes list of the 40 richest Indonesians ranking as 16th. They acquired their wealth as the Indonesian partner of the Swedish ASEA Group and the Swiss Brown Boveri Group, specialising in power plants. These contacts started in the early 1980s. Besides, Mrs Murdaya owns in her own right several shoe companies and has contracts with Nike. As such she had some troubles with strikes supported by US anti-Nike activists. She is also active in the logging business. Leftist activists have written very negative about her. George Aditjondro blamed her for close ties with the military and members of the overtly corrupt Soeharto family. He criticised her mostly for the tension between her fame as a Buddhist who claims to meditate up to three hours per day, who founded a state-supported association of Buddhist intellectuals (Keluarga Cendekiawan Buddhis Indonesia) as a parallel to a state funded organization of Muslim intellectuals, and as someone who established a Buddhist hospital in Tangerang, and a welfare organization, Yayasan Paramita, but also for the other reality of being a business women who was reluctant to pay to her workers even the extremely low official minimum salary of the country.


A very different image of Hartati Murdaya arises from the emotional story of her vocation to become chairperson of WALUBI. It is found in the book published by WALUBI in 1997 to record its early history and development. At the first National Convention of WALUBI in July 1986 the Nichiren Buddhists were more or less discarded and in July 1987 a council of monks declared Nichiren Buddhists heretics because they did not

consider the full Tripitaka as Buddhist scripture, but accepted only the Lotus Sutra as such. Besides, Mr Senosoenoto, the first Secretary General of WALUBI and Nichiren leader had promoted Waisak not as the birthday (and commemoration of enlightenment and death) of Buddha Sakyamuni, but as ‘a day of giving sympathy and love’. For its own reasons the government wanted the unity of all Buddhists in WALUBI and did not give permission to convoke a second National Convention in 1991, if the Nichiren Buddhists would be present. General Chairman, the monk Girirakkhito was in great trouble, but thanks to his ability to perform the samatha bavana meditation he could come to rest.

Finally Girirakkhito Mahathera put himself on a sleeping bed. He tried to calm down his thinking and in his wisdom Girirakkhito Mahathera asked the Almighty Lord to give him strength and advice in the troubles he faced. How to find permission to hold the Second National Convention of WALUBI without participation of the Nichiren Buddhists? That was his difficult problem. Finally Girirakkhito fell calmly asleep. In his quiet and refreshing sleep, Girirakkhito Mahathera dreamt in a very clear way and as if he himself was not dreaming and as if the facts were truly happening. In his dream Girirakkhito Mahathera saw a crystal coffin floating in the air and then coming down pushing on his body. The crystal coffin at once melted down and disappeared. He then saw a mighty being standing with a powerful and venerable appearance. This impressive creature whispered to Girirakkhito with very clear words: ‘The mission to end the quarrel within WALUBI must be executed by a woman. Her name is Siti Hartati Murdaya.’


This was the inspiration as it was received by Girirakkhito Mahathera in his clear dream, as if it was real life. Although Girirakkhito stayed at that moment in one of the houses of Siti Hartati Murdaya, on Jalan Terusan Lembang, he did not yet know her personally. The next morning he called Siti Hartati Murdaya [who was then in the United States] to tell her about the inspiration he had received from a Lofty Creature. Girirakkhito stressed that the one who received the mission to lead WALUBI out of its problems was Siti Hartati Murdaya. Hartati told him that she did not know much about WALUBI: ‘How could I fulfil this mission? And my knowledge about Nichiren is also very little.’ Finally Siti Hartati Murdaya accepted the duty to carry out the mission that she had to fulfil as it was given to her by Girirakkhito Mahathera. All material about the laws and bylaws of WALUBi and about the Nichiren was handed over to Hartati Murdaya.

Hartati apparently could find a way out of the problems. On 25 March 1992 the board of WALUBI met President Soeharto to ask him to be willing to open the second National Convention. On 17 April a meeting of monks (Viyaka Sabha) discussed again the issue of Nichiren and concluded that a dialogue about doctrine was not possible. On 25 April 1992 President Soeharto held the official opening of the Second National Convention of WALUBI. Siti Hartati Murdaya was there nominated as chairperson for charity and as a special advisor to the general board.


A third and again quite different account about the religious vocation of Mrs Murdaya is found in a very polemic booklet published in 1999 about the issue ‘Why WALUBI must have a seat in the National Congress’. The national congress in Indonesia is a state institution that functions more or less as a broad state podium for general policy. It is based in the constitution as a body that comes together after national elections to formulate the outline for the government policy in the next five years. Not only political parties, but also delegates from occupational groups and also from religions are nominated for this very prestigious body. In the period 1993-1998 the monk Girirakkhito was member of the Congress. He was then succeeded by Mrs Hartati Mudraya. The 1999 debate apparently has to do with the differences of opinion about the status of the monks in the Buddhist community: as advisors or as deciding leaders? The monks in this matter finally lost to the lay people who dominated WALUBI and most Buddhist organizations.


In the booklet of 1999 the Nichiren Buddhists are again mentioned as member of WALUBI, but Buddhayana has now left the federation. The pamphlet has a long story about Siti Hartati Murdaya. It tells how she in 1995 had deep experiences in Mahayana meditation. She also met the female monk or bhiksuni Cheng Yen in Taiwan and the organization Tzu-Chi as a body of rich people working for the poor. Cheng Yen told her that she had met Catholic nuns who praised doctrines of peace and love of Buddhism, but also reproached her that Buddhists did not involve themselves in practical social action. In this way Cheng Yen had started her movement and this became also for Hartati an enlightening encounter.

Waisak was since the 1950s the most important public event of Buddhist character in Indonesia. It was since 1953 held on the Borobudur temple, or rather in a procession between the nearby small Mendut shrine and the giant Borobudur. Between 1975 and 1982 the temple was closed for restoration initiated by the Indonesian government in cooperation with UNESCO. On 21 January 1985, shortly after the official reopening, nine stupas of the seventh and highest level were badly damaged by nine bombs. A few days later I found in a mosque in nearby Yogyakarta a leaflet, claiming that the work was done ‘in order to resume the work of the prophet Abraham who had destroyed the idols of Mesopotamia.

Indonesia was now on its way back to ancient paganism and idolatry.’ The culprits were found and sentenced to long periods in prison. However, Borobudur remained open only for tourists and cultural visits and for the time being it was decided that Waisak could not be celebrated at the most beautiful and grandiose of the old Buddhist shrines of the country. Finally in 1994 Waisak could again be celebrated at Borobudur and in that year for the first time also President Soeharto attended the great Waisak celebration in the Jakarta Convention Hall in the same way as he used to attend the ecumenical Christmas Celebration in that place and light the first candle on the largest Christmas tree of the country.


It is quite curious to read the official booklets for the Waisak celebration at Borobudur. After an introduction by the organizing committee, there are in this official programme short greetings by the President, the (Muslim) Minister of Religion, some six other ministers, the chief of the army, the national bodies for Protestants and Catholics, followed by the programme of the celebration itself. They all underline

Indonesia as a nation where religion has a firm position, where religious freedom and harmony of religion is very important, and where religions have to cooperate in the fight against poverty, crime, hedonism, AIDS, use of drugs and many other vices that are still present in society. In 1995 the Minister of Religion, the medical doctor and West Sumatran Muslim Haji Tarmizi Taher, gave a speech at the start of the procession from the Mendut temple in which he said:


As a nation of so great a variety in a vast territory, we have to see to our similarities rather than to our differences. Therefore all the religions have accepted ten years ago without any problem Pancasila as the sole foundation for social, national and political life.


In the definition of the five or six religions (Confucianism was still on its way to full recognition) that are officially accepted in Indonesia some criteria were important: international, professing the One Divinity, Holy Scripture, a prophet. In the overall structure of the state’s acceptance of Buddhism it was actually more the national harmony, law and order and cooperation in government development goals, that played an important role. Buddhism had to make some adjustments to the Indonesian situation: a greater

prominence for Sang Yang Adi Buddha as the One and Supreme Divinity, emphasis on social relevance, an important role for the laity with a restricted role for the monks. Thanks to the state ban on the rival religious traditions of Confucianism and Taoism, Buddhism could rise to one of the ‘Big Five’ in the Indonesian religious scene with many privileges in the media, in education and in the formal government administration (marriage, taking oaths, presence at official events). All this did not happen because of a general doctrine of Islam, but rather related to the concrete position of Islam as the major religion in the Pancasila religious pluralism of modern Indonesia.


Islamic Discourse about Buddhism. Anti-Chinese riots in the 20th century and Muslim perceptions of Buddhism.


The Jewish and Christian Religions and their prophets have always been in the centre of Muslim discourse, but the Buddha and Buddhism only feature in the margin of Islamic thinking if they feature here at all. Comparative religion has never been an important subject in Indonesian Muslim debate. A quite exceptional work here was written by the Gujerati scholar Nuruddin al-Raniri (d 1659) who lived for about a decade in Aceh and wrote a work on the great religions of the world, much simpler than the great work by Shahrastani but in the same style. The Hindu tradition is related here to the prophet Abraham by a curious etymology of the word for

Brahmans (written as Barahīm and so sounding as an Arab plural of Ibrahim), but the Buddhists are not mentioned by name. Only in the 20th century was a tradition of history of religion resumed by Indonesian Muslims, although only in a very modest way. In the 1930s a book in Arabic for higher Islamic education was published by Mahmud Junus, Al Adyān [The Religions]. In 77 pages all major religions are presented, starting with short notes about the Zoroastrians and Sabaeans, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, Shinto in Japan and Fetishism in West Africa: every area of the world having its own religion. Beginning with page 30-42 (Judaism) and Christianity (42-57) more elaborate presentations are given. The sources here are Arabic, probably partly taken from French encyclopaedias.


In the 1960s a first academic level for Islamic education was started with the IAIN, Institut Agama Islam Negeri that had 14 main colleges in the major cities and many further branches. Prof. Abdul Mukti Ali (between 1970-8 Minister of Religion) who had obtained a mastersdegree in Montreal’s MacGill University with Wilfred Cantwell Smith, introduced Comparative Religion as an important subject. But notwithstanding this openness all new publications about ‘the world religions’ remained concentrated on general handbooks in Arab countries with some additions from English language sources. In 1988 IAIN Yogyakarta published a Handbook Agama-agama di Dunia (The World’s

Religions, Yogyakarta: Sunan Kalijaga Press, 1988). It is without any polemic or comparison, just a presentation comparable to Ninian Smart’s famous handbook, although much shorter and cheaper. An even shorter textbook like Mudjahid Abdul Manaf, Sejarah agama-agama (‘History of Religions’, 148 pp., Jakarta:RajaRafindo 1994) is without any personal viewpoint: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jewish religion, Christianity and Islam are explained in the usual encyclopaedic manner. Seen against the background of the traditional Islamic education in Indonesia, the IAIN have taken a big step forward. As in society, and in the government administration, also here in the academic circles of Muslim scholarship, the various religions have become accepted.


Another step has been taken after the troublesome period of the years 1998-2002 when the abdication of General Soeharto as President of Indonesia was accompanied by many riots and killings by religiously inspired gangs and militias, mostly of Muslim and Christian background. Mujiburrahman has aptly described Muslim-Christian relations as inspired by mutual feelings of fear. This has been different for Muslim-Buddhist relations that were much more coloured by a small minority of Buddhists in a Muslim society. Besides, Buddhists where mostly restricted to one ethnic identity, the Chinese. Hinduism was also restricted to an ethnic (and geographic)

identity, Balinese, with few other small regions. Christians were spread in the whole country. As a result of these problems several universities have started academic programmes for interreligious understanding. One important project is the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies at the Gadjah Mada State University of Yogyakarta. Christian and Muslim institutions are here the founding members and Buddhists only join out of personal interest.


In the 20th century a long series of anti-Chinese riots have disturbed Indonesian societies. Under Dutch colonial rule, Chinese could not settle outside urban areas, were restricted in travelling outside their place of residence and therefore were mostly small traders or craftsmen in the urban areas. After the establishment of Sarekat Islam in 1912 as the first Muslim social and nationalist movement some Chinese processions from temples were disturbed and in some places shops were set in fire after accusations that

Chinese had sent dogs to a mosque. From time to time, especially in periods of less political stability similar anti-Chinese riots took place. Among the most serious were the May 1998 riots in Jakarta where ‘Muslim’ gangs scapegoated the Chinese community for the bad outcome of the Soeharto regime (related to his strong financial supporter Liem Sioe Long and his Salim group). Some 1000 deaths and loss of much property was the outcome of these riots where the word kafir or ‘unbeliever’ often was put on the wall of houses that were set afire.

There were some Chinese who converted to Islam. One of the best known was a business partner of the Soeharto family, The Kian Siang alias Bob Hassan. There were also some Chinese who accepted Islam in a mixed mood of religious and nationalist motivation. PITI, Persatuan Islam Tionghoa Indonesia (Muslim-Chinese Union of Indonesia) is the successor of an initiative that started in 1936 in Medan and later became a modest nation wide movement to promote the integration of Chinese in Indonesian society by suggesting to them to convert to Islam. Best known propagandist was the business man Junus Jahja (b. 1927 as Lauw Chuan To), living in Jakarta.


One of the few Muslim leaders who gave attention to the conversion of Chinese to Islam was Haji Abdulmalik ibn Amrullah better known under his acronym Hamka (1908-1981). As a new style Muslim leader, active in writing novels and as editor of a magazine in Medan in the 1930s, he resented the fact that the 30% Chinese population of this booming capital of the plantation industry in North Sumatra showed much interest in theosophy but had no interest in Islam, seeing this religion as dry and non-philosophical. At the request of a convert to Islam, Oei Tjeng Hien, Hamka began in 1937 a series of articles that were later published as Tasawuf Moderen (Modern Piety). In

this book there are references to Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Rockefeller, many to the mediaeval Muslim scholar Al-Ghazali, but not to the Buddha or Chinese sages. The topic of happiness is central and too strict emphasis on legal practice is even ridiculed, but no openness to or knowledge of Buddhist ideas is shown. In other works Hamka also remains silent about the Buddha. In his handbook of Islamic doctrine Peladjaran Agama Islam (1956, many reprints) there is a large section about prophets, but the question whether the Buddha was a prophet according to Islamic theology is not even raised. I found only a short remark in his Qur’an commentary on 21:85 where Dhu’l Kifl is mentioned. From an Arab of Surabaya Hamka once heard that the learned Sudanese Ahmad Soorkati, who was teaching in Indonesia between 1911-1943, thought that this Dhu’l Kifl should be identified as Siddharta Gautama because his name also can be read as the prophet from Kapilavastu (written as k.f.l.w.). The same is repeated at 38:48 the other verse of the Qur’an mentioning Dhu’l Kifl.


The question whether the Buddha can be seen as a prophet by Muslims, and consequently whether the Tripitaka can be seen as an equivalent to Torah and Gospel, as a divine revelation, is important for the question whether Buddhism can be accepted as a fully recognised religion in Indonesia. However, the question of the acceptance of monotheism was more important. In fact, there has been very little discussion about the prophethood of the Buddha. In recent discussion groups on the Internet the question has been raised by few Muslims and it is still good to summarise here aspects of the debate. I will give first a number of positive arguments in favour of the idea

of accepting the Buddha as a prophet. 1° Most traditions about the Buddha have no solid chain of transmitters. The allegation that he would have considered himself as divine or that he would have eaten pork is therefore not really proven; 2° The Buddha preached among a South Asian people and could remove their polytheism. The kernel of his message concentrating on love, true doctrines and mercy were a step forward for his people; 3° The Buddha received enlightenment that can be compared to the revelation given to the

Prophet Muhammad at Mount Hira; 4° The Buddha was a prince of royal descent and left his high position to preach religion. In the same vein also Muhammad abandoned his position in the elite tribe of Quraish to preach Islam; 5° there is a hadith or private saying of Muhammad telling that one of the former prophets was the son of a king. According to some scholars like Fakhruddin ar-Razi and Mujahid this was Dhu’l Kifl; 6° The Buddha has given a message that Muhammad would come after him. This is the text of Saddharam Pundarika Sutta 94, talking about the coming Maitreya. In fact this was to predict the coming of Muhammad. This is in line with Qur’an 4:164 about ‘messengers about whom We have told you before, and messengers about whom We have not told you.’


These discussions usually tend to be very general and do not quote precise details of Buddhist history of doctrines. Buddhism is seen as a quite tolerant religion with a high system of ethics but without stricter internal discipline. This is also the image as found with one of the most prominent modern and liberal writers about Muslim doctrine, Nurcholis Madjid. Since he started his career as national chairman of the Muslim Students Association HMI, Madjid pleaded for a ‘secularisation’ of Islam, a practical application of its eternal doctrines and values. But this should be done in loyalty to its kernel. Here Hinduism and Buddhism are seen by him as too easy:

Hinduism and Buddhism have too much tolerated Indonesian animism and were willing to give it a place in their own religion. That is the reason why so many remnants of animism still are seen in the practice of Hinduism and Buddhism in Indonesia. When Islam arrived in Indonesia the situation in matters of belief was even more or less similar to the condition at the arrival of Hinduism and Buddhism. But today Islam teaches the true doctrine that is the basis of the belief in God’s unity, tauhid.

In another publication Nurcholis Madjid repeated the common idea about Judaism, Christianity and Islam as revealed religions with an open view for the reality and value of this world, in contrast to the world-view of the Indian religions where this world is not really taken serious. Haqqiyah or ‘realistic’ is for him the keyword for a positive evaluation of the Muslim view on this world.

The cosmology of samsara brings us to a pessimistic view on this world, while the [[[Wikipedia:Muslim|Muslim]]] haqqiyah cosmology gives us a more optimistic view about this world. This is clear in some of the doctrines about life in this world. The cosmology of samsara that is the world view of the Indian religions (Hinduism and Buddhism) puts rejection of this world and living as an ascetic as the highest ideal. But in the Semitic religions and their world-view of haqqiyah there is a tendency to prohibit this way of life.

More political statements about modern Buddhism in Indonesia were made by another prominent liberal Muslim leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, national leader of the great organization of Muslim leaders, Nadlatul Ulama, and between October 1999 and July 2001 President of Indonesia. In 2002-3 he uttered severe criticism of WALUBI because lay people had taken over the leadership of the


Buddhist movement. On 26 May 2002 at the occasion of Waisak, the council of monks KASI or Konferensi Agung Sangha Indonesia had organised a celebration in the huge Senayan Convention Hall of Jakarta, but the most prominent celebration was under the authority of WALUBI at the Borobudur shrine in Central Java, where also the [[[Wikipedia:Muslim|Muslim]]] Minister of Religion had given a talk. Wahid noticed similar problems in the organization of Islam and Buddhism. Because Islamknows no clergy’ (after the saying of the Prophet Muhammad lā rahbāniyya fi-l Islām, translated as ‘there are no monks/priests in Islam’) a variety of people are now in the highest council of Muslim scholars, Majelis Ulama Indonesia, but many of its leaders are not true scholars of Islam.

Everybody now may say that he or she represents Islam. There must be clear criteria. Without these a chaotic situation may rise, as is the case now. Here we must listen to the word of the Prophet Muhammad: ‘When important questions are left to people without qualifications, we may well expect the Day of Judgment.’ Are Muslims in this country already in this stage?

In 2003 Wahid repeated his objections against the dominating position of lay people in WALUBI.

The values of the Muslim community are defined by the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, of the Catholics by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, of the Protestants by the National Council of Churches, of the Confucians by the High Council of the Konghucu Religion of Indonesia. In this way the Buddhist community should, according to this author, follow the religious values as formulated by the High Council of Monks in Indonesia, Konferensi Agung Sangha Indonesia. They should not follow some party or organization of lay people. These lay people have to obey the religious specialists. This we have to realise as government or as members of society. As long as this matter is not settled, our life as a nation is still in danger.

This is a quite remarkable statement about internal debates of the Buddhist community by a very distinguished Muslim.

The highest body for Islamic doctrine, the MUI or Majelis Ulama Indonesia has issued some fatwa directly related to Christians but also important for other religions. In 1980 MUI issued a fatwa against the ‘growing practice’ of interreligious marriage. Although Qur’an 5:5 explicitly allows the marriage of a Muslim man with a woman ‘from those who are given Scripture’, this also was no longer seen as permitted. In the debate this was mostly seen as relating to Christian women, but according to some definitions also the Buddhists can be seen as ‘those who

are given Scripture’ especially if the Buddha=Dhu’l Kifli should be taken as a prophet. In 1982 a fatwa banned Muslim participation at Christmas celebrations. This was later extended to a general ban for Muslims to be present or to be active at rituals of non-Muslim religions. Needless to say, this has not diminished the presence of Chinese Buddhists at Muslim shrines and vice versa. Also the Minister of Religion speaking at Waisak at Borobudur is not included in this ban. In the following decades there were more and more legal measures to separate religions. On 29 July 2005 MUI issued a series of eleven fatwa, most against liberal views. One of these banned

pluralism that views all religions as being equally valid and having relative truths. Pluralism in that sense is haram (forbidden under Islamic law), because it justifies other religions’. Another of these fatwa was a prohibition for Muslims to have common prayer sessions with people of other religions. In January 2009 MUI issued a prohibition of yoga and some Buddhists asked why Vipassana meditation was not banned as well? Although the Nahdlatul Ulama as an important council of Muslim scholars protested against the fatwa against yoga, this series of Muslim decisions shows a national trend towards more separation between religions.


On 12 June 2003 a new Law on National Education was accepted in Parliament including the rule that all pupils must follow religion classes according to their own religions. This was mostly seen as a measure against Muslim pupils attending Christian schools where they could be attracted to become Christian. Also private Christian schools now should give classes on Islam for Muslim pupils and prepare a prayer hall or mosque to allow them to pray. In the debate I never came across parents who were not happy with the practice that many Chinese Buddhists send their children to Catholic or Protestant schools and allow them to follow Christian religious classes. These and other measures tend towards the creation of a nation that is in school, in marriage, in many social expressions, strictly divided as to religion.

The strong and weak sides of apartheid and dhimmitude


In the colonial period the Dutch administration made a division of its colony into citizens under either European or native jurisdiction (as to family law). A third category were vreemde oosterlingen or ‘other easterners’, in fact Arabs and Chinese who were subject to family law according to their own race and religion or culture. We have seen above that this racial separatism, that can easily be labelled apartheid, has turned in the new Indonesian Republic into a separate system for religions. I call it dhimmitude after the regulations in traditional Islamic law, dividing people according to their religion and giving special status to Muslims as first class citizens and setting the other communities aside, labelled dhimmi or ‘protected people’ who have to pay a special tax as non-Muslims and are subject to rules of their own religion as to family law, especially marriage and inheritance.


One of the stories that I learned in the period working on this research about Buddhists and Muslims in Indonesia, is about modern Aceh, where in 2001 shari’a law has been introduced. The Chinese Buddhists of Aceh are not subject to shari’a law unless they put themselves under its regulations. This happened in October 2008 when a Chinese Buddhist did not act according to the Islamic law banning alcohol, wanted to present himself as subject to shari´a law, and was condemned to four months of prison. How are we to judge this measure? Should we just see it as a pragmatic move, because the verdict under shari’a administration could well have been milder than under regular state law in Aceh? Should we see it as openness from the Chinese Buddhist side to Muslim values? In fact it was openness to values also promoted in the ethical rules of Buddhism itself! Should we see it as a sign of the capacity of Buddhists in Indonesia to adjust to the Muslim majority? Is this the jizya or tax of non-Muslims to be paid to live in harmony and peace in a Muslim-dominated country that is not a Muslim state, but a plural Pancasila society?


Bibliography



Bakker, F.L.
1993 The Struggle of the Hindu Balinese Intellectuals, Amsterdam:VU University Press.
Brown, Iem
1987 ‘Contemporary Indonesian Buddhism and Monotheism’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol 18/1:108-117.
1990 ‘Agama Buddha Maitreya: a modern Buddhist sect in Indonesia’, Contributions to Southeast Asian Enthnography, vol 9:113-124.
2004 ‘The Revival of Buddhism in modern Indonesia’, in: Martin Ramstedt (ed), Hinduism in Modern Indonesia, London & New York: Routledge & Curzon, 45-55.
Isvara, Dharma (ed)
1997 Walubi, Pengabdian dan Prestasi, (Walubi, its service and results). Jakarta: Walubi.
Jinarakkhita, Ashin
1986 Rangkuman Tanya Jawab perihal Agama Buddha (Indonesia), no references.
Johns, Anthony
1984 ‘Islam in the Malay World’, in: A.H. Johns and Raphael Israeli (eds), Islam in Asia, II 115-161. Jerusalem: Magnes Press.
Jones, Russell
1979 ‘Ten Conversion Myths from Indonesia’, in: Levtsion 1979, 129-158.
Juangari, Edij
1995 Menabur Benih di Nusantara. Riwayat Singkat Bhikkhu Ashin Jinarakkhita, Bandung:Karaniya.
KELAMBU (Kelompok Kajian Agama & Budaya Indonesia)
(2000) 8 Alasan Mengapa Walubi Harus mewakili Umat Buddha di MPR, (Eight reasons why Walubi must represent the Buddhist community in parliament). No ref.
Levtsion, Nehemia
1979 Conversion to Islam, New York & London: Holmes and Meier.
Mujiburrahman
2006 Feeling Threatened: Muslim-Christian Relations in Indonesia’s New Order, Leiden:ISIM Dissertations.
Ramstedt, Martin
2004 Hinduism in Modern Indonesia. A minority religion between local, national and global interests, London/New York: Routledge.
Reid, Anthony
1993 Southeast Asia in the Early Modern Era, Ithaca NY/London: Cornell University Press.
Ricklefs, Merle Calvin
1979 ‘Six Centuries of Islamization in Java’, in Levtsion 1979, 100-128.
1984 Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th and 16th centuries, Monash Papers on Southeast Asia no 12.
Salmon, Claudine
1981 Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia, Paris: Editions de la Maisons des Sciences de l'Homme.
2003 Klenteng-klenteng dan Masyarakat Tionghoa di Jakarta, Jakarta: Yayasan Cipta Loka Caraka.
Steenbrink, Karel A.
1991 ‘The Study of Comparative Religion by Indonesian Muslims’, Numen 37:141-167.
1993 ‘Indonesian Politics and a Muslim Theology of Religions: 1965-1990’, Islam and Christian Muslim Relations, Vol 4:223-246.
2001 ‘The Religious Quest of the Chinese Diaspora of Southeast Asia, ca 1900-1942’ in: Ku Wei-ying & Koen De Ridder, Authentic Chinese Christianity: Preludes to its Development (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries), Leuven University Press, 2001, 175-195 [Leuven Chinese Studies IX].
Sudharma, Budhiman (ed)
2002 Buku Pedoman Umat Buddha, (Guidelines for the Buddhist community) Jakar-ta:Walubi.
Suryadinata, Leo with Evi Nurvidya Arifin & Aris Ananta
2003 Indonesia’s Population. Ethnicity and Religion in a Changing Political Landscape, Singapore:Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Teeuw, Andries and Stuart O. Robson
1981 Kunjarakarna Dharmakathana. Liberation through the law of the Buddha, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Van Doorn-Harder, Pieternella (ed. with Kees de jong and Djaka Soetapa)
2000 Lima titik-temu agama (Five points of religious encounter), Yogyakarta: Duta Wacana Press.
Walubi
1994-5 Darmasanti Waisak (Programme for the celebration of Waisak in various places), Jakarta:Walubi.
Wahid, Abdurahman
2006 Islamku, Islam Anda, Islam Kita, Jakarta: The Wahid Institute.



Source