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Fundamentalist Islam Falls Behind in Indonesia |
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Written by Terry Lacey
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Tuesday, 19 January 2010 |
Rapid progress, urbanization leave the fundamentalists behind
In five years the number of women riding motorbikes in Indonesia has
risen from 11 to 15 percent of the entire population of about 250
million people. But a Muslim preacher in East Java, Tohari Muslim, has
announced that women cannot charge for giving lifts on motorcycles and
therefore cannot drive ojeks (motorbike taxis).
This is in a
country where 25 percent of women are in the labor force and half of
them go to work on a motorbike, not counting the huge number of
students who go to school and college on motorbikes. Nonetheless,
Mohammad Nabiel Haroen, spokesman for a forum of 250 leaders of Islamic
boarding schools (pesantren) in East Java and Madura confirmed recently
that the Ulema forum had banned women from working as motorbike taxi
drivers.
"Just imagine if a female ojek driver carried a male
passenger who was not her muhrim, or close relative who was forbidden
to marry but allowed to associate with her, Tohari Muslim explained.
Women are not allowed to become ojek drivers because it would be hard for them to avoid sinful acts".
Muhammad
also explained that apart from being banned from becoming ojek drivers,
women are also banned from using ojek motorcycle services, especially
on routes that pass through deserted areas.
But transport
expert Ofyar Tamin told local media that people need cheap fast
transport in areas with severe traffic jams "People need ojek as an
efficient form of transport. If riding an ojek is forbidden, it will
hamper the mobility of people."
What is behind this?
Debnath
Guharoy, writing in The Jakarta Post recently, pointed out that
Indonesian women are the boss in 90 percent of Indonesian households in
terms of the household budget. In a nation whose Gross Domestic Product
is 60 percent consumer driven, it is women who control family economic
decisions, from buying toothpaste to motorbikes.
The fact is
that conservative Ulema of East Java and their mosques and Islamic
boarding schools face the erosion of their economic base and
traditional influence through rapid urbanization as well as economic
and social change in rural areas. More than 3.8 million Indonesians are
moving into the cities every year.
If motorcyclists sell lifts
in the rush hours and at lunchtime they can make two or three dollars a
day, not far short of the minimum wage. If they charge for lifts to
work or school they can cover all their petrol and half their monthly
loans for the bikes. No cleric can tell women not to do this, when 37.5
million Indonesian women already ride motorbikes every day, and female
ownership of motorbikes is rocketing.
The political economy of
traditional rural Islam is threatened, whilst young women are racing
ahead and women dominate 90 percent of households on budget decisions.
Islamic boarding schools are drawing too much negative attention to
themselves through attempts at conservative edicts against Facebook,
gossip TV shows and now motorbikes, while their networks have no
authority to make binding fatwas.
A minority of the boarding
schools previously have been recruiting grounds for militias in
inter-communal conflicts or for support for terrorism. What is needed
is more modern education and training for Ulemas and leaders of
pesantren and to help regenerate the deteriorating revenue base for
rural Islam, for example through modern waste management and clean
energy.
Support for the Islamic parties is falling in
Indonesia. People are voting for economic and social solutions, and
against corruption, and not for minority puritanical positions on
personal conduct. Attempts at enforcing unpopular puritanical rules
would produce collisions between conservatives and majority modernizers
on human rights and constitutional grounds.
There are already
some signs of this in Aceh province. The pluralistic state of Indonesia
is bound by its constitution to defend the rights of its citizens. The
provincial government has decided to take control of the East Java
pesantren by taking responsibility for the health care of the clerics
who run them, while putting their schools into a unified administration
with the secular state education system. This is a sign of the times
and that rural Islam is falling behind the speed of modernization and
needs to catch up.
Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world.
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