The Real Face of Indonesian Islam

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/11/opinion/11LIDD.html

A year ago tomorrow, Islamic terrorists blew up two crowded nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people. Last August, a bombing suspected to have been organized by the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah killed 12 people at the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. Surely, with attacks like these, politically militant Islam is on the rise in Indonesia?

Surprisingly, the answer is no. Survey and election results show that the number of Islamists, Muslims who want an Islamic state, is no more than 15 percent of the total Indonesian Muslim population of 200 million. The remaining 85 percent are moderately or strongly opposed to an Islamic state. Most important and least recognized in the current climate of fear in the non-Muslim world, Islamism as a political ideology appears to be losing ground in Indonesia, not gaining it.

Perhaps the most obvious evidence for this is the drop in voters' support for parties committed to turning secular Indonesia into an Islamic state. In the first free elections in Indonesia, held in 1955, the two major pro-Islamic-state parties, Masyumi and Nahdlatul Ulama, won 21 percent and 19 percent of the vote respectively. In the second free elections, held in 1999 (two dictators, Sukarno and Suharto, ruled in the intervening years), the three parties favoring an Islamic state won only a combined 14 percent of the vote.

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