Stewart Fenwick - Blasphemy, Islam and the State: Pluralism and Liberalism in Indonesia

This book draws on the work of Rawls to explore the interaction between faith, law and the right to religious freedom in post-Soeharto Indonesia, the worlds largest democracy after India and the United States. It argues that enforcement of Islamic principles by the state is inconsistent with religious diversity and the countrys liberal constitution. The book thus contributes to understanding the role of religion in the development of democracy in the worlds largest Muslim nation. A key objective is to test the argument that Rawls thinking about public reason cannot apply to the case of Indonesia, and Muslim states more broadly. The book therefore contributes to emerging scholarship that considers Rawls in a Muslim context. In addition to examining public reason in detail and considering critiques of the concept, the work highlights the fact that the theory was created to deal with value pluralism and is therefore relevant in any religious setting, including an Islamic one. In doing so, it emphasises that Islam is multifaceted and demonstrates the difficulties, and negative consequences, of integrating faith and law in a liberal state.

Stewart Fenwick is an Honorary Professor of the Australian Catholic University at the Institute for Religion, Politics and Society, and an Associate of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, and the Asian Law Centre, University of Melbourne, Australia. He was awarded the Harold Luntz Graduate Research Thesis Prize for 2015 at the Melbourne Law School, and was awarded the Chancellors Prize for Excellence in the PhD Thesis for 2016 at the University of Melbourne.

ICLARS Series on Law and Religion
Series Editors:

Silvio Ferrari
University of Milan, Italy

Russell Sandberg
Cardiff University, UK

Pieter Coertzen
University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

W. Cole Durham, Jr.
Brigham Young University, USA

and

Tahir Mahmood
Amity International University, India

The ICLARS Series on Law and Religion is a new series designed to provide a forum for the rapidly expanding field of research in law and religion. The series is published in association with the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies, an international network of scholars and experts of law and religion founded in 2007 with the aim of providing a place where information, data and opinions can easily be exchanged among members and made available to the broader scientific community. The series aims to become a primary source for students and scholars while presenting authors with a valuable means to reach a wide and growing readership.

Other titles in this series:

Religion and Equality
Edited by W. Cole Durham, Jr. and Donlu Thayer, Brigham Young University, USA

Church and State in Scotland
Francis Lyall, University of Aberdeen, UK

Religion as Empowerment

Edited by Kyriaki Topidi and Lauren Fielder, both at University of Lucerne, Switzerland

Religions and Constitutional Transitions in the Muslim Mediterranean
Edited by Alessandro Ferrari and James Toronto

Pluralism and liberalism in Indonesia

Stewart Fenwick

First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 Stewart Fenwick

The right of Author to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, ot other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Fenwick, Stewart, author.

Title: Blasphemy, Islam and the state: pluralism and liberalism in Indonesia / Stewart Fenwick.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. | Based on author's thesis (doctoralUniversity of Melbourne, Melbourne Law School, 2015) issued under title: Is Rawlsian libreralism compatible with Islam?: a case study of post-Soeharto Indonesia. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016015763 (print) | LCCN 2016016187 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138694675 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315527697 (e-book) | ISBN 9781315527680 (Web PDF) | ISBN 9781315527673 (ePub) | ISBN 9781315527666 (Mobipocket)

Subjects: LCSH: Islam and stateIndonesia. | BlasphemyLaw and legislationIndonesia. | Freedom of religionIndonesia. | Religious pluralismIslam. | Rawls, John, 19212002. | Liberalism.

Classification: LCC KNW2688 .F46 2017 (print) | LCC KNW2688 (ebook) | DDC 342.59808/5297dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016015763

ISBN: 978-1-138-69467-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-52769-7 (ebk)

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For my children

This book is based on my Doctoral thesis, completed in 2015. The research was conducted over a long period of time in a wide variety of settings. Some of my early study of John Rawls was undertaken in the very traditional setting of Duke Humfreys Library, Oxford University. Here I was able to read a number of dissertations that addressed Rawls work in detail; interest in Rawls only increased during the years I spent on this task.

While resident in Indonesia from 2004 to 2008 I learnt first-hand about the blasphemy regime from colleagues in the legal aid world. I accompanied them to court sessions in the trial of Lia Eden and her followers in the Central Jakarta District Court, and I visited the defendants in the cells behind the courthouse. Not the least of my field experiences was my visit to Lawang, East Java, in early 2008, to meet with Yusman Roy, the main subject of this book. During this trip I was also kindly provided by legal aid staff with a set of DVDs containing recordings of his 2005 trial, which provided me with valuable insights into the dynamics of the time.

My research presents, largely, a description of events and of key legal and constitutional issues relating to blasphemy in Indonesia. It is, in the main, a statement of the who and the what; it is not, in any major sense, a statement of the why. I provide details about the events leading up to the trial of Yusman Roy, and describe the posture of other key players but I have not attempted a detailed explanation of why things occurred in the way they did. This is because my research was not sociological, and I did not collect direct, personal input from the many actors involved. It was also important, in my view, for institutional voices to be heard, and I was fortunate to have access to sufficient documents to do this.

This book is fundamentally an inquiry into the nature of authority legal, religious and political. As my primary discipline is law, this inquiry took me into new territory. Taking up a case study of blasphemy in an Islamic setting led me to explore Islamic religious doctrine and the nature of religious authority in Indonesia, and to interpret and apply Rawls notion of public reason. I hope that I have done justice to these important elements of the study. These dimensions to the research should be understood for the way they assist in elaborating the different layers of the case study, which should itself be seen as providing insight into the evolution of law and constitutionalism in post-Soeharto Indonesia.