What do Aussies really know about Indonesia?

Irfan Yusuf

October 06, 2008 12:00am

INDONESIA is our closest neighbour.

It also happens to be the largest Muslim-majority state in the world.

Yet just how much do Australians know about Indonesia?

At one time Indonesian was almost as commonly taught in high schools as French and German.

Today, for many Australians, Indonesia is represented not by its shadow puppetry or its batik artistry.

Instead, we view Indonesians as smiling replicas of Amrozi, the Bali bomber facing execution.

But what do ordinary Indonesians think of groups like Jemaah Islamiah?

Estimates of JI’s membership vary from less than 100 to several thousand.

Compare this to Nahdhatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim religious organisation, whose youth wing alone has more than 10 million members.

I never realised just how much ordinary Indonesians hated the Bali bombers until I actually went there in January 2006.

I was part of a delegation on an exchange program organised by the Australia-Indonesia Institute.

In Jakarta, staff at the Australian Embassy advised us to tone down our Aussie-style brashness with ordinary Indonesians, who rarely engage in blunt discourse even when they strongly disagree with each other.

On our AII tour we were politely grilled by Indonesian journalists, many who saw Australia as defined by Pauline Hanson and the Cronulla riots.

We were also exposed to every kind of Indonesian Islam, from firebrand charismatic Salafis to ecumenical interfaith activists of Interfidei to youth reps of Muhammadiyah and Nahdhatul Ulama, the largest Islamic organisations.

At a university in Jogjakarta, I met a Balinese student researching the impact of the Bali bombings on the economy of not just Bali but also nearby islands and even eastern and central Java, Indonesia’s economic and cultural heartland.

A year later in Sydney, I met another Balinese chap visiting on an AII exchange program. This fellow requested me to take him to Cronulla.

I assumed it was to see the scene of the 2005 race riots.

It was only when I saw him at the memorial for Bali victims, reciting traditional Muslim prayers for one’s deceased relatives, that I realised why he really wanted to be there.

Many Australians died in Bali, but so did many Indonesians.

Thousands of Indonesian families and communities had suffered loss of livelihood and severe poverty thanks to those terrorist attacks in Bali.

Mentioning Amrozi and other bombers brings the kind of uncharacteristically brutal response we were told Indonesians rarely exhibit.

If more Australians understood just how unpopular the Bali bombers are in their own country and just how many ordinary Indonesians’ livelihoods have been destroyed, we would understand exactly why Amrozi smiles so much.

When Indonesians smile or chuckle, it’s often out of embarrassment or shame. This is possibly Amrozi’s smile.

His words may be defiant but Amrozi knows millions of Indonesians are looking forward to his execution.

Most Indonesians are Muslim, but their Islam doesn’t fit stereotypes.

My AII delegation stayed in the hostel of a popular Muslim televangelist, Aa Gym.

His message of “Manajemen Qulbu” (literally “heart management”) has proven far more popular than the rants of Abu Bakar Bashir.

A sex scandal spoiled his popularity.

Indonesians had little tolerance for his polygamy – but they have even less tolerance for extremist violence.

– Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and research associate at the Australian Homeland Security Research Centre

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24450024-5000117,00.html