JAKARTA, Indonesia, 5 July 2004 — Uu Ukirman is a man with a face as round and bright as a full moon. Most mornings, before the sun rises, he is at the mosque 20 paces from his house. There, one recent morning, wearing a black pillbox hat, he raised his resonant voice, issuing the Muslim call to prayer.
“Allahhhhhuu Akbar,” he cried as men in sarongs and prayer shawls silently slipped into the mosque.
Meanwhile, his two grown sons slept through the prayer. He said he did not see this as an affront to Islam. It’s a matter of “personal choice,” he said.
Uu, his wife and one daughter say that in presidential elections today, they will vote for a former armed forces chief, who they trust will bring security and prosperity. Uu’s four other children will vote for a former security minister, who has repeatedly spoken out against terrorism in Indonesia.
Politics, Uu said, is also about personal choice. His choice is to reject extremism, as do most Muslims in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country. “A majority of Indonesians live in peace,” he said. “We don’t like violence. We don’t want to make enemies.”
Democracy is a new endeavor in Indonesia, a nation of 212 million people. This is the country’s first direct presidential election after years of leaders being chosen by legislators. Voters will choose from five candidates. Some, such as Uu, are expressing priorities that sound similar to those of democracies elsewhere: Security and jobs. A recent public opinion survey showed that religion was voters’ least important consideration in choosing a president. Leadership quality was the most important. Indeed, religious issues do not dominate the campaign, and over the years, Indonesia’s Muslim majority has dismissed calls by a radical minority for the adoption of Islamic law, known as Shariah. The candidate who espouses Shariah is in last place.
Uu, a religious but not a zealous man, is typical of Indonesian Muslims. His life is infused with Islam, yet it is not a brand of Islam that makes headlines. When Uu and his family see images of violence on television committed by radical members espousing Muslim ideals, they react with fear and distaste.
“Indonesian Muslims ... can be a model for the Muslim world,” said Syafiq Hasyim, deputy director of the International Center for Islam and Pluralism here. “In Indonesia, Islam contributes to democracy.”
Uu’s favorite perch is an aluminum bench next to the mosque, in the little lane in front of his peach-colored house. Seated there, dressed in sarong and sandals, he can watch the world go by and discuss news of the day. Men in button-down shirts, carrying briefcases, stride by on their way to work. Vendors trundle by, toting bundles of fried vegetable cakes or pushing carts offering meatball soup, banging spoons on a pan to alert customers.
At first, Uu said, he tried to tell his children to vote for Gen. Wiranto, the former military commander under President Suharto, the longtime authoritarian leader who was ousted following popular demonstrations in 1998. “They said, ‘Pop, give me a break,”’ he recalled, chuckling. “That’s democracy. Everyone has their own vote.” The children said they will vote for Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the former security chief.
Uu said he had heard that Wiranto has been implicated in human rights abuses in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that Indonesia occupied in 1975 and which became independent in 2002 after years of armed resistance to Indonesian rule. Uu said he did not know whether there was any truth to the charges against Wiranto. In any case, he said he liked the fact that Wiranto was a former military man who would be “firm.”
Uu, 53, said he was concerned about violence after years of terrorist attacks, including bombings of shopping malls, a mosque, churches, two Bali nightclubs and a hotel in Jakarta. The government blames the terrorist organization known as Jemaah Islamiah, whose members are mostly Indonesians and Malaysians.
“Indonesians are religious, so why are so many chaotic things happening?” Uu said. “Islam never taught us to do those things.”
Uu’s son Asep is a younger version of Uu, plump with a rascally grin, his baseball cap on backward. He works in his father’s ironsmith shop around the corner from their house. Jemaah Islamiah, he said, pausing while welding a door one day, “is a different strain of Islam.” He noted the group leaders were trained in Afghanistan. “This group doesn’t have any roots here,” he said.
“Muslims in Indonesia are not terrorists,” he said. “We love peace, and we won’t attack other countries.”
Asep said he gets angry when he thinks about Indonesia’s image abroad. “The majority of Indonesians are not part of that movement,” he said. “Do you know the saying, ‘One drop of poison ruins the whole jug of milk’?”
The answer is not the imposition of Shariah, Uu said. “I don’t feel comfortable with that,” he added. “Indonesia is diverse. Not everyone is Muslim. If we want to implement Shariah, it would mean everyone would have to be Muslim. It could be a problem.”
In a country with an overwhelming Muslim majority, Christians and other minorities have not been subject to religious laws. And with a direct presidential election widely expected to be free and mostly fair, the country is gradually moving toward strengthening its institutions, analysts said.
Islam was introduced throughout the Indonesian islands largely by traders from India, many of whom were Sufi mystics, beginning in the late 13th century. “The peaceful way of introducing Islam at the time became the prototype, the seed of democracy and pluralism in Indonesian Islam,” Hasyim explained.
Indonesian Muslims are flexible, blending the high Islamic traditions with local culture. And the presence of large, moderate Muslim civic groups serve as a bulwark against extreme views, he said.
