Mostly Moderate Moslem

The population of Indonesia is overwhelmingly Moslem (91 percent), and most Moslems here are moderates (a small but vocal percentage are not). According to Bambang, our tour guide in Jakarta, Indonesians are by nature “soft.” What he calls soft, we might term gentle and tolerant. Islam is not a state religion here, and therefore the flag doesn’t have the Moslem crescent moon on it. About 6 percent of the population is Christian (many of them Chinese), and 2 percent Hindu or Buddhists.

Tolerance extends to letting radicals have their say. Bambang thinks that the militants are mostly ones who went to Arabic countries for education. They can be noisy, but they don’t have a lot of public support. In my opinion, Indonesia can be taken as an example of how Islam and modern society can meld.

What we have seen so far of Indonesia is the island of Java. There are 17,000 islands in the archipelago with cultures so varied that there are over 260 languages. Tolerance is often a hard-won virtue, and not always practiced. But tolerant behavior is deemed wise and appropriate.

Outsiders often judge a Moslem society by how women dress. In the city of Jakarta almost every woman we saw wore headscarves and coverings from wrist to ankle. Quite often women wore black leggings and black knit jersey tops underneath long colorful tunics. Headscarves matched the tunics, and were often jeweled or decorated in some way. Loose, flowing clothing would be cooler in this humid climate, but it seemed to me that the current fashion is show the body shape more directly. In other words, the clothing is supposed to be modest, but it can be attention-getting. The women we spoke with said that they feel it is their decision what to wear. And one Christian woman we met was as modestly dressed wrist-to-ankle as her Moslem counterparts.

The five-time-a-day call to prayer is broadcast through loudspeakers, starting before sunrise. We’ve seen a number of mosques, including one that can supposedly house 100,000 people, but going inside a mosque has not been part of our program in any city.

A good Moslem anywhere in the world is supposed to memorize as many verses of the Qu’ran as he can, and that is to be done in Arabic. But the imams, or spiritual leaders who matter here are Indonesian.

A few words about the Indonesians who are not Moslem. The largest number are on the island of Bali, where 85 percent of the people are Hindu, 10 percent are Moslem, and 3 percent are Christian. Hinduism on Bali has evolved from the Hinduism of India. It defines in large part the Balinese way of life.

The following comments are from Nyomar Reis, who is Balinese. His first name, he told us, informs people that he is from the fourth caste, the commoner class, which is the lowest in Bali. His name means Number Four. There are only four names (or numbers) given to children in his caste, and since he was the seventh child, there are two in his family named Nyomar. This highly educated man said that being in the lowest caste did not prevent him from getting a good education or a prestigious job. And, he said, the room boy in our hotel might be from the Brahmin caste. But the caste matters in social relationships, and especially marriage. Nowadays parents don’t try to prevent their children from marrying who they want, however inter-caste marriages do provide complications. For instance, a lower caste woman would be elevated only to a half step below her husband’s family, and she might not be allowed to eat with them. A higher caste woman would be formalistically“expelled” from her family for marrying someone beneath her (contact does continue).

A book on Bali says, “Life, death, rebirth. This cyclical conception of existence lies at the very heart of Balinese Hinduism.” Nyomar told us that the Balinese believe that reincarnation occurs within the family, and that when a baby is 105 days old the family has a consultation to determine whose soul the baby has. It might be, for instance, a great-great-grandfather’s. (It would seem strange, he said, to think it could be the reincarnation of a neighbor’s great-great-grandfather.)

It can be inferred that the release of the soul at death is very important in Balinese culture. The physical body is returned to the five elemental substances: solid, liquid, radiance, energy and ether. Only then can the soul be released and reincarnated. Weeping near a corpse disturbs the soul and makes it unwilling to leave, so grief is expressed in private. The cremation ceremony is elaborate and complex. It may last for many days and involves not only the burning of the corpse, but also vast quantities of valuable ritual objects especially created for the occasion.
The ceremony is so expensive that cremation may be postponed until the family has enough money for it. The corpse may be temporarily buried for months or even years. Nyomar told us that if he never accumulated enough money to cremate his parents properly, the family obligation would fall to his children.

If I maintained a proper balance in my words about religion in Indonesia, 91 percent of this posting would be about Islam, but in writing about Hindu culture I can show that Indonesia truly has room for diversity.