Raid on Indonesian Food Stall Prompts Fears of Fundamentalism

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/world/asia/indonesia-ramadan-raid-islam-fundamentalism.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur&_r=0

By JOE COCHRANEJULY 9, 2016

Saeni, center, the owner of the food stall that was raided, with her daughter Elita and her husband, Alex, at their home in Serang, Indonesia. Last month, Ms. Saeni was accused of violating a local bylaw against serving daytime meals during Ramadan. CreditKemal Jufri for The New York Times

SERANG, Indonesia — Lying on the floor against a gym bag full of clothes in a two-room shack in the West Java town of Serang, Saeni tried to explain how her life had been turned upside down, but she fainted before she could finish.

Last month, Ms. Saeni, 53, a mother of four, was cooking in her tiny open-air food stall in preparation for customers about to break fast during the holy month of Ramadan, when local public order officers entered. They angrily accused her of violating a local bylaw against serving meals during the day and confiscated all her food.

Ms. Saeni, who like many Indonesians has only one name, has since been threatened by hard-line Islamic groups, clerics and Muslim organizations that have demanded the local government throw her in prison.

Traumatized and in shock, she said, she went into hiding at a relative’s house. She denies breaking any laws.

“I didn’t serve food,” she said, still on the floor, with her eyes closed. “I was only preparing it for breaking fast. But they didn’t listen. I’m illiterate and cannot stand up for myself.”

Ms. Saeni’s restaurant. Public order officials in Serang insist they were carrying out their duties when they raided the place. CreditKemal Jufri for The New York Times

A news video of the raid quickly spread on local social media, leading to high-profile coverage. Some Indonesians pledged donations to Ms. Saeni that totaled more than 192 million rupiah, or about $14,500 — including 10 million rupiah from the president, Joko Widodo.

Ramadan ended in Indonesia on Wednesday. Yet the raid continues to feed debate about fears of “creeping Islamization” in the country, which despite having the world’s largest Muslim population remains secular and has influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities.

“If the nationalists aren’t careful, there will be a push to change Indonesiainto an Islamic state,” said Sri Wiyanti Eddyono, an expert on gender who studies rising fundamentalism and its impact on women in Indonesia.

“There is a growing fundamentalist movement doing this step by step, at the local level, which ultimately could expand to the national level,” she said. “This can happen if no one tries to stop it.”

For decades, some political parties and hard-line Muslim groups have pushed to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state like Saudi Arabia or Iran. The most recent push, analysts say, started after the country began transitioning toward democracy and decentralization after the ouster of Suharto, the authoritarian president, in 1998.

Islamic-based political parties began jockeying with secular, nationalist ones for power, while politically connected hard-line Muslim groups, suppressed during Suharto’s 32-year rule, emerged in the new open society with anti-Western rhetoric, street protests and occasional violence.

A public order officer in Serang, next to a mannequin dressed in a uniform. Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population but remains secular and has influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities.CreditKemal Jufri for The New York Times

Sensing a political shift, autonomous provincial, district and city governments have over the past decade passed hundreds of bylaws inspired by Islamic law, or Shariah. The majority of the regulations single out women — enforcing dress and morality codes — while others target religious minorities and gay, lesbian and transgender Indonesians.

As of October, 389 Islam-inspired local bylaws were on the books across Indonesia, according to the National Commission on Violence Against Women

Last month, Mr. Joko announced that the government would abolish more than 3,000 “problematic” bylaws that ran contrary to national regulations — but not one was related to Islam.

Devi Asmarani, the chief editor of Magdalene, an online publication in Jakarta that focuses on women’s issues, said the bylaws, whether based on religion or not, were badly written, lacked logic and went against the Constitution.

“All these bylaws show the poor capacity of governments and administrators at the local level,” she said. “Their inability to properly make policy — and their tendency to politicize Islam — is a disaster.”

The prevalence of Islam-inspired bylaws is just one example of an increasing Islamic trend in Indonesia, analysts say. They point to the construction of mosques, religious television shows and a boom in Quran study groups.

A McDonald’s in Serang. Local bylaws prohibit restaurants from serving food during the holy month of Ramadan before the breaking of the fast. CreditKemal Jufri for The New York Times

In addition, far more women, in particular those who are younger, now wear the traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab.

Still, many of the same analysts contend that Indonesian society is not becoming more religious.

“This is, as is so often the case in Indonesia, more about power politics rather than an increase in grass-roots faith,” said Daniel Ziv, a Canadian documentary filmmaker based in Indonesia, who is researching the surge in women wearing hijabs.

“There’s all this new space to reach out to Islam, or the trappings of Islam,” he said. “And Indonesians are very group oriented, very collectivist. They love labels, and ‘hijab’ is clearly a label.”

Public order officials here in Serang, the capital of Banten Province, insisted they were just carrying out their duties when they raided Ms. Saeni’s food stall, or warung. While no customers were there, the officials said, they found two partly eaten plates of food on a table.

“This regulation is local wisdom,” said Ahmad Yani, who runs the public order office’s secretariat. “The majority of the people observe Ramadan, so they need moral support during the fasting month.”

Nonetheless, there was widespread public dismay that the officers had confiscated food and threatened to arrest Ms. Saeni, as in the past there were no punishments for not fasting during Ramadan or restaurants that served food during the day.

Under the Suharto government, restaurants and food stalls simply put up curtains out of respect for those fasting and to give privacy to those who were not fasting or were not Muslim.

Two days before the raid on Ms. Saeni’s food stall, public order officers in Bogor, West Java Province, raided several stalls and found 13 men eating lunch. After the men were confirmed to be Muslim, they were taken in, given a severe lecture and forced to do push-ups as punishment.

“But if you go to the shopping mall, there’s no problem whatsoever,” as the restaurants are open during the day, said Bahtiar Effendy, the dean of the department of social and political sciences at the State Islamic University in Jakarta.

He said there were no police or public order officers in the malls, “raiding and asking questions.”

He asked, “Why do you apply different rules?”

That is also what Ms. Saeni’s lawyer, Evi Shofawi Hayz, asked. She has reported the Serang public order office to the police, accusing the office of abuse of power and charging that it did not have a search warrant.

“They were arrogant,” Ms. Evi said. “I think she was targeted.”

While expressing happiness at having legal backing, Ms. Saeni said she wanted the matter to end so she could return to serving one of her specialties: chicken innards in broth.

“I want peace,” she said. “I hope this is not going to create tensions between religious or ethnic groups.”

Continue reading the main storyShare This Page

• Share
• Tweet
• Email
• More