Religions In Indonesian Public Sphere: Its Role and Relation With The State

Indonesian public sphere has not ever been secular. It becomes a space of religion for actualizing itself. The debates among Indonesian founding fathers and mothers during State Constitution drafting had established such account. The Islamic faction supported Syariah law for the new independent state; on the other hand the secular or the nationalist groups preferred secular law. The compromise was achieved. Indonesia was neither secular nor Islamic state. Under Suharto’s dictatorship, Islamic state supporters and also pro-democratic exponents were all suppressed. The 1998 Reformation opened a space for all groups and movements that had been silenced before, to sound their voices. Since then Islamic groups seems to have louder voices though than nationalist and non-Muslim groups. However it was quite surprising, in 2006 the Government officially recognized Confucianism as official religions of the State together with Islam, Protestant, Catholic, Buddhism and Hinduism. Furthermore, in the same year, the Government and the House of Representative stipulated the Law that acknowledged local belief adherents in state administrative system. It shows that religion plays significant role in Indonesian public sphere. It influences legal and political deliberation. The paper will discuss the existence and the role of religion in Indonesian public sphere. The politics of legal identity, in which religion has been used as identifying category of individual in public sphere, will be elaborated in expounding this account. Because of such politics, public sphere has been a contestation arena between official religions and other religions such local religions. In such space, religion has been constructed by dominant power, defining the existing power relations.