Indonesia's ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2011 and the introduction of Law No. 8/2016 on People with Disabilities in 2016 require the government to shift its policy on people with disabilities from a medical- and charity-based approach to a rights-based approach. Among the many rights that are guaranteed by the Disability Law is the right for people with disabilities to receive an education (Article 5(1) and Article 10). The law requires the national government and local governments to provide accessible and inclusive education for all students from the primary through to the tertiary level. Three years after the adoption of the Disability Law, however, the education sector still awaited passage of the crucial government regulations (peraturan pemerintah) needed to guide its implementation. At the time of writing, the government had given no clear timeline for introducing those regulations.

In this chapter I will discuss Indonesia's efforts to include people with disabilities in education. I will focus in particular on the Islamic education sector, which constitutes about 30 per cent of the total education sector. Among other things, I will examine practices of inclusion, how Islamic higher-education institutions are working to increase participation for people with disabilities and how Muslims are exploring their faith to promote inclusion.

I began this research in 2015, looking at societal attitudes and processes of disability inclusion in Muslim communities. This research was prompted by the realisation that in a society where discrimination and exclusion are deeply entrenched, it is important to understand people's views on disability, because these can be a significant barrier to inclusive policies. A study by Miles (2002), for example, found that religious teachings can contribute to negative societal attitudes towards people with disabilities and be an impediment to inclusion. Research on disability inclusion in Islamic educational institutions may help us to identify the areas in need of improvement and to gain insights that can transform societal attitudes towards disability. The aim is to explore religious thought as a source of inspiration for societal change.

Looking at the efforts and level of enthusiasm of faith-based educational institutions to include people with disabilities allows us not only to understand policy development but also to learn about social change.

Most academic discussions on ethnic and religious minorities in Indonesia have focused either on the state's unilateral dominance over various minority groups or the resistance of those groups to state power. While revealing key aspects of ethno-religious conflict, such discourses can be misleading as they are based on two assumptions: first, that minority status equals disadvantage, and second, that in order to preserve their identities minorities have to actively confront the state. Although it is true that minorities do often find themselves in a vulnerable position vis-à-vis state power and/or an ethnic and religious majority, assuming that disadvantage is inherent to a minority status is erroneous. Moreover, an approach that focuses solely on active resistance, while ignoring other forms of identity negotiations, presents just a part of the story, albeit a very significant one.

I argue that minority status can signal an advantage, even privilege, over a majority of the country's population. I also argue that disregard of state power, often in the form of disregarding both obligations and rights, can be an effective way to preserve a distinct identity. The story of the Sindhis in Indonesia is precisely about advantage, and in some cases privilege, that has stemmed from ethnic minority status and global power dynamics. It is also a story of the generally neutral relations between the minority and the state when both had very few points of interaction and those rarely turned into pressure points. Overall, the relations between the Sindhi minority and the state do not fit into the commonly used frameworks of forced assimilation or targeted discrimination and marginalisation.

So who are the Sindhis in Indonesia? Originally from Sindh, the former territory of British India and currently part of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Sindhis claim Indian, rather than Pakistani, identity and maintain an exclusionist, endogamous way of life. They see business as the core of life, practise a form of Hinduism that is heavily influenced by Buddhism, Sikhism and Sufism, and constitute one of the wealthiest and most well-connected trading communities in the world, the Sindhayat (Markovits 2000). There are approximately 10,000 Sindhis in Indonesia, making them a tiny minority in a population of around 260 million. With very few conversions to Christianity or Islam, Hindu Sindhis are a ‘double minority’ in a largely Muslim population.

Disputes over places of worship (rumah ibadat) have become an increasingly common type of interreligious conflict in Indonesia in recent years, replacing the sectarian violence that racked areas such as Ambon (in Maluku) and Poso (in Central Sulawesi) during the early reformasi period (Panggabean, Alam and Ali-Fauzi 2010). Although conflict over sites of worship occurs mainly between Muslims and Christians, disputes within faith communities are also common, as when Sunni Muslim groups protested against the presence of Ahmadi mosques in West Java (Crouch 2014: 159). This type of conflict signifies the complexity of relationships between majority and minority religious groups in a plural and democratic Indonesia.

Statistics on disputes over places of worship can be found in the reports of institutions specialising in religious freedom, such as the Wahid Foundation (2017) and the Setara Institute (2018). Although these publications provide valuable data on violations of religious freedom, they seldom delve into how and why such incidents occur. In addition, their main focus is, understandably, on transgressions against religious freedom, such as attacks on houses of worship, rather than on incidents where religious tensions have been managed effectively and conflict has been avoided. Departing radically from these reports, Ali-Fauzi et al. (2012) investigated the factors that gave rise to complex cases involving church construction in the greater Jakarta region. They analysed the variety of influences in different cases, paying particular attention to why some were successfully resolved, resulting in the building of the church, whereas others led to protracted legal, political and sometimes physical conflicts, some of which still continue. Panggabean and Ali-Fauzi (2015), meanwhile, located disputes over places of worship in the context of religious freedom and the role of the state, particularly the police, in protecting the rights of religious minorities. Both of these publications emphasised the need to improve police effectiveness and increase the role of religious leaders and civil society organisations in supporting state agencies to maintain freedom of religion.

Building on these previous publications, in this chapter I will look specifically at the role played by the Interreligious Harmony Forum (Forum Kerukunan Umat Beragama, FKUB) in managing conflict. These forums were established by a joint regulation issued by the ministries of religious affairs and home affairs in 2006.

Since its establishment 15 years ago, Indonesia's Constitutional Court has become a forum in which various minorities have been able to pursue their interests, often in the face of subjugation by larger groups and even the state itself. These minorities include customary law (adat) communities, whose dependence on natural resources such as forests and coastal areas has brought them into conflict with the interests of the state and businesses, who often claim a legal entitlement to those resources. They also include adherents of so-called ‘deviant’ sects—that is, those who call themselves believers of a religion officially recognised in Indonesia, but believe in a ‘version’ of that religion that, at least in the view of some religious authorities, diverges from the orthodox tenets of the religion. The cases involving these two minority groups have drawn significant controversy and been the subject of much academic writing (Budiwanti 2009; Butt 2014; Crouch 2011, 2012; Fenwick 2017; Lindsey 2012: 20; Lindsey and Pausacker 2016; Lindsey in this volume).

The court's constitutional review function potentially offers minority groups an avenue to use the court as both a ‘sword’ and a ‘shield’. As a ‘sword’, the court enables these groups to actively push for legal change in the face of legislation that appears to discriminate against them or to disregard their constitutional rights. As a ‘shield’, the court has allowed them to seek to protect themselves from legislation that violates their constitutional rights.

This chapter focuses on two Constitutional Court cases handed down in late 2017 involving two other broad minority groups, upon whose interests the Constitutional Court had not previously adjudicated. These cases drew significant public attention and controversy but very little has yet been written about them. The first of these cases touched upon the interests of some of Indonesia's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) community, which has suffered increasing intolerance in recent years (Firdaus 2018; see also Chapter 7 by Wieringa and Chapter 8 by Wijaya in this book). In December 2017 the court handed down its decision in a case brought by members of a conservative Muslim group, the Family Love Alliance (Aliansi Cinta Keluarga, AILA). Among other things, they challenged Article 292 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits ‘indecent activities’ (perbuatan cabul) with a minor of the same gender as the perpetrator.

The theme of this volume, ‘contentious belonging’, posits two possibilities: the inclusiveness that is expressed in the official national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, or ‘Unity in Diversity’, and the exclusiveness in the form of Muslim majoritarianism that generates pressure to conform to an increasingly conservative set of norms and values. The spectre of the latter as it affects religious and sexual minorities has been an important theme of the chapters in this book, but if we shift the focus away from the national to the local level, and we look at islands other than Java, then several other dimensions of minority status, also contentious, emerge. One is the tension between indigenous and migrant communities. Another is the transformation of ethnic minorities into majorities through pemekaran—a byproduct of decentralisation that has allowed the partitioning of administrative regions to create new provinces, districts and subdistricts. A third is racial identity, especially along Melanesian versus Malay lines.

MIGRATION

Any discussion of minorities and contentiousness cannot ignore migration. In many areas of Indonesia outside Java, the tensions are not primarily between Muslim and non-Muslim but between indigenous and migrant, and the line between the two is constantly changing. One can be from an ethnic majority at home (Javanese, Balinese, Madurese, Bugis), become part of a minority community as a migrant and then, through family networks, see one's ethnic group grow to the point of demographically and often economically displacing the indigenous population.

One example is the Butonese in West Ceram, Maluku province, who now constitute a majority in at least three subdistricts but who have no right to own land in those subdistricts owing to discriminatory local regulations. In one village, they actually constitute 90 per cent of the population but the indigenous lobby has had the village declared a customary village (desa adat) and the Butonese have been excluded from representation on the village council. At the same time, the redrawing of electoral districts in 2014 produced two out of five districts in which Butonese were the majority, enabling them to win seats in the regional parliament (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah, DPRD) (Brauchler 2017).

Indonesia has always perceived itself as being a tolerant, diverse and pluralist nation. As one of the most ethnically, religiously and culturally complex societies on earth, Indonesia has cast acceptance of difference and equality of rights and opportunities as a cornerstone of its existence. The nation's motto is Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, an Old Javanese phrase typically translated as ‘Unity in Diversity’ but perhaps more accurately rendered as ‘Out of Many, One’. The motto implies that Indonesia not only embraces but also celebrates diversity. Founding president Sukarno set the tone in a speech in 1955 when he declared: ‘This country, the Republic of Indonesia, does not belong to any group, nor to any religion, nor to any ethnic group, nor to any group with particular customs and traditions, but is the property of all of us from Sabang to Merauke! [i.e., from the further-most northwestern to southeastern points of the archipelago]’ (quoted in Vatikiotis 2017: 157). In essence, he was claiming that all who lived within Indonesia's borders were owed the same rights and no single group had preference. More recently, presidents Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–14) and Joko Widodo (2014–) have made terms such as ‘moderation’, ‘tolerance’ and ‘multiculturalism’ central to their nation's international diplomacy. Yudhoyono, for example, declared at a Harvard address in 2009 that Indonesia was a ‘bastion of freedom, tolerance and harmony’ (Yudhoyono 2009) and stated at a high-level event in New York in 2013 that ‘[Indonesia] will always protect our minorities and ensure that no one suffers from discrimination’ (Parlina and Aritonang 2013). In addition, and reflecting a broad sentiment, public opinion surveys have repeatedly shown that an overwhelming majority of Indonesians believe their country to be tolerant and respectful of the rights of minorities (Fealy 2016: 120; Mietzner and Muhtadi in Chapter 9 of this volume).

But is this self-perception justified? In recent years Indonesia's reputation for tolerance and inclusivity has come under growing scrutiny from domestic and overseas civil society and human rights groups, the international media and the diplomatic community. Much of this scrutiny relates to the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities and of the country's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. They have variously been subject to condemnation or denigration by other sections of society and political leaders, and in some cases have been the target of violent attack.

Chinese Indonesians have received considerable public attention in recent times, mostly because of the blasphemy scandal involving the ethnic Chinese and Christian former governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known as Ahok). A popular governor with consistently high approval ratings, Ahok was widely tipped, before September 2016, to win the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election. Then, in late September, he made a campaign speech in Jakarta's Thousand Islands district referring to verse 51 of the Al-Ma'idah chapter of the Qur'an, which is generally interpreted as saying that Muslims should not have non-Muslim leaders. Ahok urged Muslim voters to make up their own minds about the interpretation of the verse and not simply to follow those who claimed that it was sinful to elect a non-Muslim leader like himself. Within weeks, a series of mass protests in central Jakarta organised by hardline Islamist groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam, FPI) were attracting hundreds of thousands of Muslim protesters from all over Indonesia.

What started as a religious issue soon also became a race and class issue. Very quickly, angry and hate-filled racist messages began to appear at the anti-Ahok demonstrations, directed not only towards the governor but also towards the ethnic Chinese as a group. The protesters cited Ahok's notoriously abrasive character as evidence of the arrogance and sense of superiority of Chinese Indonesians (Walden 2017).

Following the first mass demonstration on 4 November 2016, groups of protesters went to the exclusive north Jakarta residential estate where Ahok and his family lived. Most of the people living at the estate were affluent ethnic Chinese, and for them, the protesters’ threats to torch their houses echoed the horrors of earlier riots in May 1998 targeting the Chinese. Although the protesters eventually left without creating much havoc, anti-Chinese rhetoric intensified in the months that followed, particularly on social media. For instance, rumours abounded that Ahok's political rise had been financed and engineered by Chinese Indonesian business tycoons who hoped to exert political influence on the governor and other politicians, including Ahok's close ally, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi). It was also claimed that Ahok's controversial Jakarta Bay land reclamation project was intended to house millions of new migrants from China, rather than providing low-cost housing for Indonesians.

In 2016, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues attracted national attention. Between January and May of that year, government ministers, senior officials, politicians, civil society organisations and religious leaders publicly condemned homosexuality, associating it primarily with potential threats to the nation-state because of its supposed immorality, its ‘sins against nature’ and its subversion of Indonesian culture. Some went so far as to say that LGBT people were mentally ill, while others accused homosexuals of being part of a ‘proxy war’ against Indonesia by Western countries (Wijaya 2017a). In one bizarre case, homosexual tendencies were even declared to be the result of overconsumption of instant noodles (TribunJogja 2016). While such pronouncements might cause laughter, it has also become obvious that non-heterosexual Indonesians are increasingly being excluded from the national identity and being vilified solely on the basis of their sexual non-normativities.

The outcomes of this anti-LGBT panic are twofold. First, as the term ‘LGBT’ has circulated with unprecedented frequency in the Indonesian press, it has become part of the everyday vernacular of Indonesians, usually with strongly negative connotations. Second, among the costs of this increased visibility of LGBT issues in the public sphere are the attempts of socially conservative Islamic groups to criminalise consensual same-sex relations and extramarital sex under the guise of protecting the morality of the younger generation. In 2016, for example, an Islamic organisation called the Family Love Alliance (Aliansi Cinta Keluarga, AILA) took a case to the Constitutional Court seeking to amend the Criminal Code to outlaw homosexuality (see Chapter 3 by Lindsey and Chapter 4 by Butt).

Although the Constitutional Court rejected that proposal, significant challenges and threats to LGBT communities remain. At the time of writing, one of them was a proposed amendment to the broadcasting law that would ban ‘LGBT behaviour’ from the media (Wijaya 2017b). Some queer activists are convinced that politicians are deliberately exploiting LGBT issues in order to shore up their public support. Indeed, the very term ‘LGBT’ has been framed negatively to perpetuate the idea that LGBT people and ideas are foreign to Indonesia and politically and morally threatening. Such politicisation is not exclusive to LGBT issues; rather, as several chapters in this volume attest, various other religious, ethnic and ideological minorities have also been constructed discursively as a menace to the nation-state.

Indonesia has long been seen as a country that is relatively friendly towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. This is due in particular to the public visibility of male-to-female (MTF) trans people, known as waria (from wanita–pria, woman–man). Until a few years ago, consensual homosexual acts among adults were not criminalised. Since late 2015, however, a campaign of virulent homophobia has shattered the image of Indonesia as an LGBT-tolerant country, and a campaign to criminalise all sex outside marriage is now under way. The people behind this campaign invoke tradition, morality and religion to ‘prove’ that same-sex relations and transgender practices are alien to the country. This homophobic campaign is interwoven with and strengthened by a ‘red scare’. In this chapter, I analyse the sexual moral campaigns deployed in the ‘othering’ of two minorities, LGBT activists and alleged communists.

I argue that heteronormativity has always been the dominant regime in the country, invisibilising same-sex practices. Its passionate aesthetics have even informed attitudes towards the major exception to invisibility, the waria. I first query how ‘tolerant’ the Indonesian archipelago may actually have been towards same-sex practices. Next, I provide some examples of the homophobic campaign that has swept the country since 2015. I contrast this with the preceding period, in which LGBT issues gradually became more visible and sexual rights could be discussed more openly. A discourse of human and women's rights emerged after the fall of the military dictatorship of President Suharto in 1998 (Wieringa 2015b). In this more open climate, gay and lesbian people attempted to stake a claim in the public sphere and to set up or strengthen various sexual rights groups (Boellstorff 2005; Wieringa 2007).

Indonesia has experienced two major episodes of sexual moral panic in the post-independence period. The first occurred in the mid-1960s in conjunction with an army-orchestrated campaign of sexual slander that helped to incite Indonesians to slaughter their neighbours. The massacre of up to 1 million people, which amounted to a genocide, and other crimes against humanity occurred after a segment of the army murdered six generals and a lieutenant on 1 October 1965 in what was seen as an unsuccessful coup attempt (Robinson 2018; Wieringa, Melvin and Pohlman 2019).

The political demise of the former Christian-Chinese governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known as Ahok), has attracted much political commentary, both in Indonesia and abroad. Accused of blasphemy, Ahok faced unprecedented mass protests by Islamists during his re-election campaign in late 2016 and early 2017. Following his electoral defeat and subsequent imprisonment, debate about the relationship between Indonesia's ethno-religious minorities and the Muslim majority intensified (Setijadi 2017). These complex discussions centred on a number of key questions. For instance, were the sentiments of the anti-Ahok protesters—often middle-class Muslims accompanied by their children—representative of religiously and racially prejudiced views held by the majority of Indonesian Muslims (Assyaukanie 2017), or were they part of a pious movement in defence of Islam (Fealy 2016; Weng 2016)? What was the relationship between Islamist world views and the protests? Did the former cause the latter (Lindsey 2016), or have the demonstrations hardened exclusivist attitudes (Scherpen 2017)? And finally, what are the socio-economic profiles of those who hold such views (Chaplin 2016)? These questions have since dominated the scholarly and broader discourse on Indonesian politics and society, with passionate disagreements among participants about how best to research the problem and how to interpret the findings.

In our own work on the subject (Mietzner and Muhtadi 2018; Mietzner, Muhtadi and Halida 2018), we have taken the view that in order to explore the attitudes of Indonesian Muslims, there is no better way than conducting scientifically solid opinion surveys. We believe that such an approach is, in this specific case, superior to ethnographic or other qualitative approaches that necessarily focus on a much smaller number of actors in limited locations. By contrast, nationwide surveys based on multi-stage random sampling (Marsden and Wright 2010) can provide a reliable snapshot of Indonesian Muslim attitudes. Moreover, as we have access to a database containing multi-year data series, we are able to track changes in attitudes with much more precision than exclusively qualitative research could. In this contribution, we thus address the questions mentioned above based on a survey we conducted in August 2018, and identify long-term trends by comparing its data to similar surveys we and other researchers have carried out in the past.