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Race, Islam and Power: Ethnic and Religious Violence in Post-Suharto Indonesia
Jakarta based Andreas Harsono is one of the most knowledgeable, experienced, high-profile and courageous of reporters and commentators on contemporary Indonesian society. Race, Islam and Ethnic and Religious Violence in Post-Suharto Indonesia is the result of Harsono’s fifteen year project to document how, in post-Suharto Indonesia, race and religion have come to be increasingly prevalent within the nation’s politics. From its westernmost island of Sabang to its easternmost city of Merauke in West Papua, from Miangas Island in the north, near the Philippines border, to Ndana Island, close to the coast of Australia, Harsono reveals the particular cultural identities and localised political dynamics of this internally complex and riven nation. This informed personal travelogue is essential reading for Indonesia watchers and anyone seeking a better understanding of contemporary Indonesia. A passionate seeker of human rights protections, civil liberties, democracy, media freedom, multiculturalism and environmental protection, Harsono reminds us that Indonesians ‘still have not found the light at the end of the tunnel’.
- GenresPolitics
304 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 17, 2019
Reading Mas Andreas' works is always a pleasure and this one is no exception, although saying that reading about violence is pleasurable does sound a little perverse.
Let me explain: I started this book with the expectation that this book is going to be like Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families on the Rwanda genocide which I found super grim. Race, Islam, and Power is written more like a travelogue so it reads easy, unburdened with heavy citations that I'm sure shaped this book in the research stage. In this way I find it closer to Pisani's Indonesia, Etc: Exploring the Improbable Nation, but you know, grim.
But you can't avoid grimness when writing about violence, and of course Mas Andreas had his pick of major violent events. He divided the chapters by islands and focused on a specific site for each: the chapter on Sumatra is on Aceh/GAM, Kalimantan is Sampit, Maluku is Ambon, Nusa Tenggara is Timor Leste, Papua is Merauke, and Sulawesi is Talaud.
Some of his choices are intuitive: I like that he chose to write about both Sabang and Merauke. And opening the book with Sabang I think is very shrewd. Having visited Sabang and being in Aceh a couple of times made this opening vivid and it works very well to hook me in. I suspect this will be the case for many casual visitors, too. The chapter offers a thorough investigation of the roots of the conflict that left me with a clear idea of how it started and its impacts to the present day. This sets the standard for the following chapters: Andreas traced out how the violent events in Sampit and elsewhere escalated from a seemingly minor incidents. I admire his writing: he advanced the narrative fluidly in short sections as he stitched his observations and research with direct quotes from multiple interviews.
However, there are also oddities with this book: the chapter on Java is more historical with a lot of discussion on pre-independence day with very little on post-Soeharto violence, despite what the cover may have you believe. I thought that the Sulawesi chapter will be on Poso, but we get an investigation from a border island instead. I also expected that this book would cover the violence against the Ahmadiyah, but it did not get the treatment I think it deserved. I was hoping to read his take on those in this book, but I still learn a lot from what Andreas did write in this book (a selection of some interesting passages: https://twitter.com/masyhurh/status/1...).
I'm going to end this review with a quote:
"Too many Indonesians think of Indonesia as an inheritance, not as a challenge nor a common project. Where one has inheritance, one has inheritors, and too often there are bitter quarrels as to who has rights to the inheritance."
This (abridged) quote is by Ben Anderson, and I can think of no better remark to encapsulate this book than that.
Let me explain: I started this book with the expectation that this book is going to be like Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families on the Rwanda genocide which I found super grim. Race, Islam, and Power is written more like a travelogue so it reads easy, unburdened with heavy citations that I'm sure shaped this book in the research stage. In this way I find it closer to Pisani's Indonesia, Etc: Exploring the Improbable Nation, but you know, grim.
But you can't avoid grimness when writing about violence, and of course Mas Andreas had his pick of major violent events. He divided the chapters by islands and focused on a specific site for each: the chapter on Sumatra is on Aceh/GAM, Kalimantan is Sampit, Maluku is Ambon, Nusa Tenggara is Timor Leste, Papua is Merauke, and Sulawesi is Talaud.
Some of his choices are intuitive: I like that he chose to write about both Sabang and Merauke. And opening the book with Sabang I think is very shrewd. Having visited Sabang and being in Aceh a couple of times made this opening vivid and it works very well to hook me in. I suspect this will be the case for many casual visitors, too. The chapter offers a thorough investigation of the roots of the conflict that left me with a clear idea of how it started and its impacts to the present day. This sets the standard for the following chapters: Andreas traced out how the violent events in Sampit and elsewhere escalated from a seemingly minor incidents. I admire his writing: he advanced the narrative fluidly in short sections as he stitched his observations and research with direct quotes from multiple interviews.
However, there are also oddities with this book: the chapter on Java is more historical with a lot of discussion on pre-independence day with very little on post-Soeharto violence, despite what the cover may have you believe. I thought that the Sulawesi chapter will be on Poso, but we get an investigation from a border island instead. I also expected that this book would cover the violence against the Ahmadiyah, but it did not get the treatment I think it deserved. I was hoping to read his take on those in this book, but I still learn a lot from what Andreas did write in this book (a selection of some interesting passages: https://twitter.com/masyhurh/status/1...).
I'm going to end this review with a quote:
"Too many Indonesians think of Indonesia as an inheritance, not as a challenge nor a common project. Where one has inheritance, one has inheritors, and too often there are bitter quarrels as to who has rights to the inheritance."
This (abridged) quote is by Ben Anderson, and I can think of no better remark to encapsulate this book than that.
January 23, 2020
This book was wonderfully detailed and informative. There is no dispute the authority and depth of knowledge the author possesses. I went into this book expecting a very academic and tone-less book providing a textbook overview of FoRB conditions in Indonesia, and surfaced shortly after thoroughly surprised to find an intimate and engaging exploration of Indonesia's diversity, history, and current political and ethnic/religious climate.
That all said, I felt that in some places the narrative interrupted itself, with transitions between paragraphs jarring and, at a more basic level, the tense and grammar inconsistent. I think the copy editor could have done a better job to reign in some of these cosmetic mistakes.
However, for anyone interested in the current political and ethnic/religious situation in Indonesia, whether already well acquainted or just beginning to engage with the country, this book is a must read.
That all said, I felt that in some places the narrative interrupted itself, with transitions between paragraphs jarring and, at a more basic level, the tense and grammar inconsistent. I think the copy editor could have done a better job to reign in some of these cosmetic mistakes.
However, for anyone interested in the current political and ethnic/religious situation in Indonesia, whether already well acquainted or just beginning to engage with the country, this book is a must read.
March 7, 2024
The passion, knowledge, care, and dedication with which Andreas Harsono wrote this book is next level. His comprehensive study of the Indonesian archipelago took many years, and put Harsono in danger many times.
The country’s diversity is vast, and the isolating terrain of an archipelago seems to exacerbate a lot of group tensions and conflicts. Harsono does a good job of using stories to explain to the reader just how complicated and brutal the country’s many conflicts are. The multitude of different conflicts (sectarian violence, independence movements, ethnic and racial violence, feuds between honor cultures) within Indonesia that occur simultaneously and independently from one another make for a problem set unlike anything I’ve ever heard or read about. The suffering due to these conflicts has been immense.
The archipelago’s diversity contrasted with a strictly-controlling centralized government heightens these issues, leading many Indonesians to claim that colonialism never left: the Dutch handed their imperial reign directly to Java and Jakarta. The fascist tendencies the Javanese-led Indonesian government and military inherited from Japanese occupation also worsen the country’s issues. Where Jakarta’s interests are concerned, the government and military are oppressive. Where they are not, the government and military lie dormant as the tensions produced by hundreds of years of colonialism, proselytization, forced migration and resource exploitation cause very-preventable mass killings. A surge in Islamic extremism and a history of Dutch and American interference have also added to (and caused) significant chaos and violence.
Favorite quotes:
“I believe that human rights protection, civil liberties, democracy, media freedom, multiculturalism, and environmental protection are the answer to these problems. This book is a reminder that Indonesians still have not found the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Hundreds, if not thousands, of newspapers have been closed by the Dutch, the Japanese, the Sukarno and the Suharto regimes. In Indonesia, self-censorship has become a ritual.”
“How could they shout the name of Allah when killing the Madurese Muslim?”
“In Ndana, I realized Indonesia is obviously too big, too diverse and too complicated to be understood by the Jakarta elite. They have neither the imagination nor the intellectual prowess to professionally manage this vast archipelago.”
‘Nobody wins, nobody loses. The winners become ashes, the losers become dust.’ - Yuningsih Saibaka
“Now past histories are twisted to accommodate present circumstances.”
“When I asked him my final question about the new autonomy program in the post-Suharto period, Supit replied, ‘There is a saying popular among people here. They let loose the heads but still hold the tails.’”
The country’s diversity is vast, and the isolating terrain of an archipelago seems to exacerbate a lot of group tensions and conflicts. Harsono does a good job of using stories to explain to the reader just how complicated and brutal the country’s many conflicts are. The multitude of different conflicts (sectarian violence, independence movements, ethnic and racial violence, feuds between honor cultures) within Indonesia that occur simultaneously and independently from one another make for a problem set unlike anything I’ve ever heard or read about. The suffering due to these conflicts has been immense.
The archipelago’s diversity contrasted with a strictly-controlling centralized government heightens these issues, leading many Indonesians to claim that colonialism never left: the Dutch handed their imperial reign directly to Java and Jakarta. The fascist tendencies the Javanese-led Indonesian government and military inherited from Japanese occupation also worsen the country’s issues. Where Jakarta’s interests are concerned, the government and military are oppressive. Where they are not, the government and military lie dormant as the tensions produced by hundreds of years of colonialism, proselytization, forced migration and resource exploitation cause very-preventable mass killings. A surge in Islamic extremism and a history of Dutch and American interference have also added to (and caused) significant chaos and violence.
Favorite quotes:
“I believe that human rights protection, civil liberties, democracy, media freedom, multiculturalism, and environmental protection are the answer to these problems. This book is a reminder that Indonesians still have not found the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Hundreds, if not thousands, of newspapers have been closed by the Dutch, the Japanese, the Sukarno and the Suharto regimes. In Indonesia, self-censorship has become a ritual.”
“How could they shout the name of Allah when killing the Madurese Muslim?”
“In Ndana, I realized Indonesia is obviously too big, too diverse and too complicated to be understood by the Jakarta elite. They have neither the imagination nor the intellectual prowess to professionally manage this vast archipelago.”
‘Nobody wins, nobody loses. The winners become ashes, the losers become dust.’ - Yuningsih Saibaka
“Now past histories are twisted to accommodate present circumstances.”
“When I asked him my final question about the new autonomy program in the post-Suharto period, Supit replied, ‘There is a saying popular among people here. They let loose the heads but still hold the tails.’”
November 30, 2019
Narasi yang mengagumkan soal Indonesia jaman kontemporer.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews