Presidential Election In Indonesia In 4 Days-- Nothing Much Expected

Don't be scared

You know what country has the most Muslims? Not Saudi Arabia, where the religion began; not Egypt, the biggest Arab state; not Pakistan, which has 174,579,000, almost all of whom are Muslims. The answer is Indonesia, which is where I am right now. Of the 237 million people living here just over 85% are Muslim. (I'm on one of the smaller Indonesian islands, Bali, which has a population of something like 3.3 million but only around 5% of the folks here are Muslim. Most everyone is a Hindu.)

When I arrived last week, my friend Anwar-- one of the 5%-- told me that next Wednesday is the presidential election. If the last parliamentary elections and recent polls are any indication, the incumbent, President Bambang, will be re-elected, probably quite handily. I asked Anwar if there was any chance for unrest and he said there isn't. Indonesia is a pretty secular state. There is no state religion and the kind of Moslem faith practiced here is a pretty moderate one. Today's NY Times managed to come up with a political story as religiously confrontational as you're likely to find. It's about women wearing head scarves. So far the only ones I've seen are on Malaysian tourists.

But with little else to campaign on, the probably losing Golkar Party is grasping at straws by pointing out that the wives of their presidential and vice-presidential candidates wear jilbabs (the traditional Indonesian women's head scarves), while President Bambang's and his VP nominee's wives don't. "But it would not be the first time that politicians tried to co-opt religious symbols to win votes." The issue doesn't seem to be getting much traction here, where head scarves have more to do with a fashion statement than a political one.

The country’s Islamic parties have core supporters that are coveted by the major parties, though the Islamic parties have failed to make inroads among mainstream voters. In fact, in April’s parliamentary elections, they suffered a steep drop in support compared with five years ago, a decline interpreted as mainstream voters’ rejection of Islam in politics.

Neng Dara Affiah, an official at Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Islamic organization, which espouses moderate Islam, said the fight over the meaning of wearing the jilbab was taking place between “fundamentalists” and “progressives.”

The fundamentalists are trying to force women to wear the jilbab as an act of submission, and had already done so in various municipalities across the Indonesian archipelago in recent years, Ms. Neng said. For the progressives, she said, wearing the jilbab was an expression of a woman’s right.

“For women in Indonesia, whether they want to wear the jilbab or not is their choice,” said Ms. Neng, who started wearing one five years ago. “It shouldn’t be political.”

...“If you ask 10 different women why they’re wearing jilbab, you’ll get 10 different answers,” said Jetti R. Hadi, the editor in chief of Noor, a magazine specializing in Muslim fashion, which features jilbab-clad models on its cover. “You cannot assume that because a woman is wearing a jilbab, she’s a good Muslim.”