JIL vs. FPI

It is midday Friday and some friends at my office in Pejompongan are preparing to go to the mosque for congregational prayers. Here at Komunitas Utan Kayu (KUK), there are people with cameras and others with video cameras. The bookshop is closed. A tall, solidly built man in a red shirt is being interviewed. Men and women sit at wooden green tables while smoking, drinking coffee and finishing their lunch. Some are writing in notebooks; some are watching footage on the screens of their video cameras.

I ask someone nearby: "Is the gallery closed today?" "Yes." Then, "is there some kind of event on today?" He tells me, the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) are planning to come here. They want to destroy the Liberal Islam Network (JIL)." The former is a "hard-line" Islamic movement; the latter is an Islamic liberalist movement.

The crowd gathered at KUK consists of academics, writers, students, journalists. Ulil, a co-founder of JIL is being interviewed; he seems relaxed and positively happy. He is among his friends, colleagues and supporters. Soon the FPI will arrive and they are the opposition, "the enemy". A sign lies on the ground near the steps to the cafe area: "UUD 1945 (1945 Constitution): Respect religious pluralism.

I talk with Munif, a student at the State Islamic University of Jakarta, located in Ciputat, South Jakarta. He told me, "FPI wants to apply the system of which is in Saudi Arabia to Indonesia. Now, that is impossible. It is not contextual."

"Religious plurality is enshrined in the founding principles of the Indonesian state. It is not possible for them to force all Indonesian Muslims to follow one kind of Islam.

Indonesia consists of so many different cultures, ethnicities. The Koran was revealed as a way of solving problems in a certain time and place. Different verses, containing concepts about ethics, were conveyed over various stages. The Koran as such was a response to the circumstances it was revealed in.

Polygamy, for example, was not revealed outright, but limitations were placed on the number of wives a man could take. Alcohol was only banned after it had been discouraged with increasing severity in earlier verses. Now, for example, we must view issues such as polygamy from the viewpoint of their contemporary relevance.

Out the front of KUK, the members of the Nahdlatul Ulama's Banser security force are waiting for the arrival of the FPI. They are dressed in black and have been ordered to protect the KUK from any action taken by the FPI. It is common knowledge that they have magical powers and are accomplished in the art of ilmu kebal (invulnerability).

It is aman (safe) by all reports, but I leave early, not wanting to be involved in something that is potentially tense, angry and which is not my business.

ANDY FULLER, Jakarta