Sunanda K Datta Ray: Testing the faith

WHERE MONEY TALKS

In those distant days when General Suharto ruled the world's most populous Islamic nation with an iron hand and the all-powerful Golkar party stood four-square behind him, they talked of five promising warrior knights or satria "" Bahasa Indonesian for Kshatriya "" as the "Pendewa Lima."

The term meant the Five Pandava brothers from the Mahabharata. American-trained General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, 55, who won the recent presidential election, was the foremost Pendewa Lima.

This leavening of Hindu mythology and the Sanskrit language makes Indonesia sound like the Islamic ummah's odd man out. Or, perhaps, the ummah with its 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide is not quite the monolith that George W. Bush's war on terror makes it out to be.

Of course, religion is a powerful determinant of human behaviour. But it is not the only, or even always the most important, factor. More to the point, religion itself is shaped and influenced by a host of other conditions like history, geography and culture.

That is something to be remembered in the wake of the horrendous murder in Iraq of Kenneth Bigley, the 62-year-old British hostage. The temptation is to blame the atrocity on a religion that is thought to encourage violence.

All Muslims may not be terrorists, we are told, but all terrorists are Muslims. That is not true. Look at Northern Ireland where Protestatnt and Roman Catholic militants are both accused of crimes against humanity.

Look at America's Mafia organisations with their Italian Roman Catholic heritage. Look at the Basque nationalists, also Roman Catholic, in Spain. Nearer home, look at the supposedly Hindu activists of the Bajrang Dal who so cruelly killed the three Staineses.

It is in this context that Indonesia's staggered presidential election, in which 140 million voters took part, acquires significance. The peaceful transfer of power from Megawati Sukarnoputri gave the lie to the stereotype of Islam being bigoted and autocratic.

Had that been true, the Ottoman empire would not have sent ships to rescue Jews when Spain, always far more the bastion of Roman Catholicism than Italy, expelled them in 1492.

That was 150 years before Jews were permitted to set foot in Britain, long regarded as the epitome of liberalism, from where they had been expelled in 1290.

Two lessons are inescapable. First, Turkey, seat of the Islamic Caliphate, set Christian Europe an example of enlightenment five centuries ago.

Second, Indonesia has proved again that a Muslim nation can prefer the ballot to bullets. Megawati was right to hail Yudhoyono's triumph as "a victory for all of us."

It is a victory not only for all Indonesians, including the small Christian, Buddhist and Hindu minorities, but also for the region, and for all Muslim societies with democratic aspirations.

Islam, which is on trial in Afghanistan and Iraq, has a role model in Indonesia. If Iraqis fail both tests, we must look for other reasons in Iraq's unique experience for the recalcitrance.

The real point of the election is that it might enable 210 million Indonesians to catch up with their richer South-east Asian neighbours. It was the tragedy of their founding father, Sukarno, that he saw politics as an end in itself.

Perhaps this was understandable in the aftermath of the Bandung conference when the sun of nonalignment strode the heavens. Courted by Zhou Enlai, Sukarno neglected the basic needs of his people who command such a strategic location straddling the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Little point is served by discussing the murky events that ended the Sukarno era. The years that followed brought a semblance of stability and some growth but at the cost of civil liberties and, above all, the respect that national leaders must enjoy if the nation is to forge ahead.

The 1998 riots that brought down Suharto reflected widespread discontent with rapacity at the top, corruption in every sphere and a stagnant economy. The chaotic years since were a period of transition during which Indonesia struggled to rediscover its soul and realise its potential.

Today, Indonesia is the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. Abundant raw materials support its expanding manufacturing base. Foreign investors will help Yudhoyono meet the demand for industrialisation. His campaign plank promised to boost the economy, create jobs and root out corruption.

Saudi Arabia's austere Wahabi faith is a far cry from the Kashmiri Muslim's Sufi mysticism. Defying radical populist movements, Indonesians elected a secular woman, with a Hindu grandmother at that, last time because of the tolerance they had imbibed from Islam's animist, Hindu and Buddhist predecessors.

Now that its hour has come, the new president will have to go beyond politics and economics and come to grips with the challenge of national reconciliation.

East Timor is out of the way, but he still faces the problems of Irian Jaya, Aceh, Ambon and the difficulties faced by Chinese Indonesians. A strong Indonesia presupposes the willing cooperation of all its constituents.

The many factors that encourage optimism about Mr Yudhoyono's ability to tackle this task include Indonesia's multicultural identity in a diverse ummah. The national symbol of the Golden Garuda, the national creed of Pancasila, and Sanskrit-origin names like Megawati, Sukarnoputri and Yudhoyono all indicate a unique eclecticism that belies conventional notions of Islamic conformity.