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The relatively peaceful interreligious relations in Indonesia seem to be shattered ever since Suharto's fall in 1998. Religious cleavages grew and quickly became sources of conflict. Exclusive religious truth claims have led people to support interreligious violence. Yet, benevolent religious values continue to encourage people for mutual solidarity and to shy away from violence. Religious minority groups are often perceived as a threat by the religious majority. Although living side by side allows different groups to develop positive interreligious contacts, this may differ for religious majority and minorities. This study scrutinizes the role of religion in interreligious conflicts in Indonesia.

This book analyses the relation between state and religion in Indonesia, considering both the philosophical underpinning of government intervention on religious life but also cases and regulations related to religious affairs in Indonesia. Examining state regulation of religious affairs, it focuses on understanding its origin, history and consequences on citizens'religious life in modern Indonesia, arguing that while Indonesian constitutions have preserved religious freedom, they have also tended to construct wide-ranging discretionary powers in the government to control religious life and oversee religious freedom. Over more than four decades, Indonesian governments have constructed a variety of policies on religion based on constitutional legacies interpreted in the light of the norms and values of the existing religious majority group. A cutting edge examination of the tension between religious order and harmony on one hand, and protecting religious freedom for all on the other,this book offers a cutting edge study of how the history of regulating religion has been about the constant negotiation for the boundaries of authority between the state and the religious majority group.

As religious polarisation in society deepens, political actors and policy-makers have begun to struggle with questions on the role of the dominant religion and how religion influences constitutional commitments and development. By focusing on Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, Constitutions, Religion and Politics in Asia demonstrates how constitution-making and the operation of constitutional arrangements involving religion cannot be separated from the broader political dynamics of society. Although constitutions establish legal and political structures of government institutions and provide tools for rights protection, they do not operate in a vacuum divorced from the games of power and the political realities surrounding them. Here, Shah sets out how constitutions operate and evolve, and demonstrates how constitutional provisions can produce unintended consequences over time. A vital new source of scholarship for students and scholars of law and religion, and comparative constitutional law, and those interested in issues of constitutionalism and legal and political history in Asia.

Islam is one of the world s oldest and most intriguing religions, and with so much recent attention focused on Muslim groups, the importance of understanding Islam today is self-evident. How does this classic religion deal with contemporary challenges in ethics and morality in a consistent and rational way? How in the 21st century do its complex moral and legal philosophies continue to provide an alternative to secularism?Professor M.B. Hooker looks at how modern Indonesian Islamic thinking has responded to changes in social and cultural practices in this timely book. In particular he examines how authorities have ruled on such basic issues as purity and representation of doctrine, religious obligations, status and capacity of women, Islam and medical science, and offences against religion. Hooker s research has been drawn from around 2000 fatawa - formal opinion on points of law or dogma - collected from Indonesia between 1920 and 1990. The authority of the fatwa is independent of the state and is uncontaminated by European intellectual imperialism. It thus gives us a pure response to difficult issues from within Islamic thought, and is essential to how we understand Islam at this particular place and time. M.B. Hooker is Professor of Law at the Australian National University, and an Honorary Senior Associate of the Asian Law Centre, University of Melbourne. He has forty years experience in teaching and writing about Southeast Asia.