RELIGION AND BELIEFS IN INDONESIA Early on, Indonesians were Animists, who believed that non-human entities, such as animals and plants, as well as inanimate objects such as rocks, can have souls. Animists believe that these entities must be placated by offerings in order to gain favours, or even worshipped. When Hinduism and Buddhism started to spread throughout the area, Animism tended to become less popular, but there are still areas in which it survives, including some parts of Papua and West Sumba. Islam is the predominant religion in Indonesia, and 88% of the country’s population are followers. In the eastern regions, Christianity is the major religion, and 8% of the population are followers. Bali’s Hindus make up around 2% of the population, and Buddhists and Animists make up 1% each. Hinduism Like Islam and Buddhism, Hinduism was greatly modified when adapted to Indonesian society. The caste system, although present in form, was never rigidly applied. The Hindu religious epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana became enduring traditions among Indonesian believers, and this is expressed in shadow puppet (wayang) and dance performances. Hinduism in Indonesia is primarily associated with Bali. Hindu believers in the early 1990s were relatively few outside of Bali, where they made up more than 93 percent of the population. Others were scattered throughout the archipelago. Nationally, Hindus represented only around 2 percent of the population in the early 1990s. It is difficult to describe the Balinese version of Hinduism in the same terms as Islam and Christianity, since this unique form of religious expression is deeply interwoven with art and ritual, and is less closely preoccupied with scripture, law, and belief. Balinese Hinduism lacks the traditional Hindu emphasis on cycles of rebirth and reincarnation, but instead is concerned with a myriad of local and ancestral spirits. Balinese people place great emphasis on dramatic and aesthetically satisfying rituals of these spirits at the many temples which are scattered throughout villages and throughout the countryside. Each of these temples pretty much has a fixed membership; every Balinese person belongs to a temple by virtue of descent, residence, or some mystical revelation of affiliation. Some temples are associated with the family house compound; others are associated with rice fields and others with key geographic sites. Rituals featuring states of self-control (or lack of) are a feature of religious expression among Balinese people, who are famous for their graceful and decorous behaviour. One particular ceremony at a village temple, for instance, features a special performance of a dance-drama (a battle between the mythical characters Rangda the witch and Barong the dragon), in which performers fall into a trance and attempt to stab themselves with sharp knives. Life Cycle Rituals are important occasions for religious expression and artistic display. Ceremonies at puberty, marriage, and, most notably, cremation at death provide opportunities for Balinese to communicate their ideas about community, status, and the afterlife. Balinese religion is hierarchically organized, with one small segment, the Brahman class, being the most prestigious. A Brahman priest is not affiliated with any individual temple, but acts as a spiritual leader and adviser to families in various villages scattered over the island. These priests are consulted when ceremonies requiring holy water are conducted. On other occasions, traditional healers may be called in. Christianity Although Christianity, taking in Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, was the most rapidly growing religion in Indonesia in the 1980s, its numbers are still small compared to Islam (9 percent of the population compared to 86.9 percent Muslim in 1985). Christianity had a long history in the smaller islands, with Portuguese Jesuits and Dominicans operating in the Maluku’s, southern Sulawesi, and Timor in the sixteenth century. When the Dutch defeated Portugal in 1605, however, Catholic missionaries were expelled and the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church was virtually the only Christian influence in the region for some 300 years. Christianity advanced just a little in Indonesia until the nineteenth century. Only a few small communities endured in Java, Maluku, northern Sulawesi, and Nusa Tenggara (primarily Roti and Timor). In around 1800, the Dutch permitted ‘converting’ in the territory. This evangelical freedom was put to use by the more tolerant German Lutherans, who began work among the Batak of Sumatra in 1861, and by the Dutch Rhenish Mission in central Kalimantan and central Sulawesi. In addition, Jesuits established successful missions, schools, and hospitals throughout the islands of Flores, Timor, and Alor. The twentieth century witnessed the influx of many new Protestant missionary groups, as well as the continued growth of Catholicism and of large regional and reformed Lutheran churches. Following the 1965 coup attempt, all nonreligious persons were labelled atheists and hence were vulnerable to accusations of harboring communist sympathies. At that time, Christian churches of all varieties experienced explosive growth in membership, particularly among those people who felt uncomfortable with the political aspirations of Islamic parties. In the 1990s, the majority of Christians in Indonesia were Protestants of one affiliation or another, with particularly large concentrations found in Sumatra Utara, Irian Jaya, Maluku, Kalimantan Tengah, Sulawesi Tengah, and Sulawesi Utara. Catholic congregations grew less rapidly in the 1980s, in part because of the church’s heavy reliance on European personnel. These Europeans experienced increasing restrictions on their missionary activities imposed by the Muslim-dominated Department of Religious Affairs. Large concentrations of Roman Catholics were located in Kalimantan Barat, Irian Jaya, Nusa Tenggara Timur, and Timor Timur provinces. Islam Islam remains the dominant religion by far in Indonesia, with around 170 million devotees. This high percentage of Muslims makes Indonesia the largest Islamic country in the world. Within the nation, most provinces and islands have majority populations of Islamic adherents (ranging from just above 50 percent in Kalimantan Barat and Maluku provinces to as much as 97.8 percent in the Special Region of Aceh). According to orthodox practice, Muslims believe that there is only one God (Allah or Tuhan) and that he is a pervasive, if somewhat distant, figure. The Prophet Muhammad is not deified, but is regarded as a human who was selected by God to spread the word to others through the Quran, Islam’s holiest book. Islam is a religion based on high moral principles, and an important part of being a Muslim is commitment to these principles. Islam is universalist, and, in theory, there are no national, racial, or ethnic criteria for conversion. The major branches of Islam are those adhered to by the Sunni and Shia Muslims. To a significant degree, the striking variations in the practice and interpretation of Islam, in a much less strict form than that practiced in the Middle East, in various parts of Indonesia reflect its complex history. Introduced by various traders and wandering mystics from India, Islam first gained a foothold between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries in coastal regions of Sumatra, northern Java, and Kalimantan. Islam probably came to these regions in the form of mystical Sufi tradition. Sufism easily gained local acceptance and became synthesized with local customs. The introduction of Islam to the islands was not always peaceful, however. As Islamized port towns undermined the waning power of the East Javanese kingdom in the sixteenth century, Javanese elites fled to Bali, where over 2.5 million people kept their own version of Hinduism alive. Unlike coastal Sumatra, where Islam was adopted by elites and masses alike, partly as a way to counter the economic and political power of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms, in the interior of Java the elites only gradually accepted Islam, and then only as a formal legal and religious context for Javanese spiritual culture. Another important tension dividing Indonesian Muslims was the conflict between traditionalism and modernism. The nature of these differences was complex, confusing, and a matter of considerable debate in the early 1990s, but traditionalists generally rejected the modernists’ interest in absorbing educational and organizational principles from the West. Specifically, traditionalists were suspicious of modernists’ support of the urban madrasa, a reformist school that included the teaching of secular topics. The modernists’ goal of taking Islam out of the pesantren and carrying it to the people was opposed by the traditionalists because it threatened to undermine the authority of the religious leaders. Traditionalists also sought, unsuccessfully, to add a clause to the first tenet of the Pancasila state ideology requiring that, in effect, all Muslims adhere to the sharia. On the other hand, modernists accused traditionalists of escapist unrealism in the face of change; some even hinted that santri harboured greater loyalty towards the ummah (congregation of believers) of Islam than to the secular Indonesian state. Despite these differences, the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama (literally, Revival of the Religious Scholars, also known as the Muslim Scholars&8217; League), the progressive Consultative Council of Indonesian Muslims (Masyumi), and two other parties were forcibly streamlined into a single Islamic political party in 1973--the Unity Development Party (PPP). Such cleavages may have weakened Islam as an organized political entity, as demonstrated by the withdrawal of the Nahdlatul Ulama from active political competition, but as a popular religious force Islam showed signs of good health and a capacity to frame national debates in the 1990s. Buddhism Indonesian Buddhism is the unstable product of complex accommodations among religious ideology, Chinese ethnic identification, and political policy. Traditionally, Chinese Daoism (or Taoism), Confucianism, and Buddhism, as well as Buddhist Perbuddhi, all had adherents in the ethnic Chinese community. Following the attempted coup of 1965, any hint of deviation from the monotheistic tenets of the Pancasila was regarded as treason, and the founder of Perbuddhi, Bhikku Ashin Jinarakkhita, proposed that there was a single supreme deity, Sang Hyang Adi Buddha. He sought confirmation for this uniquely Indonesian version of Buddhism in ancient Javanese texts, and even the shape of the Buddhist temple complex at Borobudur in Jawa Tengah Province. In the years following the 1965 abortive coup, when all citizens were required to register with a specific religious denomination or be suspected of communist sympathies, the number of Buddhists swelled; some ninety new monasteries were built. In 1987 there were seven schools of Buddhism affiliated with the Perwalian Umat Buddha Indonesia (Walubi): Theravada, Buddhayana, Mahayana, Tridharma, Kasogatan, Maitreya, and Nichiren. According to a 1987 estimate, there were roughly 2.5 million followers of Buddhism, with 1 million of these affiliated with Theravada Buddhism and roughly 0.5 million belonging to the Buddhayana sect founded by Jinarakkhita. Other estimates placed Buddhists at around only 1 percent of the population, or less than 2 million. Buddhism was gaining in numbers because of the uncertain status of Confucianism. Confucianism was officially tolerated by the government, but since it was regarded as a system of ethical relations rather than a religion per se, it was not represented in the Department of Religious Affairs. Although various sects approach Buddhist doctrine in different ways, a central feature of the religion is acknowledgment of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths involve the recognition that all existence is full of suffering; the origin of suffering is the craving for worldly objects; suffering ceases when craving ceases; and the Eightfold Path leads to enlightenment. The Eightfold Path invokes perfect views, resolve, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. Buddhism originally was an intellectual creed, and only marginally concerned with the supernatural. However, political necessity, and the personal emotional desire to be shielded from the terrors of the world by a powerful deity have led to modifications. In many ways, Buddhism is highly individualistic, with each man and woman held responsible for his or her own self. Anyone can meditate alone; no temple is required, and no clergy is needed to act as intermediary. The community provides pagodas and temples to inspire the proper frame of mind to assist the worshippers in their devotion and self-awareness. Destination Asia Home OUR DESTINATIONS Thailand Vietnam China Japan Hong Kong Indonesia Singapore Cambodia Malaysia Myanmar Laos THE COMPANY Corporate Profile CEO Message Operating Offices International Sales Offices News Products and Services Terms and Conditions Contact us Acknowledgements FOLLOW US! DESTINATION ASIA IMAGES SEARCH Go!
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 02:02:30 +0000