Best of 2025 - Out of darkness comes a shaft of cheer |
The news from Indonesia this month has been dispiriting – natural disaster flooding in Bali and Flores, man-made maladministration, political chicanery, perpetual graft and rioting in the cities. The headlines imply the country is crumpling. It’s not, and here’s why.
A repost from 16 September 2025.
Indonesia’s cup runneth over – with religion. Citizens have their faith — one of six approved by Parliament — stamped on their ID cards. Western democrats would find this offensive – the state checking how you pray.
Religion is the essence that unites and divides. It’s splashed across the spectrum of beliefs from major world faiths through to creeds conceived centuries before Jesus and Muhammad.
Last week in Jakarta, there was a display of the best that religions can offer – crossing into the secular affairs distressing the world’s fourth-largest nation, with 285 million souls.
Gerakan Nurani Bangsa (National Conscience Movement – GNB) is a collection of civil and religious leaders concerned about the way their country is heading. They’re seeking to stir the politicians who think defining and controlling the here and now is their exclusive job, and outsiders should worry about the next world.
GNB spokesman Ignatius Cardinal Suharyo urged the government to “listen to the thoughts, ideas, and proposals – especially from academics who have no other interest except love for the homeland. Let them be heard, considered, and seriously reflected upon together”.
Warm words cool easily in the heat of reality. But GNB is too solid to be easily extinguished so President Prabowo Subianto — a leader more likely to open a holster than a holy book — was forced to hear the demands and apparently take them seriously.
Apart from releasing prisoners, foremost has been the reform of the police, who reportedly take bribes and sides during protests or react with excessive force; this was allegedly the situation when tens of thousands of mainly young men rioted in Jakarta and elsewhere, burning cars and vandalising parliamentary buildings and politicians’ homes.
Some were thugs driven to have a........