Wednesday Forums Archive

Dialectics of Religious Freedom and Harmony in Post-Reform Indonesia
Contemporary Indonesian religious life has seen a number of religious freedom violations that are often overshadowed by the government’s insistence on the maintenance of religious harmony, which is habitually perceived to be under threat, through the process of minoritization. As a matter...

Roads to Inclusive Citizenship Kepercayaan after the Constitutional Court Decision 97/2016
The Constitutional Court (MK)’s Decision 97/2016 on the state’s recognition of kepercayaan(indigenous religions) should be seen as paving the way for inclusive citizenship, a political normativity that includes forms of acknowledgements, expressions, rhetoric, public protests, as...

Creaturely Ethics in the Anthropocene
The anthropocene names what many are calling a new geological epoch in which Homo sapiens has acquired new powers over the Earth, so that the present and future evolution of life on Earth, including the numbers and distribution of species, is in future determined by the actions and powers of...

Hunting Baraka: Majelis Habib Syech and the Changing Landscape of Indonesian Islam
In a different city almost every night, Habib Syech bin Abdul Qadir Assegaf’s performances of salawat (devotional songs to Prophet Muhammad) attract millions of people across the islands of Indonesia. At first glance, these transformations of Islamic piety bring a diverse array of...

“Ecological Conversion” and Recognition of Indigenous Communities
There has been a growing awareness among scholars and practitioners about the important roles of indigenous communities in protecting nature. Yet in religion and ecology discourse as well as interfaith initiatives on ecology, indigenous religions are very rarely engaged. My presentation will...

Christianity, Modernity and Westernity in Minahasan Society
The Minahasan or the Manadonese is a Christian poly-ethnic group in North Sulawesi province, Indonesia. This group is geographically, historically, ethnically and religiously peripheral in the context of the Indonesian national narrative, and it is vastly outnumbered in an archipelago dominated...

Anthropocene, Plastisphere, and Local Attitudes towards Nature in Java
Waste and pollution affect all humans as well as other-than-humans. The globalized environmentalist discourse tends to ignore local diversity of waste practices, and this discourse emphasizes a new feeling of entanglement with nature to transform the waste problem. Yet my fieldwork in Java revealed...

Muslim Feminism in Indonesia
Most feminist Muslims in Indonesia argue that there is a place for reconciliation between Islam and feminism. For them, being religious and being feminist at the same time is possible, although the process of harmonization involves negotiations and differing opinions. Moderate feminists who use...

Reviving Indigenous Religions through Heterotopic Tourism
Wednesday Forum – 27 February 2019 Indigenous communities such as Kasepuhan Ciptagelar (West Java, Indonesia) and Dusun (Sabah, Malaysia) have often been labelled “uncivilized” or considered as obstacles to economic growth. These communities face various challenges including...

Deity Statue Disputed: Hate Spin against the Chinese Religion, and Local Resistance in Tuban, East Java
In August 2017, a 32-metre high statue of Guan Yu, a Chinese deity, was inaugurated in the backyard of Tuban’s biggest temple. Some Muslim and Indigenous groups from Surabaya considered the creation of a Chinese figure’s huge statue inappropriate, claiming that it opposed both the...