When vigilantes are morality police

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The Jakarta police say they cannot guarantee the safety of Lady Gaga, other performers or the audience at a concert. (PAT ROQUE/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The stage was already set for battle between the 52,000 Indonesian fans of Lady Gaga, who bought and paid for tickets to see her perform, and the 30,000-strong Islamic Defenders Front, who promised to disrupt her concert in Jakarta scheduled for June 3.

Going by the Twitter and Facebook posts this week, the Little Monsters (as fans of the American pop singer call themselves) say they are not intimidated by threats from the FPI, Indonesia's notoriously violent, self-proclaimed morality police. "If it's a fight they want, then it's a fight they'll get" is essentially the attitude of the mostly young Lady Gaga fans.

But now it looks as if the showdown will never materialize.

Who blinked?

The police. The real ones, paid with taxpayers' money.

Faced with the prospect of an ugly street fight between the two groups, the Jakarta police announced this week it would not issue the permit for the concert at Bung Karno Sports Stadium to take place. The police say they cannot guarantee the security of the concert or the safety of the performers and audience.

The National Police have yet to make a final decision on whether a permit will be issued. But without the green light from local police, the concert is as good as cancelled. The organizers are still hoping to come to some arrangement with the police.

Despite their numerical advantage and tough talk, it would be unthinkable for the mostly upper-middle-class Little Monsters to actually take on the white-robed, white-turbaned FPI members, who have a long history of violence and claim God is on their side in any fight.

Lady Gaga, or rather her fans, are the latest victims of the FPI, which has been spreading its tentacles ever wider to taunt, intimidate, harass and physically attack those it believes are transgressing against its own narrow definition of morality. In the case of Lady Gaga, it opposes her concert because, as one FPI leader says, she "worships the devil," and young Indonesians should be saved from the likes of her.

FPI chairman Habib Rizieq warns if the police cannot stop Lady Gaga from coming to Indonesia, he'll mobilize all 30,000 of his members to do the job. They'll wait for her at the airport or they'll break up the concert -- by force if they have to.

And everybody knows Rizieq and his FPI are capable of doing that, too.

Last week, the FPI disrupted a series of public events involving Irshad Manji, the Canadian Muslim writer, who was on tour to promote her book Allah, Liberty and Love. The objection to Irshad, made famous through her 2004 work The Trouble With Islam, was not so much her writings, but her being openly lesbian; FPI accused her of promoting homosexuality through her books and public appearances. Another group, the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council, violently attacked Irshad at a book discussion in Yogyakarta. While she escaped unhurt, one of her staff members was injured when an assailant hit her with an iron bar.

FPI has also targeted religious minorities such as the Ahmadiyah and Shiah communities, claiming that their versions of Islam blaspheme against mainstream Sunni Islam. More than 100 Ahmadis are still living in shelters after FPI attacked and razed their homes, schools and mosques in 2006. One Shia community in East Java is living in constant fear after the local chapter of the Indonesian Ulema Council issued a fatwa (religious injunction) declaring Shiism to be heretical, and it should be banned.

Christians, the largest religious minority in Indonesia, have also been targeted. Their churches have been vandalized on various pretexts, ranging from proselytizing to convert Muslims in the area to disturbing the peace. In two satellite towns of Jakarta, Bogor and Bekasi, churches hold their Sunday mass on the streets because their worship houses have been forcibly shut down.

While almost everyone dismisses FPI and its radical views as a small group that does not represent the majority of Muslims in Indonesia, many are wondering about the government's failure to stop the group from committing violent and criminal acts. In turn, the police's failure to act has only emboldened the FPI, and its attacks have become more frequent and more violent. And FPI is casting its net ever wider.

This month, Indonesians mark the 14th anniversary of the end of three decades of authoritarian rule under Suharto and the beginning of a more democratic and transparent government. This should be a happy occasion. But for many, there isn't really that much to celebrate if their freedoms -- freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom from fear -- are being taken away by the likes of the Islamic Defenders Front.

Endy Bayuni, a frequent contributor to Foreign Policy's "Democracy Lab," is a senior editor at the Jakarta Post.

-- Foreign Policy

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 22, 2012 A14