Ivan Hadar ( JakartaGlobe, 25 August 2009)

In her visit to Indonesia, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Indonesia was not only the most populous Muslim country in the world, but also had been able to prove that democracy, Islam and modernity could exist in parallel. At a news conference after a bilateral meeting, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayudha strengthened Clinton’s statement when he said that, because of the country’s active role in pushing intercivilization, religious and cultural dialogue, Indonesia would be a good partner for the United States in reaching out to the Muslim world.

Despite terrorists bombings, the basic landscape in the country is viewed as moderate and democratic. Truthfully, the view that civilian sovereignty is incompatible with Islam and that democracy is somehow un-Islamic is neither popular nor accepted in Indonesia.

Indeed, the idea that democracy is un-Islamic is unpopular in the Muslim world in general. European expansion to the Middle East, as “the center of the Islamic world,” in the early 19th century was welcomed enthusiastically, mainly because it also carried hope of release from the “grasp” of Osmanian rule. Many laid hope in the principles of freedom, equality and kinship in deciding the formation of the nation state. But hopes quickly faded, because the basic principles of the French Revolution were not carried over to the colonies.

To legitimize discrimination and conquest, Western colonial governments needed ideological justification. Edward Said brilliantly expressed this matter in his book, “Orientalism,” saying the West uses assumptions about the Oriental economy and culture as a tool for discrimination and political control.

To read more, click here.