Religious “Dialects,” Variation, and Accusations of the Worst Kind

Abstract

In January 2009, I sat in an office with Azyumardi Azra, former rector of Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN) Jakarta and then director of the graduate school. I raised the issue of a 2005 book, which accused many Perguruan Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri (PTAIN) professors of apostasy and described the campuses as a whole as cesspools of unbelief (Jaiz 2005). Azra was quickly dismissive of the work as trash and slander and the author, Hartono Ahmad Jaiz, as unintelligent and mentally ill. Azra asserted that the book has no real impact (indeed it has a small readership, cf. Weck, Hasan, and Abubakar 2011: 34) and then would speak of it no further. He was clear that Jaiz’s book was not worthy of attention—his or mine. When I spoke about this book to other faculty members, they strongly recommended that I do not pursue this line of investigation. The sentiment was that by paying any attention to it that I would be granting it some level of legitimacy. In their minds, this aspect of the debates about PTAIN was best kept quiet. Further, they argued, this line of investigation would prove fruitless. I find that I must respectfully disagree with my friends. Although these accusations of apostasy come from a vocal minority in Indonesian society, they reflect a dimension of the debates that cannot be ignored. As Michael Gilsenan argues, the process of defining social elements as Islamic or non-Islamic is inherently political. He describes an overall process whereby