Religion, Law and Intolerance in Indonesia. By Tim Lindsey, Helen Pausacker. London and New York: Routledge, 2016.

• Date: 01 September 2018
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12357

Religion, Law and Intolerance in Indonesia. By Tim Lindsey, Helen

Pausacker. London and New York: Routledge, 2016.

Reviewed by Stijn C van Huis, Consultant Indonesian Law and

Society, Specialist Indonesian Islamic family law, Indonesia, The

Netherlands

Lindsey and Pausacker’s edited volume gives valuable insights

into how freedoms and rights derived from human rights instru-

ments are subject to translation, interpretation, and contextualiza-

tion when adopted into national legislation of a Muslim-majority

country. The book focuses on the constitutionally guaranteed

freedom of religion in Indonesia—a “core human right” adopted

from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The essays describe how the democratization process that fol-

lowed the stepping down of President Suharto in 1998 has led to

the paradox of “increased religious freedom in principle but less

freedom in practice” (6).

The 18 essays are spread over five parts and a conclusion: Part

I: State Regulation and Religious Freedom; Part II: The Politics of

Religious Intolerance; Part III: Civil Society, Pluralism and Intol-

erance; Part IV: Violence and State Responses; Part V: Discrimina-

tion and Vulnerable Groups; and the Conclusion. The strength of

the book is that the issues of religious freedom and intolerance in

post-Suharto Indonesia are viewed from the three perspectives of

law, governance, and society. This results in a comprehensive and

convincing explanation of why intolerance in Indonesia became

more antagonistic at a time amendment to the constitution

increased freedom of religion. A minor weakness of the volume is

that there is quite some repetition between the essays as explana-

tions of vital legal issues and incidents reappear in multiple essays.

Part I serves as the legal context for the case studies that follow.

The authors explain how the Indonesian Constitution has made

enjoyment of religious freedom conditional to “legislation protecting

the rights and freedoms of others” and, among others, “religious

values” (23, 45). They explain how the newly (in 2003) established

Constitutional Court issued several rulings that endorsed the gov-

ernment’s right to limit the scope of religious freedom: either by

introducing the legislation intended to protect women—for instance,

in the cases of divorce and polygamy, or by allowing the state prose-

cution of deviant teachings to guard the six state-recognized reli-

gious mainstream religions. In these judgments, the Constitutional

Court has treated Islamic law “as the touch stone for good or bad,

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