Menchik discusses democracy in Jakarta Globe
For decades, religious tolerance in Indonesia has been a contentious issue, with members of minority faiths facing uphill struggles in navigating the country’s religious education system and other laws. But recent remarks from officials within President Joko Widodo’s government have indicated that a change may be on the horizon, as the state mulls amendments to religious administration.
Prof. Jeremy Menchik, assistant professor of international relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Menchik, writing in the Jakarta Globe, argues that other democratic nations can provide examples for effectively balancing a strong religious and cultural identity with a commitment to freedom and tolerance.
While some activists feel that the best regulation of religion is the least regulation of religion, this is not the policy of most states. Most states, including most democracies, are heavily involved in the management of religion. These democracies manage to synthesize their commitments to individual human rights with the promotion of the religious values that are central to the country’s national identity and sociopolitical institutions. In other words, the Indonesian state need not become secular in order to protect minority rights; it simply needs to learn from the policies of consolidated democracies like Greece, Austria, Switzerland, Senegal, Romania and India.
Prof. Menchick’s OpEd goes on to say:
democracies can mandate religious education in schools as long as students have a choice in which religion they are incorporated including an option to study comparative religions or ethics… Another potentially useful policy is a multi-tiered registration system for religious groups, with different privileges attached to different tiers.
Prof. Menchik also called for a legal distinction between blasphemy and heresy, as well as changing the way Indonesians identify themselves by religion on state-issued identity cards. You can read Menchik’s full OpEd here.
Jeremy Menchik’s research interests include comparative politics, religion and politics, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. His book Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.