‘I Love Jesus Because Jesus Is Muslim’: Inter- and Intra-Faith Debates and Political Dynamics in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the public reactions to a billboard with the message: ‘I love Jesus because Jesus is Moslem’. A radical Islamic group placed the billboard in the Indonesian town of Cilacap in 2018 with the goal of discouraging Muslims from attending events celebrating Christmas and New Year. We place the inter-religious debates resulting from the billboard incident within the larger context of Muslim opinions on the figure of Jesus in Islam and Christianity. We furthermore ask how the Indonesian state negotiates Muslim–Christian interreligious dialogues and how its intervention influences the opinions of individual religious and community leaders. Our main conclusion is that, in spite of the fact that deeper engagement between the two communities could yield stronger forms of cooperation or reconciliation when incidents of interreligious strife occur, all involved prefer to avoid it. Instead, they aim to maintain an equilibrium that represents the status quo. Most Muslim and Christian leaders, for various reasons, remain averse to engaging in deeper conversations, especially when it concerns the role of Jesus in their respective religions.

KEYWORDS:

• Indonesia
• interreligious
• interfaith dialogue
• Jesus
• Bible
• Qur’an
• radical Islam
• state politics
• FKUB (Forum for the Promotion of Religious Harmony)
• religious leaders

Acknowledgements

We thank the Contending Modernities team at the University of Notre Dame for their support for our work. We especially owe thanks to Dr Mun’im Sirry, who is in charge of the Indonesia project. The materials for this article were gathered during our membership of the Indonesia Contending Modernities project (2016–2020).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a longer discussion of this topic, see, among others, Sirry (2014, 133–166).

2 Discussing these various levels and approaches would go beyond the scope of this article. For example, Husein (2005) argues that we first need to distinguish between Muslims who have an inclusive attitude concerning adherents of other religions and those who have an exclusive attitude, while King (2008) argues that we need to consider dialogue on the spiritual level, and Moyaert (2018) proposes to investigate cases of inter-rituality. See also Eck (2007); Cornille (2008); Patel, Peace, and Silverman (2018).

3 See ‘A Common Word’. Accessed 14 May 2020. https://www.acommonword.com/introduction-to-a-common-word-between-us-and-you/.

4 A fatwa is an opinion on a specific topic within Islamic law given by an acknowledged expert. A fatwa is not binding but devout Muslims in Indonesia tend to take MUI fatwas seriously (Kapten 2018; Laffan 2005).

5 Some of the scholars who disagreed with the fatwa were: Abdurrahman Wahid, Djohan Effendi, Musdah Mulia, Dawam Rahardjo, Syafi’i Anwar, and Weinata Sairin.

6 Translated by Mega Hidayati.

7 Translations of the Qur’an are taken from Khalidi (2008).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Contending Modernities at the University of Notre Dame [grant number 383128WFU].