Indonesian singer wags hips, bumps heads with clerics
This country's morality watchdogs - Muslim teachers and politicians - have met their match.
A year ago, Inul Daratista was playing weddings for a dollar a song. Now she plays packed houses across the country, and the president's husband hangs out backstage at her concerts. According to Gossip magazines, Ms. Daratista - better known for her writhing dance, "The Drill," than for her renditions of Indonesia's pop music dangdut - is the country's best paid entertainer.
Hard work and a sinuous pair of hips have no doubt contributed to her success. But most observers also give credit for Daratista's fame to members of the Council of Indonesian Islamic Scholars, who branded her dancing "devilish" and "lustful" in a statement earlier this year.
As her fame has risen, so has public anger at religious leaders trying to limit freedom of expression. The controversy is a timely reminder that while Islamic militants have made inroads in the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesians are in some ways more relaxed than Muslims elsewhere.
"I don't think there's anything sinful about dancing or having a good time. This is one of the few pleasures we have,'' says Suparno, a 45-year-old factory worker who attended a pro-Daratista rally with his wife last week. (Like many Indonesians, he has only one name.)
When Indonesia's longtime dictator Suharto was deposed in 1998, hard-line Islamic groups saw an opportunity to convert Indonesia's secular state into an Islamic one. Small militant groups began to attack karoake parlors, bars, and nightclubs, all complaining they were destroying the nation's moral fabric.
They won a number of quick victories, including tougher government laws on selling liquor during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and it seemed Indonesia was about to chart a much more Islamic course.
In some way, conservative Islam has continued to make steady gains in Indonesian society. More Indonesian women wear Islamic headscarves than a decade ago, and about 30 percent of the legislature is now controlled by Islamic or Islam- leaning parties.
But Islamic revivalism has mostly remained confined to personal choice rather than becoming a matter of state sanction. Although some may disapprove, women here are free to wear miniskirts, drink in bars - or shimmy their hips to make a living.
And as the case of Daratista is showing, many average Indonesians are finally standing up and saying they don't like being told what to do. The government has taken notice: Thursday in Jakarta, Habib Rizieq, the leader of a Muslim gang that specialized in attacking bars and nightclubs in Jakarta for two years, went on trial for inciting violence.
The reasons for this lie in Indonesia's largely tolerant culture, but also to public revulsion at censorship after the Suharto years, when no independent media voices were allowed.
"We have to appreciate Inul because freedom of expression wasn't allowed for 32 years under Suharto,'' says Diah Bintarini, a member of the Indonesian Women's Coalition, an activist group that organized a pro-Inul rally last week in Jakarta. "We won't let people take that freedom away again."
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