Sukmawati aside, few Indonesians would dare to change their religion

On October 26, Sukmawati Sukarnoputri, a daughter of Indonesia's founding president Sukarno, converted from Islam to Hinduism. It is rare enough for ordinary Indonesians to change the religion into which they were born. So when a member of the country's elite forsook her majority religion for a minority one, it inevitably became a cause celebre.

In response, Indonesians took to social media to express their views on the matter with most Muslims expressing their disapproval, though some came to her defence.

Controversy aside, Sukarnoputri faced no administrative obstacle to her conversion. Nor was her family opposed to it. She claimed that her three children and siblings had all given their blessings. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that her hassle-free conversion owed much to her family's political and social standing.

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For most Indonesians, however, changing one's religion can be a perilous business, which explains why in the last 10 years the percentage of Indonesians who profess to be Muslims has not changed much, at roughly 87 per cent. For the few who choose to convert or abandon their religion altogether, the process is often fraught with administrative difficulties and social stigma.

I experienced this first-hand several years ago when I tried to change the listing of my religion on my government-issued ID Card (KTP).

Born and raised in a Christian Indonesian-Chinese family, I was repeatedly reminded by my parents that we were fourth-generation Christians. My great grandparents from both paternal and maternal sides had converted to Protestant Christianity back in China, before my grandparents' eventual migration to Indonesia.

This is, I was told, quite unique since most Indonesian-Chinese Christians were usually converted in Indonesia.

My mother used to tell me with pride that her grandparents had been baptised into the faith by John Sung (1901-1944), the renowned Chinese Evangelist, and knew Andrew Gih (1901-1985), another evangelist who in later years founded Indonesia's first Protestant bible seminary.

My paternal grandparents were also active members of the first Chinese Church in Surabaya, known then as Tiong Hwa Kie Tok Kau Hwe, and sat as its elders for many years.

Despite my family background, in my late teenage years, I decided to abandon Christianity. When my parents found out, they were devastated. For them, this was a break with family tradition and our status as generational Christians.

Like most Indonesians, my parents considered religion an important part of their identity. The Chinese Christian community was their tribe and it was appalling that I should be out of it.

Despite the subsequent family pressure on me to rejoin the church, be it from my parents or my other relatives, I remained steadfast in my apostasy. Being raised in a regimented religious system had definitely made me a religion-sceptic.

In 2012, as Indonesia was digitising its national ID Card system, it was reported in the local media that Indonesian citizens who did not adhere to the six state-recognised religions - Islam, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism - were allowed to leave their religion designation on official documents as blank. So I took the opportunity to do so. I was, as it turned out, too naive.

The process was a farce. At the local district office, my request to deregister myself as a Christian was rejected outright. The officials there blatantly said that "to leave it blank means you are a Communist". Many of my compatriots often think that Communism and atheism are interchangeable.

When I asked them to list me as an adherent of "kepercayaan [non-specific spiritualism]", they again refused, arguing that there were only six options. When I opted for Buddhism, they said they needed to have proof of my conversion from a Buddhist temple.

But one official, in an act of shameless proselytism, which obviously overcame his professionalism, told me that he did not need any certification if I wanted to change my religion to Islam. I adamantly turned down his offer and left the office with my official religion unchanged.

Another opportunity presented itself in 2017 when the Constitutional Court ruled that "kepercayaan" was now a viable option to state on government documents, I returned to the district office and tried to have my religion listing altered, to no avail. I was told that I needed to show documents proving that I belonged to a spiritualist practice. But I did not have any.

Nevertheless, my frustrating experiences paled in comparison to that of my first cousin, Albert Wiyono, 33, who was raised a Roman Catholic but decided to convert to Islam upon his marriage to a Muslim girl last year.

While he had no administrative problem in converting to Indonesia's majority religion - he told me that he received warm welcome from many Muslims - his conversion led to a rift with his own family, which has not yet healed.

His wedding was boycotted by his father and most of his relatives, except for my branch of the family. But our attendance earned us displeasure from his father and his siblings.

"I decided to convert [to Islam] because my future wife didn't want to raise her children in a two-faith environment," Wiyono said, "and I promised my father that I would still bring up my children in the Chinese culture but apparently it wasn't enough."

To this day, Wiyono remains estranged from his own family. His father has not even made the effort to see his newborn baby girl.

Worse still, apostasy can sometimes land Indonesians in trouble with the law, as the 40-year-old Alexander Aan discovered in 2012. Aan became notorious in Indonesia as a "fallen Muslim who turned to atheism". But it was the charge of blasphemy against Islam which landed him in jail for two and a half years.

Although Aan became a non-believer during his teenager years, he kept his view to himself and hid it from his conservative parents. He inadvertently outed himself when he made his controversial Facebook post that "God doesn't exist" and also criticised Islamic teachings online.

When I asked him if he had ever tried to change his religion officially, he replied in the negative.

"Even with no official change in my status as a Muslim, people continuously stigmatise me as an atheist, so why bother about formalities?"

The trauma was evident in Aan as I alluded to the fact that he had been beaten up by other inmates for being an atheist during his incarceration. Even today, almost 10 years after his conviction, Aan still finds it difficult to find employment. He told me that he had started tutoring some students in Mathematics but when their parents found out he was an atheist, they fired him.

Although Indonesia's constitution guarantees religious freedom, even the right to non-belief, there is no appetite among politicians or law enforcers to uphold this intrinsic right, which is unsurprising in one of the world's most religious countries. A 2020 poll by Pew Research found that 96 per cent of Indonesians associated belief in God with morality.

I have encountered quite a few Indonesian agnostics like me or even atheists but most maintain a closeted existence for fear of societal or even legal backlash. Even for Indonesian theists, converting to another religion is a risky affair, which is why very few dare cross the line.

Johannes Nugroho is a writer and political analyst from Surabaya, Indonesia

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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