The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtap20

Being Atheist in the Religious Harmony State of

Indonesia

Timo Duile

To cite this article: Timo Duile (2020): Being Atheist in the Religious Harmony State of Indonesia,
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2020.1829022

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2020.1829022

Published online: 22 Oct 2020.

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The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2020.1829022

Being Atheist in the Religious Harmony

State of Indonesia
Timo Duile*

This article analyses the political situation of non-believers in Indonesia, a state based
on the belief in one almighty God or a divine entity (Ketuhanan yang Maha Esa) as
depicted in the national ideology of Pancasila. Applying an ethnographic view, the
contribution suggests that atheists are, on the one hand, outside of politics, since
political culture in Indonesia requires references to religion, which are used to
construct the narrative of Indonesia as a religious harmony state. On the other hand,
their atheism can enable them to see fundamental antagonisms within society and
politics to which many other Indonesian turn a blind eye. In order to give an
impression of the multifaceted political attitudes of atheists in Indonesia, this article
outlines some examples of atheist life in Jakarta and investigates why some situate
themselves outside, some within, the political realm.

Keywords: Indonesia; Jakarta; Atheism; Religious Harmony State; Political

Anthropology

Introduction
A common prayer marked the opening of a discussion I attended one morning at the
Jakarta Islamic State University, followed by a citation of some verses from the Quran.
Emphasising patriotism and the inseparable connection between the Indonesian state
and Islam, the participants also sang the national anthem together—after all, Indone-
sia is a state based on belief in one almighty God or divinity (Ketuhanan yang Maha
Esa). But the discussion that followed this opening ceremony had a rather unusual
topic: it was about a book entitled The Atheist Muslim by Ali Rizvi, recently translated
into Indonesian (Sang Muslim Ateis) by a libertarian activist (Rizvi 2017). Rizvi, born
in Pakistan and now a Canadian citizen, describes in this autobiography his journey

* Timo Duile is affiliated with the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Bonn University. Correspondence to:
Timo Duile, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Bonn University Nassestr. 2, 53113 Bonn, Germany.
Email: tduile@uni-bonn.de

© 2020 The Australian National University

2 T. Duile
from religion to atheism. The book is, however, not simply against religion in all its
forms as publications by adherents of the New Atheism are. It, rather, argues that
someone can be a Muslim in a ‘merely cultural’ way: just as atheists and agnostics
in the West attend Christmas celebrations with their families, ‘atheist Muslims’ can
be ‘cultural Muslims’ without actual belief. The thrust of the event was thus to under-
mine the assumption that atheists actively want to destroy religion and Islamic culture
in Indonesia. It was organised by a libertarian group advocating on issues such as tol-
erance and economic liberty. However, as one of the attendants said to me, a discus-
sion about atheism would not have been possible on a ‘secular’ campus. The event had
to be held at an Islamic university, since only these institutions would be above suspi-
cion of promoting non-religiosity when conducting a discussion on such a controver-
sial topic.
This vignette depicts the difficult situation for atheist expression in Indonesia. A
religious frame (here, the setting of an Islamic University) is necessary, and even
within such a frame the topic is discussed as a matter of abstract concepts rather
than one of personal convictions brought into the public. This article deals with the
exclusion of atheism from Indonesian politics because it became a ‘constitutive
outside’1 of the religious, supposedly harmonious nation. Also, this contribution is
concerned with the self-positioning of atheists in Indonesia in and outside politics.
My research revealed that atheist life in Indonesia is diverse, highly fragmented, and
has thus developed distinct approaches toward politics. Besides the above mentioned
case of libertarian activists trying to increase tolerance and acceptance of non-believ-
ers, leftist atheists and non-political atheists have also found different ways of dealing
with political issues and political engagement. ‘Atheist life’ here signifies a specific
stance in the world: the lack of metaphysical convictions so common in large parts
of Indonesian society assigns a distinct life to atheists as they usually feel estranged
when expressing religiosity in rituals, utterances or everyday behaviour. However, I
suggest that atheist life is usually attached to supplementary ways of making sense
of society, for instance liberalism or socialism, or simply searching for secular social
niches and being otherwise apolitical. In other words, there is no ‘Indonesian
atheist life’ in the singular but multiple ‘Indonesian atheist lives’.
Atheism is often a sensitive topic in many predominantly Muslim countries. This
issue has been neglected in the scholarly discourse, where other cultures are treated
as almost exclusively religious entities (implicitly against the secular West).
However, secularism—and atheism as an extreme form of secularism—has become
an important, albeit marginal, issue in cultural studies in recent years (for example,
Arweck, Bullivant, & Lee 2013; for an earlier overview, see Bullivant & Lee 2012).
Work on these issues has contributed to our knowledge about religion and science
as forms of life (Salazar & Bestard 2015), discourses between Muslims and the New
Atheism (Khalil 2017; Malik 2018), and concerning the relation between secularism,
religion and forms of critique (Asad et al. 2013). Talal Asad’s (2003) groundwork
has also inspired work on secularism in Muslim countries (for example, Agrama
2012; Fadil 2011; Saba 2016). In recent years, some works have been published
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 3

about atheism in religious societies in Asia (Quack 2012; Hasani 2016; Schäfer 2016;
Blechschmidt 2018; Duile 2018; Al Hariri, Walid, & Maris 2019; Binder 2020).
This article contributes to this ethnographic work and also concerns the wider pol-
itical circumstances of state and society. It draws on a four-month period of fieldwork
conducted in 2016 and 2017, in which I was able to talk to dozens of atheists in the
Greater Jakarta area, as well as online research started in 2014. Since then, I have
had frequent contact with many of my interlocutors, both on- and offline. During
and after the fieldwork, I participated in gatherings of atheist groups in the Greater
Jakarta Area and also conducted participatory observation in some daily life settings.
First contacts with atheists were derived from searches for interlocutors in online
groups as well as within my network of Indonesian friends. After posting in online
groups that I was conducting research into atheism and wanted to know more
about atheist life, I was able to meet dozens of atheists face to face, and in many
cases follow-up meetings took place. In these meetings I focused on general issues
first, asking why and how my interlocutors became atheists and what that meant
for their everyday lives and relations to a state based on religion. Usually I let the athe-
ists choose a place where they felt safe to conduct our conversations. This also pro-
vided some initial insights into the spaces they spend time in, and in some cases I
was also able to meet cliques of atheist friends there. Being a researcher from
Europe often made my encounters with the atheists easy: many directly trusted me
as they knew that atheism is not a controversial topic in Europe. They assumed that
I would not hold prejudices common in Indonesian society (for example, that atheists
are people without morals, communists or threaten the country). Also, I revealed my
personal agnostic thoughts and engaged in conversations on belief, doubt and atheism
based on personal experiences. From these rather vague inputs I began to sketch pat-
terns of how atheists engage with their social environment and the state. During sub-
sequent meetings I had the opportunity to ask about these issues in more detail.
Conversations and interviews, varying in length from about 20 minutes to several
hours, form the main source of information. Friendships as well as controversial dis-
cussions with atheists have deepened my insight into atheist life in Indonesia since
those initial discussions.

The Religious Harmony State: Atheism’s Position in Indonesia

The case of Indonesia is somewhat paradigmatic for many religious societies, but it
differs in the sense that the political foundations of the state are pluri-religious, yet
monotheistic. Religion and politics are interlinked. One could say that the discussion
mentioned in the opening vignette was highly political in a country that is not only
based on monotheism as a Staatsfundamentalnorm (‘fundamental norm of the
state’, the Indonesian Constitutional Court uses this German term, see Sinn 2014,
231) but also requires its citizens to subscribe to one of the officially acknowledged reli-
gions.2 In recent years, society in Indonesia has become increasingly conservative and
political statements often refer to Islamic populism (van Bruinessen 2013; Hadiz
4 T. Duile
2016). This development constantly limits room for non-conformist behaviour and
expression. Peer pressure within society has risen but so has discontent with religion.
Many atheist informants told me that being forced to be religious undermined their
faith. However, atheists are to a certain degree doomed to stay outside the political
arena since ‘proper’ politics and acceptable political behaviour in Indonesia cannot
be critical when it comes to religion. Acceptable political behaviour and utterances
even explicitly require references to religion (Duile & Bens 2017).
Atheism thus emerges as a constitutive outside of Indonesia’s political arena. The
increasingly religious foundation of hegemonic discourses is constantly in search of
its ‘outside’, that is, enemies and threats to Indonesian identity. In recent years, this
construction of enemies of both the nation and religion has, for instance, led to wide-
spread anti-LGBT discourse (Ridwan & Wu 2018). Also, other identities, especially
when they become political, have been conceptualised as the outside or the other of
Indonesian religious nationalism. For instance, in 2005 the influential MUI (Majelis
Ulama Indonesia, Council of Indonesian Ulama) declared in a fatwa that pluralism,
secularism and liberalism are forbidden (haram) (Ichwan 2013, 80–81; Kersten
2015, 1). Atheism as the other of Indonesianness is often not explicit in debates, a
fact that distinguishes this issue from other discursively constructed ‘threats’ such as
LGBT issues. It is, however, implicitly present as a cipher of the unsaid, something
that one has to avoid when one wants to enter into politics. The idea of atheism as
a hostile, threatening force has been evident in Indonesian political thinking since
the 1960s when the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia,
PKI)—until 1965 one of the largest communist parties in the world and part of the
Indonesian government under Sukarno—was eradicated in a bloody operation by
the armed forces. This resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of PKI
members and sympathisers and was probably planned by Suharto and the military
and mainly executed by the latter (Robinson 2018). In order to give legitimation to
the ‘disappearance’ of the communists, official state discourses linked communism
to atheism. Even though the PKI was never openly against religion and, rather,
went to great lengths to support the ideological foundations of the state, including
the notion of the one almighty God (Aidit 1964), the political propaganda of the
Suharto regime made atheism and communism into equivalents in the minds of
many Indonesians.
The idea of a harmonious society was already a crucial feature of political culture
under Indonesia’s first president Sukarno as he distrusted political parties (Legge
2003, 301). He believed in a common Indonesian political culture where nationalism,
Islam and communism did not emerge as competing political forces but as pillars of a
national consensus. After 1965, however, communism was eradicated from that con-
sensus. In the so-called New Order (Orde Baru), the nation was conceptualised as a
family with the second president Suharto as the father of development (bapak pem-
bangunan). The New Order ideology stressed an organic unity between the state
and society allowing no room for conflict (Aspinall 2005, 23). In this respect, the
New Order approach, which saw the ideal citizens as a passive, floating mass
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 5

(massa mengganbang), was deeply depoliticising, leaving politics only to certain

groups of politicians seeking consensus through deliberation, as stated in the fourth
sila of Indonesia’s national ideology. The New Order’s depoliticisation was based on
the notion of harmony. To put it in a nutshell, ‘Suharto thought ideological compe-
tition an entirely unsuitable model of politics in Indonesia. Politics, rather, was not
about ideas and their robust competition, but rather about managing processes to
achieve already accepted (or imposed) conceptions’ (Elson 2008, 247).
Even though wrapped in Indonesian cultural terms, it has been shown that this pol-
itical thinking also had roots in the anti-Enlightenment reaction of European philos-
ophy (Bourchier 1998, 205). As a result, institutions in politics and even in civil society
are usually eager to veil antagonisms, and the ‘indigenous’ idea of consensus through
deliberation tends to dominate political practice. Debates and underlying discourses
must, therefore, rely on unifying signifiers. Even though Indonesia is not an Islamic
country, acknowledged religions in general, and Islam in particular, constitute such
unifying signifiers. Religion and limited religious pluralism further set the frame for
the harmony state. This view also emerges when it comes to debates on religious
freedom. The prevailing opinion sets religious views and feelings above freedom of
expression (Lindsey & Butt 2016).
During my research on atheism in Indonesia, I also had the opportunity to meet
with Agus, an employee at the Ministry of Religion. He was keenly interested in my
research, and throughout our conversation in a coffee shop on Jalan Thamrin in
downtown Jakarta he stressed the necessity for maintaining social harmony; his Min-
istry assumed an important role in this regard. Our conversation took place in the
aftermath of huge protests against the Christian governor of Jakarta who was
accused of blasphemy by Islamic groups. Although these protests were never men-
tioned directly by Agus (as a state official he upheld the picture of a conflict-free
society), it was clear that his notion of harmony was also influenced by what had hap-
pened roughly three months earlier in the very street we were looking at. A year prior
to that, an Islamist terror attack had taken place on Jalan Thamrin. Through the
windows of the coffee shop we could see the police post where a police officer had
been shot to death by a terrorist. But that was also not mentioned during our discus-
sion. For Agus, like many Indonesians, religion is inherently good. He was eager to
portray Indonesia as a modern country guaranteeing civil rights to its citizens. But
when it came to religion, there were some restrictions. ‘Indonesia’ he told me,
acknowledges the freedom of belief [kebebasan beragama] as long as [it is] in line
with the harmony of the communities of faith [kerukunan umat beragama]. […]
Actually it is allowed [to not believe in God], but that is perceived as a disturbance
of harmony when it is brought to the public. […] If someone spreads disbelief in
public, harmony will be disturbed, and there are tools for the state to restrict
that. (Interview with Agus, Ministry of Religion, 28 February 2017)
Agus was curious about my research, especially what I had found out so far concerning
atheists. He was well aware of the existence of atheists in Indonesia and admitted that
the state is not able to convince atheists to give up their unbelief. However, he
6 T. Duile
expressed his hope that atheists would not make their viewpoints public, making
atheism political. That view is probably widespread among state officials. In 2010
when the Indonesian Constitutional Court heard the case of the blasphemy law and
found it to be in accordance with the Indonesian Constitution, the chief of the
court, Mahfud MD, declared that it is not personal beliefs that are punishable.
Within the forum internum, Mahfud declared, there are no laws stipulating what
one must believe or not believe. Atheism is only dangerous (blasphemous or a poten-
tial cause of social unrest) as a forum externum, that is, if it is made public (Hasani
2016, 201).
This oppressive framing—by the religious harmony state and its discourses—results
in common prejudice against atheists, though the issue of prejudice against atheists is
not only widespread in Indonesia (see, for instance, Cragun et al. 2012; Gervais and
Norenzayan 2012). As a means to counteract misperception and prejudice, secular
groups have suggested that ‘coming out’ as an atheist may help convince religious
people that atheists do not represent a threat and can actually be moral beings
(Abbott & Mollen 2018). This is notoriously difficult, however, in Indonesia. Even
though some atheists speak out in public and discussions among believers and atheists
are initiated to abolish prejudices (Valbiant 2020), the majority of Indonesian atheists
‘come out’ only in narrow circles of like-minded or progressive friends. They fear not
only law enforcement but also social sanction, especially atheists from the lower classes
who rely on their relatives as networks of mutual support.

Atheists and the (non-)Political

Defining atheism is not an easy task. Numerous definitions appear in research on this
topic. While most definitions stress that atheism implies the belief that there is no God
(for example, Martin 2007, 1), some emphasise that it also accounts for belief in Gods
or any forms of divine beings (Baggini 2003, 3; Eller 2010, 1) while others even define it
as active forms of rejecting such belief (McGrath 2004, 175; for a general overview, see
Bullivant 2013). As far as the topic came up in conversations with interlocutors, they
stressed similar notions, especially that they do not believe in God (in a specific Islamic
or Christian way) or, more generally, in what in Indonesia is called Ketuhanan yang
Maha Esa. Some went further, actively arguing against the existence of God by
giving scientific or moral reasons and insisting that atheism also means a scientific,
materialist worldview. This was especially the case among interlocutors I identify as
‘santri atheists’, that is, atheists who put an emphasis on doctrine whereas their
abangan counterparts rely on what Bullivant (2013) has labelled ‘negative atheism’,
that is, the simple absence of belief without active rejection. The terms santri and
abangan, originally used to describe distinct Muslim identities on Java, are further
explained below.
The unbelief of the atheists unfolds in what Smith and Cragun (2019, 320) have
called the ‘belief axis’. Atheist individuals do not believe in God, but the boundary
with other categories on this axis (agnosticism) is porous, and in most cases a
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 7

gradual transition occurs from belief through agnosticism to atheism (and in some
cases back again, but these cases are not covered in this article). On the other axis,
the belonging or affiliation axis, almost all atheists in Indonesia are apostates or, to
use the less derogative term from Cragun and Hammer (2011), ‘deconverts’. People
who undergo a process of deconversion have been raised with a religious affiliation.
The secondary identities discussed here such as libertarianism, leftist identities or
anti-Islamic notions are tools through which deconverts can express their new
forms of belonging. Sometimes it is sufficient to belong to an atheist group (on- or
offline), but political convictions or social habitus can expand the field of belonging
in which atheist identities unfold.
Atheism in Indonesia is an apolitical topic as it represents the other of the suppo-
sedly harmonious religious society. But does that mean that atheists refrain from
calling themselves political? In the following, I outline some cases that I found to be
typical among my interlocutors. These cases are, to some degree, ideal types and in
practice many atheists I spoke to actually exhibited characteristics of more than one
of these categories. Some atheists may not identify with any categories in this
scheme. However, based on my engagement with atheists in Indonesia between
2014 and 2020, both online and in ‘real life’, I found these categories to be useful heur-
istic devices when describing the crucial features of atheist life in Indonesia. My aim is
not, therefore, to give a complete picture of atheists’ political views in Indonesia but,
rather, to show some features of their diversity.
The first category describes atheists who call themselves apolitical and never engage
in politics. That does not mean, however, that they do not observe politics or have
opinions about political processes. Their apolitical stance derives from their view
that politics is potentially threatening to them and it is best to avoid becoming
involved in politics. Other atheists are heavily influenced by right-wing discourses
from the West. Due to their negative experiences of Islamic intolerance, they are
willing to engage in anti-Muslim debates on social media, but they are apolitical in
the sense that they never take part in political actions or engagement. Political engage-
ment in Indonesia would be a lost cause for them. Since they also adopt anti-leftist
stances from transnational right-wing discourses, they see Indonesia, despite its
state-sponsored anti-communism, as a socialist/leftist country that is in constant
decline. These atheists are labelled right-wing atheists (ateis kanan) by their left-
wing counterparts (ateis kiri), but they often disagree with that ascription. And it is
indeed an interesting question whether anti-Muslim discourses from right-wing
groups in the West are still ‘right wing’ in Indonesia, where criticism of Islam is not
aimed at a minority group but, rather, at the (often threatening) majority.
Unlike the ateis kanan, the ateis kiri usually engage in political debates and actions.
The latter are also influenced by transnational discourses. As transnational left-wing
discourses are often more supportive of Muslims, left-wing atheists do not view
Islam and religion in general as problematic. However, it is not atheism alone that
drives their engagement but, rather, social issues. Referring to critical versions of Indo-
nesia’s history, left-wing atheists know that communism and religion were not
8 T. Duile
contradictory in the country’s early years, and they do not view religion as their enemy
(Duile 2018). They, rather, view reactionary religiosity as a by-product of capitalist
marginalisation. Finally, there are atheists I consider libertarian. The libertarians I
met in Indonesia were all secular. Some were believers, some were not, and all regarded
religion as a private issue. They see themselves as political persons, but atheism does
not constitute their main focus of political engagement. Fostering acceptance of a
society for people not believing in God is, rather, a by-product of their struggle for tol-
erance and individual liberties in general.
‘Be careful what you are saying on social media’, my friend Andi reminded me in
response to a political posting of mine on Facebook. After the 2019 presidential elec-
tion, I gave a short interview for Deutsche Welle in which I criticised the government
and its closeness to the oligarchy but also pointed to the increasing conservativism in
Indonesian politics. Andi did not suggest that what I had said in the interview was
wrong. In fact, I knew he probably agreed with everything I had said, but for Andi poli-
tics is dangerous. One can make fun of it but only among close friends. Andi came to
Jakarta about ten years ago. Raised in a Malay Muslim family in North Sumatra, he lost
his faith when he came of age but never confessed it to his family. While living with his
parents and already deconverted, he had pretended to pray (pura-pura berdoa) and
still does so when visiting his relatives in order to avoid discussions which, he said
to me, would neither convince him to become a Muslim nor his family to accept
atheism. Living on his own in Jakarta made him feel free to a certain degree. Once,
I met him in his government building office in Central Jakarta. He described his col-
leagues as friendly, and I asked him whether they knew that he is an atheist. ‘Only very
close friends know it’, he said, and when we talked with his friends the issues of
atheism or religion were never brought up. When he was new to the office his col-
leagues sometimes asked him to join the Islamic prayer, but Andi made excuses
and after a while they stopped asking him. ‘They know that I am not interested’,
Andi said. They know this without openly discussing dissenting views on religion.
Although this is a different social practice than pretending to pray with his family,
the main objective is the same: avoiding social conflict. Andi told me about an edu-
cational programme in his office that intended to strengthen nationalism by singing
the national anthem and conducting prayer together. At first Andi did not join, but
his supervisors started to complain. Now Andi participates in what he views as a
rather absurd ceremony. Andi sometimes joined gatherings of other fellow atheists
in a nearby restaurant and when we joined these meetings together, people often
talked about everyday issues, leaving politics as a rather marginal topic.
For Andi, being an atheist in Indonesia means not engaging in politics. Andi works
in a government institution where his everyday observations of state administration
have lead to a view of the state that is antithetical to the official depiction. The
state’s demand for nationalism, in which the state is portrayed as a coherent, well-
ordered and sublime entity is, for Andi, rather absurd. For example, while his office
building has an entrance with a large lobby, aquariums and ornamental plants,
upon entering the working section, one finds oneself in a chaotic environment.
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 9

Some people even seem to dwell there. Since the traffic during rush hour is so bad,
some sleep overnight on their office floor. People store personal items in the cup-
boards; and cook, eat and watch television in their offices after working hours.
Some play games on their computers. Behind its official façade, the religious
harmony state is remarkably profane here, but Andi does not contradict its basic
assumption about not causing dissent. Andi is probably one of the atheists Pak
Agus from the Ministry of Religion would consider harmless, even though he works
for the state.
At one gathering of atheists near Andi’s office, I met Nur. When Nur heard that I
was from a country in Europe with a reputation for accepting refugees, he directly
asked me about what he called the ‘refugee crisis’ (krisis pengungsi). He could not
understand why the governments of some European countries had let so many
Muslim people in. In his view, states in Europe had become ‘flooded’ (dibanjiri) by
Muslim immigrants, and he considered that a serious threat. I explained to him
that I am not so pessimistic, but he was not convinced by my arguments. ‘You will
import all the problems with religion (impor masalah agama) to Germany if your gov-
ernment will not stop it’; he warned, ‘now you are tolerant, but as soon as Muslims
achieve an influential position, they will not be as tolerant as you guys are towards
them now’. His viewpoint is not surprising since he regularly reads anti-Muslim
articles. Western narratives about how Muslim immigrants will eventually seize
power, for instance as articulated in Michel Houellebecq’s bestseller Soumission
(2015), express for some Indonesian atheists a global view on Islam, a view that is
often shaped also by their personal experiences. Sometimes, Nur posts articles from
organisations like Breitbart News or the British National Party in atheist online discus-
sion groups. Since participant observation in online media also means that I partici-
pate in these discussions, I have occasionally shared my views on these topics and
warned against right-wing propaganda. Consequently, some right-wing atheists
viewed me as a naive left-wing academic, and some even started to avoid talking to
me. But Nur is different. Even though he disagrees with me, we openly discuss such
topics. ‘So what about political change in Indonesia’, I asked him at one of the gather-
ings. He replied, ‘there is no way this country can change. When people are so reli-
gious, they lack reason’. Even though Nur actively engages in political debates,
doing so outside the atheist community is not an option. For him, atheism and
anti-Muslim criticism go hand-in hand. One cannot be a real atheist without criticis-
ing religion in general and Islam in particular. He agrees with the critiques of the New
Atheists, mentioning Harris’ The End of Faith (2004) and Dawkins’ The God Delusion
(2006) as convincing books. Whenever he had confessed his atheism to Muslims, he
said that he had seldom experienced acceptance. Several times he had even received
threats. Similar stories from fellow atheists circulate within the atheist community.
It is not uncommon among atheists in Indonesia to search for like-minded people,
and online media provides a great opportunity for doing so anonymously. It has to be
stressed here that while online groups may help to form ‘forbidden identities’, as
Schäfer (2016) outlined in her insightful account on Indonesian atheists, I hesitate
10 T. Duile
to call that phenomenon ‘activism’ as Schäfer did. These online groups do not aim to
reach out to the public and, further, the atheists I talk to do not view engagement in
these groups as activism. Online engagement, however, is often an important step to
strengthening atheist views. The first offline meetings formed around 2010. Many
online activists now meet offline in regular gatherings. Meeting offline is considered
a valuable addition by these online networks of atheists. In most major cities, such
groups are now well established. Some of my interlocutors had even abandoned
online discussion entirely and only engage offline with other atheists they have met
in these groups. Participants in offline gatherings are mostly young (between 20
and 35), often male, and in many cases from the (upper-)middle classes. These
groups sometimes have their own rituals mocking or, ironically, imitating religion,
for instance performing a secret Santa before Christmas, calling gatherings
‘jumatan’ (a term used for Friday prayers in mosques) or referring to well-known
and respected people within their community as nabi (prophet). Similar to online
communities, these loose circles may suggest the existence of action-oriented commu-
nities united by atheism as shared conviction. However, when conducting participa-
tory observation in some of these groups, I did not find them to be action-oriented.
They are an important means to strengthen the atheist views of the individuals enga-
ging in them, but they are not meant to address the wider public. Configurations of
atheist identities almost always take place in a realm outside official political practices,
but atheist convictions may have political implications beyond atheist circles.
Within the wider atheist community in Jakarta, a rupture occurred a few years ago
when distinct political views expressed by some members became a controversial
subject for discussion both on- and offline. The adherents of New Atheism, often criti-
cal and polemical about religion in general, faced opposition from what some atheists
call the left-wing atheists. These ateis kiri see religion as a potentially liberating force
when it serves the aims of tolerance and social justice. At a discussion about Marxism
and religion conducted by a progressive Protestant church, I met Markus. A young
employee at a multimedia company, he was raised in a Catholic Javanese family but
began to join atheist gatherings in 2014. As someone from the lower middle-class, it
soon became obvious to him that his habitus was distinct from that of the mostly
upper-class atheists at these gatherings. His political views were also different.
Reading different historical narratives to the official Suharto propaganda, he soon
became aware that the opposition between religion and communism had been
made up by the New Order regime. ‘Religion and social justice used to work hand
in hand’, he explained to me, and ‘now many atheists hate religion, but why should
atheists hate religion and religious people? They are not all stupid’. Markus began
to participate in a progressive Protestant community, together with other atheists
who felt increasingly alienated from established atheist circles. This community wel-
comes atheists and other people who are stigmatised in Indonesia such as LGBTIQ
persons.
Another atheist in this community is Fitri, originally from an abangan3 family in
East Java. After years spent searching for a social space in which she could openly
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11

discuss her atheism without being stigmatised, she finally found the Protestant com-
munity. While she describes herself as an atheist, Fitri became interested in Protestant
theology. She attended a programme held by the Ministry of Education for teachers
willing to teach in marginal parts of the country and was eventually sent to a school
on a remote island off the shore of North Sulawesi for one year. ‘I lived with religious
people there, all Protestants, and I learned how important religion is for them. Atheists
can be atheists, but they can also be empathic with religious people. No need to judge
them (nggak usah judge mereka)’, Fitri declared. Even though Fitri now only occasion-
ally joins the community meetings, she is an example of an atheist not hostile to reli-
gion and deeply concerned with issues of social justice. Atheists like her are political
not only in the sense that they are interested in politics, but also because they are
looking for ways to engage politically. Since it is not possible in Indonesia to carry
out political action under the banners of communism, socialism or atheism, they
join other progressive forces and they do not care if the organisations they work
with are religious. Their political engagement is not determined by atheism in the
first instance but by a vision of a more inclusive Indonesia. When I accompanied
some ateis kiri during the women’s march rally in Jakarta in 2017, Markus explained
that he was not there as an atheist but as a member of a progressive Christian com-
munity. Atheism and his membership of that community are not contradictory to
him. ‘They accept me as an atheist (menerima saya sebagai ateis), that is what counts’.
Markus and Fitri may be described as abangan atheists. They do not search for a
‘pure’ atheist doctrine but, rather, are concerned with rituals and other social practices.
In this sense, rituals can also mean political demonstrations or discussions about phil-
osophies of social justice. Santri atheists, on the other hand, are often adherents of the
New Atheism, eager to develop a coherent doctrine of what it means to be without
faith. For them, the ‘a’ in ‘atheism’ means a specific denial, whereas abangan atheists
are negative atheists, simply assuming the absence of God (Bullivant 2013). The santri
atheists are more concerned with the atheist community and do not desire mingling
with religious communities. In contrast, for the abangan atheists, the small Protestant
community or other progressive organisations become their social units. Fitri, for
example, once said that she felt that the Protestant community was like her family.
However, the conservative and capitalist notions of the Indonesian state have lead to
the alienation of ateis kiri from the state. This also affects their view of society: as the
state is eager to maintain the narrative that a religious, harmonious society has to be
achieved and maintained despite growing social inequality, ateis kiri also feel disaf-
fected by the religious harmony state and its society. What appears as well-ordered
and harmonious on the surface is, for the ateis kiri, an inherently absurd socio-political
constellation. This outlook on society is articulated explicitly in political online
memes. Again, these memes seldom deal with the issue of atheism directly—but,
rather, aim at general features of the absurd society. Ateis kiri are highly political.
The fact that they cannot use atheism as their political identity does not bother
them much since they value issues of social justice more highly. This they have in
common with the libertarian atheists mentioned in the opening vignette. Libertarian
12 T. Duile
atheists, just like their left-wing counterparts, wish that their atheism could be socially
accepted. But instead of promoting social recognition for atheism, libertarians only
promote it under the wider issue of civil liberties. For ateis kiri, social justice is
what counts, and they believe that when this is achieved, society will become more tol-
erant. For libertarian atheists, the absence of state intervention is what counts, and if
the state interferes less in society, religion as a matter of political identity will become
less important.
When I discussed with atheists how to map the atheist communities in Indonesia, I
was always eager to use categories that they themselves used, for instance the notions
of ateis kiri and ateis kanan. However, some atheists reminded me to be careful with
categories in general since many atheists felt that they were not represented by any
single category. It is, indeed, true that these categories, including the additional cat-
egories of non-political and libertarian atheists outlined above, are ideal types, and
atheist life often manoeuvres between these categories. In what follows, I provide an
example of how atheists manoeuvre between categories and approach the political
in Indonesia.
Wulan is an atheist who is well known among the atheist community in Jakarta.
Raised in a santri family, at home she had to wear a jilbab. When I met her for the
first time in a cafe in East Jakarta in 2016, she told me that her mother had very
recently thrown away some of her books because she considered them to be un-
Islamic. Among the books considered unfaithful were titles from both the New Athe-
ists and feminist and philosophical volumes often read by the ateis kiri. Wulan was
deeply disappointed about the loss of her books, telling me that in such situations it
is good to be able to talk to like-minded friends. In the ensuing years, I met Wulan
on several occasions, sometimes at gatherings with atheists that leftists would consider
ateis kanan or, applying my own terminology, santri atheists. But Wulan also attended
the women’s march together with the ateis kiri. When I met her in 2019, she had
unveiled and she told me that she now lived on her own. Her family was still watching
her, however. When she posted a quote by Immanuel Kant on her social media
account, her parents told her that the quote was against Islamic teaching. ‘They are
actually right’; she said, ‘if you use your own reason, it is against Islamic teaching’.
To a certain degree, Wulan shares some views with ateis kanan. She sees no progress-
ive potential in religion. While she is sceptical when it comes to socialism in practice,
she does not reject the idea of social justice and advocates on issues many ateis kanan
are sceptical about, such as feminism. As an atheist, she cannot be political. But she can
be so as a feminist and writes on this topic on her social media accounts. Her femin-
ism, however, was originally inspired by her atheism.

Conclusion: Atheism, the (non-)Political, and the Religious Harmony State

In this article I set out to describe how atheism in Indonesia affects atheists’ member-
ship in society and their agency within it, and how atheists see their political agency
being hampered by their non-religiosity. The interview data underscore that while
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 13

through atheism their agency is very limited, sometimes atheists’ non-religiosity

enables them to see politics, the nation and society from a completely different
angle. Initially this can lead to disaffection with politics and the state.
Prior to the 2019 presidential and legislative election, I asked some atheist friends
who they intended to vote for. While a few said that they would vote for the incumbent
Jokowi as the lesser evil, the majority said that they would deliberately spoil their
ballots. This decision reflects a deep alienation from the religious harmony state
and from official politics in Indonesia. As the political culture denies atheism the
opportunity to be part of Indonesian society, atheists are in turn free to question
the very fundamentals of that political culture. An atheist stands outside politics
because they are beyond the discursive frame of the religious harmony state. It is
this very constellation that allows atheists to see politics and society in general in a
way that expresses this antagonism. Whereas Agus from the Ministry of Religion
stressed the notion of Indonesia as a harmonious religious society, atheists see
behind that façade. For instance, in his work within a state institution, Andi experi-
ences the state as an entity that exercises its power through performance but all this
is nothing more than an absurd play for him. He accepts this as an inevitable con-
dition, finding his own spaces in niches. Nur views society and Indonesian politics
as being in decline and not worth saving. His analysis is highly political, but his behav-
iour is outside the political realm since he never expresses his views in public. The ateis
kiri and the libertarians see society from the outside as well because they are positioned
there by the workings of Indonesian politics. But unlike Andi and Nur, they find ways
of engaging with politics.
Being an atheist in Indonesia is something that affects every aspect of one’s life. One
has to find excuses and one has to negotiate with friends, families and with oneself, for
instance about the question of when to reveal one’s atheism and when to hide it. Athe-
ists are always in search of social spaces they can occupy. Private convictions cannot
easily be separated from how one thinks, behaves and engages with political issues.
The distinction between the forum internum and forum externum made by the
judges of Indonesia’s Constitutional Court does not, therefore, hold up when it
comes to social practices. But as shown by the cases above, atheists engaging in politics
never pose a direct threat to the religious harmony state. Their critique is more subtle
than most state officials could even imagine. Talking about a book on atheism within a
religiously framed event is just one example. The ateis kiri also find ways to be politi-
cal, to fundamentally challenge the foundations of the religious harmony state without
making their atheism the cause. Many atheists manoeuvre between apolitical and pol-
itical views, and between what I have called, subsequent to Geertz (1960, 126–130),
abangan and santri atheists. Whereas abangan are more concerned with syncretic
social practices and rituals (as they find no contradiction, for instance, in being
members of progressive religious communities), santri atheists stress coherent
atheist-materialist worldviews and tend to draw borders between atheist communities
and all others who have failed to adopt a ‘pure’ atheism. Exclusively atheist groups are,
thus, important to santri as they represent a way to establish atheist spaces with their
14 T. Duile
own structures, histories and rituals within Indonesian society. The ways atheism in
Indonesia unfold in co-existence with other forms of identities and belonging are,
indeed, manifold.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the support from the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace (ICRP) in
Jakarta during fieldwork. Also, I want to express my thanks to Mirco Göpfert and the participants
of the panel ‘Gestalten des Nichtpolitischen’ at the Conference of the German Association for
Social- and Cultural Anthropology in 2019 for their helpful remarks. Finally, I wish to thank the
anonymous peer reviewers for their comments, which, in my view, helped a lot to improve this
article.

Notes
[1] This term describes the process of identity formation in light of poststructuralist insights. Some
terms in language do not refer to something outside language, rather, they obtain their meaning
in relation and opposition to other terms in the system of language. In a concrete example, the
idea of Indonesian identity would appear to refer to something given a priori, while it actually
constitutes itself through its relation to its other. In poststructuralist political thinking, the ‘con-
stitutive outside’ is a radical outside, lacking a common measure with the ‘inside’. While the
constitutive outside emerges as an enemy, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have also
stressed that the constitutive outside is irrepresentable within the discourse on identity (for a
more detailed discussion, see Thomassen 2005, 110). Laclau’s and Mouffe’s idea fits well in
the case of atheism in Indonesia since atheism is the enemy, yet an enemy almost nobody
really speaks about—an enemy that escapes concrete symbolisation in language.
[2] Currently in Indonesia, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confu-
cianism are acknowledged as religions (agama), all conceptualised as monotheist faiths with
a single divine entity (Ketuhanan yang Maha Esa) at the top. However, the Constitutional
Court recently ruled that adherents of the traditional religions, in Indonesia commonly
known as kepercayaan, are also allowed to enter kepercayaan as their religious affiliation in
the religion column on the identity card. That decision, however, has drawn strong criticism
from religious, especially Islamic, organisations.
[3] The term abangan, originally introduced by Clifford Geertz, denotes Javanese Muslims who are
more concerned with rituals than Islamic doctrine, also incorporating Hindu-Buddhist aspects
into their rituals. The abangan’s basic social unit is the household, whereas the pious santri
view the ummat (Islamic community) as their primary social unit (Geertz 1960, 126–130).

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