INDONESIAN RELIGIOUS FORMS AND THEIR INTERACTIONS
Indonesia is an archipelago nation 3,500 miles long by 1,000 miles wide (Koentjaraningrat). It ranks fifth in the world in population, with 150 million people as of 1985 (Denny 370). More than half of these live on Java, the capital island. The nation is made up of people of many ethnic groups that speak at least 250 mutually unintelligible languages, though most are related. Bahasa Indonesia ("the language of Indonesia") is used as the national language (Johns 202).
The archipelago has an ancient civilization that has been affected by many foreign peoples, including Indians, Arabs, Chinese, Portuguese and Dutch (Geertz 7). At the beginning of the 20th century, the islands making up modern Indonesia were the Dutch East Indies. Dutch colonial rule was ended by the Japanese occupation of the region during World War II. Following World War II Indonesian independence was declared by the nationalist leader Sukarno. Independence from the Dutch was realized in 1949, and parliamentary government was established to govern the country (Denny 370). The constitution establishing the government included a state philosophy called the antjasila (Five Principles), the first of which is belief in the one Supreme God (Johns 203). Indonesia has had two long ruling presidents: Sukarno and Suharto, whose presidencies were split by a Muslim led anti communist massacre in 1965 (Denny 371).
About 90 percent of Indonesian nationals claim to be Muslim (Denny 370) making Indonesia the country with the most Muslims in the world, over 130 million (Johns 202). The only other major religion is Christianity, which has about 8.5 percent of Indonesians as adherents (Kipp and Rodgers 3). Despite the abundance of Muslims in Indonesia, their presence and impact have apparently been neglected by all but a few scholars and overlooked by Westerners in general. This report will survey the predominant...