THE INDONESIAN DIASPORA

 

Stay or Return?                    

Getting jobs overseas can be tough for Indonesian professionals, but the rewards are sweet.  The downsides include your kids straying from their Indonesian roots.  Duncan Graham reports.

When Ridwan quit as a section head with Indonesia’s Supreme Audit Board (BEPEKA) in 2006, friends thought he’d lost his abacus.  Who’d toss in a prestigious government position with a guaranteed pension – it didn’t compute.

His bosses were also bewildered.  They accused the top public servant who’d won a presidential award of betraying his country.  For Ridwan was determined to fulfil a long-held secret dream – to work in the West.

“I still have the red and white (Indonesia’s national colors) in my heart but I also want to be loyal to my profession,” said the assurance manager in New Zealand’s Office of the Auditor General.

“I’m proud of being Indonesian, showing others that we are capable people. I’m helping maintain NZ’s place as the least corrupt country in the world.

“Being away from my country is difficult for my little family (he has a wife and son) and my mother in Jakarta, but not for me.  I’ve worked in the Philippines, South Africa, the US and Australia.”

Ridwan is part of the Indonesian Diaspora, a small but expanding group of Indonesian professionals with transferable skills and no-fear attitudes.  They’re comfortable sipping café latte in sidewalk bars, can flick off English idioms as though they’d been born in London, (UK, Ohio or Ontario) yet want to retain links with their motherland.

It’s not just colleagues’ derision that cripple the ambitions of Indonesians desiring clean air, big skies and space to expand salaries, mind and career.  Indonesia’s bar on dual citizenship also hurts. 

In early July the world’s first Congress on the Indonesian Diaspora was staged in Los Angeles.  In a message to the three-day event President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said his government was “taking concrete steps to develop a strong partnership with the Indonesian Diasporas,” and planning “special visas” for those who have renounced Indonesian citizenship.

Ridwan was on a panel of four speakers at a public forum in Wellington, NZ. The discussion – Stay or Return? The dilemma facing overseas students took up concerns raised at the US Congress organised by the Indonesian Embassy in Washington DC.

The Wellington event was initiated by the NZ-Indonesia Association.

Polytechnic lecturer Iwan Tjhin, a member of the audience, criticised speakers coming from “good financial backgrounds” and overlooking issues like corruption, inequality and discrimination that made people leave Indonesia.

“There’s a huge difference in the value of human life between NZ and Indonesia,” he said.  “Someone gets hit by a bus here and it’s page one news.  You get treated in hospital whoever you are – but not in Indonesia. If you don’t have the money you die.”

Iwan said he’d come from a poor family and had left to seek residency overseas when he was 17. 

His assertion was rejected by Sri Farley.  She’d grown up in a poor family of five children in Medan, North Sumatra.

“I went to a state school and a state university,” she said.  “My parents couldn’t pay. I studied hard and got an honors degree.  I went to Jakarta and became a commercial credit analyst at Bank Negara Indonesia.”

But when she moved to NZ in 1999 with her British husband Daniel she was faced with the rough reality: Like gentlemen and blondes, bosses prefer local graduates.

So she went back to university, struggled, persevered, got pregnant and graduated with distinction with a Masters degree in finance.

“Studying here is different,” she said.  “Staff are more supportive and there’s a collegial relationship with freedom of expression.”

Even then exercising new skills wasn’t easy.  After door knocking as an Indonesian and getting few opened she started using her married name – and found a carpet of welcome mats.

“Ridiculous?  Yes, but that’s the way it is,” she said.  “NZ employers aren’t comfortable using workers from developing countries. They’re OK with people from developed nations, especially if they’re Anglo-Saxon.”

Sri now works as a senior financial analyst with Inland Revenue, the NZ tax department. The hurdles achieving this position were high but she got the nod because her study grades were equally elevated.

“I love travelling so much,” she said. “I want our children to be able to speak Indonesian and appreciate Indonesian culture. If there’s an opportunity to work six months in Indonesia and six months in NZ I’ll go for it too.”

Winning a regular pay cheque was also a problem for Hendry Sutjiadi who got his doctorate in building science from Victoria University of Wellington this year.  Despite having ten years of concrete dust under his fingernails from building roads, bridges and high rises in East Java, NZ company heavyweights were initially unimpressed.

Originally from Surabaya he graduated cum laude with a Master’s degree from Petra University before becoming a project manager for a major construction company. He’s now working for NZ consulting engineers after months of resilience-testing rejections.

“Initially I didn’t want to go overseas, but was pushed by my wife Melissa,” Hendry said.  “We wanted somewhere better to live should we start a family. NZ was a cheaper place to study.”

Grace Pamungkas showed the forum derogatory newspaper cartoons of NZ prime minister John Key and commented that the right to criticise leaders, religion and social values could jolt the sensitivities of older Indonesians.

“My daughter can speak freely if I do anything wrong,” she said.  “This is a culture that respects the young.  I like that but it’s hard to adjust.  My colleagues work and relax differently.”

Grace is uncertain what she’ll do after graduating. Back in Jakarta she could pick up her past profession as an architect or take a university teaching post.  However these jobs probably wouldn’t pay enough to give her daughter an international-quality education.

Grace said her future depends on what Kintaka, 10, wants to do when she is older.  At this stage it looks as though Wellington is winning.

The primary school student has absorbed her new lifestyle so well she’s just won second place in a public speaking competition against local born kids.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 3 September 2012)

##

ASIAN CITIES - TOO BIG, TOO SICK, TOO CROWDED

Anywhere decent left to live?                                       

Among the forecasts on population growth here’s news to stress those smug folk who don’t live in big cities like Jakarta, preferring the better quality of life found in smaller centers: 

Be prepared: Your view of the mountains will disappear behind smog; motorbike engines will shatter your silence.

By 2015 nearly 2.5 billion people globally are expected to live in cities of up to one million compared with 600 million housed in cities of more than five million.

In brief the urban drift continues, but most growth will now occur in smaller cities.

That reverses past trends.  In 1940 Semarang had 200,000, a quarter of Jakarta’s population.  Since Independence the Central Java city has grown five fold, the capital 20 fold.

Once visitors seeking the ‘real’ Indonesia were told to head to the hills where splay-toed men trail buffaloes through mud and leather-skinned women thresh rice in parched paddocks.  But for how much longer?

Soon the majority will be cramped in kampong, not raising corn and cassava for national consumption, but problems for urban planners.  Only 30 per cent of Indonesians will live in rural areas by 2035.  Twenty years ago it was the other way around.

It’s a demographic shift so rapid you only have to return after a couple of years to find once-familiar landmarks turned to rubble. Few Western cities can match Indonesia’s speed of urban change because they’re shackled by prolonged planning, environmental concerns and rigid construction rules.

What’s going on?  Globalization, urbanization or nation-building?  Push or pull? These questions feature in Asian Cities, New Zealand historian Malcolm McKinnon’s study of megalopolis and metropolis in India, China and Indonesia, focusing on the two Javanese centers mentioned above.

Western cities are also expanding, though for different reasons. Growth in places like Germany’s Frankfurt and Canada’s Toronto comes from international migration, while most Asian cities rely on movements of locals seeking better wages.

The two main exceptions are Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, where foreigners are imported to do what the author calls the 3D jobs – dirty, difficult and dangerous. 

Unlike the opening of China to capitalism through political fiat, the economic development of Indonesia has no precise starting point.  The fall of Soekarno in 1965 was a critical point in history; it helped the West breathe more deeply but a flood of capital didn’t follow.

Under Soeharto the state kept control close to the State Palace.  Since his departure Jakarta has remained the magnetic political and entertainment pole of the Republic.  It seems that the much-heralded era of reformation and decentralisation was more sound than substance.

The Big Durian continues to seduce the hopeful and the hard up to seek their fortunes, out-charming Medan, Makassar and other regional centers despite the capital’s black hole reputation.

Compare this with Shanghai, not China’s capital but a huge and powerful attractant through its commercial energy and wealth, with 24 million residents, four million more than Beijing, yet so easy to access. 

If this situation was replicated in Indonesia industrial Surabaya would be the nation’s most populous.  Now too late.  The circling towns have expanded like cells on a slide, creating a borderless mess of terracotta and asphalt.

Semarang had its golden era as a trading port in the late years of Dutch colonialism, the third largest city exporting agricultural produce from the hinterland.  Now it has slipped to ninth place and according to Dr McKinnon is “unequivocally a provincial city.”

In the West the creation of the urban monster has been longer, slower but more consistent, dating back to the industrial revolution, then the centralization of government.

Asia is a fertile area for globalization studies but it’s a discipline where locals tread reluctantly. Says the author: “Scholarship in urban Asia remains, despite over 60 years of independent and independently-minded Asian governments, dominated by the Western academy.”

It would be good if this intellectual energy was leading towards solutions – but that doesn’t seem to be the goal.  Maybe because it’s all too difficult, like the job of town planning in a culture where rupiah, not rules, determine where and how you’ll live.

Asian cities don’t have to be gross.  Hong Kong has been rated as the world’s most liveable by The Economist magazine.

If Soekarno had acted back in the 1950s Jakarta could have been another Semarang and the nation’s capital would be Palangka Raya in Central Kalimantan.  President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono keeps the idea alive through occasional CPR, but not the necessary drip feed of dollars. 

If Jakarta can’t even complete a proper public transport system, or an athletes’ village for the Southeast Asian games without corruption, how could it cope in establishing an entirely new city? 

Would rebuilding be a better economic solution, despite the huge complexities and astronomic costs?  Elsewhere the models are mixed.  In 1960 Brazil shifted its capital to Brasilia, a city that now has 3.7 million residents. Rio, the nation’s center since the mid 16^th century now has only 4.5 million.

Less successful have been attempts to move Kuala Lumpur’s 2.6 million by creating Putrajaya. The new city has wide roads and green parks but only 70,000 residents.

It’s a pity that Dr McKinnon hasn’t explored these issues, preferring to concentrate on history and theory – interesting but of limited use.

We know Jakarta is overcrowded and already rushing towards failed city status on the grounds of traffic management and pollution.  What are needed are books on how to fix the problem.

ASIAN CITIES: Globalization, Urbanization and Nation Building

Malcolm McKinnon

NIAS Press 2011

(First published in The Sunday Post, 2 September 2012)

.

JAKARTA TEN-TEN

The Monas mystery gold heist:  Episode One

 Why doesn’t Indonesian television produce local detective programs?

Instead of banal sinetron following a predictable plot, viewers could pit their wits against cunning sleuths battling vile villains across Southeast Asia’s Sin City, home to 12 million stories.

The BBC has been telecasting such programs since John Logie Baird first caught a cathode ray.  The US has never let go of the genre.  Nor has Hong Kong where kung fu cops jump off 40 storey towers to chop up snakeheads..

So why no Achmad of the Archipelago, a silat-master righting the wrongs, defending the poor, confronting the corrupt?  What an arresting idea!

Maybe there’s insufficient wrongdoing in the Republic to stimulate scriptwriters?  Methinks it safe to eliminate that theory.

Could such programs be haram?  Negative: Goodies always vanquish the baddies, though sometimes the two can be inseparable.

So here’s a few suggestions to get the creative juices haemorrhaging.  First we need a hero.

Haji Sjahrit Holmes (I Gusti Ayu Puspawati ) of Jl Bond, disguised as a street musician deducts the obvious others have overlooked while giving his pipe a workout in the kampong. Tobacco sponsorship?  Elementary, my dear Wayan.

Hamzah Poirot promenading La Rue des Thamrin spots clues missed by the clumsy gendarmerie, revealing the dominatrix in the Hyatt as the guilty one, not the scowling satpam.

Nyonya Marples would have no problem seeing the flaws in the alibis of a sinister itinerant vendor poisoning the innocent with toxic bakso. (Is there any other sort?)  This would be The Curious Case of the Kaki Lima.

Murder on the Yogyakarta Express could have a cast of candidates, one wearing a yellow jacket, another green and the third red.  One goes missing. The train gathers speed. It’s heading downhill.  The guard has disappeared.  The emergency lever doesn’t work. A metaphor for the state of politics?

Not interested?  So how about a police series:  The Thick Khaki Line could feature the gallant gumshoes of Precinct 13 covering the notorious Tanjung Priok waterfront. The lads ensure nothing gets through without their knowledge.  And cut.

Too British?  Here’s an original idea – let’s steal from the States.

The Funda Mentalist would have a bland, near mute actor (Nicholas Saputra) playing the role of a psychic.  He and his sidekick Fatima (Alya Rohali) fetching in a blue burqa with matching sunglasses, dispenses with old fashioned policing methods, like door knocking and DNA testing. 

They solve the crime in 38 minutes plus commercials just by looking mysterious.  Should do well in superstitious Java.

There’s no shortage of adaptable ideas to suit Indonesian tastes.  The Modest City, (preserving Asian values), The Touchables (story consultants - KPK), Irian Five-0 (“obscure, confused,” say critics) and BD (Big Durian) Confidential (the smell says it all).

Ponder the plotlines.  It’s dawn at Matabukit Police Station in an overcrowded, rubble-strewn industrial area known for its sleaze.  And that’s just the cops.

A man rushes in, blowing a whistle, waking the duty sergeant.  “The 50 kilograms of gold atop Monas has been stolen,” he shouts, and is promptly arrested for disturbing the police.

What the flatfoot doesn’t know is that the whistleblower has top contacts.  Minutes later the phone rings.  Within seconds the crimson-faced cop releases the prisoner.

The man then reveals himself as Jusuf Bond (Dude Harlino), famous foreign agent assigned by Blok M (Christine Hakim) on the trail of the crim behind the Great Monas Mystery.

Some character tweaks would be required.  Yusuf’s tipple is three fingers of Teh Botol on ice.  His favorite car is a custom-built black Kijang with a bed in the back for kips during daylong traffic jams.

Pak Bond only beds his wives, but being polygamous is allowed four.  They always wear headscarves so their tresses don’t tangle in helicopter blades while choppering over the Presidential Palace or speed-boating down the Ciliwung. Proprieties must be maintained.

Enough imagining.  Now it’s over to the TV stations. Naysayers might argue that viewers aren’t ready yet for programs featuring smart and honest police – the idea is just too fantastic.

Far more believable to the poor are the antics of the rotten and restless in millionaires’ mansions.  Duncan Graham

(First published in The Sunday Post 26 August 2012)

SUPPORTING INDONESIA'S DISABLED

Not a back seat person    

                               

When she finishes performing at the London Paralympics in September athlete Ni Nengah Widiasih, 19, will fly to the far side of the world.

The tiny Balinese powerlifter will spend ten days in New Zealand inspiring people with her life story and helping raise money for other disabled Indonesians.

Her trip comes thanks to the energy and initiative of Bill Russell, the chair of the Rehabilim Trust.  This NZ charity supports young, physically handicapped Indonesians learn skills they can use to earn money, and become independent.

“I first met Nengah six years ago.  She’d been crippled by polio and could only move on all fours,” said Mr Russell. The same disease also struck his father shortly after the family moved to NZ from Scotland when Bill was a teenager.

“Nengah went to Yogya for treatment and operations, then took up weightlifting in the 40 kilogram class.  Her achievements have been astonishing.”

The class relates to the athlete’s weight.  At the 2011 ASEAN ParaGames Nengah won gold, lifting 87 kilograms. NZ is sending a team of 26 to the Paralympics, Indonesia only three. 

Helping the disabled in the Republic is a curious turn about for a man whose first knowledge of Indonesians was as enemies in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

In 1963 President Soekarno tried to crush Malaysia claiming it was a creation of the former British colonial power. Commonwealth forces, including NZ soldiers, defended the new nation.

Private Russell was ready.  He’d been in Peninsula Malay since 1961 starting as a 22-year-old professional soldier patrolling the Thai border, stopping communist guerrillas heading south.

“I enjoyed being with the locals,” said Mr Russell.  “I got invited to weddings and other events. I learned a few hundred words of Pasar Malay.  There was a gentleness and politeness.

“I saw people with nothing – a situation I’d never encountered in NZ.  It caused me to think about ways to help.

“Fifty per cent of our troops were Maori.  The Malays were surprised to discover we were multicultural, unconcerned about color and ethnicity.  It helped us relate.” 

Fortunately he never saw Indonesians at the wrong end of his rifle.  When Soekarno sent three aircraft to parachute troops into Johore the young Kiwi was heading the other way on leave.

After three years soldiering he returned home, joined an agricultural supply company, got married and raised a family. He also became involved with Rotary, the volunteer international service club, and still serves in senior roles.

“I’m not a back seat person,” he said.  “My modus operandi is to make a difference.  So many people have helped me and I want to pass that on and leave things better. I’ve learned this is best done through an organization.”

It wasn’t till 1981 that he got back to the tropics – this time to Indonesia – first on holiday, then on business.  Since then he’s made well over 100 visits. 

“I’ve been so lucky and seen so much,” he said. “But I’m not a culture buff.  The more I think I know, the less I realise I know. I started a company selling seeds for horticulture and looked around for a market in Indonesia.

“In those days business was done on the strength of a handshake. A trader in Medan once owed me US $30,000.  I reminded him – he apologized for the oversight and I got a cheque a couple of days later. 

“I still stay in contact with the family.  It’s important to develop personal relationships when doing business in Indonesia. 

“This is a message I push to NZ education institutions trying to recruit Indonesian students: You’ve got to understand your customers and they need to know you – just sending in business cards doesn’t work.”

Next month (September) Mr Russell will be in Bali running a workshop where 20 Indonesian agents will get information on NZ education services from tertiary providers and immigration authorities.

His company, Education Network Indonesia, is a group of universities, polytechnics and schools presenting a common approach.

“We need to taker a fresh look at Indonesia as an education market,” he said.  “In a few years Indonesia will be a major manufacturing economy with a lower cost structure than China.

“There’s going to be a big demand for middle level management skills. This is an area where we can really help.”

While wandering the Archipelago last century the seedsman heard of Colin McLennan, a fellow Kiwi working at the Yakkum rehabilitation center he’d founded in Yogya.

“At the center a young girl wearing callipers was learning to walk using parallel bars,” Mr Russell said.  “Eventually she stepped away and walked by herself.  I saw her smile.  It’s something I’ve never forgotten.”

Impressions are fine, but actions are better.  Back in Wellington and with others (all the Rehabilim Trust’s eight unpaid directors have visited Yakkum) he set out to raise funds from well-wishers, church groups, service clubs and philanthropists around the nation.

Interest earned on money left by Mr McLennan when he died in 2007 can only be used for scholarships; two disabled young Indonesians are now being helped to study tourism and pharmacology. 

Mr Russell has promised that all donations go to Indonesia so he approached Kiwi economist Gareth Morgan who immediately offered NZ $3,000 (Rp 23 million) for Nengah’s air fares. 

In NZ Nengah will be taken to the Halberg Trust formed by former middle-distance runner Sir Murray Halberg, a gold medal winner at the 1960 Rome Olympics. 

The trust’s policy is to ‘honor sporting excellence and link people with a disability to sport and active leisure, whatever their ability and without exception.’

Said Mr Russell:  “I hope Nengah’s visit will boost people’s understanding of Indonesia while showing her that in this country we respect the rights of the handicapped.

“Sport is a major influence in the lives of the disabled in NZ. It would be great for Indonesia if Nengah wins.  Then more attention might be paid by the government to the needs of the handicapped.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 13 August 2012)

##

ASYLUM SEEKERS; INDONESIA'S UNHAPPY GUESTS

Welcome to Transit Indonesia Year    

The NIMBY syndrome is well known in Australian politics.  ‘Not In My Back Yard’ refers to electors’ demands for governments to relocate prisons, landfills, airports and other undesirable but essential services in someone else’s suburb.

The same thinking is alive in the toxic asylum-seeker debate Down Under.

So far this year more than 6,000 asylum seekers have arrived, mainly from the Middle East claiming sanctuary from war and persecution.  They’ve been using Indonesian fishers as ferrymen to Christmas Island, an Australian territory.

About 4,000 boat people are in mandatory detention, but even this system – like the hazardous sea voyage that’s taken hundreds of lives – doesn’t deter.

Outgoing Human Rights Commissioner Catherine Branson commented:  "As far as I'm aware, our system is the strictest in the Western world and there's no evidence that it works.”

Here in Indonesia an estimated 10,000 are waiting for third nation settlement, some supported by the UN High Commission for Refugees, others in hiding.  Overcrowded Indonesia doesn’t want them and they don’t want to be in Indonesia, fearing police brutality, local hostility and long delays.

There’s been a surge of boats leading to the fasting month of Ramadhan – seven last week. (w/ending 21 July) There’s also been a spate of arrests of asylum seekers and officials illegally providing embarkation assistance along Java’s south coast. It seems the government is now responding to Australian pleas for Indonesia to better police exit points.

What about entry ports? How the foreigners get through Soekarno-Hatta in such numbers with suspect documents is a great mystery.  Australians visiting the Archipelago must have visas and usually can’t board planes without return tickets.

The Labor government wants some refugees who get to Christmas Island, less than 400 kilometers south of Jakarta, sent to camps in Malaysia for processing. 

The Liberal opposition wants them shipped to the Micronesian island of Nauru because Kuala Lumpur, like Jakarta, hasn’t signed the UN Refugee Convention. 

An earlier attempt to involve Timor Leste failed.  Cynics might assume most favor an ABA solution – Anywhere But Australia. 

The Greens, who hold the balance of power, are demanding processing on Australian soil and the refugee quota to be lifted from 13,750 to 25,000.

Others urge Australia to face global realities. Australia’s Refugee Council, an NGO, says the country recognized only 0.56 per cent of the world’s asylum seekers.

The latest solution-de-jour is for Australia to pay for processing in Indonesia.  This plan comes from refugee advocates’ proposals to a three-man expert committee set up by the government to try and break the political logjam.  Almost 70 submissions have been lodged. 

The committee’s report is expected next month (Aug), but its findings won’t bind the political parties.  Their responses show they’ve already dug deep defensive trenches to repel fresh thinking.

A Labor Party splinter group called Labor for Refugees wants more diplomats sent to Jakarta and the Embassy to handle asylum claims.

The Perth-based NGO Indonesia Institute suggested a “major detention processing center” be built in Kupang, creating jobs and injecting life into East Nusa Tenggara’s moribund economy.

This isn’t totally left-field thinking.  After the Vietnam War thousands of anti-communists fled south on little boats.  Many were temporarily housed on Pulau Galang, an Indonesian island close to Singapore. 

Times change. The Indonesian government can no longer throttle public comment or crush angry responses – as shown in mob attacks on the Ahmadiyah sect and Shiite Muslims.  This group is well represented among asylum seekers, particularly Hazaras from Pakistan and Central Afghanistan. 

Could these Australian relocation ideas work?  The more important question is: Would Indonesia agree? The plans have been conceived in isolation without input from the Indonesian people.  Even if the government agreed, at what political cost?

In May President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was bruised when he approved a five-year cut to Australian drug smuggler Schapelle Corby’s 20-year sentence. 

Although a legal attack by the anti-drug agency Granat failed, it showed how democracy has advanced when a president’s actions can be so publicly challenged – impossible under Soeharto. 

The signal is clear:  Ministers may make deals with their foreign mates in exclusive hotels  – but if the majority in the gritty streets outside are hostile the pledges are meaningless.

Hungry and homeless citizens living on less than US $2 (Rp 19,000) a day, peering through wire fences at Sri Lankans and Iraqis being safely housed, well fed and enjoying free health care courtesy of Australian taxpayers might not see the sense and justice in this transit lounge arrangement.

Processing in Jakarta? Imagine Jl Rasuna Said blocked by thousands of foreigners clamouring to get into the Australian Embassy fortress to lodge asylum claims.  The building is already too small to handle current business and expansion is planned,

Some might be inclined to show their displeasure at the ballot box in 2014; hotheads may not be prepared to wait that long. 

Johnny Hutauruk, deputy head of the Human Trafficking, Refugees and Asylum Seekers unit told the Sydney Morning Herald: ''On the one hand we have to guard our sovereignty - we don't want too many of these people here - but we also must respect their human rights,

''There are some refugees in Puncak (West Java) and you see cultural conflicts between refugees and locals … they bring with them their habits and their culture, which is perhaps not in tune with local culture and traditions.''

Being Indonesian, the polite Mr Hutauruk is less blunt than his southern neighbors – but he’s saying the same thing: NIMBY.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 2 August 2012) 

See also Asia Times On Line: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/NH03Ae01.html

##

INDONESIAN MUSLIMS IN A MINORITY

Indonesian Islam Down Under   

 

                                           Kilbirnie Mosque, Wellington

Here’s a message for Indonesian Muslims who feel their faith is flagging:  Move to a country where you’re a minority.

“It can be a challenge and there may be downsides, but after ten years in New Zealand I’m more pious than I was in Jakarta,” said Agam Jaya Syam (above, right), chairman of the Indonesian Community Association in Wellington.

“Back home I accepted a lot of things uncritically, but here we find our beliefs and values being challenged.  For example my son Fachry asked why we can’t eat pork.  In the past I would have said it’s forbidden.  Now I’ve had to add the reasons why, explaining how pigs feed and their digestive system works.”

There’s another plus: Worshippers with conflicting views on how their faith should be practised bury divisions when faced with the reality of being the few among the many.

“When you’re in a minority – and a very small minority – you tend to overlook little things,” said Fawzan Hafiz (above, left) , a past president of the International Muslim Association of NZ (IMAN).

“Differences don’t seem to matter so much.  The larger the group, the less the compromise.  That’s when history, culture and custom come into play.

“In NZ we have a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic community. More than 40 nations are represented in the congregation at the Wellington mosque.  The beauty of Islam is that it can adapt.”

A few Chinese Muslims arrived in NZ during the South Island gold rush about 150 years ago.  However they had little influence in an overwhelmingly Christian nation, for by 1950 there were only 150 throughout the whole country.

Eleven years later the number hadn’t even doubled.  Then Indian Muslims started coming from Fiji. Students from Asia began to arrive, along with refugees from the Middle East.

Islam also began attracting locals disillusioned with other faiths.  Now ten per cent of Muslims in NZ are Maori and Western.

Today NZ has around 40,000 Muslims.  They worship at 35 prayer centers and mosques, including one in Invercargill, which at latitude 46’42” may well be the world’s most southerly – and coldest.

About 150 of the 400 Indonesians in Wellington use the local mosque and a central city room in a shop for Friday prayers.

The mosque, a printing warehouse converted with local funds and money from Malaysia, can accommodate more than 1,000 worshippers.  It was opened just after Muslim terrorists slammed two commercial jets into New York’s World Trade Center, releasing a global cloud of Islamophobia.

Though little across NZ, according to Fawzan.  There had been some graffiti and a broken window, but these were examples of vandalism by street kids and not linked to bigotry.

When The Jakarta Post visited at 7 am on a cold Sunday the outside gate was open and the doors unlocked.  No guards were present.  Later, on a Saturday afternoon, the rooms were full of Somali children and their moms in colourful ankle-length ethnic dress.  A few headed for the shops wearing black burqa.

“The atmosphere here is different,” said Fawzan.  “NZ is generally pretty tolerant.  The people are good – there’s no religious prejudice.”

But then there’s not much religion in the South Pacific nation of 4.25 million. 

Census statistics show one third of the population indifferent to religion.  Church attendances have tumbled and Sunday service pews in the traditional denominations grow thinner and greyer every year.

The present Prime Minister John Key is not religious though his mother was Jewish. His predecessor Helen Clark, like Australian PM Julia Gillard, is also an atheist.  Laws on the separation of faith and state prevent the government from funding religion or having a Ministry of Religion.

An absence of piety doesn’t indicate immorality or lack of compassion. A George Washington University survey of 208 nations called How Islamic are Islamic Countries? ranked NZ number one for implementing policies in keeping with Islamic values.  Indonesia was number 140.

When Kiwi businessman Tim Mackay was killed in a 2009 Jakarta terror bombing the RI Embassy in Wellington offered unqualified public apologies and sympathies.

 Agam Syam wrote in the local press that he felt “betrayed and ashamed” by terrorists, adding: “If we cannot create peace and instead make trouble and take human lives, that is not Islam.”

“It would be impossible for an Indonesian president not to be Muslim,” said Nourina Djamal who has spent seven years in NZ after a similar period in Australia.

“However we must differentiate between those born Muslim and those who want to be Muslim.  If our politicians were truly Muslim there’d be no corruption and there’s be care for the poor.

“I’m happy that there’s no official religion in NZ and I don’t think that causes problems.  People don’t ask about religion and it’s illegal to question faith when applying for a job.

“However I don’t like the sex education in schools – I think there’s too much information, it’s too extreme.”

Nourina wears a headscarf in her job at a supermarket, but her 20-year-old student daughter does not – although she did at school.

Agam’s wife Silviana Dewi Warli  (left) works for NZ Post.  In the street she dons a headscarf – but not in the office.  “I’m not ready for that yet,” she said. 

The couple have been wondering whether to send their son back to Indonesia for Islamic schooling because there’s only one Muslim school in NZ – in Auckland, 700 kilometers north of Wellington

Both women claimed neither they nor their children had suffered discrimination or abuse but were sometimes greeted in the street by others who recognised fellow Muslims.

However stories of casual racism are often reported in the media.  Human Rights Commissioner Joris de Bres reported that although race relations were “relatively healthy” prejudice existed, with Asians the principal target.

Asians are expected to overtake Maori as the second largest ethnic group in NZ by 2026.

The Wellington mosque administration appears to have made earnest efforts to merge into the wider society.  Every year it holds an Open Day, inviting visitors and questions, and offering a wide variety of foods from Islamic countries.

Leaders are involved in inter-faith groups and the Koran has been read from lecterns in some progressive churches. 

There are no loudspeakers atop the minaret and even if noise abatement laws didn’t exist there’d still be no broadcast calls to prayer, according to Fawzan.

“Why should we disturb local residents who aren’t Muslims?” said Fawzan.  “That doesn’t help improve relations with the community.”

 (First published in The Jakarta Post 30 July 2012)

##