(Photo: Buddha Bar Restaurant in Jakarta, December 4, 2008/Beawiharta)

The Indonesian branch of the Buddha Bar, an international chain of upmarket bars, has been ordered to close because its name caused distress to Buddhists, local media reported on Wednesday.

The English language newspaper Jakarta Globe reported that Central Jakarta District Court on Wednesday ordered the owners of the bar, Nireta Vista Creative, to close down immediately.

The owners, Jakarta’s district governor, Fauzi Bowo, and the Jakarta Tourism Agency were fined a total of 1 billion rupiah ($110,700) for causing mental distress to the plaintiffs, a group called the Anti-Buddha Bar Forum (see their Facebook page here).

The group had complained the bar’s name and use of Buddhist decorations and statues was a form of blasphemy.

Jakarta’s governor and the tourism agency were fined because, by allowing the bar’s development, they “failed to consider the religious and cultural development in the society and ended up offending them,” said Judge F.X. Jiwo Santoso.  A lawyer for the bar owners said they would appeal.

(Photo: Indonesian Buddhist students protest against the Buddha Bar restaurant in Jakarta, March 5, 2009/Supri)

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, the site of a deadly July 2009 bomb attack perpetrated by Islamist militants,

and the topic on everyone’s lips was how to broaden the party’s appeal and shake off their image as hardliners.

CORRECTION: This post originally identified this Ritz Carlton as the site of the 2009 bombing, which occured at a different Ritz Carlton location.

It’s a reputation the party earned by pushing conservative policies such as Indonesia’s anti-pornography law and supporting the introduction of stoning for adulterers in semi-autonomous region of Aceh, where sharia law is practiced.

(Photo: Sharia police check women caught wearing tight pants in Aceh province May 26, 2010/Junaidi Hanafiah)

But a tough moral line has not proved a great vote winner in majority Muslim Indonesia, where most people practice a very moderate form of Islam that incorporates pre-Islamic traditional beliefs. PKS increased its vote only slightly in the 2009 election and all other Islam-based parties actually lost votes.

Hence the push to open up the party. Secretary General Anis Matta has set a goal of 1.2 million new members over five years and non-Muslims are now being invited to join PKS.

Senior PKS member Hidayat Nur Wahid in a speech on Saturday reiterated the party’s commitment to Pancasila, the national ideology that promotes pluralism. Keynote speakers included U.S. Ambassador Cameron Hume, German-born Catholic priest Franz Magnis-Suseno and Australian Ambassador Bill Farmer.

“I truly expect all cadres of this party to improve and expand your knowledge regarding inter-society and community interaction so that we can realise what has been taught by our religion, which is peace, prosperity and justice,” said PKS party president Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq.

These are noble goals but it seems PKS still has a long way to go before it will be seen as a mainstream, middle way party. Part of its image problem is Tifatul Sembiring, a former PKS president and current information minister, who seems to court controversy wherever he goes.

(Photo: Tifatul Sembiring, April 13, 2009/Crack Palinggi)

He told Reuters last year that he supported the death penalty in the worst cases of corruption and that he couldn’t understand how atheists could have any moral control. During a tour last year of West Sumatra’s quake-hit capital, Padang  – where more than 1000 people had died — he linked natural disasters to immoral TV shows.

Earlier this year, Sembiring, an avid user of Twitter, quoted Hitler in a tweet that read “The union between two children, when both of them complete each other, this is magic — Adolf Hitler.”

He was given a dressing down by the Indonesia’s Catholic Bishops Conference on Saturday after comparing a celebrity sex tape scandal to a theological debate between Christians and Muslims on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

He was also reported by local media saying the case of a Bali teen caught in flagrante delicto with a cow was an example of why sex outside of wedlock is a social problem.

“Sometimes he speaks before he thinks,” one PKS cadre, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

But Greg Fealy, an expert on Indonesia’s Islam-based parties from the Australian National University and a keynote speaker at the PKS congress, said Sembiring’s gaffes should not be overblown.

“The party is relieved he is no longer the [party] president. Obviously he has some ill-effects for PKS but he is not an unpopular figure and is a nice man. He is not an obstacle to PKS going places,” he said.

(Photo: Soldiers at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Jakarta on July 18, 2009 after suicide bombers struck/Supri)

Fealy said he expected PKS to get more heterogenous and progressive over time, but that this process would take years.

“There’s still a big gap between rhetoric and reality. The reality is it is very difficult for non-Muslims to rise to important positions in the party. That’s the real test of whether the party has opened up,” he said. “But right now, everyone in a decision-making role is not only Muslim but a certain type of Muslim.”

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The PKS believes religious values should be reflected in social policy to address what it sees as Indonesia’s moral crisis. Its former president, Communications and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring, has campaigned hard for tighter Internet controls to ban what he describes as “negative” content on the web, and last year said natural disasters such as earthquakes were linked to immoral television shows.

(Photo: PKS supporters hold pro-Palestinian rally in Jakarta on 20 March 2010/Supri)

PKS members in Aceh, where sharia law is practised, have supported the introduction of a strict penal code that would see adulterers stoned and homosexuals lashed.

But the PKS has only four ministries: agriculture, information and communications, social affairs, and research and technology and can exert limited influence over these portfolios.

Here are some questions and answers about PKS policies on the economy, corruption, moral issues and boosting its voter appeal.

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Indonesian Muslims pray at the Istiqlal Grand Mosque in Jakarta 9 March/Supri

Some things in the central Jakarta district of Matraman have barely changed since the late 1960s, when United States President Barack Obama lived and played there.  Old men train their racing pigeons on the badminton court and screaming children chase each other through the winding, grimy alleyways. But if Obama does decide to drop by his old neighborhood when he visits Indonesia next week, he may notice change around the community’s mosque.

The local mosque has become a meeting spot for members of the small but vocal Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), an extremist group famous for smashing up bars that serve alcohol and which made headlines when its followers assaulted several elderly men and women at a peaceful interfaith rally in 2008.

“Now there are so many radicals around here. We don’t agree with them but there’s definitely more than there was before,” said Ali Rully, a pensioner who was a high school student when little “Barry” Obama lived here.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation but is officially secular and has long been seen as a bastion of moderate Islam.  But the emergence of pockets of radicalism and a shift from Indonesia’s traditional form of Islam, infused with Hinduism and other influences, toward a stricter form of the religion are cause for concern for some moderate Indonesians.

Read the whole story here.

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(Image: An Agus Suwage print “Behind the curtain” combining the text of Indonesia’s anti-pornography law with a female nude/Agus Suwage collection/Handout)

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(Image: An Agus Suwage print “Behind the curtain” combining the text of Indonesia’s anti-pornography law with a female nude/Agus Suwage collection/Handout)

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(Photo: Indonesian Muslim women support sharia, 19 Sept 2006?Supri Supri)

The decision could still be overturned once Aceh’s new parliament is sworn in next month. But many, including Aceh’s governor, the central government in Jakarta, and local businessmen, are concerned about the impact a broadcast public execution by stoning could have on Indonesia’s international reputation.The Aceh case is one of several showing how hardline Muslim groups are influencing policy in Indonesia. Local governments, given wide latitude to enact laws under Indonesia’s decentralization program, have begun to mandate sharia regulations, including dress codes for women.One ethnic Chinese Indonesian businessman, a practicing Christian who asked not to be quoted by name, said he feared if the trend continued it could lead to capital flight by the wealthy Chinese, Christian minority. “A lot of regional laws are going in that direction. It’s already alarming the way it’s going. It’s a minority who are doing this, but the problem is that the silent majority just keep silent.”Read the whole story here.

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