Ethnic Chinese Muslims in Indonesia: An Unfinished Anti-Discrimination Project

Indonesia is a nation with the world's largest Muslim population. However, ethnic Chinese Muslims constitute a very small minority since the population of ethnic Chinese themselves is very small in Indonesia. For over three decades, Chinese identity in Indonesia has been on the decline, and almost lost due to state repression. There was little room for the Chinese to articulate and express their socio-political interests and identity, including their traditional culture. This paper is an attempt to investigate state discrimination practices against ethnic Chinese, including the Muslims in particular, as a minority group in Indonesia in the post-enactment of the new Citizenship Bill No. 12/2006. The paper argues that even though all ethnic groups are constitutionally guaranteed equal citizenship status, the enactment of the Bill did not automatically eliminate state discriminatory practices at all levels of the bureaucracy from national to local against the Chinese, including particularly the ethnic Chinese Muslims. To guarantee their socio-political security, Chinese Muslims therefore adopted cultural approaches, intensively coordinating with religion-based organisations, including Muslim mass organisations and Islamic non-governmental organisations. Ethnic Chinese Muslims find these cultural approaches important and effective for protecting themselves from any possible anti-Chinese sentiments and discriminations as well as exploitation from either the local communities or the state bureaucracy.