Pluralist currents and counter-currents in the Indonesian mass media : the case of Anand Krishna

This chapter examines the mass media, both print and electronic, as sites for the contestation of religious pluralism in Indonesia since the restoration of effective democracy in 1998. The Reformasi period (as the following decade came to be known) can be seen as one of destabilization and dispute over divergent notions of religiosity as properly communalist or autonomous, with the scales tipping towards the communalist since the Indonesian Council of Ulama (Majelis Ulama Indonesia or MUI) pronounced a series of fatwa against pluralism and liberalism in religion in 2005.