Tolerance

BALI – "Welcome to Paradise," a big sign said at the entrance to the just-renamed The Laguna Resort & Spa in Nusa Dua here.

Near the sign is a reminder that the Balinese are still waiting for Paradise to be regained: security officers checking vehicles for bombs as they enter the complex of five-star hotels.

A memorial to the 202 people killed, 88 of them Australians and 37 Indonesians, now stands on a corner lot in Kuta where a terrorist bomb ripped through a packed nightclub in October 2002. On Jimbaran Beach several kilometers away, the restaurant that was bombed in the second attack has been rebuilt and is open for business.

"The Island of the Gods" has not fully recovered from that second attack. The father of two whom I hired last Friday as driver and guide-cum-photographer for a day for less than $30 (fuel expense his) said the rent-a-car company where he used to work had to shut down, forcing him to rely on occasional tour deals. He regretted buying his van brand-new; the price dropped by almost 50 percent after the bombing and has not gone up since, he said.

Balinese products, including paintings and woodcarvings, are so dirt-cheap you almost feel guilty about haggling. For bargain hunters, it’s a great time to be here. That is, if they are unfazed by the terrorist threat.

Indonesia is pictured as the home of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the terror cell loosely linked to al-Qaeda that has been tagged in the Bali bombings and the two deadliest terrorist attacks in Manila – on a SuperFerry in 2004 and the Light Rail Transit in December 2000.

Local journalists here told me that "Jemaah Islamiyah" simply means "the Muslim community" and there is no formal group or movement, although some registered organizations linked to extremism are believed to be part of JI. The journalists said this was why Jakarta could not ban JI as demanded by Western governments – the terror cell was non-existent.

What about Abubakar Bashir, said to be JI’s spiritual adviser, who has been released after his sentence was reduced? "He’s not a threat. He’s just an old man," The Jakarta Post chief editor Endy Bayuni told me. Bashir does provide good sound bites and gives the foreign press what it wants to hear, Bayuni said.

Are the Indonesians simply in denial? The world’s most populous Muslim nation acknowledges the terrorist problem and is fighting back in its own way, by promoting dialogue and fostering understanding among different cultures and faiths. Even this seemingly innocuous path is littered with landmines.

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Of 80 journalists formally invited to the two-day Global Inter-Media Dialogue here that was supposed to promote freedom of expression and diversity, one failed to make it: Israeli columnist and former education minister Yossi Sarid.

Like several predominantly Muslim countries, Indonesia does not recognize the state of Israel, and would not give Sarid a visa.

Norway, co-host of the dialogue, offered what its foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store called a "constructive way out" – Norwegian travel documents for Sarid. He declined the invitation.

"I take full responsibility," Store told a press conference here the other day. "I respect that he turned it down."

Store’s Indonesian counterpart N. Hassan Wirajuda explained that the Israeli issue was a "very sensitive" one here and "it would not be easy to manage the presence" of Sarid in Indonesia, adding it could provoke the opposite of tolerance and dialogue.

Danish journalists invited to the dialogue probably thought they would also be unwelcome here; none accepted the invitation, although the dialogue was planned following the violent protests in the Muslim world against the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Denmark had temporarily shut down its mission here in February at the height of the cartoon controversy.

I asked Store why no one from Jyllands-Posten was invited, and he said, "It was not a deliberate decision." They did not want the cartoons to be the dominant theme here, he explained.

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Jyllands-Posten was not really missed here, but the absence of the Israeli journalist was a stark reminder of the complexities that we all must deal with in the age of Osama bin Laden.

Former CNN reporter Mike Chinoy, now an Edgerton Fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles, expressed the sentiments of many participants from countries that enjoy press freedom: Where do we draw the line between freedom of expression and respect for religious sensitivities? Does press responsibility mean trying to avoid offending one group? Chinoy said the press should strive mainly for credibility.

"The Muslim community worldwide is not asking for special treatment. It is merely asking for the same respect that is given to other religious groups," said Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as he opened the dialogue here together with Store.

"There is a feeling among many Muslims that they are not being portrayed fairly by the international media, and many in fact are complaining of double standard," Yudhoyono added. "There is a perception held by many, rightly or wrongly, that the greater Western community regards, to be quite blunt about it, that a Muslim life is less precious."

The debate is more complex in developing countries that lack the capacity-building needed to make press freedom and democracy work.

"Democracy in many nations is a work in progress, and respect for human rights and freedoms should be balanced with respect for the right against discrimination and degradation," Yudhoyono stressed.

Teguh Santosa of the local newspaper Rakyat Merdeka is on trial in Jakarta and could face up to five years in prison for "publicly expressing or inciting animosity and defamation... towards Islam" for reproducing one of the Muhammad cartoons in the paper’s online edition.

In this multicultural society, the media buzzword is not tolerance but pluralism.

Several dialogue participants wanted to know how tolerance is defined, and who decides what should be tolerated.

Over dinner Friday night in a traditional Balinese village, an Indonesian woman recalled that one of the Bali bombers had complained of foreign tourists wearing bikinis and even going topless.

If other faiths see nothing wrong with going topless and Muslims find it offensive, who should tolerate whom? The dialogue here is just one of numerous efforts now being undertaken to create bridges of understanding among different religions and cultures.

One thing is clear: blowing up nightclubs because you find topless women offensive must never be tolerated.

And yet it happened here in Bali. Paradise is still paying for it.