An ontological struggle: Islamic political theology and the criminalization of same‐sex sexuality in Indonesia

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines legal efforts to criminalize same‐sex sexualities between consenting adults by conservative Muslim movements in Indonesia, epitomized by the Constitutional Court of Indonesia's 2016 Judicial Review on the Indonesian Penal Code, continuous resistance to the Sexual Violence Law, and the current Indonesian Penal Code. Based on my ethnography of the Judicial Review's court transcript and other legal archives, I argue that the conservative Muslim movements’ legal effort to criminalize sexuality in Indonesia is an exercise of Islamic political theology revolving around a certain ontology of personhood concerning the relationships between “the human” and God, the state, and the nation. This ontology is apparent in their assertion about the intrinsic difference between sexual violence (“kekerasan seksual”) vs. sexual crime (“kejahatan seksual”). This paper aims to: (1) demonstrate that anthropological inquiries of ontologies can further develop the conceptual framework of political theology, especially in elucidating how ontological imposition of “the human” and its personhood plays a pivotal part in conservative movements’ repertoires in criminalizing sexuality; and (2) make use of Southeast Asian studies’ scholarships and cases to speak back to the broader discussion on the fissures in/of secular imaginaries and secularization processes.