A month ago, the magazine's offices were ransacked by a group of 300 extreme
Islamists who call themselves the Islamic Defenders Front. Police looked on as
windows were smashed, yet no arrests have been made.
Days later, Editor in Chief Erwin Arnada announced the indefinite suspension of
future editions.
"The police say we have broken no laws," Arnada told reporters as he left a
police station in Jakarta after questioning.
The storm is not likely to blow over quickly. In an interview, the front's
chief said its attacks were just a warning to publishers and that other groups
could do considerably more damage.
The front "made these protests not only to protect society but also to protect
the media itself," said H. Muhammad Ridwan Voderi, the group's secretary
general.
"There are many other groups who are against pornography and the media, and
they can do more damage than what the (front) has done, such as bombing the
offices," he said. "We were just trying to get through to the media before the
other groups."
The alarming comments also reflect sensitivity over the Iraq war and the war on
terror.
"Playboy represents the image of the West and with everything going on in the
world lately, with the tension between the United States and the Islamic world,
anything that represents the West is considered anti-Muslim," says Gadis
Arivia, founder of the women's activist magazine Jurnal Perempuan.
For the front, the name Playboy also represents a perceived moral decay that
pervades the West, which they claim to be preventing the spread of across their
secular nation.
"We told the publishers before they started they should change the name because
the image of Playboy internationally is very bad, its identity is pornographic
images," Voderi said.
The ferment over Playboy Indonesia is just one chapter in a debate about
pornography laws that is polarizing women's rights groups, Islamic
fundamentalists and a government which is struggling to sustain the democratic
momentum that began with the fall of former President Suharto's regime in 1998.
An anti-pornography bill is being vigorously debated in parliament and is
expected to pass by the middle of the year.
Opponents argue that Indonesia already has three pieces of legislation
regulating content on television and in the media, in addition to a criminal
code which prohibits the distribution of pornographic material.
The new legislation, say women's rights groups, is just a smokescreen for a
Sharia (Islamic) based law that is fundamentally anti-women.
"When you look at the bill, there is nothing really in it about pornography or
the distribution of pornographic material," Arivia said.
"But is says a lot about what women can and cannot wear, what they can and
cannot do, where they can go ... a lot of Sharia law that restricts women."
Arivia is one of many critics who fear that if the bill finds its way through
the parliament in its current incarnation, men's magazines won't be the only
thing forced to cover up.
"The new bill doesn't respect the diversity of culture, and is a threat to the
freedom of speech of artists ... and our identity," said Husna Mulya, another
women's rights activist.
"It will regulate what people can wear and which parts of the body can be
exposed. It could also see writings, poems, songs, etc. banned because they
contain references to eroticism or sexuality."
The defenders front has also made claims that pornography is provoking Muslim
men to commit violent sexual crimes against women in Indonesia.
"There have already been a lot of cases of crime due to the effects of
pornography in magazines, television, movies, etc. Nowadays we are hearing of
fathers raping their daughters, sons raping their mothers and so on. Will the
media take responsibility for this? Of course not. They don't want to know the
effect their magazines has on people; they don't care," Voderi said.
Which is an indication that it will take much more than an airbrushed nipple to
lower temperatures in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Katie Hamann is a freelance writer based in Jakarta.
