As the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia's response to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks is of potentially significant relevance to the United States, as the Bush administration endeavors to build an anti-terrorist alliance. This importance is compounded by recent reports of Osama bin Laden's network having spread its roots to the island nation, where rising fundamentalism and a lingering economic crisis have apparently simplified recruiting. This combined with high levels of corruption and ineffectual law enforcement has worried U.S. officials, who are concerned Indonesia may become a staging area for future acts of international terrorism. At the time of this writing, six radical Islamic groups announced that, if the U.S. does strike Afghanistan, they will attack all American interests in Indonesia. Recently appointed president Megawati Soekarnoputri's first state visit to the U.S., underway at the time of this writing, is likely to address these issues. At the same time the Bush administration is likely to request the new president's aid in abating the perception that America's response will be directed against the Muslim world, a perception that the Indonesian mass media has done little to thwart.

The Indonesian parliament is now in the process of revising the currently unenforced journalism and broadcast laws that are largely left over from the 32 year authoritarian rule of former president Suharto, which ended in 1998. Following Suharto's fall from power, media outlets reveled in new found press freedoms, but soon came under attack from politicians and intellectuals for sensationalism and unprofessionalism in their products. Numerous small newspapers and radio stations rapidly appeared, catering to a variety of niche markets, including religious fundamentalists, who were previously denied the benefits of mass media. Current drafts of the proposed broadcast law, which will not be enacted until 2002 or later, explicitly forbid disparaging any religion, though it is unclear if this prohibition applies only to the five officially accepted religions in Indonesia (Buddhism, Catholicism, Hindu, Islam, and Protestantism).

Immediately after the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the Indonesian media was conciliatory, and Megawati sent an official letter condemning the incidents to the Bush administration. This initial reaction was not to last, however, nor was Megawati's letter to prove representative of Indonesian government as a whole. Within two days, high ranking politicians, including the vice-president Hamzah Haz, were issuing lwarningsn to the United States regarding its reaction. Editorials and reports of comments by government officials published in the country's English language daily The Jakarta Post prompted an angry response from the U.S. ambassador Richard Gelbard, who accused them of contributing to "an atmosphere of misunderstanding and hatred."

At the same time, anti-American sentiment grew rapidly on radio call-in programs, in Internet chat rooms, on student listserves and in the mainstream Muslim press. Television reports stopped focusing on the devastation of the attacks and the recovery effort, limiting themselves to an assessment of Indonesians killed in the attacks (possibly just two), and then focusing heavily on anti-Muslim violence in the U.S. In one September 13th report, on Indonesia's 24-hour news station Metro TV, an 'on the scene' reporter in New York was cut off by the in-studio anchor when he began to bring up admonitions made by President Bush and N.Y. Mayor Gulliani against prejudice toward Muslims in the U.S. In stark contrast with the BBC and CNN, news reports here also seem to studiously avoid reporting on evidentiary developments in the case.

The Indonesian media's focus, which might seem curious to Americans, may be the result of differing foundational assumptions regarding what the goals media coverage ought to be. Here in Indonesia, factual aspects of the case have received little media attention, replaced by a more reputational and policy oriented discussion. In issues of blame, Indonesian commentators have been quick to wax philosophical about U.S. foreign policy, speculating on its role in motivating the attacks, and are untiring in their reference to the Oklahoma bombing case as an example of America's quickness to look for Middle Eastern, Muslim scapegoats, when, in fact, the terrorist in that case turned out to be domestic. In fact, the Oklahoma case seems to blur together with the current terrorism investigation in some reports; the influence of this widespread media representation may have been evidenced in a recent poll by the secular news magazine Gatra, in which 46.43% of respondents - the majority grouping - claimed that the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks were the work of "the American people themselves."

Many Westerners living in Indonesia have been stunned by the rapid rise of anti-American voices in the media, following so quickly on the heels of such a tragic event, and in a country where such sentiments had, in recent times, remained largely below the surface. The media, however, appears only to be responding to the popular belief, at least among the middle and upper income Indonesians, that the United States brought this tragedy on itself through inequitable foreign policy and perceived anti-Muslim prejudice. The mainstream news media has, in turn, sought to avoid undermining this popular sentiment, while giving the perpetually 'lectured to' Indonesian Hlite a chance to lecture the world's remaining superpower for a change.

This apparent interest in avoiding the appearance of undermining popular opinion and developing pan-Islamic solidarity has been handled carefully by the mainstream broadcast media. On television news reports and in many articles on the terrorist attacks, there is a sense of foundationlessness and disconnection from the sort of nuts and bolts facts that are the mainstay of Western media reports. Many reports here have an almost postmodern tone, in that varying accounts of the tragedy or the investigation are not treated as having any greater import or validity as a consequence of their apparent veracity or factual foundation. Most reports claim that the United States, or the Bush administration, has 'decided' (memutuskan) that Islamic militants, or Osama bin Laden, or whomever, were responsible for the attacks. Evidence is usually described only as "not yet clear" (belum jelas) or "speculative", without elaboration. The opinions of local university professors, Muslim clerics, or politicians tend to be lent more credence and certainly air-time than do any foreign-based reports of the tragedy; this adds to the predominance of opinion and speculation in media coverage, as opposed to reporting, creating the impression that the facts of the case are open to debate. Further supporting this tone are student listserves and chat rooms that churn with conspiracy stories of Jewish control of Western media and reports of falsehoods or slander in the Western press that give those who search for it an excuse to ignore all outside media.

The notion that there might be clear evidence pointing one way or the other is not evident in most coverage, nor is the belief that the 'truth' could be discovered in a way that would not directly reflect the biases of those doing the 'discovering'. In a sense, the truth of what happened is not the question, but rather only the perceptions of various positioned parties involved in the drama. If Western media quickly fell back on a narrative of good versus evil in the wake of the attacks, Indonesian media has invoked a more nuanced narrative of deception and conspiracy, in which old actors return to play their caricatured roles, and the truth always lies several layers beneath the surface.

Indonesia also has its fair share of mainstream, Islamicly oriented media outlets, with circulations comparable to the secular press. In the Islamic press, more boldly anti-American as well as anti-Semitic stances sidestep the vagaries used by secular media. A recent editorial in the popular newspaper Republika, entitled "New York, Jews, and United States' Symbols," by Sidik Jatmika, the author of a book titled America, Obstacle to Democracy, began with this paragraph:

The superpower nation of the United States underwent an extraordinary panic after the World Trade Center buildings in New York collapsed and the Pentagon in Washington DC was damaged after being hit by a kamikaze airplane. As usual, the United States immediately looked for a scapegoat with the accusation of Middle Eastern terrorist agents as the masterminds of the bombing of these buildings which symbolize the glory (kejayaan) of the U.S. Why did it have to be the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that were targeted? Putting aside whomever really masterminded this bombing, this article elaborates the existence of New York as a city of Jews and a symbol of U.S. glory. This is what made the U.S. government shocked and angry at the sudden attack of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: symbols of U.S. glory.

Jews have played a variety of roles in the early shaping and development of the U.S., eventually causing feelings of indebtedness among Americans toward Zionists and Israel. The U.S., in the end, must feel thankful and maintain a good attitude toward Jews (and Israel) to pay back the debt of Jewish contributions toward to the progress of the U.S. ... We can only wait for the next development. Usually, after a scapegoat has been fingered, the U.S. performs various acts of "response" that are haphazardly [lit: like a blind pig] carried out against the groups that have been designated the source of the attack against these symbols of U.S. glory, regardless of whether these targets are correct or incorrect. (my translation)

The extent of the author's research into the recent terrorist attack may be betrayed by his reference to the event as a bombing (pengeboman) - a misconception that remains remarkably common here in Indonesia - but messages like this one are anything but uncommon in the mainstream Muslim press, giving a voice to, and fueling, anti-Western resentments. Recent polls conducted among the readerships of these publications are as instructive, as much for the options they present as for the results. One such survey performed by Republika described the origin of the attacks as "speculative", and asked respondents their opinion as to who had done it. The results are as follows, with options presented in their original order:

Radical Jews	34.4%
The Red Army of Japan	2.2%
Osama bin Laden's group	10.4%
Anti-U.S. forces	42.7%
Domestic Terrorists	10.3%
Total Respondents	2023

The current and ongoing Republika poll focuses on the possible results of American military action in Afghanistan, asking "What will happen if this military aggression goes forward?" At the time of this writing, the results were as follows:

The U.S. buried/obliterated in Afghanistan	47.9%
Open war between Islam and the West	26.4%
Third World War Triggered	9.7%
Unification of Anti-U.S. terrorists	9.7%
Undermine efforts for peace	6.5%
Total Respondents	1715

Although media items such as those above may surprise American audiences, they are genuinely middle of the road examples here in Indonesia, and do not approach the extremism seen in more fundamentalist publications such as Sabili. On the other hand, the mainstream secular press, including the daily Kompas, and the weekly magazine Tempo, tend to approach the issue more conservatively, if still from a skeptical angle that lends significant weight to popular opinion and local experts.

While anthropologists might be quick to assign culturally-based explanations to Indonesia's media focus, it may be more instructive to observe its similarities to Western media. Both are largely capitalist, seeking to increase revenues and market share, rather than to alienate audiences with unwelcome analyses that conflict with mainstream belief systems. Both appeared to respond defensively to the horrendous attack, falling back heavily on nationalistic and religious discourses, while avoiding lines of reasoning that might implicate, however tangentially, their own nations or religions. Both are made up of complex media webs, ranging from mainstream broadcasting, to niche newspapers, to local talk radio, to various Internet forms, reaching varying self-selected audiences, mediated by social cleavages including social class, ethnic background, religion and wealth. And both demonstrated (and continue to demonstrate) a lamentable lack of reflexivity regarding the nature of their own representations - their emphases, their obfuscations and their omissions - yielding two wildly different sorts of stories from the same tragic events.

Gareth Barkin is a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at Washington University, currently conducting research on Indonesian popular television in Jakarta.

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