Norimitsu Onishi

Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto on the campaign trail with their jilbab-wearing wives. (Photo: Antara)

Why Wearing the Jilbab Has Become a Burning Poll Issue

As ever y one who has spent more than an hour in the city over the past few weeks knows, three parties competing in the presidential election next week have plastered Jakarta with campaign billboards and posters depicting, predictably, their presidential and vice presidential choices looking self-confident.

But one party, Golkar, has controversially also put up posters of the candidates’ wives next to their husbands, posing demurely and wearing Muslim headscarves known as jilbabs . The wives recently went on a jilbab shopping spree in one of Jakarta’s largest markets, and published a book together titled “Devout Wives of Future Leaders.”

Most polls suggest that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will win next Wednesday’s vote on his economic policies and anti-corruption drive, and the recent television debates have shown that there is little of substance on which the candidates have disagreed. In this vacuum, the campaigns have been personality-driven, and the issue of the wearing of the jilbab has often seemed to overshadow differences of policies or ideas.

It is perhaps not surprising Jilbab sales have been booming for three years across a country where women have traditionally gone unveiled, and where the meaning of wearing the jilbab — or not wearing one — remains fluid. The issue also cuts to a central, unresolved debate in Indonesia’s decade-old democracy: the role of Islam in politics.

“It’s the first time that the jilbab has become an issue in a presidential campaign in Indonesia,’’ said Siti Musdah Mulia, a professor of Islamic studies at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University and a leading proponent of women’s rights.

“There are so many more important issues that should be addressed in the campaign,” said Mulia, who has worn a jilbab for eight years. “Why this one?”

But it would not be the first time that politicians tried to co-opt religious symbols to win votes. The ruckus over the jilbab began a few months ago when Yudhoyono, whose wife, Kristiani Herawati, does not wear a jilbab, and Vice President Jusuf Kalla, whose wife, Mufidah, does, decided not to run together again.

The president selected as his new vice presidential running mate the respected head of the central bank, Boediono, whose wife, Herawati, goes unveiled.

Kalla, in turn, decided to run for president as the Golkar Party’s standard-bearer and picked as his No. 2 a retired general, Wiranto, whose wife, Rugaya, is veiled.

Perhaps sensing an opening as it trailed in the polls, Golkar soon put up posters of the veiled wives. With reporters in tow, the wives went shopping together for jilbabs at Tanah Abang, the city’s largest textile market, where the general’s wife was known as a regular, but Kalla’s wife was not.

Golkar officials rejected accusations by the president’s party that they were trying to exploit Islam for politics; they also denied having anything to do with the recent distribution of leaflets that stated, falsely, that Boediono’s wife was not Muslim but Roman Catholic.

Yudhoyono was also getting pressure from a current coalition ally, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the country’s largest Islamic party. A party leader said members were gravitating toward the Golkar candidates because of their jilbab-wearing wives.

The country’s Islamic parties have core supporters that are coveted by the major parties, though the Islamic parties have failed to make inroads among mainstream voters. In fact, in April’s legislative elections, they suffered a steep drop in support compared with five years ago, a decline interpreted as mainstream voters’ rejection of Islam in politics.

Neng Dara Affiah, an official at Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Islamic organization, which espouses moderate Islam, said the fight over the meaning of wearing the jilbab was taking place between “fundamentalists” and “progressives.”

The fundamentalists are trying to force women to wear the jilbab as an act of submission, and had already done so in various municipalities across the Indonesian archipelago in recent years, Neng said. For the progressives, she said, wearing the jilbab was an expression of a woman’s right.

“For women in Indonesia, whether they want to wear the jilbab or not is their choice,” said Neng, who started wearing one five years ago. “It shouldn’t be political.”

Despite being home to the world’s largest Muslim population, Indonesia does not have a tradition of Islamic dress. Most Indonesian women started wearing the jilbab in the last decade, after the fall in 1998 of President Suharto, who had kept a close grip on Islamic groups.

Fashion and clothing industry experts said the number of women wearing jilbabs rose sharply in the past three years, for reasons of religion, fashion or something undefined.

“If you ask 10 different women why they’re wearing jilbab, you’ll get 10 different answers,” said Jetti R. Hadi, the editor-in-chief of Noor, a magazine specializing in Muslim fashion that features jilbab-clad models on its cover. “You cannot assume that because a woman is wearing a jilbab, she’s a good Muslim.”

At Tanah Abang, the market where the political wives shopped for jilbabs, many small shop owners had recently switched from selling Western clothes to jilbabs to capitalize on the boom.

One shop owner, Syafnir, 53, said seven of his 15 relatives working in the market had begun to sell jilbabs in the past two years. Asked whether faith was fueling the boom, he shook his head emphatically. Fashion was, he said, an answer echoed by others in the market.

Deni Sartika, 36, who was shopping with her mother and young daughter, all three of them veiled, said she started wearing a jilbab in 1991, long before most Indonesian women did. She was a member of PKS, the Islamic party that supports Yudhoyono. Deni said she would vote for Yudhoyono even though their wives did not wear jilbabs.

“I’m looking at the candidates instead of their wives,” she said, “but we’d be happy if the wives wore jilbabs.”

The New York Times

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