1 - Changing Notions of Sensuality

1Hijab fashion shows have often been held in big cities in Indonesia in the last five years. This is the manifestation of high-end fashion embedded into the discourse of the veil in a context of a battle of economic imperatives. Formerly, the jilbab trade was dominated by Muslims but today it is the merchants of Tionghoa ethnicity who lead the market as vendors and distributors. Expensive, deluxe jilbab have been created to appeal to the sophisticated and discerning consumer. Not just a large selection of jilbab made from the finest fabrics but also sets of prayer shawls, hijab amira for children, caps and pins, and for women, long skirts, trendy flared trousers, harem pants, long tunics, dresses, sweaters etc., are available in markets, boutiques and online.

2Young Muslimah (Muslim women) who are avid users of social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, now feel inadequate without this high-end Islamic fashion item. They pair Western and Korean fashion with the jilbab, in a cacophony of hybrid and conflicting fashion. At the same time, skinny jeans have been banned in many universities and schools, and girls have taken to social media to express themselves. Most of them are 15–30 years old, from urban middle-class families and have little experience of activism. They insist that what they are doing is apolitical, that they are united only by repression. “We are not against the law prohibiting girls from wearing skintight attire; it’s just irrational hating jeans in such a way,” explained Danty Sofie Karin. These girls have been criticized by teachers for being too sexy and sensual. Sensuality and sexuality have been stamped upon but can never be completely denied, and debates rage on between those who deny their own curves and those who accept nature’s gift. There are those who hate their bodies and allow the community and the holy text to decide its fate, and then there are those who love their bodies and want to decide for themselves.

3Just like the rainforest and the ozone layer, girls’ hair has been disappearing from sight in most Islamic schools and universities. Girls’ hair, which was still visible in the 1980s, must be hidden from the public gaze. It is clear to all that things have changed. The disappearance of women’s hair says much about womanhood, the state of self and love, and the relation of body and soul. A woman’s hair is an intrinsic part of her body. Whether it is set free or concealed under a piece of cloth sends a message about a woman’s relation to her body — whether she loves or rejects it. There are myriad variations of such ‘body construction’ and self-definition. The informal law on girls’ dressing has morphed into the removal of hair. To go unveiled is to ruin one’s reputation as hair has come to symbolize intimacy, sensuality and sin. Hairlessness and the jilbab mark the divide between girlhood and womanhood, but it always distinguishes the demonic from the angelic. The bareheaded are closer to the demonic, flaunting sensuality and intimacy in a cheap way, while femininity is now located in the observance of the veil. The image of the fashionable jilbab with nary a display of hair also shapes the sexual imagination of legions of young men. The jilbab is taken as a sign of safety — a veiled female does not engage in extra-marital sexual relationships. Thus, the veil has, perversely, come to define erotic desirability.

4Sensual poses have become embedded into the jilbab. The female teen jilbab fetish has gone mainstream. The jilbab might not be feminist but it can be feminine. This is reminiscent of women’s fascination with cosmetics and luxurious branded bags and shoes. Magazines for young women such as Annida or other secular long-existing magazines frequently feature jilbab fashion shows, a perpetual reminder that if you are Muslimah, you are defined by the jilbab. Never during the 1990s did the question, “You are a Muslim woman right? Why don’t you wear the jilbab?” ever arise.

5The high-end jilbab has also come to signal sexual maturity and availability, not unlike how lip gloss is used to signal a girls'kissability, except the jilbab offers a sexual fantasy that is legitimate and halal. Throughout history, women’s legs, hair and curves have been regarded as erotic and taboo. The same is now happening with hair. Even women who are about to deliver babies insist on wearing the head veil! "Everybody is going to be in that room," one expectant mother explained to me. "I don't want them to see my hair." Private space has become public space. Because women can now exercise the right to wear the jilbab, once veiled, she expects to be acknowledged as dignified and demands of her community a reciprocal respect. In a society that has hidden all female hair from sight, such as in Aceh province, it is no wonder that even the smell of a woman’s hair has ceased to be a common experience. Hairlessness, like wearing the jilbab, advertises that a Muslimah has been purified for male and religious favour.

6On the other hand, it marks a disdain for nature and the female body — its form, smell and very nature. Beneath a women’s desire to look ‘religious’ lies the implication that her natural body is ‘dirty’. In wanting to be an instrument of religious chastity, the fact that the female body is built for birth and reproduction has been overlooked. There is a deep irony here: Muslimah are pursuing sexual pleasures that were made possible by a feminism that also asserted the beauty of the feminine body. Sex is no longer dirty, but hair and skin are. It is a discourse of gaze. When the public gaze is prohibited, what can women do to celebrate their bodies if not high-end make-up and fashion items? Websites specializing in the sale of Eastern and Islamic fashion have mushroomed since 2005. These advertise a new collection of jilbab for every season, cotton being de rigueur for tropical Indonesia. Elegant caftans and Indian-style women’s apparel are also available.

7The Muslim factor has extended beyond the fashion industry. Books on initiation to Islam are doing brisk sales, as are DVDs and multimedia materials for children and women, covering prayers, Islamic educational games, learning Arabic, etc. One can go full tilt with Moroccan slippers that have actually become essential clothing for children, who also have their jilbab, hijab, kamis and pants. Widely available too are beautifully crafted Moroccan decorative items such as sconces, wrought iron lanterns and luminaries, and mirrors, as well as pens and bookmarks. There are also health care and natural products such as Argan oil, prickly pear, black soap, Aleppo soap and the indulgent kassa horsehair glove. The immersion is total.

8I have been surveying Muslimah student eroticism for several years now and one thing is clear: young women who don't love and don't feel loved tend not to wear make-up. For them the jilbab constitutes a gateway to academic success and a holy path to Allah. Even though it means capitulation to fashion, the jilbab is a portal to fuller affection. It is a mark of female sexual availability to men on par with rites of submission for ‘secular’ women. Just as women are achieving academic predominance and breaking into field after field as the economic order increasingly seeks the verbal, social and emotional skills they have to offer, the terms of trade are turning against them in their own bodily expressions. Educated Muslim women must increasingly submit to the sexual demands of a shrinking pool of suitable men. And ironically for women, despite all their progress in the classroom and boardroom, it is increasingly only their bodies that set them apart. The religious look is feminine. It is the accepted code for pretty, like the smooth cheeks on their faces. The religious body pushes aside the sensual function of the body — corporeal denial to be precise. The disappearance of femaleness, of skin and of hair is a hot issue in the changing notions of sensuality and sexuality in contemporary Indonesia.

2 - Sexuality and Women’s Skin

9There are women who expose their neck but cover their hair, or reveal their arms and legs but hide their hair, attesting to the dissonance and contradictions evident in the universe of the jilbab. Even commercial sex workers wear the jilbab — a practice that is common in the Middle East where the jilbab originated, but not in Indonesia where it is still considered sacred. Pressure and enforcement have made women insert their own meaning into the jilbab.

10Girls’ helplessness and confusion in the face of all these contradictory messages should be heeded — they are the new generation and legitimate voices of progressive forces that will define the future of Indonesian Islam. Enthusiasm among girls for social media in Indonesia has overshadowed their apprehension of Islam. Many Indonesian artistes, while on pilgrimage to Mecca, have their outfits faithfully documented and broadcast by TV, thus unintentionally becoming models of Indonesian Islamic fashion. Jetti R. Hadi, editor-in-chief of NooR, a magazine specializing in Muslim fashion, explained that Indonesian Islamic fashion, with its sophisticated and up-to-date look, has attracted many women in the Middle East, especially in Mecca and Medina. They comment that Indonesian women manage to be attractive and pious at the same time; this is something they cannot find at home since creativity is so restricted. Indonesia has been called the Mecca of Islamic fashion, with Pasar Klewer, Solo and Central Java being the driving forces. According to Jetti, Muslimah apparel and accessories constitute 20 per cent of the Indonesian fashion industry, worth approximately USD 1.7 trillion in 2008 alone. While the Middle Eastern fashion industry is dominated by Morocco and Turkey, Indonesian Muslimah fashion styles are influenced by traditional Javanese batik and kain ikat. With their exuberant motifs of flora and fauna, intimacy and sensuality manage to find their way back into Islamic fashion.

11The scary image of Islam is being attenuated by this vibrant Islamic fashion, displacing the narrative of suicide bombs and deaths. The growing market of Islamic fashion has even touched mainstream fashion designers who had never designed Muslim wear previously, for example, Itang Yunasz, Ghea Panggabean and Sebastian Gunawan. From tightfitting jilbab to loose ones covering the chest, diverse concepts crop up every year with celebrities setting the trend. The jilbab goes down well because one can abide by the law and be fashionable at the same time! A rigorous promotion of Bandung-based Up2date and Solobased Bilqis have taken two of Indonesia’s most popular brands overseas, gaining a following in Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and Thailand, where Muslims reside. Bilqis sells mainly elegant batik pieces from Solo while Up2date offers a mishmash of Parisian and Korean styles.

12Supermarkets such as Carrefour, big businesses, banks, insurance offices and department stores have discovered that being Muslimfriendly is good for business. The case of a female staff of BCA (Bank Central Asia) who was rejected because of her veil and who tried to expose what she claimed was the Islamophobia of the bank is notorious. Now all banks, for example, BNI Syariah Bank, BPD Syariah Bank and Mandiri Syariah Bank, are competing to establish Bank Syariah, which has brought in trillions of dollars. Not only is Muslim apparel now permitted in banks, the jilbab is even a must for all female staff at Bank Syariah — something unthinkable in the 1990s. The corporate world never used to be Muslim-friendly, but attitudes have changed dramatically. Where previously presenters were prohibited from wearing the jilbab, some 90 per cent of national television now bans discrimination on the basis of the jilbab, with only one TV station, Metro TV, bucking the trend. The Commission of Human Rights has urged workplaces to accept jilbab-wearers unconditionally. Jilbab-wearers who faced difficulties in finding jobs during the Soeharto era have seen the tides turned. Women labourers in the textile industries, for example, are now required to cover their hair.

13Jobs in banks and the top positions in government service are filled by jilbab-wearers. The industry has accepted them on the basis of their professionalism. Department stores and malls compete with each other to produce the most imaginative Muslim-friendly policies. What has caused this corporate revolution? We can put it down to sweeping changes in attitudes that have reduced the liabilities and raised the rewards of being Muslim-friendly. A generation ago, during the New Order Era, creating a Muslim-friendly workplace might have upset the regime; now it probably won’t. On the contrary, failing to treat jilbabwearers equally is likely to drive them elsewhere. Since they make up perhaps 80 per cent of the national talent pool, bigotry makes a firm less competitive.

14The Islamic revolution in the workplace is remarkable. In most places, companies are more liberal than governments. In the coming years, the revolution is likely to gather pace. Younger businessmen are far more relaxed about the jilbab than their parents were. Indeed, many of them, whether Muslim or Tionghoa or Christian, would feel uncomfortable if the jilbab-wearer were treated indecently. Companies vying to recruit employees bear this in mind. The mindset that the jilbab is connected to bigotry has changed and the jilbab-wearer is judged on her potential. The jilbab-wearer has also ‘come out of the closet’ and now pursues a career just as ardently as her non-jilbab wearing counterpart since the veil is no longer synonymous with domesticity. Paradoxically the show of skin among jilbab-wearers is scandalous. The more women opt for Muslim wear, the more they find ways to contravene the iron law of covering-up: more skin is shown in offices, bare feet are exposed instead of hiding them in stockings, the official outfit is donned but in a body-clinging design that shows off curves.

15The film and entertainment industry has not been spared either. Artistes faithful to the jilbab such as Inneke Koesherawati, Aminah Cendrawasih, Nani Wijaya, Desy Ratnasari are part of an increasing number who crowd Indonesian screens. The Islamic revolution is far from over. Nearly half of national film production is embedded with Islamic themes, for example, films such as Sang Pencerah, Ayat-Ayat Cinta and Mata Tertutup, with established director Hanung Bramantya leading the game. The censorship of sexuality and intimacy in Islambranded movies has given rise to a particular genre of films that, incredibly enough, tops the box office. Fashion designers serving the film industry design clothes that not only cover the body but are also artistic; it is a tricky business to provide conservativeness and sensuality at the same time. Sensuality thus has to be represented by the quietness and gentleness of the artistes wearing the jilbab, and cannot rely merely on the exposure of skin. Indonesia has become a hub of Islamic film production that not only sells religiosity but also sensuality with a dash of conservativeness.

16With images of head-veiled girls flooding social media, and the changing attitude towards private life as public display, there is mounting skepticism towards the jilbab — formerly acknowledged as a religious cachet, it is turning into a meaningless piece of cloth that any woman can take on and off. The act of putting it on when entering schools and universities, and taking it off just as soon upon exiting, is a political act, a way to for girls to exercise power that has been taken away from them in the classroom. Girls have come together to form cliques to protect each other and devise strategies to break the religious stronghold. Such cliques have been boosted with the emergence of many Islamic-based militant organizations targeting and recruiting students.

17Until now, women have been required to observe the jilbab only when entering mosques and during religious congregations. Feminists have spoken out against the extension of the rule. "Everywhere we are asked to observe Jilbab. This is not imposed on men," charged Lies Marcoes Natsir, a leading feminist based in Jakarta (Bush, 2002; Candraningrum, 2008). Proponents of the jilbab are wary that the movement rejecting the jilbab is really aimed at secularizing the nation. "We are not stupid; we know that the jilbab is now the top political prop. Many politicians and civil servants are now observing the jilbab. We will be vigilant against the misuse of the jilbab for non-religious objectives. We do not want our girls to be corrupted by the West,” they warned.

18Fellow pro-jilbab movements such as Aisyiyah and Fatayat Nadhdlatul Ulama have pledged to monitor television advertising using veiled women. An example of such gratuitous use of the jilbab is a shampoo advertisement that, ironically, does not even show hair. Kelompok Pengajian Ibu-Ibu (Religious Congregation by Mothers) notes the persistence of references to the jilbab without justification and has asked parents and schools to eliminate as much as possible such images.

19Over the past few decades, as more and more women have embraced the jilbab, the authorities, in the name of the Muslim family, have waged war against pornography and sex. Abortion is strictly prohibited and crackdowns are common, with the police and media carrying out raids to catch illicit lovers in motels or hotels, something unheard of in contemporary Western countries (Lewis, 2002). Abandonment of contraception and condoms is becoming widespread among militant religious groups such as LDII (Lembaga Dakwah Islam Indonesia) and mosque officials promote natural family planning: women are advised to track their cycle and abstain from sex on all but their least fertile days. They cast artificial contraception as an affront to God’s will, a gateway to abortion and a threat to public health. In their minds, condoms are abortifacients and family-planning campaigners are propagandists of a culture of death.

20This type of thinking has led several ulama and ustadz to try to curb the use of modern contraception. Many PKS politicians, for example, Yoyoh Kusroh, have a minimum of seven children (Ramage, 1996). This has also led to a rise in maternal mortality, unwanted pregnancies and injuries caused by clandestine abortions. It is obvious that a conservative approach to reproductive rights can and has hurt women. Behind the Manichaean religious rhetoric espoused by reactionary Muslims hides plain truths about public health: access to contraception decreases maternal mortality and lowers the number of abortions. The birth control programme has become a vicious battlefield — something that never happened during the Soeharto era (Mujani, 2003). A comprehensive study by the World Health Organization confirmed that abortion rates in countries that prohibit or restrict legal abortion are no different from abortion rates in countries with liberal abortion laws; the only reliable way to reduce abortion is through the provision of affordable, accessible contraception. In addition, there has been a surge in births outside marriage, the greatest rise being among poor girls around the age of 18 with some high-school education. More than quarter of births to women under 30 years of age now occur outside of marriage. Is this really a time to try to limit contraception? What about the reckoning of human lives? The reckoning of human lives — and saving them too!

21The jilbab is powerless before the rising mortality of mothers during childbirth and the numbers of girls being sold into prostitution, even jilbab-wearing ones! According to a 2012 report by UNICEF, 100,000 children (predominantly girls) and women are trafficked in Indonesia every year. The United Nations defines child trafficking as the recruitment, transportation or receipt of children with the purpose of exploiting them. Poverty, lack of economic opportunities, low social status, high demand for cheap labour and commercial sex, weak law enforcement, conflict and discrimination are the prime reasons for child trafficking. Apart from prostitution, girls are sold for as little as Rp 100,000.00 into servitude in private homes, as street beggars and factory workers. The trafficking of girls, besides drugs and guns, is a lucrative business in tourism hubs such as Bali, Batam and Jakarta, pandering to tourists from countries governed by stricter laws. Girls from poor rural areas are being sold in these places and other big cities in Indonesia such as Surabaya, Medan, Makassar and Semarang.

22The last decade has seen some spectacular incidents involving women: a family in Jakarta was convicted for killing four female relatives, a woman was allegedly strangled by her husband in Kediri, and a highprofile charity decided to withdraw funds for cervix cancer screening. There are two striking aspects about these events and news coverage about them. Firstly, in all these cases, different as they may be, women were being punished for being women. The Jakarta killings were allegedly motivated by the girls'dating and wearing of girly clothes. The woman in Kediri was supposedly killed because she was having an affair with her neighbour. And it is hard to think of a gesture that more clearly penalizes women for just being women than defunding screenings for cervix cancer. The second remarkable aspect about these events is that many people expressed outrage, making me feel tentatively optimistic about the future for women's rights.

23Despite the fact that many women are the sole or main providers for their families, and despite women's advances as middle managers, women continue to be under-represented in top leadership roles. This can be attributed in part to assumptions about women's ‘nature’ — less assertive than men, and lacking in vision and strength. It is telling that many job advertisements add the line that qualified women are encouraged to apply: men, this seems to imply, are qualified just by being male. What makes the situation worse are the punitive laws related to women’s sexuality.

24Societies have viewed and regulated women's sexuality differently since time immemorial. Semitic religions, Christianity or Islam, expect women to be chaste and demure; punished or ridiculed are those who were not (Hitti, 1940; Epstein, 1967; Brenner, 1996; Hasyim, 2006). Today, laws punishing women for having sex with the wrong persons at the wrong time for the wrong reasons persist in almost all countries in the world, ranging from the criminalization of female adultery and abortion, to laws that punish drug use during pregnancy and social services provisions that penalize poor unmarried women with more than one child. At the basis of all of these laws is one main notion: women should not really want to have sex. As long as women are undervalued, expected to bear the entire price of reproduction, and at the same time required to be outwardly asexual, the world will see more women and girls killed or maimed and their health needs neglected. Feminists continue to fight for women, Indonesia being one of their top concerns with its rife trafficking of children. Regions that thrive on tourism such as Bali, Batam and Jakarta being the hotspots of child exploitation. Child trafficking is one of humanity’s most terrible crimes and Islam slumbers on, impervious to this blight.

3 - Intimate Photos and Adulation of Self

25One question I wanted to answer in the undertaking of my research was “What does sexuality look like to young Muslim women wearing the head veil?” In order to find out, I did some virtual travelling through photos displayed on Facebook and Twitter and conducted interviews. Women’s perception of sexuality is moulded by messages sent by society, school, the media and, most importantly, family. Sex and reproductive health education has been recognized to be of prime importance, yet remains taboo in Indonesia. Instead, a patriarchal family ethos based on clearly segregated male and female roles, underlined by conservative attitudes towards gender sexuality and reinforced through religious education, dominates.

26The masjid yields great influence on the perception of sexuality. In Indonesia, Islam as the national religion is one of the core ingredients of ethno-national identity. It is a marker and vehicle of social mobilization. The Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono regime has strengthened the role of the masjid in society. The rise of religiosity among Indonesians since 2000 has led to the gentrification and localization of norms and mores from the community into the mosques. The influence of the masjid as the ultimate moral authority has strengthened conservative viewpoints and policy initiatives on abortion, sex education, homosexuality, gender roles, woman leadership and violence against women. With the installation of a more liberal media at the same time as the rise of conservatism, tolerance of sexual freedom is still in its infancy, thus the adulation of the self through social media as the sole means of expression.

27What does this mean for young women in Indonesia? Is the masjid the lens through which they view sexuality? Or are they nonetheless affected by the global trend of freedom on sexuality? I have come to conclude there is no one notion of sexuality. The hyper-sexualization of the media is influential in shaping mentalities for both male and female adolescents in Muslim families in Indonesia; yet the lack of sexual education has resulted in an incomplete understanding of sexual behavior, underdeveloped communication skills and fragmented knowledge on sexual issues. This means greater exposure to abortion, risky sexual behavior, sexual infectious diseases, as well as unrealistic expectations and distorted views of one’s own sexuality and of sexuality itself — all of which is increasingly articulated through social media by young men and women.

28Marriage is a primordial consideration for Indonesian youth and is inseparable from issues of sexuality — this is something that Western scientists should take into account. Indonesian youths are expected to finish high school or university and then get married. On the other hand, Indonesia is no different when it comes to how these same youths are bombarded by hyper-sexualized images in the media. Female sexuality is defined and reproduced to sell and manipulate viewers. It is also being explored within the private-public realm of Facebook and Twitter. Who am I? How is my body perceived? How powerful is the act of seeing, or of being seen? How naked am I? Am I going beyond the boundaries, or am I staying within the normative mores? Questions such as these cross every girl’s mind when she displays her photos!

29Girls who avidly post their photos seem to have all the control yet latent overarching norms are ever present, curtailing their self-expression. Masculine and feminine archetypes of sexuality and intimacy are also very much intact. The Kantian golden rule of sexual segregation is very much present. Sexual identity is still being constructed by a socially defined gender role. So the male archetype remains that of a physical creature, a hunter, all muscles and mass. It is translucent, vibrant and tangible, with no real magic or mystery. Women, on the other hand, are depicted as contemplative and mysterious creatures. Feminine sexuality should be invisible and timid; at the same time, hyper-sexualized images of the female flood the media in an unprecedented way. Too much exposure, too much money, too much skin, too much fashion — all this has contributed to the cultural relocation of the meaning of sexuality.

4 - Lust and Angst

30Conservatives see the restriction of bodily expressions and the limitation of sex education as ways to bolster Indonesian values. One consequence of this is that marriage is becoming a ticket to sexuality — the less educated and the less well-off are more likely than others to get married, and at a younger age. Meanwhile, divorce rates for much of the rest of the population have increased in the past five years, nearly doubling. From the perspective of the conservatives, the volatility of sexuality is related with that of marriage; however, pushing young people who are not ready into marriage is not the solution. Youth sexuality is not getting enough play in the debates on school curriculum. It remains a taboo and is constantly denied. Reopening the debate on sexuality is not possible, much less in schools.

31Girls’ bodies are seen as moral corruption incarnate, likely to flame the revolution of free sex and cause the downfall of Indonesian values. In order to maintain these so-called values, it is girls’ sexuality rather than boys’ that must be curbed: in cases of rape, girls are the ones investigated and scrutinized and judged to be guilty of zina (illegal sexual intercourse)! We are indeed in a woeful state. While grassroots feminist democracy campaigners point fingers at government corruption as the cause of the misery among the poor, the poor put the blame on women, leading to the sexual repression of women.

32Interlacing religion and sexuality will always result in the locked terminology of taboo. As small children, girls discover the boundaries between their bodies and the sacredness of religion, but they are unable to glean any information from schools. Sexual intercourse or abortions are whispered about. They are alluded to in roundabout metaphors. Girls are silenced. They cannot speak about their abortion, divorce, slavery or fight for freedom. Sacred images of womanhood are widely disseminated to promote a proper dress code that allows for no engagement, much less criticism. It is only online that girls can have a conversation and share their perspectives. Likewise, secret erotic oases are created so that amorous couples can steal a few kisses — a hidden little dead-end street in Solo, the Balapan railway station, cars parked at sunset. Some of the girls don the jilbab, but that does not prevent them from wearing skin-tight, long-sleeved tops and heavy make-up with bright cherry-red lipstick. The boys are like boys everywhere, placing their arms around their girlfriends’ shoulders and even sliding their hands into their blouses. Much lust is on display, but much angst as well, for all this is considered subversive. Condoms thrown on the beach must be burnt or the illicit lovers will be condemned as depraved sinners if caught. Jepara coast is the scene of such drama every morning. Many resort to the wearing fake wedding rings. As for homosexuality, it is, needless to say, verboten. Yet homosexuals are tolerated. Stoning and lashing were introduced in 2010 but were massively rejected. Nonetheless, much debate continues on the legislative level, and a law on stoning gays or lesbians to death might be possible in the future.

33Lust and passion are being enacted with prudence and discretion. That is the sole option when they are seen as endangering pillars of religious beliefs. Prohibitions have been successful in suppressing everyday sexuality, and religious censors in Aceh are desperately trying to put a stop to what they call corrupted morality, yet little is being done to curb corruption. Corruption is halal! Any failures of the government are conveniently overlooked while feminism is to be countered. If caught by the hated Sharia police, illicit sexual intercourse is punishable by a jail term, and the couple is forced to get married within a few months. It is sexually frustrating and youths are being denied their own bodies by politicians’ extreme bullying. Many youths suffer from broken hearts, or else frigidity. Even sitting next to a member of the opposite sex has become impossible with the separation of sexes in classes!

34On the other hand, tourists from the Middle East living for a couple of months in Indonesia can enjoy nikah sirri, a temporary, short-term marriage for pleasure. Everyone knows that it is sexual sinning hiding behind a halal label and feminists have spoken up boldly against it, alerting the public to the fate of these temporary wives. Sadly, anything of Arab origins, even when it is related to sexuality, is permitted while anything that reeks of the West is disallowed, such as Valentine’s Day. Though Allah has been described in the Quran as al Wadud (the Loving) in Surah Al Buruf, Muslim youth are forbidden from celebrating this socalled pagan satanic festivity. The conservatives have lumped it with illicit lovers and fornication. All that is Western is Christian, and that is reason enough to ban it. As such, this innocent and harmless celebration is regarded as dangerous, satanic and harmful to youth morality.

35Lust and angst are two sides of the same coin. The body that is used in performing shalat is also used in sexual intercourse. It is a battlefield where pleasure and purification coexist, except pleasure is prohibited and to be avoided, which is why orgasms are taboo and women’s bodies are to be covered up, lest they tempt males and endanger the faith. Girls are taught to decrease their attractiveness as well as sexual desire, with the onus placed on women, not men, to minimize the libido. This corporeal hatred turns to mental angst among girls.

36“I cover my hair, yes, but I also show my curves. I have to at least be fashionable,” a student of Universitas Paramadina told me in an interview. Karina has a boyfriend and indulges in clandestine kisses, stopping short only of sexual intercourse. Thus she does not consider herself a sinner. This is the way she bends religious values and accommodates modernity at her own discretion. Karina and her boyfriend create their own definitions of sin and of hell, a creative hybrid of attitudes towards lust, intimacy and sexuality — not necessarily with the acknowledgement and consent of their parents or their teachers! This is how youth in Indonesia deal with love and lust under religious dogma. Karina confidently reveals her tabooed femaleness while still embracing Islam passionately, religiously performing shalat five times a day.

37Representations and expressions of the body, of lust and love, in social media is a form of protest. The Internet has been used to resist the power structure and explore the individual’s place in popular culture and in the observance of Islam. By violating traditional taboos on sexuality, lust, cross-dressing, intimacy and adulation of the self, women’s voices often empower the tabooed body while redefining family structure and values. Repression is still leading the way, but peel away the outermost layers and you will find rich expressions of lust and love being voiced without fear. Apprehension and trepidation are tangible on the faces of girls in schools, but this vanishes once online. Euphemisms are the linguistic devices that women employ to express lust and love, and angst is a fertile ground for generating euphemisms and metaphors of intimacy and sexuality.

38Women’s bodies have been reproduced in art and popular culture and is very vulnerable to stigma — lines indicate aging, lumps of fat are seen as unattractive, even the fairness of skin and the shape of the nose are scrutinized. Debunking stigma and demystifying physical beauty, instead of promoting airbrushed images of women on billboards, is a step towards honest discussion of femaleness.

39The stigma attached to lust and sexuality has indeed created suffering. Youths perceive it as torture, creating much angst. Society’s double standards are especially punitive for women. They are sold and nullified as amoral, almost at the same time. Women’s tales of woes — be it of marriage, divorce, abortion or plastic surgery — are tales of petrified, unhappy beings. How women negotiate the jilbab, interpret the body and access justice is not equal across the board. Women’s bodies are being devalued, revived and reread as part of the religious memory. To speak of women’s special responsibility, their duty and obligation to maintain a high standard of appearance, femininity, self-respect and pride, and yet oblige them, in the name of religion, to not reveal any skin and hair, signs of sexual availability, is pathetic.

40Femaleness is a commodity that comes in for heavy stigmatization in the arena of religiosity. The stigma surrounding lust, attached solely to femaleness, has undermined the diverse experiences of women around the globe. Women shall define beauty based on their own horizon, one that is fair and equal. Love, lust, intimacy and sexuality are legitimate and are experienced by women — the bareheaded and the jilbab-donning alike. It should be a source of strength to fight for a religiosity that is not suffocating, petrifying or murderous.