The story of Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama’s alleged blasphemy against the Quran and the ensuing massive protests over it have dominated the Indonesian media for the last few months. We already knew that the issue has hurt Governor Ahok significantly in the polls for next year’s gubernatorial race, but we had yet to see any evidence of how the case is being perceived by the Indonesian public at large. For example, is Ahok generally perceived as being guilty or innocent?
The answer to that question and many related ones are contained in the results of the latest survey done by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC), which randomly polled 1012 people across the country to get a sense of the nation’s opinions on Ahok’s case.
On the question of his guilt, 45.2% agreed that Ahok had indeed insulted Islam. That number may be less than half, but only 21.5% said he had not committed blasphemy and 33.3% percent said they did not know.
Now, the truly surprising thing is that the vast majority of people surveyed did not know exactly what Ahok’s allegedly blasphemous statement was. It turns out 88.5% of respondents said they did not know exactly how Ahok referred to verse Al-Maidah 51 of the Quran during his infamous speech he gave in the Thousand Islands, in line with the 87.1% of respondents who said they had not seen the video of the speech that went viral online (although not that viral, apparently).
“This means that most people only know [about Ahok’s blasphemy] from the news or word of mouth,” Saiful Mujani said during a press conference announcing the results of the survey yesterday as quoted by Kompas.
Of the 12.9% that said they had watched the video, 46.6% said that Ahok had said the word “pakai” (used) in the line containing his alleged blasphemy, telling the audience members they were being “fooled using surah Al Maidah”. The other 37.4% said Ahok had not used the word “pakai”, meaning they incorrectly thought the governor told audience members that had been “fooled by surah Al Maidah”, an extremely important distinction.
Since the incident, Ahok has apologized for it numerous times (there are literally thousands of news stories about his apologies). However, only 50% of respondents said they had heard or read news about him apologizing. Of those who did, 57.3% said his apology is sincere while 29.1% say it is insincere.
SMRC surveyed respondents from November 22 to 28 and the margin of error for the results is 3.1%.
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