Western media usually tags Indonesia as having more Muslims than any other country. That’s statistically _true_ – but lesser known is that 11% of the 284 million don’t follow Islam. The constitutionally secular republic has more Christians than Australia.

The problem is that some of their behaviours don’t always follow their founder’s teachings of love, compassion and forgiveness.

The latest example comes from Medan, the capital of North Sumatra. The city has a population of about 2.5 million; an estimated 70% are Muslims. As this is below the national figure of 88%, tolerance is assumed to prevail – another quality Indonesia claims for its overseas image.

Not in the case of Muslim TikToker Ratu (Queen) Thalisa, 40, aka Irfan Satria Putra Lubis, who has been jailed for 34 months and fined Rp 100 million (A$10,000) for blasphemy under the Electronic Information and Transactions Law (EIT).

 The EIT was amended last year to protect minors and clarify online prohibited content. Critics of the charge and sentence claim the law is being used to villify objectionable neighbours.

Blasphemy charges are usually flung at non-Muslims for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad, deviating from mainstream thinking in sermons, or despoiling the Koran. Want to get rid of your debts? Tell the cops your lender uses the holy book as a doorstop.

Thalisa faced the court because she’d been dobbed in by five groups of Christians ignoring Jesus’ edict: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven.”

The prosecutors wanted Thalisa behind bars for more than four years. She can appeal. So can the prosecution.

The pure and faithful objected to her arguing online that Jesus should get a short back and sides and look sartorially splendid in well-ironed robes, as befits the Son of God soaring heavenwards.

She showed a picture that made him appear like a dissident, unkempt by modern Indonesian standards, particularly those enforced by the military.

As no one has a clue what Jesus looked like, artists across the centuries have usually assumed he was a model for a martyr, tall, slim, manly, bearded and with Caucasian features. These include a luscious head of hair that Thalisa considered scruffy.

Minor joke? Throwaway line of no consequence? Elsewhere, maybe, though not in Indonesia, where humour and religion rarely marry. Instead, a sinful suggestion in the minds of the holy ones who spotted other evils – sexual deviance and popularity.

Thalisa is transgender and reportedly has more than 440,000 TikTok followers, more than enough to fill many cathedrals. So a person of some influence and controversy, maybe even a threat.

She was convicted because her comments could allegedly “spread hatred” and disrupt “public order” and “religious harmony”.

The blockbuster rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar has been banned in Indonesia as showings would probably rip congregations apart and damn all to hell. At least, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music would be uplifting.

Indonesian law authorises seven beliefs and bans the 4000 others found across the world. “Protestants” are called “Christians” and are separate from the Catholics, Atheism is not an option, though indigenous beliefs pre-dating Christianity and Islam are anecdotally being recognised in some jurisdictions.

The Portuguese in the 16th century and later the Dutch brought Christianity to the Archipelago through Calvinist and Lutheran missionaries preaching an austere faith. The prosperity gospel is now becoming popular with Pentecostals.

In 1972, Australia signed the _International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights_. The UN Human Rights Committee claimed: “Prohibitions of displays of lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible with the Covenant.”

Indonesia ratified the Covenant in 2006, but it seems to have made no difference. Amnesty International Indonesia’s executive director Usman Hamid said the verdict on Thalisa illustrates “the increasingly arbitrary and repressive application of the EIT law to violate freedom of expression”. He wants the sentence annulled.

In the past five years, Amnesty claimed at least 560 people “exercising their freedom of expression” have been charged with alleged violations of the EIT Law “including defamation and hate speech, of whom 421 were convicted.”

In 2023, a woman was jailed for two years after uttering an Islamic prayer before eating pork, a food forbidden to Muslims – and, incidentally, Jews. Last year, another TikToker got into strife after asking school kids “What kind of animals can read the Koran?”

The question seems silly, but has some theological relevance as 31 creatures are mentioned in the Koran having qualities useful for humans – like the ant’s persistence. Mistreatment of animals is forbidden. Whether they can talk is not a matter for childhood chatter, but kaftan-clad judges neatly coiffed.

Lest readers conclude this column is unbalanced, it will end on a story from the province of Aceh where the Hukum Jinayat (Islamic criminal code) prevails. The legislation prohibits gambling, boozing, women wearing tight clothes, men avoiding Friday prayers and sexual deviancy.

Last month, two gay Muslim college students in their 20s were caught in an intimate act and sentenced to public canings – 82 and 77 times. Reports state one man had to be carried off the stage because he was too weak to move after the last lash.

It has yet to be revealed whether the floggings moved the men to heterosexuality, made them more pious or candidates for conversion to another approved religion. But they got haircuts ahead of the canings.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.