Amid all the smoke and dust of urbanized Jakarta – motorcycles, white Islamic veils, clove cigarettes, blue jeans, smoking satay on the street grill – in a megalopolis of something like 21 million people – there is a real Java, Indonesia, too.

This one isn’t revolutionary, but eternal. By eternal, I mean it seems to resist EVERY change in favor of itself, its OWN identity. Java is the same as it always was. Not that it is always easy to live this way, of course, it’s just that it’s frequently done.

You might ask why such a post belongs on Publius Pundit, and I think there are some things to say about it.

One, Indonesia is a Muslim country and unfortunately, that sometimes conjures up the belief that it is widely Islamofascist. This really isn’t true. Only a tiny number of people subscribe to Islamofascism – when I was in Indonesia, I had to go looking hard for them, because nobody liked it. Most Indonesians, instead, are syncretic, a combination of their own religions – a layering of Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and animist tradition – the evidence is below in the pictures.

Two, Amid all this very slow moving traditionalism, Indonesia is a real and true democracy. Despite the country’s reputation for corruption, this country has serious, pro-democracy voters as any in the world. They have give and take. They forgive their enemies. They compromise. They talk to each other, even if they are on other sides of the fence. These are significantly critical elements for making a democracy work. Randy at Beautiful Horizons has an item up about the death of someone I have known of for a long time, Pramoedya, who forgave the Dutch colonizers and the Soeharto dictatorship. In Indonesia, voting is voluntary and everyone considers it a prized privilege to go out and vote. Indonesian elections are clean and transparent and all sides are fairly represented. Indonesian democracy is a thing so beauty, just like these people. Not only that, every president they have elected since democracy began in 1999 has been better than the previous one. This is a country that has a long way to go to get to the level of freedom, prosperity and choices it wants, so even though like Mexico, its pace is slow, it’s done very well, and not backtracked.

Three: Look at these traditional people. Look at their clothes for one thing. Look at little bits and pieces of technology, and look at layers and layers of culture. In their clothes you can see Indian, European, Buddhist, Hindu and Dutch influences, in addition to the very traditional Javanese center. Some Muslims! Take a look at those offerings to the traditional gods in that one photo, the one with the green cones. Traditional yes, and more modern Muslim, yes. The Javanese never became less Javanese for opening themselves to gradual change. They only became more Javanese. And more like themselves.

And fourth and most important: The steady seeming unchangingness of the Javanese culture (even though there is change indeed in the gradual cultural adaptations described above) is precisely what keeps it from falling into the trap of Islamofascism, which, if you ask me, is religion in a hurry, virtue cheaply bought. There is no such taste for that among the traditional Javanese seen in these pictures. They know too much about other realities and for that, will always be themselves. Nothing will ever take them over, no globalization, no Islamofascism, no Americanization. They already know who they are.

When I see these beautiful pictures of Java – a place I know well – I first get a little misty eyed because it is the Java I remember very well from 1998. The great Asian financial crisis wasn’t about money, it was about people. And that crisis sent me to these places to ask such people what it meant to them. So I got to know a little about them, and these are things I treasure.

Look at these photos here, ahead of the huge impending explosion of Mount Merapi, known in Bahasa Indonesia as Mountain Of Fire. I look, and I recognize.

Source: All photos, AFP, Reuters, Associated Press, via Yahoo!