On sub-tropical Sunday mornings in August, in the square outside the Fatahillah Museum in north Jakarta, cultural tableaux testifying to Indonesia's diversity take place. In one of them, a troupe of Balinese school girls performs the elegant Legong dance that interprets, in its distinctive way, aspects of the island's ancient Hindu traditions. In its 2002 Jakarta version, however, instead of the sinuous traditional dress, the girls cover their heads with white headscarves. White gloves and white socks obscure their elegant hand and foot movements, while what appears to be a green satin sack hides the rest of their prepubescent anatomy.
Such puritanical disdain for traditional practice reflects the growing Islamization of Indonesian cultural life. It marks a significant breach with the recent and historical past, when both pre- and post-colonial Javanese rulers took pride in a syncretism that amalgamated religious and cultural differences into an original Indonesian blend. Across Jakarta today, however, middle-class women anxiously debate-while sipping latte in air-conditioned cafes in the downtown shopping malls-whether it is Islamically correct to wear the stylish "millennium" headscarf, elegantly tied at the nape of the neck, as a fitting accompaniment to lipstick and Ray-Bans. This fashionable equivocation receives little sympathy from sisters in Islam like Anne Rufaidah, the owner of an Islamic women's clothing chain. She insists that only the austere Middle Eastern headscarf, which descends shapelessly to the waist, meets the Quranic injunction to modesty and propriety. The Balinese dancers in Fatahillah Square wisely opt for the righteous look.
