Exorcisms and ‘corrective’ rape: inside Indonesia’s controversial LGBT ‘conversion’ therapies
- Faith-based ‘treatments’ for LGBT people – such as a type of Islamic exorcism known as ‘ruqya’ – are commonplace in Indonesia
- Commercial entities have also cropped up in recent years, offering everything from pray-away-the-gay sessions to ‘sex therapy’ – a euphemism for rape
While the pseudoscientific practice has been condemned in much of the West, conversion therapy is still widely carried out by faith-based organisations in the world’s largest Muslim majority nation, as well as some commercial entities. Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia but rising religious conservatism has fuelled increasing discrimination against the community.
Christine, who grew up in the city of Medan in North Sumatra province, said that she was first subjected to the practice – a type of Islamic exorcism known in Indonesia as ruqya – when she was thirteen.
“I had been feminine since I was seven,” Christine told This Week In Asia. “I was really close to my elder and younger sisters. I played with girl toys and I did chores that girls normally do.”
By sixth grade, she was being bullied in school for being “really girlie”, she said, with schoolmates often shouting slurs at her in Bahasa Indonesia meant specifically for transwomen.
“That’s when my mum asked a Muslim cleric to do a ruqya for me. The cleric told my mum that there was a female jinn inside me,” she said, using the Arabic term for a supernatural spirit. He then gave her some holy water to drink.