Gary LaMoshi, Denpasar, Bali – A new corruption scandal has shown that Indonesia's crooked politicians and government officials have no sacred cows – or books.

A member of the House of Representatives and his son stand accused of corruption in connection with the government's 55 billion rupiah (US$5.9 million) program to print copies of the Koran, Islam's holy book. But for the nation with the world's largest Muslim population, the scandal could prove a blessing in disguise.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has accused House of Representatives budget committee member Zulkarnaen Djabar of receiving 4 billion rupiah in bribes on Religious Affairs Ministry projects, including Koran printing and supplying computer equipment for Islamic schools. Media reports say each copy of the Koran wound up costing the government 1 million rupiah, or more than US$100.

Djabar, a member of the powerful Golkar Party, allegedly steered contracts toward his son's company. Other contract winners reportedly had links to powerful politicians and groups, including the deposed treasurer of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party Muhammad Nazaruddin who is already facing a raft of corruption allegations.

Clean government groups, meanwhile, caution that embezzled funds from the government's Koran program may have ended up in political party coffers.

Other members of the committee overseeing the Religious Affairs Ministry budget each received more than 500 copies of the government produced Koran. The lawmakers denied that accepting the Korans constituted bribery. Instead they said they took the holy books for distribution to constituents as part of their public service.

Double dip

Despite the KPK's investigation, alleged misappropriation of funds and scant details on the program's true costs, the budget committee dutifully doubled the Religious Affairs Ministry's Koran procurement budget to 110 billion rupiah.

Democratic Party budget committee member Muhammad Bogowi told the Jakarta Post newspaper, "We... agreed to the proposal because we felt that morality in society had deteriorated rapidly."

A two-fold budget increase to improve morality via an apparently corrupt program could make sense only to Indonesia's venal public servants. The budget for Koran printing and distribution in 2010, before the alleged fraud began, was 4 billion rupiah.

Amid public outrage, Djabar has denied the charges. He said the accusations were a warning from God that he is too involved with earthly matters and needs to become more spiritual. That goes double for the Ministry of Religious Affairs, long cited as a nexus of official graft.

Last year KPK named Religious Affairs as Indonesia's most corrupt government agency. That's no mean feat given the tax department's lengthy roster of officials convicted of wrongdoing. Former Religious Affairs Minister Said Agril al-Munawar had already been imprisoned on embezzlement charges.

Pilgrims' profits

The Religious Affairs Ministry's corruption problem is linked to one of the pillars of Islam, the hajj, the ritual pilgrimage to Mecca. The hajj is a commandment for each of Indonesia's nearly 200 million Muslims who have sufficient health and means for the trip.

The ministry administers the pilgrimage, this year collecting 35 million rupiah from each aspiring hajji. At present, the ministry holds more than 40 trillion rupiah from 1.4 million Indonesians. Saudi Arabia grants Indonesia an annual quota of 211,000 pilgrims, so the current waiting time for Indonesians to visit Mecca is six years.

Meanwhile the ministry, not the depositors, collects interest on the hajj funds, amounting to an estimated 1.7 trillion rupiah a year, or more than $180 million at the current exchange rate. Investigators say the ministry routinely uses funds to pay for government officials to make the hajj, with plenty left for other abuses.

But misusing other people's money isn't the worst of the Religious Affairs Ministry's sins, say critics. Rather than protecting the freedom of worship and belief inscribed in Indonesia's constitution, the ministry has often become an advocate and enabler of intolerance.

Aid and discomfort

In 2008, the ministry designated Muslim splinter group Ahmadiya as a heretic sect. That decree, issued at behest of Islamist hardliners, has given political cover to extremist violence against Ahmadiyah followers.

The worst attack, in January last year in Cikeusik, West Java, saw a mob of 1,000 fanatics bludgeon three Ahmadis to death. Courts convicted several assailants of minor offenses as well as sentencing one of the 20 Ahmadis attacked to six months in jail for his unarmed defense against the attackers.

Days after the Ahmadi killings, a mob burned two churches and attacked a third in Temanngung, Central Java. A court had just convicted a Christian man to five years in prison for distributing pamphlets that prosecutors claimed insulted Islam. However, the crowd thought the sentence – a year longer than Tommy Suharto served for masterminding the murder of the judge who sentenced him to jail – was too lenient.

For years, Christian congregations in Bekasi and Bogor in West Java have been subjected to a combination of hard-line Muslim protests and government discrimination. Both groups have been barred by local authorities from building churches despite court orders to permit construction.

Muslim extremists have hounded worshippers when they've tried to hold services on the putative church sites or alternative locations. Congregants have even taken Sunday prayers to Istana Merdeka, the Presidential Palace, to bring attention to their plight.

So where's the Religious Affairs minister in all this sectarian strife? Habitually on the side of the extremists and against the constitution.

Loathe thy neighbor

After a Shi'ite village on Madura Island off East Java came under attack from a majority Sunni mob in December, mainstream religious leaders scrupulously avoided inflammatory language. But Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali labeled Shi'ites as heretics amid the volatile violence.

When vigilantes firebombed an Ahmadiyah mosque in West Java in April, Suryadharma failed to condemn the attack. Instead, he warned Ahmadis "must abandon their deviant beliefs" and obey the law.

Suryadharma, also chairman of the Muslim-based United Development Party, one of the Suharto-era's three sanctioned political parties, has also suggested banning skirts above the knee, an idea that fits with sharia law style local regulations on dress sprouting around the country. Last month he applauded the cancellation of Lady Gaga's sold out concert in Jakarta after hard-line Muslim groups threatened violence against the singer and the audience.

The Religious Affairs Ministry's Koran scandal will ideally end its run as the Islamist Protection Agency, and get it back to its real mission of protecting freedom of worship. Or it may lead the outraged public to ask why the world's third-largest democracy needs to have the government actively involved in religion at all.

[Gary LaMoshi is long-time editor of award-winning investor rights advocate eRaider.com, has written for Slate and Salon.com, and works an adviser to Writing Camp (www.writingcamp.net). He first visited Indonesia in 1994 and has been watching ever since.]