According to research conducted by Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI), a leading Indonesian public opinion research institute, Indonesia's population increasingly prefers nationalist-oriented political parties (these parties stress the importance of a religious pluralist and harmonious society) over Islamic parties, which aim for a more dominant role of Islam in society. In 2014, Indonesia will organize its next legislative and presidential elections.

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Indonesian financial authorities are considering to ease foreign ownership limits for local Islamic banks and to promote new sharia-compliant financial tools in an effort to make the Islamic finance industry more attractive to foreign investors and the Indonesian population. Despite having the world’s largest Muslim population and being a dynamic emerging economy, Indonesia plays only a very minor role in the global Islamic banking industry. Meanwhile, domestically, Islamic banking still seriously lags behind conventional banking.

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Syariah banking or Islamic finance is a large untapped potential in Indonesia, a country where about 13 percent of the total global Muslim population live. With nearly 90 percent of the 250 million people in Indonesia adhering to Islam, the market share of syariah (sharia) finance is remarkably low. At USD $24 billion, Islamic banks in Indonesia only held 4.9 percent of the country’s total banking assets in 2013, hence making Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK) decide to launch a five-year roadmap in a move to boost syariah banking.

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By the mid-1960s, politics and the economy of Indonesia had turned into disaster. After Independence in 1945 (and the cessation of hostilities with the Dutch in 1949), the young nation was plagued by hostile internal politics in which several political forces - consisting of the army, nationalists, Muslims, and communists - opposed each other. For over a decade, Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president, had reasonable success in keeping these forces in check by the force of his own personality. However, by the mid-1960s his failure became evident.

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The Regional Investment Coordinating Board said that Aceh (Sumatra), known for its strong Islamic identity, expects to receive IDR 5 trillion (USD $438.6 million) in foreign and domestic investment in 2014. In the first quarter of 2014, Indonesia's western-most province already saw IDR 2 trillion (USD $175.4 million) worth of investments. Aceh, a resource-rich province (in particular oil and natural gas), is one of the more mysterious Indonesian provinces and has had to deal with considerable negative publicity throughout its modern history.

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