10/05/11 Indonesia (BeliefNet) – Islam’s most populous nation, Indonesia, is the most diverse nation imaginable — a far-flung archipelego of 13,466 islands where 238 million people speaking 742 languages live in everything from luxurious skyscraper penthouses to squalid cardboard slums, mountainside-hugging bamboo huts and rain-forest tree houses.
The government only recognizes six religions. Census figures show the population is overwhelmingly Muslim at 86.1 percent with 9 percent Christian (Catholic and Protestant combined), 3 percent Hindu, 2 percent Buddhist and 1 percent Confucianist.
And while freedom of religion is guaranteed by the national constitution, the minority religions complain of an official bias toward Islam, write university professors Moh Yasir Alimi and Salim H. Ali in separate articles in the Jakarta Post and the International Herald Tribune.
“Four men, traumatized, terrorized and stigmatized, sat in a Jakarta apartment and described to me how they were almost killed by a Muslim mob earlier this year,” writes Benedict Rogers of the London-based human rights organization Christian Solidarity Worldwide in a guest column in the Wall Street Journal:
One was stripped naked, beaten to a pulp, a machete held at his throat. He was dragged through the village and dumped in a truck like a corpse. Another fled into a fast-flowing river, pursued by attackers throwing rocks and shouting “kill, kill, kill.” He hid in a bush, dripping wet and extremely cold, for four hours. A third suffered a broken jaw, while a fourth, pursued by men armed with sickles, machetes and spears, was detained by the police for three days, treated as a suspect not a victim.
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Christians are also under pressure. Radical Islamists have stirred tensions and forced churches to close. Even churches that have legal registration and secured Supreme Court rulings in their favor have remained sealed, their congregations forced to worship in the street. According to the Setara Institute in Indonesia, 91 violations of religious freedom were documented in 2010, at least 75 of which affected Christians.
Both Ahmadis and Christians warn that if their persecution continues, Indonesia could fracture.
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BBC correspondent Mishal Husain asked the Indonesian foreign minister, at an interview after the World Economic Forum, if Indonesia was afraid of being ‘Pakistanised.’
That fear is very real and palpable for moderate Muslims in the region.
Recent attrocities against Christians and other minorities “have tarnished Indonesia’s international reputation as a tolerant society,” writes Rogers.
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