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Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesias largest Islamic organizations, has called on all people to not politicize the Islamic fasting month that will fall late this month.
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President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called on the people to build harmony and religious tolerance during the observance of the Hindu Day of Silence here on Friday. "I call on the people, particularly the Hindu adherents to create a democratic climate and build harmony and tolerance," the President said when attending the Hindu Day of Seclusion at the Sports Hall of the Cilangkap Military Headquarters.
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President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said radicalism and extreme ideas must not be allowed to grow in Indonesia because they would only disrupt current peaceful and harmonious relations between different religious followers.
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President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said democracy could not operate alone, but must proceed side-by-side with peace, stability and economic growth so that democracy benefits the people.
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An outspoken non-governmental organization (NGO) urges the government to provide protection for the minority Shiite community who has been forced to flee their villages to live in refugee camps after a bloody conflict with non Shiite Muslim community in Sampang, Madura, East Java Province.
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Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called on all parties to jointly strengthen inter-faith tolerance as Indonesia is a country with a pluralistic society. "Indonesia is a diverse country that believes in God," the president said on his Twitter account @ SBYudhoyono in Jakarta on Friday.
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President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono asked all parties to continue maintaining tolerance and political ethics in entering the year of politics in the run up to the 2014 general elections.
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Indonesia will host the Conference of Muslim-Christians Religious Leaders of Asia on February 26 through March 1, 2013 themed "Bringing A Common Word to Common Action for Justice".
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The Governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, also known as Jokowi, has urged the people of Jakarta to maintain religious tolerance and harmony.
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Indonesian Constitutional Court (MK) Chairman Mahfud MD has stated that human rights violations by the state have drastically reduced since the reform era. "Now, such violations of human rights occur only sporadically and on a small scale, usually committed by the regional apparatus," he said here on Wednesday.
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The Indonesia`s Religious Affairs Minister, Suryadharma Ali said, Muslims can convey Christmas greetings to Christians. "It is not unusual to convey Christmas greetings to Christians," said Ali on Monday.
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The value of Indonesia`s democracy has declined over the past few years blamed on the attitude of both the people and the government officials, an expert says.
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Coordinating minister for people`s welfare Agung Laksono has refuted the allegation that Islamic Boarding Schools or Pondok Pesantren have helped shape radical groups.
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Visiting US State Secretary Hillary Clinton in her remark at a press conference here on Monday said there should be no discrimination against any minority in this world.
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Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali has condemned the latest violence against the Shiite community in Sampang district, Madura Island, East Java Province. "Any violence in whatever form, including in the name of religion or sectarian differences, is unacceptable," the minister stated here on Monday.
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Over the past decade, the Indonesian police have captured 800 terrorists in the country, according to the Counter Terrorism Agency`s director of prevention, Brigadier General ESA Permadi.
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President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has appealed to the country`s Muslims to make the Prophet Muhammad`s birthday a momentum to increase tolerance, togetherness and true understanding of religious teachings.
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A wave of condemnation greeted the verdicts imposed on Thursday against 12 people accused of killing three members of the minority Ahmadiyah group in Indonesia.
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Dozens of illegal traders in tickets who were looking for a nice trade in terminals 1 and 2 of the international airport of Soekarno-Hatta near Jakarta have been arrested. "They indeed were a target in our cleanup operation," said Abdi, a manager of state-run airport manager PT Angkasa Pura II.
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Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono should void decrees recently adopted by two provinces that ban activities by the Ahmadiyah religious community, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.
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A Muslim mob on Tuesday destroyed at least three churches and clashed with Indonesian police in central Java after a Christian man was sentenced for blasphemy against Islam, the daily Kompas reported.
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An organisation run by Indonesian Muslim organisation Nahdlatul Ulama said that West Java tops reports of religious intolerance. Christians top the list of victims, followed by the Ahmadiyah Islamic sect.
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It seems to be very common these days that after every Friday and Sunday, there are messages in the Indonesian press in which the results of the criminal intolerance of a small group of severely mentally limited people have tarnished the Indonesian state-ideology once more.
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Religious tolerance in Indonesia has come under increasing strain in recent years, particularly where hardline Islamists and Christian evangelicals compete for the same ground. Islamists use 'Christianisation' - a term that generally refers both to Christian efforts to convert Muslims and the alleged growing influence of Christianity in Muslim-majority Indonesia - as a justification for mass mobilisation and vigilante attacks.
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Recent video footage from Indonesia's West Papua allegedly show the torture of indigenous Papuans by the Indonesian military, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) said on Monday.
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Hundreds of Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia members rallied at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta on Thursday to support a regulation on houses of worship and implementation of sharia. “HKBP commits treason against the state,” read posters displayed by the Muslim group activists.
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Religious Affairs Minister Suryadarma Ali has asked Islamic groups in Indonesia not to conduct raids on entertainment centers ahead of the Islamic fasting month which will start this month. He made the request at the University of Sunan Gunung Djati in Bandung, West Java, on Friday, as certain Islamic organizations once tended to resort to violence in dealing with differences.
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And that is something you notice when you have arrived on the island of Batam, at some 45 minutes by boat from Singapore. Jakarta is a western city already with a young population that is not that tight concerning the traditional adat in the country, but in Batam this is exaggerated even more.
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With the adoption of the 'anti-pornography' laws yesterday, Indonesia is approaching more and more the ideal image of a remote province of the Middle East. With adopting the law, which has been pushed forward by the radical-Islamic FPI (Islamic Defenders Front) and the MUI (Council of Islamic Scholars) for almost a decade now, it is now possible to act on your own when you see something that is not acceptable for you. In most countries that would be called 'taking matters into your own hands', but not anymore in Indonesia, where a young democracy is buried under a thick layer of radical-Islamic mud.
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Supporters of Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisation clashed with Muslim hard-liners following a bloody attack on interfaith activists by the radicals. One person was injured in the brawl late yesterday between members of Nahdhatul Ulama and hard-liners from the Islamic Defenders Front in Yogyakarta on Java island. Angry crowds have gathered outside offices and homes of the FPI in two other towns on Java in recent days.
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A peaceful rally for religious tolerance was broken up earlier on Sunday afternoon by Islamic hard-liners from the radical FPI (Islamic Defender Front) when they beat other demonstrators with bamboo sticks and calling for the deaths of members of a Muslim sect they consider heretical, witnesses said.
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Muslims have stormed a church in Indonesia to force it to close down, a resident and police said on Thursday, in the latest incident of religious intolerance in the archipelago nation. The attack in West Java on Tuesday came after a series of similar incidents targeting churches set up in Muslim areas of the province. "Four people have been detained for questioning and are currently in custody," Purwakarta district police First Inspector Yadi said.
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The death of IPDN student Cliff Muntu is not surprising. In Indonesia, seniority is very much embedded into local education culture. I began to sense this when I enter junior high school, and as I moved up onto higher education in Indonesia, the sense of seniority is felt even more.
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The Indonesian-language BisnisBali warns that the tolerance of the Badung Regency's authorities when it comes to granting licenses to Villas in Bali will have its limits. The Chief of Tourism for the Badung Regency, Made Subawa, told the press that the special team established for the registration of tourism accommodation will not process permits for villas built in Bali's "green zones" or "jalur hijau" where permanent construction of any kind is strictly prohibited.
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Indonesia will declare bird flu a national disaster, giving the government access to special funds to combat the disease that has killed 63 people nationwide, the planning minister said Wednesday. "It has become an epidemic," Paskah Suzetta told reporters in the capital, where authorities were preparing for the compulsory slaughter of thousands of backyard chickens as part of high profile efforts to fight the H5N1 virus.
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A controversial new movie about the 2002 Bali bombings premieres in Indonesia Thursday. More than 200 people, mostly foreign tourists, died in the bombing of a nightclub by Muslim extremist group Jemaa Islamiya. The Long Road to Heaven goes where Indonesia's timid media have feared to tread, examining the role of religion in the attacks.
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Only through dialogue can stereotypes such as Westerners regarding Islam as "a breeding ground for terrorists" and Muslims seeing the West as "deficient in morals" be removed, an Indonesian minister said on Wednesday. Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda told a conference on Islam and Europe that such inaccurate, sweeping generalisations existed in both communities because media and other sources failed to present the complete picture of those cultures.
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Publicity-shy paper and plantation magnate Sukanto Tanoto is in Indonesia's national headlines after topping two high-profile lists. Forbes Asia last month listed the 56-year-old tycoon as the richest individual in Indonesia, with assets worth about US$2.8 billion (Rp25.2 trillion). In June, the self-made ethnic-Chinese tycoon also topped a list of state-owned Bank Mandiri's six biggest debtors.
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Indonesia's president called on Muslims to be peaceful and respect the law amid persistent violence carried out in the name of the faith in the world's most populous Islamic nation, media reports said Tuesday. Indonesia has been hit by a series of bloody bombings by the al-Qaida linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group in recent years, and hard-liners have often vandalized bars, Western embassies and churches.
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A band of 70 public order officers will patrol the capital to ensure nightspots and entertainment centers comply with an order to adjust their operating hours during the Ramadhan fasting month. Agency head Hariyanto Badjoeri said his office distributed a circular from the City Tourism Agency to the management of entertainment centers and nightspots in the capital earlier this month.
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Houses of worship are an important topic of discussion for many people, as the recent debate over them showed. The impression was that people put more importance on the buildings themselves than on practicing the good deeds taught inside them. The heated debate revolved around drawing up new rules on church or mosque construction to replace an antiquated joint ministerial decree. If any issue reflects the nation's progress, it is this one. After 61 years as a free nation we are still fighting over rudimentary matters of religion.
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When Erwin Arnada, editor in chief of Playboy magazine in Indonesia, answered a summons at the police headquarters in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, he turned up smiling, behaved like a good citizen and, in turn, was treated politely during nearly six hours of questioning. The parrying, he recalled, went something like this:
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The US needs to let other countries decide for themselves how to fight terrorism in order to counter perceptions that Washington is overbearing, Indonesia's defense minister told visiting US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In turn, Rumsfeld talked to Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono and Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Tuesday about a need for their nation to continue efforts to ensure that human rights abuses are no longer a problem with its military.
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Fifty years ago, Clifford Geertz wrote: " ... archipelagic in geography, eclectic in civilization, and heterogeneous in culture, Indonesia flourishes when it accepts and capitalizes on its diversity and disintegrates when it denies and suppresses it". The comment, part of Geertz's assessment of the political situation in Indonesia in the late fifties, also anticipates the future of Indonesia.
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Legend has it that the Tengger ethnic group in the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru area of East Java is descended from the ancient Majapahit royal family. The name "Tengger" itself is said to be an acronymic derivation of two legendary figures from the region, Rara Anteng and Jaka Seger. As it has been long told, during a time of chaos for the Majapahit kingdom, Princess Rara Anteng took refuge in the area around Mount Bromo. While she was being evacuated, Rara Anteng met Jaka Seger, the son of a priest from the kingdom of Kediri, which was also in great turmoil. Their meeting was the beginning of a love story, and the area was later christened after their combined names.
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Tangerang is firmly in the spotlight after the issuance of a controversial bylaw to eradicate prostitution in the municipality. It also issued another bylaw that bans liquor. Syafi'i Anwar, executive director of the International Centre for Islam and Pluralism (ICIP), shared his views with Ridwan Max Sijabat >on what is happening in the region.
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It has been unnervingly quiet on the tourism front in Bali of late - many have been laid off or put on part-time - giving the Balinese more time at home, more time to just be ... Balinese.
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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Indonesia's record on religious tolerance and democracy as hundreds of Islamic protesters yelling "Condeleeza go to hell!" denounced America's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rice, on her first visit to the world's most populous Muslim nation, lunched with her counterpart Hassan Wirayuda, and afterwards praised Indonesia as "an inspiration to the entire world" for its religious tolerance and democratic progress.
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Australia was last night bracing itself for more tension with Indonesia following the death sentences handed down to two Bali Nine ringleaders and the life sentences that will possibly see the other ring members die in Indonesian jails. Andrew Chan, 22, and Myuran Sukumaran, 24, were convicted of drug smuggling at Denpasar District Court and face death by firing squad unless they launch a successful appeal or are granted a presidential pardon.
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The recent research conducted by the International Center for Islam and Pluralism (ICIP), the Indonesian Islamic Boarding School Association (BKSPPI) and AusAID, in which I was involved, shows that many pesantren (Islamic boarding schools), both traditional (salaf) and modern, in West Java reject pluralism as they perceive this as an acceptance of the relativity of religion -- or rejecting the notion that Islam is the absolute truth.
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Despite a flurry of warnings about possible violence over the holidays, residents in this capital of Central Sulawesi Province, thought the bomb blast that ripped through a nearby pork-selling market on New Year's Eve was an earthquake. They were convinced, like so many others in the region, that the communal tensions that erupted into deadly clashes between Muslims and Christians five years ago were a thing of the past. Even after finding out it was a bomb, they condemned it as simply the work of a small group of "terrorists."
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Indonesian Islam will remain moderate and tolerant by and large, but problems and challenges will continue to exist. The future of Indonesia depends on the ways in which the government and various Muslim groups actually act in public life. While violence, discrimination, and grievances are still felt among the minorities, especially non-Muslims, the Muslim majority continue maintaining the tolerant, moderate character of the country. A small number of hard-liners and terrorists will be disproportionately influential, but the tolerant, moderate majority and the government will not be silent.
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There is no danger that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, will be turned into an Islamic state. One reason for this is that most Indonesians practice a moderate strain of Islam and are tolerant of different religions. Another reason is that the nation's founding fathers, who included charismatic Muslim leaders and ulema, never wanted Indonesia to be an Islamic state.
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Some of the moderate and liberal Muslims (I consider myself as part of this group) often charge that hard-liners, jihadists, terrorists and suicide bombers are not true believers. The jihadist and terrorists are more aptly called deviant Muslims, people with a fallacious understanding of Islam. We also blame their activities as tarnishing the name of Islam and harming its reputation before the hallmark of modern civilization. Their interpretation of Islam is also said to be destroying the religion's fundamental and truest mission. This is what we have to say about them.
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Indonesia has made further progress in terms of press freedom over the past 12 months, according to Reporters Without Borders' 2005 Worldwide Press Freedom Index. According to the index, made public late last week, Indonesia is ranked 102nd, out of 167 countries surveyed. The country was ranked 117th last year.
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Vice President Jusuf Kalla asked Muslim militants to stop closing Christian churches after Christians complained that militants had shut 23 churches in recent weeks on the island of Java. "It is the responsibility of all of us to stop such kind of violence," he told a gathering of Muslim leaders, urging them to promote tolerance.
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Three evangelical women in Indonesia are facing charges which could to prison for allegedly contravening a law against “Christianisation”. They have been accused by a chapter of the Indonesian Council of Muslim Clerics of trying to get Muslim children to convert to Christianity through “the use of lies, deception or enticement.”
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Religious leaders and government officials in Indonesia must modernize their attitudes towards gay people if they are to halt the spread of HIV in the country, according to health workers. Speaking to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, the country's National Committee on AIDS Control said that religious intolerance of homosexuality was a stumbling block in the strategy to stop the spread of HIV.
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The Australian public ranks Indonesia as the country’s greatest military threat, a study by a defence think-tank said on Wednesday. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute surveyed opinion polls on defence issues dating back to the 1960s and found Australians now saw less chance of an foreign security threat than at any time in the past 30 years. “However, to the extent that the public identifies a security threat to Australia, there is a greater consensus than ever before that the threat comes from one country: Indonesia,” it said.
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He has established direct air links with Singapore and is negotiating similar links with Malaysia. And now, the Sultan of Yogyakarta province in central Java wants to change the value system of his bureaucrats to make them more entrepreneurial and understand the needs of foreign investors.
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Christians in Indonesia's Maluku province and Christian campaigners abroad have reacted with alarm to reports that a disbanded Islamist militia may re-form and deploy to the troubled region amid a new outbreak of violence there. Indonesia's cabinet was meeting Thursday to discuss the violence. At least 36 people have been killed in the city of Ambon since Sunday, in the most serious deterioration there since thousands died between 1999 and 2002.
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Christian organisations may face curbs on preaching and people of different religions could be banned from marrying under laws being considered by Indonesia. With an eye on next year's elections, where Islamic-affiliated parties are expected to drain support from President Megawati Sukarnoputri's bid to retain office, hardline Muslim groups are drafting laws to combat Christianity's spread in the world's largest Muslim country.
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The feared Jemaah Islamiah (JI) network responsible for the Bali bombings is beginning to regroup and launch new attacks against Christians in Indonesia to mark the onset of Ramadan, according to new reports. Following several weeks of violence in Poso, central Sulawesi, in which 13 people died, Indonesia's respected Tempo magazine said the attacks were the handiwork of militants linked to JI.
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US President George W Bush has described Indonesia as a vital partner and friend of America during a three-hour lightning stop in Bali. Mr Bush said he appreciated what he called Indonesia's strong support in the war on terror. He also announced he would propose to Congress a six-year programme worth US$157 million to support basic education in Indonesia to aid efforts to build a system that discourages extremism.
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The jail sentences for Briton Lesley McCulloch and American nurse Joy Lee Sadler for violation of tourist visas in Aceh sends a message that researchers are at risk of becoming political prisoners in Indonesia, according to The Age newspaper.
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President Abdurrahman Wahid played down on Sunday security fears in the wake of rumored mass rallies between people in support of and against him on Monday. "God willing, there will be nothing," Abdurrahman said after a meeting at the Merdeka Palace on Sunday morning to discuss security in the capital.
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Population growth in the last decade has been declining as indicated by the results of the latest census which shows that Indonesia now has a population of 203,456,005 of which nearly 60 percent live on Java island. The Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) on Wednesday issued the results of the latest population census which showed that population growth in the country between 1990 and 2000 was at 1.35 percent per year, while the previous rate between 1980 and 1990 was 1.97 percent.
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A visit to a shopping mall always has the potential to become ugly for "Bill" and his wife, "Sita". There are the stares, the double-takes and, frequently, the hurtful comments, spoken in a stage whisper so the American and his younger Indonesian wife will be sure to hear.
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