REUTERS, Thu 28 Jul 2005 12:01 AM ET
Christian inroads worry top Indonesia Muslim body
JAKARTA, July 28 (Reuters) - Christians are making worrying inroads in Indonesia,
the world's most populous Muslim nation, delegates said at a meeting of the nation's
top Islamic clerical group, the Jakarta Post newspaper said on Thursday.
It said the clerics told the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI), during the meeting in
Jakarta that Christians were expanding their presence in the provinces, and in the
capital itself.
The MUI is responsible for Muslim doctrine in the country.
About 85 percent of the 220 million people in Indonesia, the world's fourth most
populous nation, are Muslim. But in some eastern parts, Christian and Muslim
populations are about equal in size.
The state is officially secular and recognises Christianity and several other religions in
addition to Islam, although some complain policy and practice tend to favour the
latter.
The Jakarta Post said the delegation from Jambi province reported Christian preachers
were active in the province on central Sumatra island and converting Muslims at an
alarming rate, despite a ban on proselytisation in the country.
"The phenomenon of the construction of churches in the province is most disturbing,"
the newspaper quoted a Jambi delegation report as saying.
In Jakarta, the percentage of Muslims "has declined from 90 percent to 87 percent ...
because of the large influx of migrants from non-Muslim areas," according to a report
by delegates from the capital.
The delegation from Bangka-Belitung, islands off the east coast of Sumatra, said it
didn't have enough funds to counter conversions, and the recent election of a
non-Muslim as regent would make things even harder.
"We don't understand how a non-Muslim won the election, since Muslims account for
90 percent of the regency's population," the newspaper quoted the delegation's report
as saying.
"We will make sure it won't happen next time," it added.
However, the delegation from Banten in eastern Java said there was not a single
church in Cilegon, a regency in the area, and it intended to keep it that way.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spoke to the group of leading
Islamic clerics earlier in the week and told them Muslims have been mistreated and
improperly linked to terrorism.
Most Indonesian Muslims are considered moderate but there is an increasing hardline
minority who advocate violence against Western targets.
There have been a series of attacks blamed on Islamic militants in recent years,
including the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreign
tourists.
Thousands of Indonesians were killed in violence between Christians and Muslims,
mostly in the eastern part of the country, in the years following the 1998 downfall of
the autocratic Suharto regime.
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