Category: Indonesia

Acts of violence and intolerance against Christians in Indonesia almost doubled in 2011, with an Islamist campaign to close down churches symbolizing the plight of the religious minority.

The worst is perhaps yet to come if authorities continue to overlook the threat of extremism, said a representative from the Jakarta-based Wahid Institute, a Muslim organization that promotes tolerance.

In a test case of religious intolerance in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, an Indonesian mayor is defying court rulings by pushing for a decree to block Christians from opening churches on streets with Islamic names.

Members of the Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church in the West Java town of Bogor are, after three years, still forced to worship on the sidewalk outside their building, protected by police.

In Indonesia’s crowded world of celebrity Muslim preachers, it often pays to have a trademark. For Koko Liem, his ever-present Chinese-style outfits — garish satin tunics paired with matching skullcaps — play the role.

Whether in television appearances or Koran recitals, the approach of Mr. Liem, a 31-year-old convert to Islam from Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority, is undeniably kitschy.

Mr. Liem is one of a small but significant group of ethnic Chinese preachers to emerge over the past decade with a simple message: that being a member of Indonesia’s dominant majority — Muslims — and its historically most maligned minority — Chinese — need not be mutually exclusive.

This approach represents a powerful break with the past, writes the New York Times, noting that pogroms and prejudice against Chinese have been a constant theme in Indonesian history.

But Mr. Liem is a relative minnow in Indonesia’s booming world of celebrity preachers. Like their Christian counterparts in the West, these men and women often use their personal biographies and charisma, rather than traditional religious knowledge, to win adherents through television appearances and packed tour schedules.

Hundreds of Muslims from outside the area where a 600-member church meets in West Java staged a protest there to call for its closure this month in an attempt to portray local opposition.

Demonstrators from 16 Islamic organizations, including the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), gathered on Feb. 15 to demand a stop to all activities by the Galilea Protestant Church (GPIB) in the Galaxy area of Bekasi City.

PALU, Central Sulawesi (JP): Three Christian militants convicted for the massacre of hundreds of Muslims in 2000 were executed in the early hours on Friday, a senior police officer said. The officer, who declined to be identified, confirmed that the execution of Fabianus Tibo, Dominggus da Silva and Marinus Riwu, was carried out at 1.20 am local time. Their bodies were then taken to the Bhayangkara police hospital for autopsy, he said. No further details were available, including the location of the execution, usually by a firing squad. The three men had exhausted all legal channels for reprieve, including a

Attempts by Indonesian police to arrest a mystical cult leader have left three officers dead, six in hospital and two missing in Central Sulawesi. Sixteen police searching for a witch doctor after allegations of Satanism and child sacrifice were confronted by more than a hundred “possessed” followers, a police spokesman, Brigadier-General Sunarko, said. Machete-wielding men, believing themselves impervious to bullets, ignored warning shots and stabbed to death the local heads of the intelligence and riot squads, and a junior officer. A cult member is also believed to have died in the clash. Police were searching the isolated, mountainous Gawalise area