Louisiana passes bill to allow prayer in public schools. Former Manson Family member denied parole for 20th time.
And the Miss World Competition has scrapped its bikini segment after demands by Muslim hardliners.
Religious intolerance is growing in Indonesia Indonesia’s positive image of a country where different communities and cultures interact peacefully with each other contrasts heavily with the reality of the past 10 years, reports the Deutsche Welle. Many of the country’s Christians fear for their lives, as there has been an increase in attacks on religious minorities in recent years. It’s not just Christians who are under attack in the Muslim-dominated country. Extremists from Indonesia’s 200 million Sunni Muslims have also been attacking the country’s Muslim minority sects, including the estimated 100,000 Shiites and 400,000 Ahmadiyyas. The Deutsche Welle says, “according
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.
An Indonesian man wounded when Muslim hate criminals attacked members of his minority Islamic sect was sentenced Monday to six months in jail, more than some of the actual attackers who were caught on video.
It is part of a pattern of abuse against followers of the Ahmadiyya sect.
Another mob attack on Christian worshipers in Bekasi on Sunday has led to renewed calls for police and national leaders to crack down on the apparently swelling tide of religious violence.
About 20 members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church in Pondok Timur Indah were chased and beaten with sticks by a mob believed linked to the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) after they tried to conduct Sunday services at a field in Ciketing, Bekasi.
Muslims nationwide have condemned the hard-line Islamic organization for an attack on a church group on Sunday, saying the incident had tarnished the image of Islam.
Around 300 Muslim protestors and 300 police officers surrounded members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan or HKBP) on Sunday (Aug. 1) as they worshiped in an open field in Ciketing, Bekasi, local sources said.
“There were many police on guard, but the attackers were able to get very close to the congregation,” Theophilus Bela, president of the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum, said in a statement to international government and advocacy groups. “We are afraid that they will attack the church again next Sunday.”
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.
Some 1,000 seminary students are resisting efforts to evict them from the former municipal building of West Jakarta, Indonesia where they have taken refuge after Muslim protestors drove them from their campus last year.
In July 2008 hundreds of protestors shouting “Allahu-Akbar ” and brandishing machetes forced the evacuation of staff and students from the SETIA campus in Kampung Pulo village.
In Indonesia, a series of attacks on followers of the Ahmadiyah sect by fanatical Muslims — who consider the movement to be a cult of Islam — continues to draw criticism.
Alfred C. Stepan, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion at Columbia University in New York, an expert in religion and democracy urging the government to exercise its authority when there are violations of human rights.