Indonesian Muslim Hardliners Protest Christians On Good Friday

Church in Jakarta

Yesterday was Good Friday, an important day for Christians leading up to Easter Sunday. And although most Christians in Indonesia were able to celebrate services without incident, there was a group of more than 1,000 worshippers in one area of the country that were forced to pray in a restaurant because Islamic fundamentalists decided they didn't have the right to worship in their makeshift chapel.

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Some Indonesian Muslims make it very difficult for Christians to worship there, and churchgoers in Parung, Bogor have been subjected to much of that discrimination. They have been trying to build their church since 1990, when they applied for the appropriate permits. 10 years later, they have yet to hear back from Bogor officials and the building has yet to be built. And the fact they have no permits is where the Muslim hardliners get them.

A church member told the Jakarta Globe that on Thursday night the congregation held a two-hour service to observe White Thursday under tents erected on the vacant plot of land in Parung where their John the Baptist church was being built.

Gabriel Michael Kia Telok said the Mass ended peacefully, with police helping to direct traffic around the church construction site. However, some two hours later, a group claiming to belong to the Parung Ulema Forum came and staged a protest rejecting the construction of the church in the area. Gabriel said the protesters claimed the church did not have the necessary construction permits.

The group also threatened to disband forcefully any religious activities held there.

“Some 200 young people came to our makeshift chapel and asked us to stop our prayers, which actually were already done. We were terrified, but after they negotiated with our church leaders, the group agreed to move their protest to the Parung district office,” Gabriel said.

To ensure the safety of the congregation, the church leaders decided to move the Good Friday service to a building owned by the local education office, but a miscommunication forced them to move the venue again to a restaurant owned by a church member.

“It’s not the first time the group has staged a protest. Protests also occurred during Easter celebrations in 2008 and Christmas services in 2009,” Gabriel said.

This isn't the first time hardliners have tried to intimidate Christians; apparently last year a church still under construction was attacked in Bekasi. Besides the attacks, intimidation and threats of violence, non-Muslim religious groups find it almost impossible to get the building permits that are needed to erect their churches etc.

According to the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, there were 139 cases of violation of the freedom to worship in Indonesia in 2009.

Now lets see, let's switch things around a bit. What do you think would happen if this occurred say in a Western, Christian country, and rather than a church it was a Mosque that someone was trying to build, and 1,000 Muslims were celebrating the last day of EID al-Fitr, and 200 Christian youth showed up to protest? I can guarantee there would be a huge outcry, with violence erupting around the world. The fact is, Muslims have always been allowed to build mosques in non-Muslim countries, even though the same courtesy is NOT extended to non-Muslims in Muslim countries, and the banning of minarets does not count, since that is merely cosmetic. And Muslims have always been allowed to worship freely in Western countries, and yet religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries have always been persecuted, killed or driven out. This is why so many non-Muslims are fed up with the sense of entitlement that some Muslims have in the West, when all that non-Muslims want in Islamic countries is to worship in peace. As the biblical saying goes "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!"