DON'T GET BEGOTED

Submitted by Lyle Sharky (Indonesia), Oct 2, 2010 at 04:48

Let me share with you, my non-Moslem friends, that Indonesia with the largest Moslems population has never been implementing "Islamic Syari'a"- although the absolute majority of its founders and independence fighters were Moslems. Some of them wanted to build an Islamic state, indeed; but the majority rejected it. They all realized that it had nothing to do with things that jeopardize the existence and religious freedom of non-Moslems, but the majority preferred secular state with "Pancasila" as our ideology in order to fairly cover our diversity of religion and ethnicity with equality. Islam also covers the same things, no contradiction.

You see, Christianity in Indonesia has been the fastest growing religion in this country. This is obviously the evidence of high tolerance given by the Moslem community. Many of my relatives are Islamists and Christians; and we all live in a harmony environment one to another. This kind of coexistence and tolerance are common thing in Indonesia, especially in urban areas.

Extremism and terrorism have nothing to do with Islam. Conflict among different group of people occur not only based on different religious groups but also racial, ethnical, and other social groups. There is tendency that low educated people grow into bigotry as the root of radicalism and terrorism- whatever their religion is. So, I think you should know what our real enemy is and what to do.

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