Fears of attacks by Islamic militants are forcing some Christians in Indonesia to abandon traditional churches in favor of more discreet and secure venues this Christmas.
With foreign governments warning of holiday terror bombings, thousands of churches in major Indonesian cities will hold services this year in office buildings, hotels and even movie theaters, church leaders say.
"It puts us at a lower risk for being a target for religious persecution," said Pastor Steve Lunn, originally from Seattle, Washington, whose International English Service holds worship for 1,000 people in a downtown Jakarta office building.
"People tell me they feel safer," he said. "The facility itself is not the most important thing. It's just a place to gather. The most important thing is being together and worshipping God together."
Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of more than 13,000 islands and 210 million people, is the world's most populous Muslim nation. The vast majority of Muslims practice a moderate version of the faith.
But attacks against Christians, who are just 8 percent of the population, have become more frequent since ex-dictator Suharto's downfall in 1998, and amid a global rise in Islamic radicalism. Suharto enforced secularism as part of national security policies.
Four years ago, suspected militants from the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group bombed 11 churches on Christmas Eve, killing 19 people.
The group was also blamed for the 2002 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people on the resort island of Bali, a 2003 attack on the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta and a blast at the Australian Embassy in September.
This year, more than 140,000 police will be deployed at churches, shopping malls and hotels where Westerners gather during the Christmas period, a police spokesman said.
"People are still afraid," said Pastor Hengki Ompi, whose church was attacked earlier this month by suspected Muslim gunmen on the central Indonesian island of Sulawesi. "We hope the attacks stop so we can celebrate Christmas without fear."
Plans to build new churches are sometimes met with violent protests from Islamic groups, which view them as an attempt to convert Muslims. Church leaders also say a decree requiring religious leaders to get neighborhood approval before building new places of worship is being used to discriminate against them.
Some church leaders say these obstacles are understandable given the country's Muslim majority, and acknowledge Muslims face similar problems in the few pockets of Indonesia where Christians dominate. But others say the restrictions reflect a growing intolerance of religious minorities.
"We have a lot more liberties than say Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the fact is that Christians are second-class citizens," said Pastor Bill Heckman, a Dutchman who has tried for six years to build a church in Jakarta.
Sporadic fighting between the Muslims and Christians in central and eastern Indonesia has reportedly killed more than 10,000 people since 1999.
Muslims say evangelical Christians are partly to blame for rising religious tensions. They say hundreds of foreign-funded evangelical groups are using churches in Muslim-dominated neighborhoods to convert locals -- a claim some Christians acknowledge is true.
In response, the government has proposed a law barring Indonesians from attending religious ceremonies that do not reflect their faith -- making it much harder for them to switch. It would also criminalize interfaith marriages and adoptions. Christians are lobbying the government to scrap the 35-year-old decree that can restrict churches from being built.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS