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Indonesian President Concerns Over Religious Conflict
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid has expressed his deep concern over the current conflict between religions, which he said represented a setback in the religious life of the people in the country.
"Religions in the country are undergoing trivialization, a process in which religion is reduced into superficial elements and slogans, especially among the Muslim people," said the president here at a Catholic Church's Grand Synod late on Sunday.
"Religion has been seen only as a formality by certain sides, taken as slogans and put it in an inhumane field, destroying our human instinct," the Jakarta Post daily Monday quoted the president as saying.
He said the religious trivialization has extended to a horizontal conflict between the modernist and the traditionalist.
Wahid said this situation came as a surprise to him because under democracy, the nation should no longer use physical force and instead use rational arguments in continuous dialog.
The president statement was clearly referring to the row between him and his critic, Speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Amien Rais who was former chairman of the Muhammadiyah, the second largest Muslim organization in the country. Amien recently urged the president to step down because he was considered unable to cope with major problems in the country.
Wahid, who was general chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Muslim organization in the country with 35 million followers, said the ongoing conflict between the two Muslim organizations must be managed, despite its complications, "because it has led to the tense situation we are facing at present."
Tens of thousands of NU followers in the East Java town of Pasuruan last week staged a demonstration to protest against Rais. NU's two youth organizations have also threatened to mobilize huge demonstrations if the call continue for Wahid to resign.
In West Java, leaders of the National Awakening Party established by Wahid, have also threatened to mobilize their followers if the demands continue.
In the East Java capital of Surabaya, hundreds of mobs last week also attacked and vandalized the office of the Islamic Students Association (HNI), whose members and alumni have also aired strong criticism of president Wahid.
Meanwhile, Muhammadiyah based youth organizations have protested the move to ban Rais from traveling to East Java. President Wahid himself also criticized his supporters over the ban on Rais's trip.
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