Country Profile - Indonesia

Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, who live alongside a sizeable Christian community and various other minorities. In this vast country, the situation of Christians varies from place to place. In some areas Christians are currently enduring intense pressure, which sometimes escalates into intimidation and violence. At times in the last 30 years Christians have been killed, churches burned and whole Christian communities displaced.

Yet it was not always so. Until the 1980s Indonesia was a model of good relations between Islam and Christianity. 

This map of Indonesia shows the percentage of Christians in the country’s various provinces

Muslim dominance

The vast archipelago of Indonesia comprises more than 17,000 islands and has a population of some 245,000,000 people. According to official figures, about 88% (215 million) of its people are Muslims, and around 9% (22 million) are Christians. However, many Christians and members of other minority groups believe that the proportion of Muslims has been seriously overestimated, and church leaders suggest that Christians may number 15% or even 20% of the population.

Christianity has a long history in Indonesia. Missionaries were active there from the 16th century, and a small Christian presence was maintained throughout the centuries of colonial rule, mainly by the Dutch. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the churches experienced significant growth, which became explosive in the 1960s. Large communities of Christians form the majority population on some islands.

But Christianity has always been a minority faith in the country as a whole. For many centuries the population was mainly Hindu and Buddhist. Then Islam gained a foothold in the 13th and 14th centuries, introduced by traders and mystics from India, and by the 18th century Muslims were dominant in most of the territories. Their supremacy has been unchallenged since, either by the Indonesia Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, who live alongside a sizeable Christian community and various other minorities. In this vast country, the situation of Christians varies from place to place. In some areas Christians are currently enduring intense pressure, which sometimes escalates into intimidation and violence. At times in the last 30 years Christians have been killed, churches burned and whole Christian communities displaced. Yet it was not always so. Until the 1980s Indonesia was a model of good relations between Islam and Christianity. growth of the churches or by the persistence of small groups of Buddhists, Hindus and others.

From harmony to discord

Indonesian Islam is predominantly traditional. The mystical tradition of Islam, known as Sufism, has exercised a major influence, and it has often become synthesised with local religious practice. Only about a third of Indonesia’s Muslims are rigorous in their practice of Islam, and another third do not even identify strongly with it, mingling it freely with aspects of local mysticism or animism. These restraining influences seem to have encouraged good relations between the huge Muslim community and minority groups.

When Indonesia gained its independence in 1949, the new nation was founded on the doctrine of Pancasila. This includes belief in one God and a commitment to national unity and communal peace. Every citizen was obliged to follow one of the following faiths: Islam, Christianity (either Protestant or Roman Catholic), Hinduism or Buddhism. (Another, Confucianism, was recognised later.) For many decades this ideology helped to promote stability, peace and equality between different religious communities. Christians and Muslims lived together in equality and harmony.

But in the 1980s the enormous social and political strength of the Muslim majority began to be exploited by Islamists, whose long-term goal was to bring the whole of Indonesia under the rule of sharia law. Then in the late 1990s, after the introduction of democracy, Islamist groups took advantage of initially lax government controls to launch an alarming campaign of violence against Christians. In some areas this amounted to a full-scale programme of ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of churches and thousands of homes were destroyed in Central Sulawesi, the Maluku Islands and elsewhere in eastern Indonesia. According to some estimates 30,000 Christians were killed and about half a million driven out. Some areas that were previously majority-Christian became majority-Muslim.

Conditions in these territories have eased, and the anti-Christian bloodshed of those years has not recurred elsewhere on the same scale. Yet three factors are combining to keep Indonesia’s churches in a highly precarious position: government restrictions on religious freedom; the spread of sharia law; and the continuing activities of militant Islamists.

Restrictions on religious freedom

The constitution of Indonesia gives to all people the right to worship according to their own religion or belief, within the recognised faiths. In practice, however, this freedom is limited in various ways, especially at a local level. Although the restrictions are supposed to apply to all religious groups, Christians seem to be particularly affected.

A church in Papua, an area with a large Christian population where many Muslims have recently settled (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Religious groups that want to construct a building for worship need the declared support of 90 of their own members and 60 people from other religious groups. However, they must also obtain the approval of the local office for religious affairs. Sometimes Christian groups collect the required signatures, only for the authorities to refuse them permission to build, and even if a permit is granted, it may be revoked at any time. For example, in March 2009 a church in Bandung, having obtained a permit and begun construction, was forbidden to proceed further by the local mayor because residents had complained about the building. At the same time a massive programme of mosque-building has been proceeding in Indonesia since the 1990s.

Evangelism is banned in most circumstances. The government claims that it could prove disruptive, especially in religiously diverse areas. Distribution of religious materials to people of other faiths is also banned. Christian missionaries from overseas sometimes find it difficult to obtain or extend visas.

Since 1982 successive governments have been officially committed to a strategy of removing religion from the country’s political life. However, this has amounted not to secularisation, but to the granting of a privileged status to Islam. Muslims are favoured in government, military and academic appointments, diminishing the influence of the country’s Christians on policy – the so-called “greening” of the country’s institutions. The marginalising of the churches also makes them more liable to persecution by Islamists (see below), as they are perceived to be soft targets.

Spread of sharia law

The increased political power of Indonesia’s Muslim majority has led to the extension of sharia law to and within various parts of the country. Facing considerable pressure from grassroots Muslims to cater specifically for their interests, the government has lacked the will or strength to resist.

Following a prolonged Islamist insurgency the territory of Aceh (known as the “gateway to Mecca” because it is so Islamic) achieved a measure of autonomy from the national government in 2001. Two years later its government established sharia courts and began to introduce elements of sharia law, which were enforced by special religious police.

This Indonesian church was destroyed in anti-Christian violence

Aceh is the only one of Indonesia’s 32 provinces where sharia is officially permitted, and non-Muslims have been explicitly exempted from its laws. Many other provinces, however, use it as the inspiration for their ordinances, and since 2003 at least half have enacted their own variations of sharia. Some of these apply to Christians as well as Muslims. Schoolchildren, engaged couples and women are particularly affected. The national government has refused to intervene, claiming that the laws deal only with “public order”. It even shows signs of yielding to pressure for sharia-compliance in its own legislation: a bill is being considered that would require all food, drink, drugs and cosmetics to be tested for conformity to Islamic dietary rules.

The growth of sharia has also led to a hardening of attitudes among Muslims, with more of them calling for the introduction of such cruel punishments as stoning and maiming. The increased Islamisation of some areas is eroding Muslim tolerance of Christians, making them fertile ground for extremism and violence.

Another factor that has served to promote sharia is the government-sponsored policy known as “transmigration”, the organised movement of people (mainly Muslims) from Java into other regions and communities. Many Muslims are settling in the Christian-majority Malukus, and Christians expect that there will soon be a Muslim majority there. Papua is another Christian area where large numbers of Muslims have recently settled. By cleverly (and illegally) dividing the province the government has created a separate Muslim-majority area in the west. Once Islam holds the numerical ascendancy in an area, a much stronger case can be made for the imposition of sharia.

Activities of militant Islamists

The continuing presence and activity of numerous Islamist groups perhaps poses the greatest threat to the existence and well-being of Indonesia’s churches. One stated goal of these groups is to eliminate Christianity from the country altogether, and to this end they have sought to undermine efforts at reconciliation between Muslims and Christians. In some areas they have gone much further, mounting an aggressive and often violent campaign against Christians. Church growth through the conversion of Muslims to Christianity is likely to provoke an especially strong reaction.

Indonesian Islam remains generally traditional, and the Islamists are estimated to comprise less than 10% of the population. But because the authorities and other Muslims are afraid of them, they have extensive freedom of action and are able to punch well above their weight. Where they cannot take direct action, damaging, burning or bombing Christian churches and homes, they may raise a mob to act on their behalf; or they can influence local government to prevent the repair of buildings or to stop services and other Christian activities.

The results of these strategies can often be disastrous for Christians. Hundreds of churches have been destroyed by angry crowds, and permission for them to be rebuilt has often been withheld. Violence and intimidation have been used to close churches.

For example, in January 2010 two churches and a pastor’s house were set on fire by a mob of up to a thousand Muslims in the Padang Lawas regency of North Sumatra. Hundreds of Christians fled from their homes to avoid possible attacks. The Muslim community was reported to be “tired of seeing too many faithful and too many prayers”. The local police asserted that the buildings were not registered as churches, but the church leaders denied this claim.

Indonesian Christians study the Bible together

In another incident 17 churches were forcibly closed down in one district of Aceh. Local Muslims, discontented with the repairing of churches in their area and the construction of new ones, threatened the Christians with death if they did not destroy the buildings. The Christians had also to promise not to meet for worship or teaching in their homes or carry out any missionary activity. Many of the Christians were so much frightened by the incident that they would no longer attend church at all; others had to hold their meetings in the plantations.

If Christians do try to continue their ministry in their own homes, they can be targeted there too. Three years ago three Christian women were sent to prison for allowing Muslim children to attend a Sunday School in one of their houses. Releasing them was scarcely an option for the judge with screaming mobs of Muslims outside the courthouse threatening violence.

The activity of Islamists is often concentrated in specific areas where the local government or Muslim community are especially sympathetic to them. A spate of recent incidents in West Java provides an example of this tactic. In December 2009, at Islamic New Year, thousands of demonstrators stormed a church in Bekasi regency, setting objects on fire. On 31 December the authorities in East Bekasi, under the influence of hard-line Muslim groups, ordered a large church to stop its services and other activities. On 3 January 2010 hundreds of residents of the North Tambun sub-district prevented members of another church from taking part in services. In Bogor Regency Muslims took to the streets to protest against the building of a permanent church. Repeated intimidation and constant insecurity undermines not only the ministry but also the morale of the local Christians.

A Christian schoolgirl displays the scar of a machete attack that left her three companions dead

Individual Christians may also be attacked, maimed or killed. In Palembang in South Sumatra a Muslim study circle opposed to the conversion of Muslims to Christianity was radicalised and decided to pursue its cause by means of violence against those who shared the Gospel with Muslims. In April 2009 ten of them were imprisoned for killing a Christian teacher and planning other attacks. In 2005 a group of Christian schoolgirls were attacked by Islamist militants armed with machetes; three were beheaded and a fourth seriously injured.

Other behaviour that offends Muslim sensibilities may also spark violence. In December 2008 there was a riot in Masohi in the Malukus after a schoolteacher allegedly made a comment insulting Islam. Two churches and dozens of homes were burned by a crowd of more than 300 people.

Nor are Christian institutions immune from such action. In July 2008 the Arastamar Evangelical School of Theology was attacked by residents in West Jakarta, and more than 20 students were injured. The local authorities relocated the school to three separate sites, which provided only poor-quality accommodation and made teaching difficult. A year later they were moved on again, and they have only recently found a new campus.

The Indonesian security forces have not only failed many times to restrain the activities of Islamist groups. During the extreme anti-Christian violence from the late 1990s they often joined in on the side of the Muslim militants. In West Papua, with its large Christian population, the Indonesian military even burned a number of Christian villages and killed their inhabitants.

Islamist persecution also takes nonviolent forms. A Christian group in Banda Aceh built more than 200 houses for Muslim victims of the Pacific Ocean tsunami of 2004. With support from Barnabas Fund it also provided seven houses for Christian victims, but local Muslims then refused to allow Christians to move back and occupy the houses.

A region on the brink?

The size of Indonesia, and its resulting power – economic, political and military – makes it crucially important in South-East Asia. If its Islamists were to achieve their goals of making it an Islamic state under the authority of sharia and eliminating Christianity from its territories, then the presence and mission of Christians in other parts of the region would also be endangered. Please pray for the churches of Indonesia as they seek to respond with wisdom, courage and faithfulness to the serious challenges that they face.

Examples of aid from Barnabas to Indonesia

Church planting in Java

An Indonesian ministry supports a church planting initiative in Muslim villages in East and Central Java, where pastors have started Bible study groups or small house churches. Sometimes they experience persecution, being chased out of their homes or villages, or threatened and attacked by armed mobs during services. The pastors are encouraged to start small enterprises of their own, such as baking or keeping chickens, to help support themselves. It is hoped that within a few years the churches they have planted will be able to cover the rest of their living costs.

Grants from Barnabas Fund have contributed to the living costs of 40 pastors and the administration costs of the ministry. We have also given an extra grant at Christmas to enable the pastors to organise a celebration with a special meal. The people from their neighbourhoods are all invited, and the parties provide a good opportunity to build friendships as a foundation for evangelism.

(Project reference 22-828)

The Christian village of Horale was burned by a Muslim mob in 2008. Barnabas has given funds to enable the villagers to construct permanent homes

Reconstruction of Horale village

The mainly Christian village of Horale in the Malukus was attacked by a mob from the neighbouring Muslim village in May 2008. Around 120 houses were burned, with three churches and the village school. Four Christians were killed and 56 wounded, and crops and fishing-boats were destroyed.

Barnabas has given funds to help the villagers rebuild their lives. These have been used to turn the semipermanent houses provided by the government into permanent homes and to build new houses for those who had none. We have also provided rice, a generator, a village water tank, well and pump, and a bathing facility and public toilet. A longboat to carry supplies to and from the village has also been purchased with a Barnabas grant.

(Project reference 22-753)

Theological seminary in Jakarta

A theological seminary in Jakarta is currently training 61 Christians. Its graduates are in ministry all around Indonesia. The seminary is run very simply and costs are kept to a minimum; some of the staff give their time voluntarily. Barnabas Fund is assisting with the running costs and with developing the library.

(Project reference 22-766)