In his first public comment about the increasing frequency of attacks against churches, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Tuesday stopped short of guaranteeing Christian minorities their constitutional rights to pray. Instead, he chose to wash his hands of the matter and ordered the police and the local authorities to stop what he described as “religious violence”.

The President has reduced or diluted a grave matter related to the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of a group of citizens to a simple question of criminal thuggery for the police to manage.

Yudhoyono did not refer to any case in particular, but many religious leaders and public figures were appalled by a violent attack on Sunday at the HKBP Christian church in Bekasi that injured 20 people, mostly women. It was the fifth time that the church had been attacked. They have had to conduct their services in the street because the church was sealed by local authorities. The police were there but were unable to prevent the violence from taking place.

Something fundamental is at stake here. The Bekasi incident is more than a case of residents who were encouraged by outsiders to attack Christians during peaceful Sunday services. Given the frequency with which this is occurring, the real issue is about the constitutional right of religious minorities to pray and to build houses of worship.

Yudhoyono could learn a thing or two from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who last week delivered a stirring speech defending a plan by Muslims to build a mosque and an Islamic center near the Ground Zero site, overruling objections from New Yorkers who saw this as an affront to the victims of the 9/11 attacks by radical Muslims. Bloomberg, with the full backing of the City Council, gave the green light for the construction of the Islamic Center, saying it was the fundamental right of Americans of all faiths, including Muslims, to build houses of worship.  

Wouldn’t it be nice to see something like this in Indonesia? Wouldn’t it be nice to see Yudhoyono come to the defense of religious minorities and do for Indonesia what Mayor Bloomberg has done for the Muslim minority population in New York?

Others in Indonesia can also learn from New Yorkers that there are civilized and non-violent means of opposing the presence of churches in your neighborhood.  

This is a democratic country after all, right?

Yudhoyono missed an opportunity to address this problem this week when he avoided the real issue. In fact, by calling the Bekasi incident an instance of “religious violence”, he is in danger of expanding such incidents into religious conflict. Only the President can stop all these disputes from deteriorating into a full blown religious war. He can still do it.

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