Letter: Politics and intolerance

The great majority of Indonesian Muslims are tolerant and law-abiding citizens. Many of my kindred are good Muslims who would never intimidate, let alone attack non-Muslims or Muslims of other sects.

All of the troubles, murder and mayhem have been perpetrated by fanatical people who claim to be Muslims. These criminals can not possibly be followers of any religion including Islam.

The problem is that the government vis-à-vis the police and other relevant state agencies have been bending backward to allow all of this anti-social behavior to take place with regularity.

One can only guess that these criminals might be utilized by certain factions of the government to attain their hidden agenda. The police and that means the central government are afraid to stamp out these louts because they don’t want to be branded as anti-Islam, which is totally incomprehensible and the government simply do not care what happens to the minority groups because the leaders are incompetent and only concerned with their back pockets.

We have seen the inability or lack of political will on the part of the government to do anything against these criminals, and it leaves the ordinary Indonesians — in particular the good Muslims to put their collective foot down and openly express their indignation against criminals who sully the good name of Islam to promote their crazy agenda.
 
Paul E. Rantau
Singapore