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new bill drafted to boost religious tolerance in the country may serve as a tool for the government to inhibit religious freedom and foment intolerance, religious leaders and scholars say.

Franz Magnis-Suseno, a Catholic priest and professor at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy said that the bill, which has been under deliberation between the House of Representatives and the government, was too prone to state intervention in pursuit of religious tolerance.

He argued that the bill consisted of contentious clauses that should be revised and rephrased to avoid public unrest. He cited for instance Chapter 17 on religious propagation, which would invite state intervention because propagation was mandatory in all religions.

“The bill allows religious propagation among infidels or atheists but in reality all people hold their religion in accordance with their own beliefs, including our brothers in remote areas in Sumba and Kalimantan,” he said in a public discussion here last week.

The discussion was jointly organized by the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Asian Muslim Action Network to seek input for the House in deliberating the bill.

The bill has been prepared to accommodate the 2006 Joint Ministerial Decree on construction of houses of worship and in response to increasing social conflict and incidents triggered by the construction of houses of worship in Java, especially in Jakarta and surrounding areas.

Magnis-Suseno criticized chapters in the bill that prohibit the propagation of sectarian teaching and questioned the state’s authority in determining whether certain religions were sectarian or not. “In the Christian perspective, Protestantism is sectarian. Who is the authority to decide on sectarianism? The state has no competence and authority to make decisions on the truth of a religion. This is also the case regarding the Sunni and Shia sects in Islam,” he said.

Siti Musdah Mulia, a professor at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, concurred, saying that the bill’s substance did not reflect its title. “We cannot judge the book by its cover. The bill’s title is religious tolerance but I cannot find in the bill what that really means,” she said.

She questioned the state’s authority to recognize only six religions — Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism — while according to research, there were at least 23 religions with their own adherents in the country. “In Surabaya, for instance, there is a small Jewish group but their religion is identified as Islam on their identity cards. Is this the kind of religious freedom the government wants?” she asked.

She accused the government of hypocrisy, saying it had intentionally prepared the bill to demonstrate to the world Indonesian religious tolerance but this was not really implemented and the government did not manage sectarian conflict well.

The bill, she said, should reflect the government’s neutrality by giving equal treatment to all religions no matter who was in the majority or minority.

Chairman of the PKB faction Marwan Jafar appreciated all the input and said the PKB would enhance cooperation with other parties to hold similar meetings to seek input from all stakeholders, including civil society groups, to make a law that promoted tolerance among religious communities and maintained pluralism.