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refer to an article titled “Christians denounce anti-Islam film”, (The Jakarta Post, Sept. 24, p. 4)

Maximum freedom compatible with equal freedom for all is a sound principle. It has allowed many generations of Americans, with different cultures and beliefs, to speak freely and pray without coercion and intimidation.

It is ironic that members of a church in Indonesia neglect principles of freedom and equality that would guarantee their right to worship, in favor of a pathetic attempt to seek sympathy from their persecutors by supporting the same idea of privilege for a repressive majority that has led to them being expelled from their own church.

But, of course, demonstrators of any religion should be able to express distaste for videos, or to call for governments of foreign countries, in this case the US, to amend their constitutions and legislate the execution of people exercising what previously were their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Destruction of property, rock-throwing and carrying of weapons is deplorable, but even that is not in itself a major problem. Every country has frustrated young men keen to join belligerent gangs espousing intolerant ideologies. As long as politicians and law enforcers contain such gangs and treat their ideologies with proper scorn, civil society is not threatened.

But in Indonesia, politicians only scorn demonstrators who draw attention to “trivialities” like child starvation in West Timor or to millions of sick people unable to afford health treatment.

Demonstrators shouting “Allahuakbar” and protesting a video that hardly anybody has watched that was made by an obscure man on the far side of the world receive instant assurances of solidarity with their deeply-felt suffering.

President Yudhoyono jumps up to announce that he has received his marching orders and off he goes to New York to tell the world that the path to peace lies in adopting the same policies that have kindled house burnings and religious killings in Indonesia.

Forget the Millennium Development Goals! What really matters, according to SBY, is a new protocol assigning him and his MUI cronies to be global censors, able to sniff out and crack down on any thought, word or image they deem “offensive to Islam”, whatever that might mean.

John Hargreaves
Jakarta