R

eligious leaders are urging Muslims nationwide to take the lead in promoting religious tolerance in multicultural Indonesia.

They issued the joint statement after a two-day forum where they discussed ways to encourage a greater appreciation of religious diversity.

Ahmad Fuad Fanani, research director at the Maarif Institute for Culture and Humanity, said Muslim organizations should also be more open to discussions of pluralism. He encouraged the issuance of a fatwa on the subject.

'€œOrganizations such as Muhammadiyah [the second-largest Islamic organization in the country] should seriously discuss tolerance and diversity during their national meetings so that members of their communities can be more accepting of minority groups,'€ he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Fuad said Muslims in the country needed to accept that despite being a Muslim-majority nation, Indonesia was a plural society with peoples of diverse cultures and faiths.

It is also incumbent upon the government to promote religious pluralism, Fuad said.

'€œIt is the government'€™s job to protect the peace and prevent conflicts by continuing to tell the public that diversity is a fact of life,'€ he said.

Meanwhile, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin acknowledged that intensifying religious conflict was a threat that could lead to the nation'€™s unraveling.

Rights watchdog group Setara Institute reported 135 cases of religious-based violence across the country in 2007. The latest figures show the number of case rose to 264 in 2012.

Members of the Ahmadiyah and Shia communities have been subjected to repeated attacks by Sunni Muslims who condemn them for their beliefs and teachings.

Members of the Indonesian Christian Church (GKI) Yasmin in Bogor have also faced hardships after being denied, for a fifth consecutive year, the right to hold a Christmas service at their church, which has been sealed by city authorities in response to public pressure in 2010.

'€œWhat we need right now is a public and a leadership that is responsive to a diversity becoming increasingly complex. We need to find ways to not get distracted by our own diversity,'€ Lukman said.

Ahmad Syafii Maarif, former chairman of Muhammadiyah and founder of the Maarif Institute, said the effort to promote pluralism in the country must start with Muslims themselves.

Syafii said he was concerned that some Muslims were more concerned to see Islam as the nation'€™s dominant faith than with striving to understand the religion'€™s true teachings.

'€œIf we look at what is taught in the Koran, Muslims here have yet to practice tolerance of all faiths. We should not be concerned with the number of Muslims [in the country] but with the quality of Muslims [in the country],'€ he said.

Syafii urged Muslims to adhere to the inclusive teachings of the Koran so that minority groups in the country would be less worried about militant groups attacking their places of worship under the guise of Islam.

Wawan Gunawan Abdul Wahid of Muhammadiyah pointed out that Islam was an inclusive faith with no explicit teachings against non-Muslim political leadership.

'€œThis means that there is always the possibility of a non-Muslim leader leading a large Muslim community as long as they allow for religious freedom,'€ he said.