H

ome Minister Tjahjo Kumulo said on Wednesday that his office would propose to revise a joint ministerial decree regulating the establishment of houses of worship, a regulation condemned by activists as the trigger of recent religious violence across the country.

The 2006 joint decree between the Home Ministry and the Religious Affairs Ministry states that establishing a house of worship requires at least 90 signatures from congregation members and 60 from people living in the neighborhood of the planned house of worship.

'€œWe are considering raising the [two] points in the upcoming Cabinet meeting,'€ Tjahjo told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

As the two requirements have often made it hard for religious minority groups, especially those who are ostracized in their neighborhood, to build their house of worship, Tjahjo'€™s office has considered lowering the requirement numbers or even completely revoking the two requirements, leaving a building permit as the only requirement for construction of houses of worship.

Closures and burning of mosques and churches in the country are believed to have taken place due to the fact that religious minority groups failed to meet the two requirements, leading them to resort to clandestine methods to meet the requirements, including forging signatures.

As the handling of such conflicts is subject to the authority of several state institutions, Tjahjo said that the Home Ministry had established close communication with the Religious Affairs Ministry, Law and Human Rights Ministry, Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) as well as the Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister to craft a revision of the decree.

'€œ[The communication] is to form a shared understanding of the plan. After that we will report the result to the Cabinet meeting,'€ Tjahjo added.

The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) on Wednesday lambasted those who wanted scrap the joint decree, saying the regulation instead should be further enshrined in law by the House of Representatives in order to give a legal basis to punish violators the requirements.

'€œWe call on House lawmakers to enshrine the regulation in law,'€ MUI chairman Ma'€™ruf Amin said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin reportedly said that the Ministry would keep the joint decree as the legitimate guidelines of the establishment of houses of worship until a new one was formed, warning of the serious consequences that could emerge if the regulation was withdrawn before a replacement was created.

Religious violence recently claimed one life in Aceh Singkil, Aceh province, in October after a Muslim mob was involved in a deadly clash with church congregation members who defended their house of worship from being torn down by the angry mob who claimed that the church violated the decree.

In a similar incident in July, a small mosque was razed after locals in predominantly Christian Tolikara regency, Papua, rejected the existence of a mosque and prohibited Muslims from performing Idul Fitri festival in Tolikara. The clash also left one person dead.

Human rights watchdog Setara Institute, which campaigns for religious pluralism, lashed out at Ma'€™ruf for appealing for the regulation to become law, saying that it agreed with Tjahjo'€™s plan to revise the decree in order to relieve the burden on religious minority groups who wish to build places of worship.

'€œThe establishment of house of worship is integral part of citizens'€™ rights to freedom of religion [...] It is also closely related to people'€™s right of freedom of expression and of assembly, which are granted by Constitution,'€ Setara Institute'€™s deputy chairperson Bonar Tigor Naipospos told the Post on Wednesday.

'€œThe MUI'€™s plan will discriminate against religious minority groups,'€ he added.
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