In spite of several interfaith conflicts, a government survey has found that the country does enjoy religious harmony, especially in regions where Muslims are the minority.

The Religious Affairs Ministry released results on Wednesday from the latest inter-religious harmony (KUB) index, announcing a national score of 75.36 out of 100.

The national survey informing the index was conducted from June to December last year with 2,720 respondents covering all 34 provinces. It assessed perceptions of tolerance, equality and cooperation among people of differing religions.

The three provinces with the lowest proportion of Muslims in their populations scored the highest on the index, indicating that they performed best at interfaith tolerance.

East Nusa Tenggara came out on top of the list scoring 83.3, followed by Bali at 81.6 and Maluku at 81.3.

The lowest performer was Aceh, a Muslim-majority region and the only province allowed to implement Islamic law, which scored a harmony index of 62.8, indicating that it had the most intolerance.

Other Muslim-majority regions such as Lampung and West Sumatra followed, scoring 65.9 and 69.2, respectively.

Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin said the country had performed better in the tolerance index last year because people were more open to interfaith dialogues and his ministry had established the Religious Community Harmony Forum (FKUB) to aid communication among religious groups.

He acknowledged, however, that religion-related conflict still occurred. '€œWe should be proud of the high score, but we can'€™t deny that there are still many problems that need more attention from the government,'€ he said.

The country faced a number of religion-based conflicts last year.

An arson attack on a church in Aceh Singkil regency on Oct. 13 left one person dead, four injured and saw at least 7,000 people leave the area to find shelter in nearby areas of North Sumatra.

Conflict did not only occur in regions with large Muslim populations.

In Papua, a mosque in Tolikara was burned down by a group affiliated with the Evangelical Church of Indonesia (GIDI) during Idul Fitri. Police shot dead one teenager during the incident and injured 12 other Tolikara residents.

Lukman said that most of the conflicts were actually triggered by certain members of the elite who intentionally used religion as a weapon for provocation for their own political and economic interests.

Human-rights group Setara Institute said that the results of the government study were in line with the institute'€™s findings in its recent survey on tolerant cities.

'€œRegions that have the highest tolerance are those that are capable of accepting and preserving pluralism,'€ institute researcher Ismail Hasani said.

National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) commissioner Imdadun Rahmat agreed that, in general, the country had a good level of tolerance.

'€œThe government index is acceptable. Among a population of 250 million, only a few were involved in these conflicts and across over 500 regencies and municipalities, cases of sectarian violence involved only 0.01 percent of the population,'€ Imdadun said.

Lukman further said that, in an attempt to avoid more conflict in the future, the ministry was preparing a draft bill on the protection of religious freedom, which had been undergoing drafting since early last year.

The draft proposed five main points, including the regulation of state treatment of citizens with beliefs outside the six permitted religions, restrictions on certain religious teachings and methods for deciding whether certain religious ideologies were deviant or not.

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