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Indonesia’s election and defending Islam ‘rahmatan lil ‘alamin’
Defending religious tolerance is a prerequisite for keeping a pluralistic country like Indonesia intact.
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Toleransi Beragama (Religious Tolerance) by Suprapto, won the first prize in the general public category of Astra 2021 Photo Contest.
Indonesia has long been known as a pluralist country with various ethnicities, races, languages, cultures, customs and religions and traditional belief systems within it. Demographically, Indonesia's population is spread over many islands with the largest concentration of the population on the island of Java.
The country’s population is currently estimated around 277 million. Based on the religious groupings, it encompasses 87.2 percent Muslim, 7 percent Protestant, 2.9 percent Roman Catholic, 1.7 percent Hindu, 0.07 percent Buddhism and 0.05 percent Confucianism. Other religious groups like Judaism and traditional indigenous religions constitute 1.3 percent of the population.
For the Muslim population per se, it is overwhelmingly Sunni, while the rest is made up of other smaller Muslim groups, such as Shia and Ahmadi.
Such demographic diversity gives rise to a perspective of majority-minority relations mostly found in the area of sociocultural life and, among other areas, in religious life. In the majority-minority relational context, Islam as Indonesia’s most widely practiced religion is very inclusive in nature, instead of claiming itself as the ruling religion over its fellow believers such as those of other Abrahamic faiths and traditional belief systems that coexist in this country.
At the state level, the government’s strong commitment to treating Islam and other fellow religions and belief systems equally, including providing an equal position before the law, is undeniable. Freedom of religion in Indonesia has a very strong legal basis along with the recognition and guarantees given by the 1945 Constitution.
As clearly stated in Chapter XI Article 29 Paragraph 2 of the Constitution: “The state guarantees all persons the freedom of worship, each according to his/her own religion or belief.” Meaning, the measures toward protecting and respecting the existence and practice of a religion and other traditional belief systems in this country are constitutionally bound.
