Sydney, 1 May 2017
There is no place for atheists in Indonesia. Indonesia has set its ideology as a theism country. If someone wants to live in Indonesia, he has to believe in the existence of god. But still, there is no place for agnostic theists. He must choose one of six religions acknowledged by the government. Or, another option, he can choose to believe one of several folk religions acknowledged by government. Otherwise, he cannot access any public services, and most likely, he will be labelled as communist and jailed or probably be killed by some Indonesian extremists.
Firstly, religion is exclusively personal business, even a country cannot push someone to believe in a particular or a set of religion. Even if the authority forces the person to do so (superficially), but still no one can force what really is inside someone else's heart. Secondly, there are thousand of religion in the world, but why does Indonesia only acknowledge six of them? If Indonesia is supportive to theism, Indonesia is supposed to support any religion in the world, not being selective. Lastly, Mixing up religion with other interests such as politics is totally a bad idea. Religious Indonesians argue if religion is inseparable element to any parts of life. They say, secularism is a bad idea. But let's see the fact how many messes have been created by contaminating religion into other interests. Probably, they are wrong in defining what actually secularism is.
Indonesians are very easily provoked by religion issues. To them, religion is everything, the most important thing in the world, like their own life and death. Thus, they would put aside their rationality when fighting for their religion. The tragedy of Indonesian Communist Party in 1965 and the killing of witches during financial crisis and riot 1998 are some example of how the easily provoked religious Indonesians are employed to achieve a certain objective. Now I see the pattern is recurring. If only they used their sanity, they should have thought logically what was right and what was wrong. What I see now, religious claims they are the most behave people in the world, but the reality is the opposite.
People say religion is important to treat the deceased based on their religion. But apparently, even if someone has the same religion but different interpretation or sect, he will probably be rejected by the dominant community. Here, I see people only care to their own religious community. This actually what causes mixing up religion with other aspect in public services or interactions be spoiled. People help and support based on the religion. Religion has been more important than humanity. The lure of heaven and the fear of hell is more real than the actual real life.
