Study tour Indonesia 2007

Inter-Religious Relations

Inter-Religious Relations in Lombok, by Mr. Abdul Wahid.

Mr. Wahid is a lecturer at IAIN and holds a master degree in inter-religious relations.

Mataram, which is the capital of the West Nusa Tenggara province, is the place of a plural society. Ethnic and religious groups live side by side in this city; Sasak, Bimanese, Samawa and Arabs who are Muslims, Balinese people who belong to Hinduism, Javanese who are either Muslims or Christians, and Chinese who usually put their faith in Confucianism or Buddhism. The number of citizens in Mataram is 340 513; about 78% of them are Muslims, while 17% consider Hinduism as their religion. Protestants and Catholics make up respectively 1.4% and 1.1% of the population.

According to the lecturer, there is no discrimination and ‘they are peacefully living together!’, as written with big letters on one of the slides in the PowerPoint presentation. Although it seems like they live in perfect harmony, there are indicators that point toward a more complex reality. The Muslims and the Hindus rightly tend to live in harmony. Probably the fact that Lombok originally was Hindu and that the Islamic direction Wetu Telu still has elements from the old Hindu traditions, contribute to this. Also Christians and Hindus tend to live in harmony. Maybe the Hindu theology and teaching on tolerance can be an explanation together with the fact that both groups are minorities in an Islamic dominated society.

Whereas the other religious groups tend to live in harmony, this is not the case with Christians and Muslims, but why? Probably it is because they both have the nature of a missionary religion. They both are monotheistic religions and claim that their religion is the only one. They tend to look upon each other as competitors. Probably the big economic gap between the Christians and the Muslims also is an important part of the picture. Even though the Muslims make up the majority of the population, the Christians and also the Chinese in general have a higher income. This economic growth and wealth among Christians may be provocative to many Muslims.