The Jakarta Globe:
June 1 is commemorated as Pancasila Day, the philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state that bridges the country’s diversity.
Unfortunately today, there are some people who have not learned from the past since the first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, proposed the idea on June 1, 1945. Take, for example, the attacks on Indoneisa’s Ahmadiyah Muslims and the Bogor administration’s sealing off of a church, to name just a few examples.
Indonesia is not only blessed with vast natural resources but also the diversity of its people, languages, traditional cultures and religions. Such heterogeneity shapes the way we Indonesians live and makes us proud to be a part of our dear nation. Regardless of our differences in ethnicity, religion and language, we still manage to live side by side in harmony.
But that only appears on the surface. History recorded numerous conflicts across the archipelago — religious disputes being the most frequent…………………
Religious intolerance, I’m afraid, comes from incorrect mindsets. A small group of people use their fanaticism and fail to understand the separation of state and religion. But religion should be kept to the private sphere.