Islam in Indonesia
Indonesia is a archipelago situated in South-East Asia and comprises of 13 600 islands which stretch for approximately 5000km. Islam was introduced to Indonesia in the 14th century by Gujerati merchants from India. In 1478 a coalition of Muslim princes attack the remains of the Hinduism Empire expunging Hindu from the Indonesian empire. Islam has now become the dominant religion with 87% of the population adhering to Islam, 7% are Christians while the remainder are Buddhist, Catholic or Taoist. In recent years many conflicts have arisen between Muslims, Christians and Indonesia ethnic Chinese population, because of both religious and political differences. The clashes have been severe and 1000's of people from both religions have been murdered and beaten and 100's of Chinese women have been raped. Indonesia was one of the few countries where Islam did not takeover purely by an invading military force. One feature of Islam that appealed to Indonesian's is that it does not have a caste system such as the system in the Hindu religion. Before Islam was introduced, the king had the power to take a man's wife and land. The people of Indonesia were told that in Allah's eyes all men are made o
Previous governments have restricted Islam's influence by limiting the number of Muslim political parties by often forcing them to join together. Therefore suicide and euthanasia is rejected in a Muslim society and abortion is only allowed when the life of the mother is at stake. Many Muslim extremists are working to make Indonesia an Islamic state. The men do not treat them as second-class citizens but men and women are segregated in houses of worship. He believes that his people should subscribe to nationalism first and Islam second and has always tried to improve relations between Christians and Muslims and between the Pribumi and ethnic Chinese. From this small incident the violence spread and intensified. One of the strongest cases to show Indonesia's resentment towards ethnic Chinese occurred after a mayor in Java blocked plans to build a school on an old Chinese cemetery. The two were not allowed to be married because it was forbid under Sharia. The indigenous people (pribumi) felt discriminated against and in the post Suharto era they were more inclined to say so. Leaders from both sides have stated that they are only defending their respective communities. Indonesia's frustrations also boiled over onto the street because in June the World Bank estimated that as many as 50 million people are not eating the minimum amount of calories needed to stay healthy. This is because in less than two months the price of rice doubled. The major social problem facing Indonesia currently is the escalating violence. Indonesian people from both cultures also began to protest against the widespread corruption that is institutionalised in the Indonesian parliament and governing bodies. They had enough of their government.
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