Indonesia Must Regulate Houses of Worship Building

Yogyakarta, Indonesia (News Today) - An Islamic leader said the state must regulate religious propagation and the building of houses of worship to prevent and avoid possible inter-religious conflicts.

If religious propagation and construction of house of worship were left to the community’s initiaitve or discretion based on the principle of freedom, it could lead to inter-religious conflicts, Din Syamsuddin, chairman of one of Indonesia’s largest Islamic organization, Muhammadiyah, said here on Saturday.

"Ideally there must be a kind of agreement among different religious communities regarding a code of ethics on religious propagation, construction of houses of worship and related matters. To that end, the state needs to intervene and issue the relevant regulations in the common interest," he said.

He said there must be laws, government regulations, presidential decrees or joint ministerial decisions to regulate the matters.

"The absence of regulations that are familiar to the community could cause violence such as recently happened when Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) followers were stabbed and clubbed," he said.

He said violence must be condemned as it was intolerable regardless of who had done it or the motives. He said those involved in the act must be processed and transparently made known to the public.

"The initial cause of the incident which is related to the planned construction of a house of worship must be addressed properly because it is this kind of problems that hinder the realization of inter-religous harmony," he said.

Source : kompas

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