REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – The Chairman of Muhammadiyah, Yunahar Ilyas, said the West should study more about inter-religious tolerance from Indonesia as they allegedly said that Indonesia had religious intolerance. The intensity of dialogue between West and Islam should be encouraged to strengthen the fallacy.

Indonesia could feasibly become the model of religious tolerance for other countries, he continued. Ilyas also invites the West to see how Indonesia celebrates religious festivals for religions other than Islam. With 88 percent Muslim population, government still gives holiday to non-Muslim.

“Show me how US and Europe celebrate Muslim festivals? Is there any holiday for Muslims?” Ilyas asked following the result of the 13th meeting of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group of UN’s Human Rights Board in Geneva, Swiss. The meeting held in May 23-25 resulted that the Working Group were worried about the religious intolerance in Indonesia.

The activist of East-West Center, Maya Soetoro, said US supported the improvement of dialogue between West and Islam. The woman who is also the maternal half-sister of Barack Obama mentioned about the importance of understanding process to create the better world.

“The most important thing is that children can hold a dialogue with other nations. They can see the difference and similarity,” Maya said when visiting Pesantren Annur, Bekasi, West Java on Monday.

The Chairman of Indonesian Masjid Board (DMI), Jusuf Kalla (JK), also had some reservation regarding to the accusation. “There is no intolerance in Indonesia,” JK said.

He said, Indonesia was very tolerance to the development of houses of worship building and that was not the case in the US, especially when Muslims wanted to build mosque there. 

Meanwhile, Indonesian foreign ministry has different perspective about the UPR recommendation, which not merely criticized about religious intolerance in Indonesia. “Most of them are not about religious intolerance, but is’s more about the need of strengthening on human rights,” the Spokesman of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs Michael Tene said.

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