Indonesians' Neutrality

I read, with interests, Fatih Syuhud's article regarding how Indonesians view and comment on international political issues. He's comparing Indonesians with Indians, which he claimed are more "neutral" and can see from many more different views in commenting on such issues.

As an example, with regards to the Israel's attacks to Lebanon, Fatih thinks that most Indonesians are more divided in their opinions with regards to the attack, and the division is interestingly based on the line of religion, whereby most Indonesian Muslims condemn and disagree with the attacks, while most Indonesian non-Muslims tend to think that Israel has the right to defend themselves by launching the attacks.

I'm not too sure, but I don't think that I see the same situation, especially within the Indonesian community here in Singapore. Here, quite a lot of my non-Muslim friends also disagree with Israel's attacks to Lebanon. We see it more as an attack to a sovereign country, causing a lot of civilians become victims of the attack. Regardless of what is the religion of the victims, such an attack is despicable.

I guess Fatih might have seen the "division" after reading Patung's comment on one of his posts, and based on the articles he has written, I can see that Patung's anti-Islam level is a bit high. However, kindly reminded that not all our non-Muslim friends are like him, and it's not fair to generalise and think that all our non-Muslim friends share the same views with him.

What I can see, most of Indonesians, both Muslims and non-Muslims, do not tolerate violence and terrorism. We can see that a lot (if not almost all) Muslims in Indonesia condemned all the terror attacks conducted by Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group, and we also can see that a lot of non-Muslims in Indonesia disagree with the US's invasion to Iraq. So I don't think it's just a matter of in the line of religion.

We have to admit, there are some Muslims in Indonesia, who are too fanatic and dislike non-Muslims and religions other than Islam, and there are also some non-Muslims in Indonesia who are also too fanatic and dislike Muslims and Islam. Those are the people we have to worry, since they are the most definite danger to the racial and religious harmony in Indonesia.

[Indonesian version]