Visiting Medan, the capital of North Sumatra in Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population this week, where a Buddhist woman was recently convicted for blasphemy and sentenced to 18 months in prison for complaining that the call to prayer from her neighborhood mosque was too loud, was a wakeup call on how intolerant and socially destructive religious extremists, Muslim and Christian are.
Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization which claims 60 million members, thankfully criticized the blasphemy conviction and said the woman’s complaint does not constitute blasphemy. Indonesia’s constitution guarantees freedom of speech and religion, but religious minorities are frequently the target of blasphemy prosecutions that can result in five years in jail. Since 2004, 147 people have been imprisoned under blasphemy or related laws, according to Human Rights Watch.
The conviction has raised concerns that an intolerant brand of Islam is gaining ground in Indonesia. Like America, rising religiosity is a hot-button issue in upcoming elections.
Having arrived from Singapore where a similar debate about religious intolerance about separation of church and state was taking place, I couldn’t help reflecting how prevalent religious intolerance is growing worldwide.
In Singapore, the repeal of Section 377A of its Penal Code that makes it a crime for two consenting male adults to have sex with each other in private is being debated.
The National Council of Churches of Singapore, the Catholic Archbishop, and the Islamic authorities have issued statements against the repeal of Section 377A. They regard homosexuality as a violation of their religious dogmas and therefore a sin.
Scientific research has shown that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation in human sexuality and is not in itself a source of negative psychological effects.
Singapore, like America, is a secular state that separates religion from the state. It is therefore not the responsibility of the state to enforce religious dogmas.
Since when is a religious sin a crime?
The same religious polarization is gaining ground in America. Christian extremists in the U.S. don’t accept homosexuality or Islam as a religion.
The U.S. Supreme Court back in June ruled in favor of a Christian baker who refused to bake a custom wedding cake for a gay couple. A month later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions introduced a “religious liberty task force” that many see as a cover for anti-gay discrimination.
Even worse, many politicians, political pundits and commentators argue Muslims are not protected by the First Amendment because Islam is a political system and not a religion. Michael Flynn, who was briefly President Trump’s National Security Adviser, last year told an ACT for America conference in Dallas that “Islam is a political ideology… that hides behind the notion of it being a religion.”
In 2015, former assistant United States attorney, Andrew C. McCarthy, wrote in National Review that Islam “should be understood as conveying a belief system that is not merely but, or even primarily, religious.”
There have been 43 legislative attempts to ban the practice of Islamic religious law; 27 bills were introduced in 2017 alone, according to the Haas Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.
A 2017 poll found that half of American adults believed Islam does not have a place in “mainstream American society,” and 44% thought there was a “natural conflict between Islam and democracy.”
The fear is so real that in 2010, when Muslims tried to get zoning approval to build a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, opponents argued against the religious validity of Islam. Thankfully, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an amicus brief explaining that “under the United States Constitution and other federal laws, it is uncontroverted that Islam is a religion and a mosque is a place of religious assembly.”
There are indeed alarming consequences of allowing religion to intrude into a judicial system of a secular state. That is why America’s Founding Fathers believed the law should be allowed to evolve with society so as to achieve collective acceptance and it be unshackled from any religious imposition of objective morality and beliefs. Otherwise, the risk of a divided society is real.
Trekking for two days in the primary and secondary jungle of the Gunung Leuser National Park in North Sumatra among gibbons, slamangs, Thomas Leaf monkeys, long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques, orangutans, one-two inch ants, tigers, zigzagging several times across raging rivers, and spending the night under a tarp held in place by bamboo and a mosquito net, as the nearby river I had crossed and washed in minutes earlier rose by three-four feet as a result of the sudden monsoon downpour, I felt safer and more comfortable there with our Muslim guides than I do anywhere with religious extremists.
Orangutans are arguably the most intelligent of the great apes and one of our closest relatives. Yet they have become an endangered species.
There is no room for religious extremists of any religion, especially Christians and Muslims, the world’s two dominant religions in the New World Disorder — if Order is to be restored. The alternative — Armageddon — we will self-destruct and, like the orangutans, become an endangered, if not extinct species.
Orangutans are arguably the most intelligent of the great apes and one of our closest relatives. Yet they have become an endangered species.
There is no room for religious extremists of any religion, especially Christians and Muslims, the world’s two dominant religions in the New World Disorder — if Order is to be restored. The alternative — Armageddon — we will self-destruct and, like the orangutans, become an endangered, if not extinct species.