Supriya Kothandath

Indonesia is a secular state with several different religions practiced. Indonesia is officially a presidential republic and a unitary state. Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population and the first principle of Indonesia's philosophical foundation, Pancasila, requires its citizens to state "the One and almighty God". Consequently, atheists in Indonesia experience official discrimination in the context of registration of births and marriages and the issuance of identity cards. In addition, the Aceh province officially enforces Sharia law and is notorious for its discriminatory practices towards religious and sexual minorities. There are also pro-Sharia and fundamentalist movements in several parts of the country with overwhelming Muslim majorities.

The country's political, economic and cultural life are influenced by several different religions. Despite constitutionally guaranteeing freedom of religion, the government recognizes only six religions since 1965: Islam, Christianity (Catholicism, under the label of "Katholik", and Protestantism, under the label of "Kristen" are treated separately), Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. According to a 2017 decision of the Constitutional Court of Indonesia, "the branches/flows of beliefs" (Indonesian: aliran kepercayaan)—ethnic religions with new religious movements—must be recognized and included in an Indonesian identity card (KTP). Based on data collected by the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace (ICRP), there are about 245 unofficial religions in Indonesia.

Indonesian law between 1975 and the 2017 Constitutional Court decision required its citizens to have a KTP that identifies them with one of the six religions. (since 2017 citizens that don't identify with those religions may identify themselves to profess "believe in Divine Omnipotence" or leave that section blank).

Indonesia does not recognize agnosticism or atheism, and blasphemy is illegal. In 2018 Indonesian governmental statistics, 86.7% of Indonesians identified themselves as Muslim (with Sunnis about 99%, Shias about 1% and Ahmadis 0.2% ), Christianity (7.6% Protestantism, 3.12% Catholicism) , 1.74% Hindu, 0.77% Buddhist, 0.03% Confucian, 0.05% others.

The people of Indonesia followed the local tribal Austronesian and Papuan ethnic religions.

Immigration from the Indian subcontinent, mainland China, Portugal, the Arab world, and the Netherlands has been a significant contributor to the diversity of religion and culture within the archipelago.

Hinduism and Buddhism influenced the religions in the region before the arrival of the Abrahamic religions. Indian traders brought their religion to the archipelago in the second and fourth centuries. The fifth centuryCE saw the development of Hinduism of Shaivite traditions.

Hinduism had a decisive influence on the ideology of the one-man rule of the Raja. The traders established Buddhism which developed further in the following century and several Hindu Buddhist-influenced kingdoms were established, such as Kutai, Srivijaya, Majapahit, and Shailendra. The world's largest Buddhist monument was built around the same time as the Hindu monument, and was built by Shailendra. The peak of Hindu-Javanese civilization was in the 14th century, and is described as a 'Golden Age' in Indonesian history.

Islam was introduced to the archipelago. Islam spread through the west coast of Sumatra and then to the east in Java, after coming from Gujarat, India.

The kingdoms established during this period were Islam-influenced. By the end of the fifteenth century, 20 Islam-based kingdoms had been established, reflecting the domination of Islam in Indonesia.

The Portuguese introduced Christianity to the island of Flores in the 16th century, and the Dutch introduced Protestantism in the 16th century. The Dutch preferred economic benefit over religious conversion and missionary efforts avoided predominantly Muslim areas. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) regulated the missionary work so it could serve its own interests and focused it to the eastern, Animist part of the archipelago, including Maluku, North Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara, Papua and Kalimantan. Christianity later spread from the coastal ports of Kalimantan, and missionaries arrived among the Torajans on Sulawesi.

The Batak people are mostly Protestant and were targeted in parts of Sumatra.

The relationship between religion and the state was distrusted during the Sukarno era. Following an attempted coup in 1965 that officially blamed the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and an anti-communist purge, the New Order government attempted to suppress PKI supporters by making it mandatory to have a religion since PKI supporters were mostly atheists. ] As a result, citizens were required to carry personal identification cards indicating their religion. Most of the mass conversion was to Catholicism and Protestantism.

Chinese Indonesians were mostly Confucianists. Many people converted to Christianity because Confucianism was not recognized as a state-recognized religion.

The history of Islam in Indonesia is complex and reflects the diversity of Indonesian cultures. There is evidence of Arab Muslim traders entering the Indonesian archipelago as early as the 8th century. Venetian explorer, Marco Polo is credited with the earliest known record of a Muslim community around 1297 AD, whom he referred to as a new community of Moorish traders in Perlak, Aceh. Over the 15th and 16th century, the spread of Islam accelerated via the missionary work of Maulana Malik Ibrahim (also known as Sunan Gresik, originally from Samarkand) in Sumatra and Java and Admiral Zheng He (also known as Cheng Ho, from China) in North Java, as well as campaigns led by sultans that targeted Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms and various communities, with each trying to carve out a region or island for control. There are four sultanates in northern and southern Sumatra, west and central Java, and southern Kalimantan. The sultans declared Islam a state religion and pursued war against each other as well as the Hindus.

Subsequently, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, animist communities and unbelievers bought peace by agreeing to pay jizya tax to a Muslim ruler, while others began adopting Islam to escape the tax. Islam in Indonesia is in many cases less meticulously practiced in comparison to Islam in the Middle East.

In some regions, people continued to believe in their beliefs. They adopted a syncretic version of Islam, while others left and concentrated as communities in islands that they could defend, for example, Hindus of western Java moved to Bali and neighboring small islands. While this period of religious conflict and inter-Sultanate warfare was unfolding, and new power centers were attempting to consolidate regions under their control, European powers arrived. The archipelago was soon dominated by the Dutch empire, which helped prevent inter-religious conflict, and slowly began the process of excavating, preserving and understanding the archipelago's ancient Hindu and Buddhist period, particularly in Java and the western islands.

The majority of Indonesian Muslims practice Sunni Islam. Smaller numbers follow other schools and the main divisions of Islam in Indonesia are traditionalism and modernity.

The orders of Sufism are considered essential by Indonesia's two largest Islamic civil society groups.

Political parties were allowed to declare an ideology other than Pancasila after Suharto's resignation. The Crescent Star Party (PBB) came in sixth place in the 1999 elections after forming with Sharia. The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) came in 4th with 8% of the total votes, and the PBB came in 10th, despite being characterized by moderate and tolerant Islamic interpretations.

Shia Islam played an important role in the early period of the spread of Islam in North Sumatra and Java. Currently, there are approximately 1-3 million Twelvers in Sumatra, Java, Madura and Sulawesi islands, and also Ismailis in Bali, which approximates more than 1% of the total Muslim population. Shias form a segment of Arab Indonesians and the Hadhrami people. The main organization is "Ikatan Jamaah Ahlulbait Indonesia" (IJABI).

The earliest history of Ahmadi Muslims in the archipelago can be found in the summer of 1925, when a missionary named Rahmat Ali stepped in Sumatra and established the movement with 13 devotees. The community has had an influential history in Indonesia's religious development, yet in modern times it has faced increasing intolerance from religious establishments and physical hostilities from radical Muslim groups. In Ahmadiyya organization Jamaah Muslim Ahmadiyah Indonesia (JMAI), there are an estimated 400,000 followers, which equates to 0.2% of the total Muslim population, spread over 542 branches across the country; in contrast to independent estimates, the Ministry of Religious Affairs (Indonesia) estimates around 80,000 members. A separatist group, the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam, known as Gerakan Ahmadiyah-Lahore Indonesia (GAI) in Indonesia, has existed in Java since 1924 and had only 708 members in the 1980s.

Catholicism and Protestantism are two separate religions in Indonesia, officially recognized by the government.

The archipelago was invaded by the Portuguese in the 14th and 15th century.

The goal of spreading Catholicism was started by the Portuguese in 1534. The pioneer Christian missionary, Saint Francis Xavier, visited the islands between 1546 and 1547 to preach.

The number of Roman Catholicism practitioners fell due to the policy of banning the religion during the VOC era. After the Eighty Years War against Catholic Spain's rule, the Protestant Dutch gained their independence, which led to their dislike of Catholicism. The most significant result was on the island of Flores and East Timor. Protestant clergy from the Netherlands replaced Roman Catholic priests who were sent to prisons.

The Roman Catholic priest was executed for celebrating Mass in prison during the time of Jan Coen, who was the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. After the VOC collapsed and with the legalization of Catholicism in the Netherlands starting around 1800, Dutch Catholic clergy predominated until after Indonesia's independence. On present-day Flores, the royal house of Larantuka formed the only native Catholic kingdom in Southeast Asia around the 16th century, with the first king named Lorenzo.

Central Java has a lot of Catholics. Frans van Lith, a priest from the Netherlands came to Muntilan in 1896 to start Catholicism.

His effort did not produce a satisfying result until 1904 when four chiefs from Kalibawang region asked him to give them education in the religion. A group of 178 Javanese were christened on December 15, 1904, at Muntilan, district Magelang, Central Java.

3.12% of Indonesians are Catholics, nearly half the number of Protestants, and most of the practitioners live in West Kalimantan. The only province in Indonesia where Catholics are the majority is East Nusa Tenggara, where the island of Flores and West Timor are located.

Catholicism spread to Chinese Indonesians in the same area as it did in Java. It involves a procession carrying statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary to a local beach and then to the Cathedral of the Queen of the Rosary in Flores.

Christianity in Indonesia is called "Kristen" by the Eastern Christianity.

The Indonesian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), which was part of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Sydney, Australia and New Zealand (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia), was subsumed by the unified spiritual leadership of the Diocese of Singapore in 2019.

The Oriental Orthodoxy includes the Syriac Orthodox Church and Coptic Orthodox Church.

Protestantism is mostly a result of Calvinist and Lutheran missionary efforts during the country's colonial period. The Dutch Reformed Church was long at the forefront in introducing Christianity to native peoples and was later joined by other Reformed churches that separated from it during the 19th century. The VOC regulated the missionary work so it could serve its own interests and restricted it to the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago. Although these two branches are the most common, a multitude of other denominations can be found elsewhere in Indonesia.

Some parts of the country have a significant minority of Protestants. 7.6% of the population declared themselves Protestant in the census. In South Sulawesi province and Central Sulawesi, 17 per cent of the population is Protestants.

Up to 65% of the ethnic Torajans are Protestants. The Batak people from North Sumatra are one of the major Protestant groups in Indonesia. The apostle to the Batak people, Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen, brought Christianity to the people and started the HKBP.

The majority of the Protestant population in Indonesia are concentrated in major urban areas. The percentage of ethnic Chinese who were Christian increased in 2000.

Depending on the success of missionary activity, some villages in the country are part of a different denominations, such as Adventism, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, Lutheran, Presbyterian or the Salvation Army.

The majority of the population in Indonesia is in three Protestant-majority provinces.

It is practiced by the native population of the province. Manado was the center of the Minahasan population in the 19th century. Most of the native population of North Sulawesi practice Protestantism, while transmigrants from Java and Madura practice Islam. Adherents of Protestantism mostly live in North Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, West Sulawesi, Central Sulawesi, North Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara, North Maluku, Maluku (province), West Papua (province), Papua (province).

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Most Protestant churches in Indonesia have a single umbrella, the Communion of Churches.

Hindu culture and religion arrived in the archipelago around the 2nd centuryCE, which later formed the basis of several Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms such as Majapahit. Salakanagara emerged in western Java around 130. The largest Hindu temple in Indonesia was built during the Majapahit kingdom, which was created by an Indian trader after he married a local princess. The Hindu-Indonesian period began in the 16th century and lasted until the end of the 19th century.

Hinduism in Indonesia takes on a distinct tone from other parts of the world. Hinduism, referred to as Agama Hindu Dharma in Indonesia, formally applied the caste system. It also incorporated native Austronesian elements that revered hyangs, deities and spirits of nature and deceased ancestors. Indonesian wayang puppetry and dance are used to express the Hindu religious epics. The Panca Srada is one of the Five Points of Philosophy and is shared by all Agama Hindu Dharma practitioners.

The belief in one Almighty God (Brahman), belief in the souls and rebirth of local and ancestral spirits and karma, or the belief in the law of reciprocal actions are some of the things that are included. In addition, the religion focuses more on art and ritual rather than scriptures, laws and beliefs. In many areas on Java, Hinduism and Islam have heavily influenced each other, in part resulting in Abangan and Kejawèn (Kebatinan) traditions.

According to the 2010 census, Hindus numbered 4 million (1%) of Indonesians, but the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia disagrees. Most of the Hindu population in Sumatra, Java, Lombok, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi are from the island of Balinese who migrated through the government-sponsored transmigration program. The Tamil Indonesians in Medan are an important part of the Hindus.

There are indigenous religions that are incorporated into the Hinduism (not all followers agree): Hindu Kaharingan of Dayak people; Javanese Hinduism of Tenggerese tribe; Hindu Tolotang of Bugis; and Aluk Todolo of Toraja.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is one of the international Hindu reform movements.

Buddhism is the second oldest religion in Indonesia. The history of Buddhism in Indonesia is related to that of Hinduism, as some empires based on Buddhist culture were established around the same time. The rise and fall of powerful Buddhist Empires such as the Shailendra dynasty, Srivijaya and Mataram Empires have been witnessed in the Indonesian archipelago.

The Silk Road between Indonesia and India was the starting point for the arrival of Buddhism. The powerful maritime empire of Srivijaya was witnessed by a Chinese monk on his journey to India. The empire was a Buddhist learning center in the region.

There are some historical heritage monuments in Indonesia, such as the Borobudur Temple in Yogyakarta and statues from the earlier history of Buddhist empires.

The founder of Perbuddhi, Bhikku Ashin Jinarakkhita, proposed that there was a single supreme deity after the downfall of President Sukarno in the mid-1960s. The history behind the Indonesian version of Buddhism was backed up by the ancient Javanese texts.

According to the census, 0.8% of Indonesians are Buddhists, which takes up about 2 million people. Most Buddhists are concentrated in Jakarta, although other provinces such as Riau, North Sumatra and West Kalimantan also have a significant number of practitioners.

The figures are likely higher since practitioners of Confucianism and Taoism are not considered official religion. Most Buddhists are Chinese Indonesians and not as many of them are from the Javanese and Balinese. The major Buddhist schools in Indonesia are Mahayana, Vajrayana, and Theravada.

Most Chinese Indonesians follow a syncretic flow with Chinese beliefs, such as the three teachings.

Confucianism was brought to Indonesia by Chinese merchants as early as the 3rd century AD. Confucianism evolved into loose individual practices and belief in the code of conduct, rather than a well-organized community with a sound theology, like a religion. The organization called Khong Kauw Hwe was formed in the early 1900s.

Confucianism was affected by political conflicts after the Indonesian independence in 1945. The Indonesian people embraced six religions, including Confucianism, according to a Presidential decree issued in 1965, which was called Presidential decree No. 1/Pn.Ps/1965. In 1961, the Association of Khung Chiao Hui Indonesia (now the Supreme Council for the Confucian Religion in Indonesia) declared that Confucianism is a religion.

The anti-China policy became a scapegoat to gain political support from the people after the fall of PKI.

In 1967, Suharto issued a Presidential Instruction that banned Chinese culture, including documents printed in Chinese, expressions of Chinese belief, and even Chinese names. Despite only 3% of the population, the Chinese Indonesians have a large amount of wealth and power, according to Suharto.

The official total of six religions was restored in 1969 after a law was passed. It was not always put into practice. The Minister of Home Affairs issued a directive in 1978 stating that there are only five religions.

The cabinet decided that Confucianism is not a religion. The status of Confucianism during the New Order regime was never clear because the total of five official religions in Indonesia was re-iterated in 1990.

Confucianism was allowed by higher laws, but lower ones did not. Confucianists were forced to register with one of the official religions to maintain their citizenship because they were not recognized by the government. The national registration card, marriage registration, and family registration card were all used to apply this practice.

There are only five official religions in Indonesia, according to civics education.

The fourth president of the country was elected after Suharto's fall. Confucianism became officially recognized as a religion in Indonesia after he withdrew the Presidential Instruction and Home Affairs Ministry directive. Chinese culture and activities were allowed again.

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