Religion has no place in schools

I would like to comment on the much-debated and controversial education law, especially article 13, which stipulates that all schools must provide religious instruction to all students by teachers of the same faith. The law will require that many private Christian schools, some with many Muslim students, will have to provide Islamic teaching.

We just have to understand why many Muslim groups had demonstrated for the passage of the law because, according to the book Indonesia`s population, by Leo Suryadinata, Aris Ananta, and Evi Nurvidya Arifin, the Muslim population on Java has actually declined from 70.59 percent in 1971 to 65.53 percent in the year 2000, although the total number of Muslims in Indonesia still increased slightly from 87.51 percent in 1971 to 88.22 percent in 2000 and the Christian population has increased from 7.39 percent in 1971 to 8.92 percent in 2000.

This is a result of quite aggressive proselytization from playgroups in schools to deathbeds in hospitals by those Christian missionaries. It also does not help that unfortunately the Catholic church has declared in Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger`s dictum "Dominus Jesus" of Aug. 6, 2000 that it is "the only true church" and the Cardinal advocates combat against a religious relativism which leads to the belief that one religion is as good as another.

If the West has blamed the many Madrassah (Islamic schools) that have produced Islamic fundamentalists, the many Christian missionary schools should also stop indoctrinating very young children with the Christian beliefs as religious instruction in one's early childhood is not education but indoctrination which would render the students much less tolerant later in life.

Those young children should not be indoctrinated to believe with fear, but should be taught to think with reason, in a scientific manner. For example, many biased memories and records of ancient floods should not be taught as signs of Noah everywhere but could be explained by global warming over the last 10,000 years.

As for the education law, the government should instead intervene to exclude religious instruction from school and leave the religious matters only to the private domain of one's family and also for harmony to stop aggressive proselytizing at many schools who have gained at the expense of more tolerant groups. Remember that probably more people have been killed due to religions than saved by religions or without religions.

SIA KA-MOU, Jakarta