Tolerance

I lived in Indonesia in the 1980s and visit the country as often as personal finances allow. I write this in Jakarta after a wonderful trip through Central and East Java, seeing sights both exciting and humbling. The fact that we could make the trip at all is thanks to the great progress made in Indonesia's societal organization. Our last visit 18 months ago had me housebound for most of the time as enraged sections of society fought each other, buildings burned and many died through mindless violence.

So now Indonesia doesn't make the headlines in the Western press as it did a year or two ago. So I am delighted to be able to visit people and places both remembered and completely new to me. So other outside observers and those who love this country from afar begin to feel the return of hope. Progress indeed.

One sight, more than anything else seen on our trip to Java turned back the tides of hope: people with cardboard boxes at traffic lights on the streets of Yogyakarta and Bandung, collecting money for the jihad in Maluku.

Of course these people do not represent any significant constituency of Indonesian society. Of course tolerance of minority views is a part of every civilized society. But surely tolerance has its limits. We cannot tolerate the support of unlawful violence. Imagine extremist Protestants collecting money on the pavements of Oxford Street, London, to help put snipers' bullets into Catholics in Northern Ireland. Imagine the Klu Klux Klan rattling tins on Fifth Avenue, New York, for gasoline and matches to use on a few black gentlemen churches. If these people belong anywhere, it is either in hiding from the forces of justice, or behind bars.

TIM RIGLEY

Wiltshire, UK