Pope Visits Indonesia, Where Muslim-Christian Harmony Is Under Strain

The hallelujahs rang out on Sunday from a small hall on the outskirts of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. The sounds from the Christian service could be heard within the green and orange mosque across the way, as a group of young girls in hijabs walked by.

On the surface, the scene was a reflection of the interfaith harmony that Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, is proud of. But the Christians were not in their own church. Earlier this year, their congregation’s building was stormed by dozens of angry Muslims, and now they were temporarily gathering in a government-owned building in a different area.

This is the complex reality awaiting Pope Francis as he begins a four-day trip to Indonesia on Tuesday, which will include an interfaith dialogue at the national mosque. There are many vibrant examples of how Christianity and Islam coexist in Indonesia — a dynamic that Francis wants to encourage — but at the same time, religious minorities face discrimination.

By and large, Indonesian Muslims practice a moderate brand of Sunni Islam that is tolerant of other faiths. But other branches of Islam, notably the Shias and Ahmadiyyas, have long felt marginalized. And conservative strains of Islam have spread here in recent years, with one province, Aceh, having enforced Shariah law for nearly a decade.

With the rise of conservative Islam, some believers in minority faiths say, the space for religious freedom in Indonesia has shrunk.

The Christians who met on Sunday in Tangerang, the city on the outskirts of Jakarta, had been attacked in their building in March as children prepared costumes for an Easter show. They were told that they could not have a church in a Muslim area, members of the community said.

Last year, there were 329 acts of violence against religious minorities, nearly one per day, according to the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, a human rights watchdog. There has been deadly violence in the past, including bombings at churches.

The Indonesian government officially recognizes six faiths: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. It has adopted some measures to protect religious freedom, like forbidding schools to make hijabs compulsory. But some minorities say those protections aren’t honored in practice and that parts of Indonesian law effectively discriminate against them.

The biggest issue has been the building of houses of worship. To do so, religious groups have to get the signatures of 60 people from other faiths in the community, as well as approval from the local interfaith council, which is made up of religious leaders but almost always dominated by Muslims. This, critics say, effectively gives Muslims veto power.

Cardinal Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo, the archbishop of Jakarta, downplayed the issue of church construction being blocked, saying that such incidents largely came down to vote baiting by Muslim politicians. The bigger challenges facing the Catholic Church in Indonesia, he said, are ones that face the nation as a whole: corruption, threats to democracy and income inequality.

Still, the Christian community in Tangerang has not been able to get even half of the 60 signatures for their church, members said.

“We have been independent for 79 years, but for me it is a half-independence,” said Oktaviyanto M.I. Pardede, 59, a leader of the congregation. “Why am I still being colonized by my own people, why can’t I practice my religion freely?”

The Vatican was one of the first states to recognize Indonesia’s independence after it became free of Dutch rule in 1947, and the two have maintained close ties ever since.

Yet when Pope John Paul II visited in 1989, he was met with protests because of his faith. Two decades later, when President Barack Obama visited the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, the national mosque, many Muslims asked why a practicing Christian was being allowed into their house of worship.

But the reaction to Francis’s trip — part of his outreach to what he calls “the peripheries” of Catholicism — has been different.

“I think it’s a very important visit,” said Nurlaila, a Muslim woman who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name, and who had just finished praying at the Istiqlal Mosque.

Much of the credit for changing attitudes has gone to the Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim social organization in the world, with some 150 million members. Its leader, Yahya Cholil Staquf, said the group had protected churches from extremist groups and lobbied local officials to let them be built.

Three percent of Indonesia’s 280 million people are Catholics, but they have a substantial presence in some parts of the country, like the eastern island of Flores, where theirs is the dominant faith. Nationwide, Protestants account for 10 percent of the population.

Nasaruddin Umar, the grand imam of the Istiqlal Mosque, said Catholics had offered to donate animals to the mosque to be sacrificed during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.

The grand imam pushed for the construction of a “tunnel of friendship” to connect the Istiqlal Mosque and the nearby Jakarta Cathedral. On Thursday, Francis will visit the Istiqlal for an interfaith dialogue, and mosque officials hope he will see the tunnel.

Such blending of religions is not unusual in Indonesia.

On a recent Friday night, Diah Purwanti, 47, laid out her prayer mat in the presence of a picture of Jesus. Raised a Catholic, she had converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim man. Her parents were Muslims who had converted to Catholicism, and one of her brothers is studying to be a Jesuit priest. As children, they celebrated both Eid and Christmas.

But some worshipers see a contradiction between their own experience and Indonesia’s image as a multicultural, tolerant place.

“Unity is the foundation of the country,” said Manav Hardinata, 23, whose Lutheran community has not been allowed to build a house of worship. “But here it is a competition, they treat us as if we want to take their people.”

Though they were Lutherans, not Catholics, many of the worshipers in Tangerang were hopeful and excited about the pope’s visit.

“We are hoping that it will bring changes to this issue,” said Robert Sinaga, 62. “His message is a message of community.”

On Sunday evening in Bekasi, another suburb of Jakarta, the Muslim call to prayer could be heard from the Catholic church Santa Clara, as a priest prepared for communion.

After a 17-year wait, Santa Clara received a permit to begin building in 2015, said Rasnius Pasaribu, the coordinator of the church’s construction committee. But thousands of Muslims protested the project at the local city hall. So Mr. Pasaribu’s committee agreed to make changes to the church’s design.

From the highway, Santa Clara, a sprawling white complex with a congregation of 10,000, does not look like a church. It cannot display a cross or a bell there. Instead, its facade, and its statue of the Madonna, enclosed in a cave of rose petals, lie toward the back of the compound.

Still, Mr. Pasaribu said: “We are happy. It’s amazing that we can pray in a church.”

Muktita Suhartono, Rin Hindryati and Hasya Nindita contributed reporting.