In the morass of civil strife still terrorizing residents of Indonesia's Maluku Islands after more than two years, Christian families are forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam in rituals that include genital mutilation for females and dull-bladed circumcision for males. Those who refuse to convert are killed by jihad warriors, who afterward display the severed heads of some victims as a warning to others.
News reports and fact-finding efforts by advocacy groups confirm that ordinary Christians on the islands of Ambon, Kesui, and Teor have been killed for refusing to convert to Islam since last year, when a Muslim jihad (holy war) militia launched a campaign to rid the area of Christianity. This armed "religious cleansing" began after a year of civil war had been waged with machetes, spears, and bows and arrows between Christians and Muslims, who previously lived together peaceably.
Indonesia is 83 percent Muslim. Christians make up 13 percent of the population, but the figure (including both Protestants and Catholics) is near 50 percent in parts of the Malukus. The arrival of the jihad warriors to Ambon, Kesui, and Teor from nearby islands reportedly came in response to nominally Christian gangs forcing Muslims to convert during the machete-and-spear phase of the conflict; some also suspect Muslim warriors came to quell the independence movement.
Government security forces sent to maintain order are ineffective, as well as divided—some supporting and others opposing President Abdurrahman Wahid. Within this context, in which at least 5,000 people on both sides have been killed, 3,000 armed jihad warriors have forced thousands of unarmed Christians in Ambon, Kesui, and Teor to flee to mountain jungles to escape death or forced conversion. Their homes are often torched.
Local peace talks have begun, but atrocities and jihad street battles with nominally Christian bands of armed young men continue. Still, the vast majority of Christians do not retaliate against the invaders, advocacy groups say. Civilian Christians surviving attacks of the Muslim jihad are typically gathered into mosques, where, according to the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board (IMB), they are forced under threat of death to perform conversion rituals.
After such an ordeal last December, one 32-year-old woman described to IMB representatives how she was given no painkillers or antiseptic when a Muslim woman cut off her clitoris with a knife. Some men circumcised under the same conditions developed infections.
Indonesia chafes especially raw at foreign interference, and contacting the government in Jakarta could worsen the plight of the Christians in the Maluku Islands who are suffering for their faith, according to IMB representatives in the country. It is more helpful to:
Contact the Indonesian embassy in Washington to urge the government of President Wahid to protect civilians from invading jihad warriors.
Send a fax to the embassy at 202.775.5365. Or write to:
Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia
2020 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Urge TV networks to bring the situation to light.
While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.
A decade later, I became a Christian.
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