Religious aid groups try to convert victims
Muslim clerics object as Western Christian groups hand out food and Bibles, reports Jason Burke in Banda Aceh
Sunday January 16, 2005
The Observer
Dozens of religious groups have moved in to Aceh, looking to help tsunami victims – and convert them and others, creating tensions in the disaster area.
The arrival of Western Christian groups with records of aggressive preaching risks confrontation with local Muslim leaders which could jeopardise the provision of aid to the 600,000 local people made homeless by the disaster. The death toll in Aceh stands at around 110,000 and is expected to rise.
Reacting to the attempts of one American group to fly hundreds of local children to a Christian orphanage, Din Syamsuddin, head of the Indonesian Council of Clerics, said any attempt to spread religion under the cover of aid was wrong.
‘The Muslim community will not remain quiet. This a clear statement, and it is serious,’ he said.
Many survivors of the disaster are deeply traumatised by their experience and thus, experts say, vulnerable to religious groups. The disaster has led to a huge increase in religious sentiment. Many Acehnese speak of the wave as a punishment from God for immorality and lax Islamic practice, pointing out that in many villages only the mosque was left standing.
‘I had faith but never did what I should have done,’ said Shinta Ekhsani, a 29 year-old English teacher. ‘I did not pray five times a day. I did not teach my children about Islam. I was too materialistic. Now I have changed.’
Most Indonesians follow a moderate strand of Islam, very different from more hardline varieties increasingly prevalent in the Middle East. Local Muslim groups were among the first to bring help to victims. Aceh is Indonesia’s most religiously conservative province.
Its the same with ‘charities’ such as Operation Christmas Child – who ask schools to get kids to donate shoe boxes with Christmas presents and they ‘Spread the word of Jesus Christ’ – of course, only to kids with no understanding of what they should and do believe in.
