Indonesian leader says locked gates contributed to deaths, but no direct evidence
Indonesian police have opened a criminal investigation into a mass shooting three days ago that left eight dead and 17 wounded.
The shooting began when an Indonesian man tried to enter a mosque for a Friday prayers and the shooter opened fire with an assault rifle.
The attack on the city’s largest mosque on Thursday had a chilling impact on Indonesia’s peaceful, modern history marked by its pluralism, tolerance and religious independence.
The shooting has already shocked the country — and its world — after a Muslim group claimed the shooting was a hate crime against Muslims, and police said there was no direct link between the shooting and the attack on the mosque.
But for some Indonesia’s leaders, the case highlights how the country’s past as a coloniser and a democracy has left a stain that will be hard to scrub away.
The shooting began when an Indonesian man tried to enter a mosque for a Friday prayers
The nation has long struggled to control its history of religious violence and has long struggled to contain its complex, deep-rooted Islamisation, but the attack on Indonesia’s largest mosque on Thursday sparked a crisis with the nation’s Muslim community as it was accused of being behind the attack.
The nation has long struggled to contain its complex, deep-rooted Islamisation, and has largely escaped the violent extremist ideologies that have so many other Muslim countries grappling with, like Iraq, Syria and Nigeria.
That Indonesia’s religious violence continues to occur even as much of the country’s population professes a relatively tolerant and pluralistic view of religion, should be an indicator of a country struggling with the same issues as others, says Suryadharma Ali, founder of the Jakarta-based Indonesian Association for Human Rights.
“We’re not going to solve this problem by putting the spotlight on Islamic radicalism,” says Ali, who along with other activists founded The Indonesian Foundation for Human Rights in 2013. “That is the
