Maintaining Religious Tolerance

If you are a tourist in Jerusalem, the tour guide will say that in this country, followers of three divine religions live side by side.

Kompas/Handining

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If you are a tourist in Jerusalem, the tour guide will say that in this country, followers of three divine religions —Islam, Judaism and Christianity— live side by side. In Bethlehem Church, a chair in the front row was always reserved for Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), who was a Muslim, when the church celebrated Christmas Day.

Therefore, when he delivered his speech at the United Nations, an independent Palestine state that Arafat fought for was not a religious state, but a secular one that guaranteed all people were free to practice their religions. Meanwhile, when we visited the Vatican during a buffet lunch, a priest greeted us in Javanese, "Bapak dahar menapa?" —What do you want to eat, Sir? It turned out that the priest had lived in Surakarta, Central Java.