It's interesting that a proposed new Indonesian law restricting Christianity is entitled the Religious Tolerance Bill. It is useful to bear in mind that when many Muslims speak of Islam as a tolerant faith, they mean the tolerance that Muslim masters had for the dhimmi Christians and Jews: the tolerance of a superior for an inferior. The tolerance accorded to the dhimmis is bounded within strict limits — some of which appear in this bill, which revives several age-old provisions of Islamic law for the treatment of dhimmi populations:
• "Among other things, it will restrict the building of new churches . . ."
Restrictions on building new churches or repairing old ones are among the oldest and most consistently applied provisions of dhimmi law in Islamic history.
• "One article in the draft Bill states that religious rituals will be restricted to members of the faith, in effect putting the brakes on conversion efforts by Christian groups."
Dhimmi Christians are forbidden in Islamic law to practice their rituals publicly, i.e., through processions or even the ringing of bells. Go to the Middle East today and you will see that the Christian churches still lack bells.
• "The proposed measure will also ban a person from converting to another religion upon marriage."
Conversion from Islam, of course, is punishable by death in traditional Islamic law. As Muhammad said: "If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him" (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 260).
Please don't forget Malaysia...http://www.thestar.com.my/services/printerfriendly.asp?file=/2003/10/29/parliament/6590670.asp&sec=parliament
Interesting --8% of Indonesia's population are Christian --with another 6 percent of so being Buddist and Hindu (plus the 30 Jews) compared to the 90%-millions of Muslims and yet they need legislation to "limit" a very small minority.
Though I have a question --I don't understand how the forbidding "marriage conversions" would benefit Islam --since they are the ones who mandate that muslim women can only marry males who accept Islam --and a significant number of the converts are those that have done so to marry. It would seem to me that they would get more Muslim conversions because it is mandated than they get Christian conversions because of marriage.