JAKARTA (CNS): Christian and Muslim leaders in Indonesia have condemned the bomb attack that killed at least 13 people and injured about 150 others outside a Jakarta hotel on August 5.
“The Church strongly condemns the violent action,” Carmelite Father Petrus Go Twan An, who is head of the Indonesian bishops’ Office of Documentation and Information, said. The moral theologian said the Church “cannot justify any violent act, for whatever reason, that sacrifices the lives of innocent people”.
He conveyed the Church’s condolences to families of those who died in the blast and expressed hope that the government would take immediate action to prevent such violence from recurring.
Rev Andreas Yewangoe, who is vice-chairman of the Communion of Protestant Churches in Indonesia, deplored the attack in offering his group’s “sympathy to families of the dead and to those who were injured by the blast”.
Muslim leaders also criticised the hotel attack.
“The act is very uncivilised, and it can be done only by people who do not believe in God and who have no sense of humanity,” Din Syamsudin, who is general secretary of the Indonesian Islamic scholars council, was quoted by the daily newspaper Republika.
The newspaper also cited Azyumardi Azra, the rector of the Government-run Islamic University of Syarif Hidayatullah in Jakarta, as calling the bombing a crime against humanity, religion and the nation.
Ahmad Syafii Maarif, who is chairman of the second largest Muslim organisation in Indonesia, was quoted as saying “the culprit, whatever his or her religion, must be punished” for the barbarous act.
