INDONESIA’S president said on Wednesday that the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country needed to pull together to meet the threat of extremism and safeguard a constitution that enshrines religious freedom and diversity. In an address to parliament ahead of Thursday’s independence day, President Joko Widodo peppered his speeches with references to the need to address inequality in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy and tackle the threat of radicalism.

Indonesian police have tightened security ahead of the independence day holiday and on Tuesday arrested five suspected Islamist militants and seized chemicals they said were being used to make bombs for attacks on the presidential palace. Religious tension in Indonesia has soared since late last year after Islamist-led rallies saw Jakarta’s then governor, a member of a so-called double minority who is ethnic Chinese and Christian, put on trial during city elections over claims he insulted the Quran.

There are worries about growing intolerance undermining a tradition of moderate Islam in a country where Muslims form about 85 per cent of the population, alongside substantial Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and other minorities. In April, the then Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ally of Widodo, lost the bitterly fought city election to a Muslim rival and was later jailed for blasphemy, a sentence rights groups and international bodies condemned as unfair and politicised.

In a second speech, a state of the nation address, Widodo said his administration’s focus this year was to ensure that the benefits from an average five per cent economic growth in the last few years should be felt by everybody. Despite its growing middle class, inequality in Indonesia remains high. Indonesia’s wealthiest one per cent control 49.3 per cent of its wealth, Credit Suisse said in a report issued last November, which placed Indonesia among countries with the most unequal distribution of wealth in the world.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2017