Religion
According to 2010 census of the Central Statistics Agency, Muslims dominate Aceh province with more than 98% or 4,413,200 followers and only 50,300 Protestants and 3,310 Catholics.
Religious issues are often sensitive in Aceh. There is very strong support for Islam across the province and sometimes other religious groups, such as Christians or Buddhists, feel that they are subject to social or community pressure to limit their activities. For example, in late 2012 nine Christian churches and five Buddhist temples were closed in Banda Aceh on the orders of the Aceh provincial government. The official explanation for this action, supported by both the Governor of Aceh Zaini Abdullah and the Indonesian Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi from Jakarta, was that the churches did not have the appropriate permits. Earlier in April 2012, a number of churches in the Singkil regency in southern Aceh had also been ordered to close. In response, some Christians voiced concern about these actions.
Read more about this topic: Aceh
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he “lives” his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.”
—George Gurdjieff (c. 1877–1949)
“In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)