CORNELIS, the 63-year-old governor of West Kalimantan, a province in Indonesian Borneo, is relaxing in jeans and a stained white vest at a table piled withkrupuk crackers and other local snacks. Portraits of the governor and his wife posing with prize-winning vegetables (both are keen gardeners) decorate the walls of the family home in Ngabang, a town in the hills four hours’ drive from Pontianak, the provincial capital. But so do crucifixes and Christian figurines—and it is Mr Cornelis’s religion, more than anything else, that has made him the latest lightning rod for the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), an Islamist vigilante group.
Around 90% of Indonesia’s 260m people are Muslim, but beyond the island of Java the population is much more mixed. Minorities watched with dismay as FPI and other Islamist groups turned on Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the Christian and ethnic-Chinese governor of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, over cooked-up claims that he had insulted...Continue reading
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