!

Religion Problems in ASEAN

Bell Hirunworawuttikul!
11-04

Many countries in the ASEAN community are composed of many religions which the
citizens have been practicing for long time ago and they do not want to change their religion. There
are several domestic religious conflicts in countries in ASEAN community. For instance, the Hindus
have more privilege than others in Singapore. Vietnam does not support the idea about human rights
and religion freedom because they think chaos might happen since they have many religions in their
country and many problems could follow, while Thailand, Indonesia, and Philippines agree with the
idea because they want their citizens to have rights and freedom and these countries do not tend to
have problems if there is any changes since they do not have as many religions as Vietnam.

The common religious problem in ASEAN is the majority group and the minority group
usually have conflicts and fight against each other. For example, In Indonesia, the Islam extremists
attack Christian churches because the Muslims want to be the only main religion in the country and
they feel like they are priority because they are the majority. In Myanmar, there is a Buddhist monk
that claims himself to be an anti Muslims and stands against them. The government in Myanmar
doesnt do anything about this because Muslims are the minority in the country, so they neglect the
Muslims and that can cause anger to the minority group. These conflicts happen mainly because
religions in ASEAN are too diverse. As known that most of the countries are composed of many
religions and they are unequal in terms of human rights and religion freedom. If people have equal
rights and religion freedom, there will be less problems because the minority wont get distracted by
the majority and they wouldnt want to become the majority if they are treated equally and people
can choose to practice any religion they want to. The government cannot deal with these problems
because there are principles that prohibit the the government out from the religion, the noninterference principle.

In order for ASEAN to become a better community, all countries should get rid of
discrimination first by stop the separation between the majority and minority. Adopting the human
rights and religion freedom should work for this solution. The principles of non-interference should
also be cancelled because if the government cannot do anything with the religion due to the
principles, there might be more problems in the future. The government can help dealing with the
conflicts better than letting the citizens handle the problems themselves. Another solution that can
be very useful in practice is to make all the countries integrated as one community, not just calling
themselves as an ASEAN community, but they should be thinking and acting as a real community.
If they could really become integrated, they would accept things that benefit to their community, not
just their own country. The challenges that these solutions might face are all countries might take a
long time to become a real community because based on humans behaviour, people only take what
benefits themselves and they will avoid things that will give them disadvantage. The ASEAN
members should build up campaigns to make their citizens feel like they are a real community. If all
countries dont just look for their own benefit, they should accept and adopt the human rights and
religion freedom which means the majority and minority groups will be dissolved. They will no
longer be separated into groups. For another challenges that the solution might confront is people
might stick at the principle that the government must be separated from their religions because this
principle has been used for a long time. To use this solution in practice, the government should
slowly lend a helping hand into the conflicts to slowly change peoples perspective about the noninterference principle and to show its potential, and slowly solve the religious problems step by step
because religious problem is not a thing that can be changed easily.