Sri Wahyuni, Yogyakarta – A majority of Muslim students in state-run senior high schools in Yogyakarta province have medium to high levels of religious tolerance according to a survey.
The survey was released Monday by the Institute for Islamic and Social Studies (LKiS) Foundation.
Presenting results of the survey in Yogyakarta on Monday, the foundation's director, Farid Wajidi, said 40.53 percent of respondents showed low levels of tolerance, 35.13 percent showed medium levels of tolerance and the last 24.34 showed high levels of tolerance.
"We held the survey mostly out of concern regarding the decrease in nationalism and morals among young people as shown by the emergence of exclusive groups within the school milieu," said Farid, who is also one of the survey's three researchers.
The survey, he added, was also held in response to previous researches conducted by other institutions, including Ciciek Farkha, who found a "strengthening religious primordial phenomenon" among state-run high schools in seven provinces including Yogyakarta.
The survey was conducted in October and November 2009 with respondents comprising of 760 Muslim students from 20 state-run senior high schools across the province's one municipality and four regencies.
The survey was conducted through written questionnaires on the respondents' views, attitudes and behaviours regarding greetings to people of other faiths, celebrating religious events, seeking medical treatment at hospitals affiliated with other religions and the consideration in choosing friends and electing leaders of school organizations.
Hairus Salim, another member of the researcher team, said there were actually over 100 questions answered by the respondents. However, only seven of them were considered to be directly related to tolerance.
Regarding the question on greeting people of other religions celebrating religious celebrations, 16.32 percent of respondents said they "always" expressed the greetings, 42.24 percent said they "sometimes" did so and the rest 41.18 percent said they "never" did so.
For the question on whether the respondents used religion when considering picking a friend, 91.71 percent said "no", 7.24 percent said "yes" and the other 1.05 percent did not answer.
For the question on whether the respondents have close friends of different religions, 81.32 percent said "yes", 18.03 percent said "no" and the last 0.66 percent did not answer.
Regarding the question on whether they use religion as a consideration in electing leaders of a school organization, 59.61 percent of the respondents said "never", 23.42 percent said "sometimes" and 15.39 percent said "always".
Hairus, however, said the fact that 40.53 percent of respondents had shown a low level of tolerance was a concern, especially as Yogyakarta has long been known as a city of tolerance and multiculturalism.
Apart from that, he added, this particular age group was also considered the future leaders of Indonesia.
"No matter how small the percentage, the fact that there have been views and attitudes showing religious intolerance among students of state-run high schools, which are supposed to be neutral spaces, should be a concern to all of us," he said.