Indonesia officially the Republic of Indonesia is a unitary sovereign state and transcontinental country located mainly in Southeast Asia, with some territories in Oceania. Situated between the Indian and Pacific oceans, it is the world's largest island country, with more than thirteen thousand islands.At 1,904,569 square kilometres (735,358 square miles), Indonesia is the world's 14th largest country in terms of land area and the 7th largest in terms of combined sea and land area. With over 261 million people, it is the world's 4th most populous country as well as the most populous Austronesian and Muslim-majority country. Java, the world's most populous island, contains more than half of the country's population.
Indonesia's republican form of government includes an elected parliament and president. Indonesia has 34 provinces, of which five have Special status. Its capital is Jakarta, which is the second most populous urban area in the world. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and the eastern part of Malaysia. Other neighbouring countries include Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Despite its large population and densely populated regions, Indonesia has vast areas of wilderness that support a high level of biodiversity.The country has abundant natural resources like oil and natural gas, tin, copper and gold. Agriculture mainly produces rice, palm oil, tea, coffee, cacao, medicinal plants, spices and rubber.[16]Indonesia's major trading partners are China, United States, Japan, Singapore and India.
Religion
While religious freedom is stipulated in the constitution,the government officially recognises only six religions: Islam, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism; although indigenous faiths are also recognised.Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim-majority country with 227 million adherents in 2017, with the majority being Sunnis (99%). The Shias and Ahmadis respectively constitute 0.5% and 0.2% of the Muslim population. Christians made up almost 10% of the population (7% Protestant, 2.9% Roman Catholic), 1.7% were Hindu, and 0.9% were Buddhist or other. Most Indonesian Hindus are Balinese,and most Buddhists in the country are ethnic Chinese.
A Hindu shrine dedicated to Sri Baduga Maharaja in Pura Parahyangan Agung Jagatkarta, Bogor, West Java. Hinduism left a significant impact and imprint in Indonesian art and culture.
The natives of the archipelago practiced indigenous animism and dynamism, beliefs that are common to the Austronesian people. They venerated and revered ancestral spirit and believed that some spirits may inhabit certain places such as large trees, stones, forests, mountains, or sacred places. This unseen spiritual entity with supernatural power is identified by the ancient Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese as "hyang" that can mean either "divine" or "ancestral", and tends to be associated with God in modern Indonesian.
Examples of Indonesian native belief systems include the Sundanese Sunda Wiwitan, Dayak's Kaharingan, Torajan Aluk' To Dolo, Manusela and Nuaulu's Naurus, Batak's Parmalim faith, and the Javanese Kejawèn. These native customs and beliefs had significant impact on how certain faiths are practiced in the country, evidenced by a large proportion of people—such as the Javanese abangan, Balinese Hindus, and Dayak Christians—practicing a less orthodox, syncretic form of their religion. Though no longer a majority, Hinduism and Buddhism remain defining influences in Indonesian culture. Hindu influences reached the archipelago as early as the first century CE. Around 130 AD, a Sundanese kingdom named Salakanagaraemerged in western Java, and is the first historically recorded Indianised kingdom in the archipelago, created by an Indian trader after marrying a local Sundanese princess.
Eid al-Fitr mass prayer in Istiqlal Mosque, Jakarta
Islam was introduced to the archipelago by Sunni traders of the Shafi'i fiqh, as well as Sufi traders from the Indian subcontinent and southern Arabian Peninsula. Italian explorer Marco Polo is credited with the earliest known record of a Muslim community around 1297 AD, whom he referred to as a new community of Moorish traders in Perlak. Over the 15th and 16th centuries, Islamic militant campaign led by sultans attacked Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms and various communities, with each trying to carve out a region or island for control. Four diverse and contentious sultanates emerged in northern and southern Sumatra, west and central Java, and southern Borneo. They declared Islam as state religion and pursued war against each other as well as the Hindus and other non-Muslim infidels.
Subsequently, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, animist communities and unbelievers bought peace by agreeing to pay jizya tax to a Muslim ruler, while others began adopting Islam to escape the tax. In some regions, people continued their old beliefs and adopted a syncretic version of Islam, while others left and concentrated as communities in islands that they could defend. For example, Hindus of western Java (the Sundanese) moved to Bali and neighbouring small islands. While this period of religious conflict and inter-Sultanate warfare was unfolding, and new power centers were attempting to consolidate regions under their control, European powers arrived. The archipelago was soon dominated by the Dutch empire, who helped prevent inter-religious conflict, and slowly began the process of excavating, preserving and understanding the archipelago's ancient Hindu and Buddhist period, particularly in Java and the western islands.
Roman Catholicism was brought to the archipelago by early Portuguese traders and missionaries such as Jesuit Francis Xavier. After the arrival of VOC, the Catholic Church was banned and only survived in Flores and Timor as the Netherlands was known to support Protestantism and tried to limit the influence and authority of the Holy See. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies fell under the French Empire, and Napoleon installed his Catholic younger brother Louis Napoleon (Dutch: Lodewijk) as the Dutch King in 1806. Since then, the Catholic Church has been free to operate in the East Indies. Kingdom of Larantuka in present-day Flores was the only native Catholic kingdom in Southeast Asia, with the first king named Lorenzo. In the present day, Catholic traditions close to Easter days remain, locally known as Semana Santa. It involves a procession carrying statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary (locally referred to as Tuan Ana and Tuan Ma respectively) to a local beach, then to Cathedral of the Queen of the Rosary, the seat of the bishop. Protestantism is largely a result of Calvinist and Lutheran missionary efforts during the colonial period. The Dutch Reformed Church was long at the forefront in introducing Christianity to native peoples, and was later joined by other Reformed churches that separated from it during the 19th century.] The VOC regulated the missionary work so it could serve its own interests and restricted it to the eastern part of the archipelago. Although the Calvinist and Lutheran branch are the most common, a multitude of other denominations can be found elsewhere in Indonesia. The Batak Protestant Christian Church, founded in 1861 by German Lutheran missionary Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen, is the largest one
