Post-War Reflections on the Ambon War, Causes, Justifications and Miracles in Christian and Muslim Narratives

Abstract

Between 1999 and 2004, with reverberations until 2011, several Moluccan islands (Indonesia) faced violent clashes between Christians and Muslims. Based on 79 interviews, this article seeks to understand how people from both religious groups look back at the conflict, 12 years after the Malino ii peace treaty was signed in 2002. We identified three major conflict-related themes that continued to come to the fore during the interviews: explanations about causes of the conflict, religion-related justification of violence and miracle stories. Most interviewees indicated that the causes of the conflict were non-religious, but rather political. Religion-related language however was frequently used to justify violence as self-defense while miracles-stories were often part of war-narratives. Looking back, Christians and Muslims still understood their communities as injured and victimized. The ‘right to protect’ one’s community as a threatened Christian or Muslim community prevailed in most stories although the source of this threat was not always clear.