Non–believers find refuge online

Atheists use social networking websites to communicate with ilk
Jakarta: Chain-smoking at a trendy coffee shop while studiously ignoring the mosque’s evening call to prayer, Indonesian atheists Didi and Dewi have little patience for the beliefs of most of their countrymen.
The two young women are defiant unbelievers in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, but they let few people in the real world know it.
Instead, the women have joined scores of young Indonesian atheists who have found refuge on the Internet, using web tools such as social networking sites, mailing lists, blogs and wikis to communicate with like-minded people in a country where declaring there is no God can turn someone into an outcast.
“For me personally (going online) is just to share my thoughts and to meet people who think the same way I do, because I don’t see many in my real life,” said Didi, a 29-year-old architect. “It’s easier to say that you’re gay than an atheist.”
Dewi, a 21-year-old student fond of sardonic put-downs of religion and superstition, agreed. In her life in the West Java city of Bandung, she keeps her lack of belief secret from all but her closest friends. Both women, who refused to give their real names, go online daily to debate religion with fellow atheists and the few believers hardy enough to brave their barbs from safely behind theircomputer screens.
It is impossible to know how many atheists there are in Indonesia, a country of 234 million people that is nearly 90 per cent Muslim, and where non-believers officially don’t exist. AFP