Religion of Peace Update?

Maybe. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.

Beheading of Christian Schoolgirls Sparks Concerns About Religious Strife

(CNSNews.com) - Indonesian security forces remained on high alert and religious leaders appealed for calm in the nation's Central Sulawesi province following the beheading of three Christian schoolgirls at the weekend.

Community leaders sought to downplay religion as a motivating factor in the crime, although observers noted that the severed head of one of the girls had been found several miles from the scene of the attack, outside a church.

The timing of the attack may also be significant, coming just days before the end of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month. Numerous previous attacks on Christians in Indonesia have occurred during Ramadan.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono himself suggested that some elements in the Sulawesi city of Poso were bent on "maintain[ing] the hostility and conflict" of the past.

In Sulawesi and another province, Maluku, thousands of people died in clashes between Muslims and Christians between 1999 and 2002. (A minor dispute in Maluku at the end of Ramadan triggered the violence in 1999.) The two regions have sizeable Christian populations in what is otherwise a predominantly Muslim nation.

How about some grisly details to help you remember this story?

Saturday's grisly murders happened as a group of teenaged girls were walking through a cocoa plantation to their Christian high school near Poso.Men armed with machetes attacked them, hacking off the heads of three of them and severely wounding a fourth. The survivor, identified as 14-year-old Noviana Malewa, is in hospital.

Local reports cite unnamed police officers as saying the surviving witness said there had been six attackers, wearing black clothing and masks.