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The practice of exchanges between communities and religions is rooted in the ancestral customs of several Indonesian regions. This declined under the authoritarian regimes of Sukarno and then Suharto, which weakened local traditions in order to better control them, and centralized the definition of law at the expense of custom. In the years after 2000, in particular as part of an attempt to resolve the sectarian violence that caused massive bloodshed in the region of the Maluku Islands, these practices were reinstated and redefined in the form of interreligious dialogues, presented as a constituent part of national identity. The authorities now strive to promote this interreligious dialogue experiment, mainly by encouraging Muslim actors according to the constitutional principles of the Indonesian state.