ABSTRACT
Since early 1999, religious riots between Muslim and Christian communities have split the Central Moluccan population. While the inter-religious clashes have been covered by all international news agencies, the fact that the representatives of a local student movement have claimed a feature of local Moluccan tradition as a potential peacemaker for the religious conflicts is less well known outside the area. The students propounded that the traditional pela relations can serve to transcend the critical distinctions between Christians and Muslims, which have recently become the putative sources of social conflict. 1
