Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (35 page)

Accusations of blasphemy have also infected the political arena and have been used even against Islamist parties. On March 17, 2010, one of the leaders of the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party (JeI), Matiur Rahman Nizami, complained of the party’s persecution by the government coalition and compared his own sufferings to those of Muhammad. He was then accused of blasphemy by Mohammed Syed Rezaul Haque Chandpur, Secretary General of the Tariqat Federation, which is part of the government alliance. After Nizami and two other JeI leaders, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and Nayebe Ameer Delwa Sayeed Hossain, repeatedly refused to appear in court to answer to the charge, they were arrested on June 29 and held for investigation.
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Indonesia’s population of some 240 million is about 83 percent Muslim, 9 percent Protestant, 4 percent Catholic, 2 percent Hindu, and 1 percent Buddhist. Most Muslims are Sunni, though there may be up to three million Shiites in the country. Following independence, under President Sukarno, the country accepted the broad state ideology of
Pancasila
, now enshrined in the constitution’s preamble.
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It proclaims five principles: “One Lordship, just and civilized humanity, the unity of Indonesia, democracy guided by the wisdom of deliberations of representatives, and social justice for all the Indonesian people.”
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Article 29 of the constitution combines this commitment to monotheism with a commitment to religious freedom. It proclaims, “1. The State shall be based upon the belief in the One and Only God. 2. The State guarantees all persons the freedom of worship, each according to his or her own religion or belief.”

It is the world’s most populous Muslim country, and its religious communities have traditionally coexisted peacefully. However, Indonesian law only recognizes six faiths: Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and, as of January 2006, Confucianism. Consequently, other religious minorities can only register as social groups and thus are prohibited from performing certain types of religious activity. The Baha’ís have been banned, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned from 1976 to 2001, while restrictions have been placed on others, especially Islamic groups regarded as heterodox. Atheism is also in principle banned
on the grounds that it violates
Pancasila
, though the government does not seek out atheists. Conversions between faiths are legal and do occur, although, according to a 1979 decree by the Ministries of Religion and Home Affairs, proselytizing is illegal.

While religious groups have a wide range of freedoms, Article 156(a) of the criminal code states, “Those, who purposely express their views or commit an act that principally disseminates hatred, misuses or defames a religion recognized in Indonesia, face at maximum five years imprisonment.” This provision has been enforced almost exclusively in cases of alleged heresy or blasphemy against Islam. In 1990, journalist Arswendo Atmowiloto published in the newspaper
Monitor
the results of a survey asking readers to name their heroes: then-president Suharto came in first, Atmowiloto came in tenth, and Muhammad came in eleventh. For this, the journalist was convicted of blasphemy and served five years.
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On February 9, 2010, after challenges by the former president of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid, and several human rights organizations, the Constitutional Court for the first time began to review the constitutionality of the 1965 law. Hendardi, the chairman of the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, argued that the law was used to intimidate Muslim and non-Muslim minorities, especially the Ahmadiyya. The government, as well as Islamist groups, has defended it.
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On April 19, 2010, the Supreme Court, in an 8–1 decision, held that the law was constitutional. Before the ruling, Suryadharma Ali, Minister of Religious Affairs, said, “The law should be upheld because if it is annulled…Islam and the Quran could be interpreted at will and people and figures could declare new prophets and establish new religions.”
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The largest challenges to religious freedom tend to come from social pressures, vigilantes, and militias rather than from the government. Since the late 1990s, there has been an escalation in radical Islamist activities, and, in addition, many provinces have instituted elements of Islamic law locally. Aceh is the only province with officially recognized Islamic law, but other local governments have also passed laws discriminating against religious minorities, and mobs and other forms of violence sometimes implement these.
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To date, the government has not used its constitutional authority to overturn these laws.

Ahmadis are one of the most heavily persecuted religious groups, as they are in many other Muslim-majority countries. In Indonesia, they have been deemed a heretical sect and, in 1980, the Indonesia Council of Ulemas (MUI)—a government advisory body—issued a fatwa declaring that the Ahmadis are not a legitimate part of Islam. Following this lead, in 1984, the Ministry of Religious Affairs banned Ahmadis from disseminating their teachings in Indonesia.
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Ahmadis are also subject to increasing violence. On July 15, 2005, some 10,000 people from the Indonesian Muslim Solidarity group attacked the Indonesia
Ahmadiyya Congregation (JAI) in Parung, Bogor, West Java. Though armed only with stones and batons, the attackers damaged and set fire to buildings while demanding that the 500 followers living there leave Parung within two hours. The mob leaders specifically cited the 1980 fatwa and a recent ruling issued by the Bogor branch of the MUI, calling for the Ahmadis to leave Bogor. The police detained none of the attackers. The coordinator of the Solidarity group, Habib Abdurrahman Ismail Assegaf, justified his actions by opining, “Ahmadiyah is not a Muslim group…It says that Prophet Muhammad was not the last (prophet) and that its followers can be a haji by carrying out a ritual right here in its compound, so they don’t have to go to Mecca.” The 500 Ahmadis left their compound, and, on July 18, 2005, JAI chairman Abdul Basit went to the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) for help in preparing legal measures against the MUI and the attackers.
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Specifically, Basit wanted the MUI to annul the 1980 fatwa in order to prevent more violence against the Ahmadiyyah.
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However, the MUI did the exact opposite. On July 26, 2005, its four-day national congress called for an end to “deviant secular and liberal Islamic thoughts” and renewed the fatwa.
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The renewal of the fatwa prompted yet more attacks, including the destruction of Ahmadi mosques as well as their headquarters near the city of Bogor.
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On September 20, 2005, police detained thirty-five people for attacks against Ahmadis in Cianjur. According to one report, four mosques, three religious schools, and thirty-three houses were damaged. In response, the Cianjur regency banned all Ahmadi activities. In October 2005, the regional office of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in West Nusa Tenggara also banned the Ahmadis. While these regional bans were purportedly aimed at protecting the Ahmadis and keeping the peace, Ahmadis and their supporters justifiably believed that the government was punishing them and not their attackers.
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Indonesian authorities often did little to prevent the attacks or prosecute those responsible, instead blaming the Ahmadis for “provoking” the violence.
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In February and March 2006, 187 members of the JAI in Mataram, Lombok, had to flee to a refugee camp after local Muslims attacked their houses and mosques. The victims considered seeking asylum in another country.

On June 9, 2008, the Indonesian government, after persistent pressure from extremist groups, issued a joint ministerial decree ordering the Ahmadiyya community to stop all religious activity as long as they continued to describe themselves as followers of Islam. The decree states, “The followers…of the Indonesian Ahmadiyya Jama’at (JAI) are warned…to discontinue the promulgation of interpretations and activities that are deviant from the principal teachings of Islam.”
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The punishment for disobedience is up to five years in jail. The decree also states that those who attack Ahmadis would be punished, but this has not been systematically enforced. This decree echoed the Ulema Council view that the issue would be resolved if Ahmadis simply formed their own religion. However, apart from the Ahmadis’ own views, Indonesia requires all its citizens to adhere either to Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, or Confucianism. Unless this
legal framework is altered, Ahmadis will have to find a way to align with the state-sanctioned religion closest to their own beliefs.
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The government decree did not formally disband the Ahmadiyya community, and in practice, they can maintain their faith but cannot propagate it. However, it represented a serious setback for Ahmadis in Indonesia and set the stage for more violence.
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During 2008, twenty-one Ahmadi mosques were closed because of violence or intimidation in addition to those remaining closed from previous years.
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Many have spoken out on their behalf, including the former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, who believed that banning the Ahmadis was a first step for many Islamic radicals toward creating an Islamic state. Still, Indonesia’s Ahmadis remain under siege.
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While Christians in Indonesia have a great deal of freedom, converts from Islam to Christianity—and anybody thought to be involved in such conversions—have faced increasing threats. On September 1, 2005, three Indonesian Christian women were each sentenced to three years in prison for allowing Muslim children to attend their Christian Sunday school classes. The women, Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti, and Ratna Banjun, were charged under the 2002 Child Protection Act, which forbids “deception, lies or enticement” to lure a child from a state-recognized religion and provides a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of 100 million rupiah. (Enticing a person to a recognized religion from an unrecognized religion would not violate this law, so the children of Ahmadis, Baha’is, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are not protected.)

The court recognized that the three women had not converted any children and that, in fact, had told children who did not have parental permission to attend the class to go home. The women also showed photographs of Muslim children together with their parents at the Sunday school, proving that they had attended the class with parental consent. However, hundreds of Islamic extremists gathered outside the court and threatened to kill the judge if he did not find the defendants guilty. Rioters also brought a coffin to intimidate the defendants, purportedly threatening to bury them in the event that they were found innocent. This violent environment made it difficult for the judges to acquit the defendants. When the court announced that the three women were guilty of using “deceitful conduct, a series of lies and enticements to seduce children to change their religion against their wills,” the large crowd in the courtroom screamed, “Allahu akbar!” The women were sentenced to three years in prison. Feelings about the case were so intense that even two years later, the defendants were released at 6 a.m. to avoid violence.
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On October 17, 2006, Muslim extremists in West Java kidnapped, brutally beat, and attempted to strangle a Muslim convert to Christianity. A Muslim extremist pretending to be interested in learning about Christianity first approached the man, a lecturer at several local religious institutions, whose name
has been withheld for security reasons. This man studied with the lecturer and then asked him to accompany others on a trip to Lembang, a town near Bandung, and to bring along Christian books and cassettes. After getting into a van, he was strangled and hit in the head with a hammer before rolling out of the car and escaping to the nearest police station. The police later apprehended one of the extremists who had been delayed in a traffic accident.
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Apart from Ahmadis, there has been repression of others from either heterodox Muslim groups or non-Muslim groups. The Al-Qiyadah Islamiyah sect, with approximately 4,000 members, holds that prayer only once daily, rather than five times daily, is sufficient and that Muhammad was not the last prophet. In October 2007, the Ulema Council (MUI) declared Al-Qiyadah Islamiyah “deviant,” and, later that month, hundreds of people raided the homes of three of its members. Members were detained by police and soon were prosecuted. Twenty-one of the group’s members applied to the East Java police for protection but were refused; instead, they were instructed to write a letter promising not to engage in proselytism.
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On May 2, 2008, two members, Dedi Priadi, forty-four, and Gerry Lufthi Yudistira, twenty, were sentenced to three years in prison on the basis of Article 156. The previous month, the leader of Al-Qiyadah, Abdul Salam, was sentenced to four years for blasphemy.
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There has also been imprisonment of people with very idiosyncratic views or habits. On June 28, 2006, Sumardi Tappaya, a Muslim teacher from Sulawesi, was arrested after a relative reported that he whistled when he prayed. After the local MUI declared that the whistling was deviant, Sumardi was sentenced to six months for heresy.
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On June 29, 2006, the Central Jakarta District Court sentenced Lia Eden, leader of Salamullah (God’s Kingdom of Eden), to two years in prison for blasphemy. She was convicted for claiming that her son Abdul Rachman was the reincarnation of Muhammad, that she was the angel Gabriel, that she prayed in languages other than Arabic, and that she was the Virgin Mary.
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On October 30, 2007, she was released but said that she would continue her teaching. On November 9, 2007, Rachman was sentenced to three years in prison for blasphemy.
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In July 2009, Agus Imam Solichin, a leader of the Atrio Piningit Weteng Buwono sect, which does not consistently pray five times a day or fast, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for violating article 156A.
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