Prosecutor weak in Ahmadiyah trial: Elsam

NATIONALMon, 06/27/2011 5:19 PM

Prosecutor weak in Ahmadiyah trial: Elsam

The Jakarta Post

A team monitoring the trials of an attack against religious minority group Ahmadiyah said Monday the prosecutor performed below standard.

It said many witnesses’ statements were not well-explored during the trials.

Wahyu Wagiman, a team member from the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam), told reporters the prosecutor ignored statements from key witnesses such as Muh. Kamil Safei over the 13 trials.

“Kamil said in a trial that he received a text message from Ujang Muh. Arif, a case defendant, saying that Habib Rizieq, the Islamic Defenders Front [FPI] leader, would be held responsible for the riot,” Wahyu said.

The prosecutor did not question the content of the text message further, Wahyu added.

In February, about 1,500 people attacked Ahmadis in Cikeusik, Banten, killing three.

Eleven defendants are being jointly tried for an assault causing death, inciting violence, maltreating others, participating in assault and illegally possessing sharp weapons.

Prosecutors declined to charge anyone with the murder or manslaughter of the three Ahmadis.

The next trials will be held on June 30 and July 3 at Serang District Court. (rpt)

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved
URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/06/27/prosecutor-weak...

Two groups in tension over Ahmadiyah issues

NATIONALSun, 06/19/2011 10:20 AM

Two groups in tension over Ahmadiyah issues

The Jakarta Post

Two youth mass organizations in Makassar almost became implicated in a brawl over Ahmadiyah issues.

The police have issued warnings. The organizations, the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and the Pancasila Youth, through their leaders signed a peace pact before the police officials.

Tribunnews.com reported that tension originated from a misunderstanding between the groups’ members.

Pancasila Youth regional secretary Andi Azikin said FPI members misinterpreted the situation when they saw Pancasila Youth members by an Ahmadiyah Mosque.

“The FPI members thought we were defending the people at the Ahmadiyah mosque. The truth is we are not involved in Ahmadiyah issues,” Azikin said Sunday.

The FPI was reportedly at the site to prevent people from performing prayers at the mosque.

According to witnesses, FPI members provoked Pancasila Youth activists. Pancasila activists were then forced back to their headquarters where they allegedly planned to respond.

In the last three years, Ahmadiyah people have been subject to much discrimination in the country after the Indonesian Clerics Association (MUI) issued a religious decree stating Ahmadiyah was not part of Islam.

The FPI has been active in suppressing the Amadiyah people.

The administration under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has not provided proper protection to Ahmadiyah people, or the right to perform prayer.

Many activists perceive this as a sign of the administration’s lack of commitment toward he country’s ideology of pluralism.

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved
URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/06/19/two...issues.html

Jamaah Ahmadiyah followers remain on edge after latest attack

HEADLINES Mon, 08/02/2010 9:32 AM

Jamaah Ahmadiyah followers remain on edge after latest attack

Nana Rukmana, The Jakarta Post, Kuningan, West Java

The roads were deserted. No children were playing outside. Some women, who were talking on a house porch, suddenly went silent upon spotting a passing stranger.

In the spotlight: People exit An-Nur Mosque, which belongs to the Ahmadiyah sect, after Friday prayer in Manis Lor village in Kuningan, West Java, on Friday.JP/R. Berto Wedhatama

Tension was still in the air after a clash broke out between members of more than five Muslim groups and Islamic sect Jamaah Ahmadiyah on Thursday in Manis Lor village, Kuningan regency, in West Java.

Most residents still preferred to stay in their homes in the village, home to the country’s biggest Ahmadiyah following, which was established in 1954. Of the village’s 4,350 residents, 3,000 belong to the sect.

In and around the village, some policeofficers, including several in plainclothes, were on the lookout.

On a street corner, a group of men stayed alert, with cups of coffee and scattered cigarette butts all around them.

Nurahim, a 47-year-old secretary of the Jamaah Ahmadiyah Indonesia branch in Manis Lor, said they were afraid another attack would come but were relieved by the police’s presence.

“But I’m sure the situation will soon return to normal and people will go back to their daily routines.”

Last Thursday’s clash triggered panic among the sect’s followers. Many rushed home from their workplaces to check their loved ones were safe.

“When I heard about the attack, I panicked. I then decided to leave work to make sure my family and other residents were safe,” said 37-year-old Syaiful, who works for a private company in Jakarta.

Another Manis Lor resident, Kusworo, had to close down his shop because of the attack.

“The clash affected me financially, but I had to make sure my family was safe,” said the 43-year-old trader, who sells basic foodstuffs and now has to rely on his savings to support his family.

The attack has also raised concern among parents and children.

A mother of two, Rosidah, was worried the attack would traumatize her children.

“I’m concern that the clash would have a bad effect on my children. They saw what happened.”

Several children who witnessed the attack said they were afraid and others said they were having trouble sleeping.

“I could not sleep that night after witnessing the fight,” said Karmilatur Rasidah, a 13-year-old seventh grader at SMP Amal Bhakti junior high school.

The attack, she said, happened when she was at school.

“Classes were stopped. The teacher asked us to immediately go home,” she recalled.

For the Ahmadiyah followers, the attack was nothing new. Residents of Manis Lor suffered a similar attack in December 2007, in which four people were injured.

Similar attacks on the sect’s members have occurred in other places, including in West Java towns Bogor and Garut last month.

The Thursday attack, which injured three and damaged scores of houses, erupted after an angry mob failed to convince the government to disband Ahmadiyah.

Earlier, the regency’s public order officers, armed with a written order from the Kuningan regent, tried to seal Ahmadiyah’s eight mosques in the village, but failed.

Under a 2008 joint ministerial decree, the sect’s members are allowed to perform their religious duties but are banned from propagating their teachings.

The attack was soon condemned by many, with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono telling the police to be strict in dealing with any anarchic action.

GP Anshor, the youth wing of the country’s biggest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, announced Saturday its members were ready to protect the sect’s followers.

Rosidah said she was aware there had been protests against the sect’s presence in the village.

“We have been constantly living under threat and pressure. We’re used to this.”

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/02/jamaah-ahmadiyah-followers-remain-edge-after-latest-attack.html

Calm restored in Ahmadiyah village amid heavy security

HEADLINES Sun, 08/01/2010 3:39 PM

Calm restored in Ahmadiyah village amid heavy security

Nana Rukmana, THE JAKARTA POST, KUNINGAN, WEST JAVA

Calm has returned to a West Java village following violent clashes between villagers and Muslim hardliners with villagers resuming their daily activities.

However, there remains a heavy security presence with hundreds of police personnel patrolling the area, notably at the main entrance to the village, with trucks forming a barricade.

Ahmadiyah sect official Nurahim in Manis Lor village said the situation was returning to normal due to the heavy police presence.

Manis Lor, located 40 kilometers south of Cirebon city in West Java, is home to the largest Ahmadiyah community in the country with 3,000 of the 4,350 villagers following the faith.

Nurahim said Ahmadiyah officials were in talks with authorities and the Kuningan regency administration to address the recent attack on followers by hundreds of members of a number of hard-line Muslim organizations.

The attackers demanded Ahmadiyah followers cease all religious activities, saying the faith deviated from Islamic teaching.

“We are hopeful that peace will soon be restored,” Nurahim said.

The clash followed a failed attempt by the Public Order Agency to seal off a mosque belonging to the Ahmadiyah after facing resistance from the followers.

GP Ansor, the youth wing of Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama, announced it was ready to deploy thousands of members to protect Ahmadiyah followers.

The head of the Cirebon branch of GP Ansor, Nuruzzaman, said they had discussed the issue with the group’s Kuningan branch.

“Providing protection for citizens, including Ahmadiyah followers, is principally the domain of the government’s security institutions, in this case, the police. However, if needed, we are ready to help provide security. We can mobilize 20,000 members within a short time,” he said.

GP Ansor urged the central government to take serious measures to protect Ahmadiyah followers from violence, intimidation and vandalism of their places of worship. “We urge the government to act immediately against the violence perpetrated against Ahmadiyah followers.”

Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Muslim organization, is known for its moderate stance.

“The government must be consistent in its implementation of the Constitution, stipulating that every citizen of any official creed is guaranteed the right to conduct their religious practice according to their faith,” Nuruzzaman said.

Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali on Friday called Ahmadiyah apostate to Islamic teaching and urged them to halt propagating their beliefs, although he warned the public against resorting to violence in dealing with the issue.

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/01/calm-restored...avy-security.html

Minister urges sect followers to stop spreading faith

HEADLINES Sat, 07/31/2010 10:40 AM

Minister urges sect followers to stop spreading faith

Ridwan Max Sijabat and Dicky Christanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali called Ahmadiyah apostate to Islamic teaching and said followers should stop propagating their faith.

“It’s clear from a 2008 joint ministerial decree that Ahmadiyah is not a religion and can be categorized as deviant to Islam. Therefore [Ahmadiyah] followers had better stop their activities,” the minister said.

Suryadharma also warned the public against resorting to violence in dealing with the “issue” as occurred on Thursday in Kuningan, West Java.

“The government will not tolerate any use of violence in dealing with sectarianism and all religious communities have to abide by the law to maintain order and security,” he said in Jakarta, after inaugurating the Al-Jabr International Islamic Junior High School in Pondok Labu, South Jakarta, on Friday.

Hundreds of members of hard-line Muslim organizations clashed with Ahmadiyah followers at Manis Lor village in Kuningan regency. The attackers demanded Ahmadiyah be banned. Three people were injured and several houses were damaged in the clashes.

Suryadharma said civil society groups and mass organizations had no authority enforcing the law but were required to report any disturbances of order and security to the police.

He said that despite their similar roots, Ahmadiyah and Islam were different because Ahmadiyah did not recognize Muhammad as the last prophet “and this is really a betrayal of true Islamic teaching”.

The minister said the government would soon enforce a 2008 joint ministerial decree on Ahmadiyah with the help of the police because it had not been effective since being issued.

He said the government would rely on the police to enforce the decree when asked whether the government and the police would crack down on Ahmadiyah followers and close down their houses of worship.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Edward Aritonang said police would remain neutral in handling the incident and enforcing the decree.

“Our concern is solely to prevent any clashes and bloodshed to maintain order and security,” Edward said Friday.

He said 500 security officers were deployed to monitor negotiations between the local administration and Ahmadiyah leaders in the village.

The Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace condemned the attack on Ahmadiyah followers and the forced closure of their mosque in Kuningan, and called on authorities to end the use of violence against the minority group. “The use of violence will not solve the dispute,” Setara deputy chairman Bonar Tigor Naipospos said Friday.

There remains a heavy police presence around Manis Lor village, where 3,000 of the 4,350 residents are followers of Ahmadiyah.

“We feel safe with the security personnel around and we are very grateful for that,” Deden Sujana, who heads Ahmadiyah’s security commission, said.

— Nana Rukmana contributed to the story from Kuningan, West Java.

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/07/31/minister-urg...reading-faith.html

MUI deplores attack on Ahmadiyah

HEADLINES Fri, 07/30/2010 6:35 PM

MUI deplores attack on Ahmadiyah

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) deplored on Friday an incident of attack against members of the Islamic sect Jamaah Ahmadiyah at Manislor village, Jakalaksana district, Kuningan regency, West Java, a day earlier.

“It should have been settled persuasively,” said Slamet Effendi Yusuf, head of MUI’s Inter-religious Harmony Commission as quoted by tempointeraktif.com news portal.

The way to settle the problem could be through dialog between representatives of the regional government and Ahmadiyah members as well as members of mainstream Muslim organizations, he said.

Slamet admitted settling the problem was easier said than done. On the one hand a joint ministerial decree on Ahmadiyah signed two years ago has to be implemented. “But on the other hand, Ahmadiyah members insist to maintain their existence, exercise their activities and even try to expand themselves,” he said.

The problem is, Slamet said, that it could be left without any attention. There must have been a commitment to implement the joint decree and all parties have to wiser and respect one another as the process is not short.

“Amid the process, the Muslim organizations can make intensive approaches,” he said.

Is has been reported earlier that a clash erupted on Thursday between Ahmadiyah followers and members of Muslim organizations as the latter forced their way to enter Ahmadiyah compound in Kuningan. The Muslim organizations demanded that the government disband Ahmadiyah.

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/07/30/mui-deplores-attack-ahmadiyah.html

President orders police to be strict in call to disband Ahmadiyah

NATIONAL Fri, 07/30/2010 5:41 PM

President orders police to be strict in call to disband Ahmadiyah

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Under threat: Followers of Islamic sect Jamaah Ahmadiyah leave An-Nur mosque at Manis Lor village, Kuningan, West Java, after Friday prayers. Clash broke out between members of more than five Muslim organizations from outside Kuningan and Ahmadiyah followers on Thursday, damaging scores of houses and injuring at least three people. JP/R. Berto Wedhatama

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has instructed the National Police to be strict in handling disputes surrounding the call to disband Islamic sect Jamaah Ahmadiyah in Kuningan regency, West Java, a minister said on Friday.

Speaking at the Presidential Office in Jakarta, Minister of Political, Legal and Security Affairs Djoko Suyanto said that the police had to be strict especially in anticipating any anarchic action conducted by whoever or whichever organizations.

“A stern action has to be done on any anarchic action by anybody, everywhere, whichever organization. The police have been instructed to do so. The President has also asked me that the police have to be strict,” he said as quoted by the Antara news agency.

Djoko made the remarks following a clash between members of more than five Muslim organizations from outside Kuningan regency and Ahmadiyah followers residing in Manis Lor village, Jalaksana district, Kuningan.

The clash happened when organization members, who demand the disbandment of Ahmadiyah, forced their way to enter Ahmadiyah followers’ compound on Thursday. Police officers in charge of maintaining order were pelted with stones.

As Ahmadiyah followers felt they were cornered, they fought back, attacking members of the Muslim organizations. Several people were injured in the incident.

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/07/30/president-...-disband-ahmadiyah.html

Fresh attack targets Ahmadiyah members

NATIONAL Thu, 07/29/2010 10:17 PM

Fresh attack targets Ahmadiyah members

Nana Rukmana, The Jakarta Post, Kuningan, West Java

Clash broke out between angry mob and members of the Islamic sect Jamaah Ahmadiyah in Kuningan regency, West Java Thursday, damaging scores of houses and injuring at least three people.

Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Djoko Suyanto regretted the incident and told people to stop resorting to violence.

“The problem should be peacefully taken care of, not through violence which only disadvantages all,” he told Antara news agency.

The incident immediately drew criticism, with the National Commission on Human Rights member Hesty Armiwulan saying it shows the country’s poor law enforcement.

“The government should find solution to this problem, rather than to take side with one group and violating the other’s rights,” she said.

The clash erupted after some 500 protesters, claiming to come from several hard-line Islamic groups, forced their way into the sect’s complex at Manis Lor village, located some 40 km south of Cirebon city and is home to some 3,000 Ahmadiyah followers.

They soon pelted stones and wooden sticks against each others.

Upon order from Kuningan regent Aang Suganda, public order officers closed down eight Ahmadiyah mosques in the village on Monday and Wednesday. But the residents later opened up the seals.

On Tuesday the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace announced the result of its survey, which revealed rampant use of violence to suppress the religious freedom of minority groups in the country.

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/07/29/fresh-attack-targets-ahmadiyah-members.html

Minorities’ right to liberty

---daily Dawn, Pakistan

Provinces

Minorities’ right to liberty
Anwar syed
Sunday, 16 Aug, 2009 | 10:27 AM PST |

A group of Muslims, professedly incensed and enraged over the alleged desecration of the Quran, killed seven Christians in Gojra in Punjab. The allegation may not have been valid.

It is possible that the victims and their killers had been involved in a local quarrel. It is also possible that the victims were targeted simply because they were non-Muslim. The following presentation is based on this latter premise.

The killings have been widely condemned. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif went to Gojra to condole with the victims’ families, and each announced an award of Rs100m as compensation to them. Mr Gilani also announced his government’s resolve to apprehend and prosecute the killers. This was a laudable response on his part, and we hope it does not turn out to be one of those promises that are lightly made and then forgotten.

This was not the first incident of its kind in the country’s recent experience. Hindu, Christian and Ahmadi communities and neighbourhoods in Sindh and Punjab have been attacked, persons killed, homes and businesses plundered and places of worship destroyed. These deeds were barbaric and so were their doers.

It takes a measure of intellectual sophistication and civility to value diversity and respect those who think differently from others. These attitudes of mind are cultivated in a democratic culture, which settles issues through discussion, debate and a process of give-and-take (compromise). This mode of arriving at decisions does not admit of absolutes. It requires admission of a degree of tentativeness in one’s own position, willingness to concede that the opponent has to be heard, for his argument may have some merit.

Granting exceptions, it may be said that absolute firmness of belief in the validity of a set of propositions, and tolerance of those who do not subscribe to them, do not go together. Indeed, they are mutually exclusive.

Intense believers in their professed faith have fought others in numerous times and places. Protestants and Catholics, and within the Protestant Church Anglicans and Presbyterians, persecuted, even killed, one another for more than 100 years in Ireland and Scotland respectively.

The same kind of conflicts took place in France, Germany, Switzerland and Massachusetts. In India orthodox caste Hindus have traditionally humiliated certain lower caste groups as untouchables. They have also been persecuting their Muslim citizens.

Islam enjoins tolerance of the non-believer. ‘Moderate’ Muslims are indeed tolerant of views other than their own. But there are, and have been, others who hold that those who disagree with them are not real Muslims, and that they deserve to be placed beyond the pale of Islam, if not eliminated. At the present time, the Taliban are the foremost of such groups.

Where in the configuration described above do we place the frenzied Muslims in Gojra who killed some of its Christian residents? It is most likely that they were intellectually unsophisticated, at best semi-literate, basically uncouth and uncivil.

Next, they were intense believers in the sanctity of their faith. The allegation that the Christians had desecrated the Quran may have been invalid but, if so, that fact was probably not known to most of them. They did, however, allow themselves to get into a rage without looking into the allegation. That may have happened because the accused were poor Christians.

Muslims constitute nearly 97 per cent of this country’s population. The remaining three per cent consist of Christians, Hindus and a sprinkling of Sikhs and Zoroastrians. Certain individuals from among them became renowned for their attainments. Justice A.R. Cornelius, chief justice of Pakistan, was one of the most learned, profound and eloquent jurists that ever worked in Pakistan. Justice Bhagwandas, a former judge of the Supreme Court, is another such luminary. Some of the more wealthy Zoroastrians have given large sums of money for the establishment and maintenance of educational institutions, hospitals and other charities.

The minority people are loyal citizens of Pakistan as much as the Muslims may be. They pose no threat to its security and well-being. Nor do they pose a threat to the well-being of their neighbours. They are not numerous or strong enough even to influence public policy (as for instance the Jews are in America). Why would then any group of Muslims want to persecute, harass, terrorise or kill them?

In most such cases they are accused of having committed blasphemy, such as insulting the Prophet (PBUH) or desecrating the Quran. The accusation is often unfounded. It is possible also that the alleged act, if it did happen, was accidental and unintended. The blasphemy law should be repealed because it is a bad law, but false accusations against minority persons will continue to be made, for the motivation behind them has nothing to do with the law’s susceptibility to abuse.

One reason why minority groups are harassed may be that they are weak, and weakness invites aggression. They can easily be driven from their homes and whatever little land they may have, which their tormentors can then appropriate. If some of them have defied any of the tough guys in the area, they will be punished for their self-assertion. The greater likelihood is that their oppressors are acting simply from perversity, viciousness and meanness of spirit of which they happen to have more than their share.

What is then to be done? I believe that governments and political leaders at all levels, particularly the Islamic parties, must do all they can to persuade the imams and khateebs in our mosques to tell their audiences that it is their Islamic duty to protect the non-Muslim minorities in this country.

The writer is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. anwarsyed @ cox.net

©2009 DAWN Media Group. All rights reserved

URL : www.dawn.com/.../16-minorities-right-to-liberty-hs-10

Pakistan: Mob tries to burn houses of Ahmadis in Layyah

--- Daily Times

Friday, January 30, 2009

Mob tries to burn houses of Ahmadis in Layyah

* HRCP alarmed over four children’s detention on blasphemy charges
* FIR says local MNA’s uncle ‘probed’ the incident at his outhouse

By Abdul Manan

LAHORE: A mob – led reportedly by members of banned religious organisations – tried to set ablaze houses of Ahmadis in Layyah on Thursday, a day after four children belonging to the minority community were detained on charges of blasphemy, police and residents told Daily Times.

Twenty policemen had been deployed to the village, a police official said.

Police had registered a case (number 46/9) in the Kot Sultan police station against Tahir Imran (16), Tahir Mahmood (14), Naseer Ahmad (14), Muhammad Irfan (14), and Mubashar Ahmad (45) under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The Ahmadiyya community has denied the charge, the first ever against children since the Section 295-C was introduced in 1986.

Asma Jahangir, the chairwoman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), said that it was heinous to use the law against children. The HRCP was finding facts about the incident, she said, and would soon send a team to Layyah.

Religious scholar Javed Ghamidi said the children were safer in police custody.

The children belong to Chak 172/TDA, a village about 25 kilometres from Kot Sultan. Last week, the locals had stopped the Ahmadi children from praying in the central Gulzar-e-Madina mosque, Kot Sultan Station House Officer (SHO) Rauf Khalid told Daily Times.

But they continued to use the latrines, where they have been accused of writing blasphemous material, according to the first information report (FIR).

Noor Elahi Kulachi – a retired schoolteacher, and, as the SHO confirmed, a member of the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba – complained to Iqbal Hussain Shah, the uncle of the local National Assembly member Saqlain Shah. According to the FIR, Iqbal Hussain called the SHO and the people who had seen the writings to his outhouse, where they “probed the incident” to find the Ahmadi children guilty.

But the local leader of the Ahmadiyya community alleged that Kulachi – who was also a member of Jamaatud Dawa – had pressured Iqbal Hussain to direct the police to register the case, and the latter complied because of the Jamaatud Dawa votebank in the constituency.

Saqlain Shah, an MNA from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, denied his uncle had pressured police. But he said representatives of the Ahmadiyya community should have visited his uncle’s residence for the matter to be resolved in line with local traditions, instead of denying charges.

He also said that Ahmadis had first lodged cases against local Muslims (for violating the Loudspeakers Act and under the Maintenance of Public Order) after being disallowed to hold a religious meeting, and should now “face the truth”. He said he would visit the village on Saturday, and that his uncle was trying to pacify the villagers.

The SHO said he had registered the case after consulting the district police officer and a deputy inspector general of police. The inspector general of police had also been informed, he added.

URL: www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page...30-1-2009_pg7_2