Interfaith Relations in Indonesia Put to the Litmus Test

July 13, 2010

Endy Bayuni
Chief editor of The Jakarta Post and United Nations Global Expert
Posted: July 13, 2010 10:51 AM

Interfaith Relations in Indonesia Put to the Litmus Test

The tension between Muslims, the dominant religion, and Christians, the largest religious minority group, in Indonesia is coming to the fore with the open accusations by Islamic organizations in Bekasi, a town outside Jakarta, that churches have been aggressively converting Muslims in droves.

The Muslim groups, which include the local branch of the traditionally moderate Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) as well as the militant Front for Islamic Defenders (FPI), declared war against evangelism at the end of their congress in June. They set up a task force empowered to stop “Christianization” of Muslims in the township.

The congress would not have raised so much of an eyebrow if this was an affair involving the usual suspects like the FPI, which have of late been waging a “jihad” against people of other religions, including razing and vandalizing churches, harassing Christian masses, and attacking “misguided” Islamic sects like the Ahmadiyah. Militant, and at times destructive, these groups have never been seen as representing the mainstream Muslims in Indonesia, and most people would applaud if and when police stopped them from their violent behavior.

But the presence of NU representatives in the Bekasi congress, and the virtual silence of its national leaders as well as of other Muslim leaders who have taken part in many interfaith dialogues in the past, suggests their complicity if not of their shared concern about the activities of Christian evangelism in the country.

This could spell trouble for the relations between the religious communities in Indonesia, and raises questions about the effectiveness and sincerity of these interfaith dialogues, which were supposedly designed to build understandings and dispel mutual fears and suspicions between people of different faiths.

One of the criticisms about these dialogues is that they almost always involved the same leaders. Familiarity certainly helps to improve their communication but these dialogues have mostly excluded leaders of the more vocal or radical groups.

But any notion that the dialogues merely serve to preach the converted may also be far-fetching, as the Bekasi episode now shows. What guarantees do we have that those who participated in interfaith dialogues had seriously carried the message of peace when they went back to their flocks?

The Bekasi affair has opened up the Pandora Box of the fierce competition between different religious organizations in the battle for the soul of Indonesians, particularly between Islam and Christianity. With the 1945 Constitution guaranteeing freedom of faith, there isn’t any law that can stop any religious organizations from conducting their propagation activities with the aim of saving human souls.

A government regulation issued in 1978 forbids any attempt to convert people who already have a religion. This virtually limits evangelism in Indonesia to the eastern province of Papua, where Christian missionaries have been most active. But the regulation does not carry weight as it contravenes the constitution and it has been virtually ignored by all religious organizations, Christians and Muslims alike.

Mosques, churches, and to a lesser extent, temples, have seen their share of converting people into their religions without any interference from the state, in Jakarta as in most other cities across the archipelago. There are no statistics to show who is winning the battle, but Muslim groups lately seem bent on stopping the conversion out of their religion. Religious conversions happen for many reasons, whether through the acts of propagation, through daily contacts or marriages, but there is nothing that the state can do about what is constitutionally regarded as the rights of individuals.

Religious propagation is mostly conducted discretely rather than openly, and this allowed the leaders of different religions to remain courteous with one another as they meet in the interfaith dialogues. Leaders of mainstream Islamic organizations were also able to distance themselves from the violent behavior by the likes of the FPI.

But the Bekasi affair, in which the Muslim groups have declared war against Christianity, and the complicity, if not the silence, of the traditionally moderate Muslim organizations, has now raised the stake. The last thing Indonesia needs is a religious war on a larger scale than the one we saw erupting in Maluku 2000.

While dialogue remains the best and probably the only course to avoid a religious confrontation in Indonesia, it is time that these religious leaders start addressing the serious issues and have a hard and serious discussion, instead of avoiding them. It would help if they were also sincere and honest in these dialogues.

URL: www.huffingtonpost.com/endy-bayuni/interfaith-relations-in-i_b_640799.html

Displaced Ahmadiyah followers take part in national census

---The Jakarta Post, Indonesia

Archipelago | Fri, 05/14/2010 9:48 PM

Displaced Ahmadiyah followers take part in national census

Panca Nugraha, The Jakarta Post, Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara

Around 120 Ahmadiyah followers taking shelter at Wisma Transito building took part in the national census and were listed as residents of Mataram city in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), although many had no valid identification.

Head of the Mataram Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS), Peter Willem, said Friday the followers of the controversial sect had taken part in the census, which ends May 31.

“We registered them as residents of Mataram since they have lived in the city for the last six months,” Peter told The Jakarta Post.

He said the refugees were registered using the regular form just like other residents.

The form, he said, did not mention their status as refugees.

“It’s because the census does not query data on the status of refugees”.

Peter said the BPS did not single out the census pattern and treatment between Ahmadiyah refugees and other residents.

Some 136 families or 157 people of the Ahmadiyah sect, considered heretical by the Indonesian Ulema Council, have been living in the shelter for four years since being evicted from their homes in West Lombok by angry mobs.

Some had left or moved to other provinces but some 33 families of 126 people remain.

URL:   www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/04/21/discourse-blas...99.html

Indonesia’s Blasphemy Law: The Regulation of Faith by the State

---Qantara, Germany

Indonesia’s Blasphemy Law
The Regulation of Faith by the State

The Indonesian Constitutional Court has endorsed the country’s controversial blasphemy law, which many liberal politicians and human rights activists regard as a relic of the past that could further exacerbate religious tensions. Christina Schott reports from Jakarta

Targeted by the radical Islamic Defender Front:
Religious minorities like the Ahmadis, who do not
conform to orthodox concepts of Islam, are
particularly affected by the blasphemy law

“Infidel!” “Let us spill his blood!” These were the kind of threats Indonesian director Garin Nugroho had to endure in early April this year.

In his capacity as a cultural expert, he testified before the highest constitutional court of his country that a 45-year-old blasphemy law wholly discouraged Indonesians from discussing religion, as it did not allow them the freedom to hold their own opinions.

“This law is the biggest setback for democracy and pluralism in the history of our nation,” the internationally-acclaimed filmmaker declared. The followers of various radical Islamic organizations, such as the Islamic Defender Front (FPI) or Hizb-ut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), who were waiting outside the courthouse, were able to follow his testimony on a screen. They were clearly of a different opinion.

Validation for the hardliners

Nugroho got off lightly, however, in that he was only verbally abused. Four other experts were beaten and kicked on their way to court. The judges upheld the disputed paragraphs nonetheless. With only one vote against, the nine-person body decided in April that the old law was not unconstitutional and was “indispensable for religious harmony in the country”.

A coalition of Indonesian human rights groups under the leadership of the Wahid Institute had applied for a legal revision of the blasphemy law. In their opinion, the law, introduced after a coup attempt in 1965, contradicts the Indonesian constitution, which guarantees religious freedom.

Six religions are officially recognized in Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Followers of minority religions, such as Sikhs or animists, are tolerated, but those who do not profess one of the six official religions cannot hold an identity card or obtain a marriage certificate.

In practice, it is not possible to be an atheist in Indonesian society. Divergent religious orientations within the recognized religions also face difficulties. According to the blasphemy law it is illegal to publish, recommend or even seek public support for non-orthodox interpretations of faith.

As a result, interpretations of Islam that do not accord with either the Sunni or the Shia faiths are subject to legal prosecution – and all too often they are also persecuted outside the law.

Persecution of the Ahmadi

Adherents of the Ahmadiyya movement, who consider themselves Muslims but do not believe that Mohammed was the last prophet, have been particularly badly affected.

Many Ahmadis had to go into hiding after violent attacks by radical Islamists. On the island of Lombok hundreds of families are still living in refugee camps because they daren’t return to their home villages. Instead of punishing the attackers, the government forbade all public activities related to Ahmadiyya Islam.

“Religious freedom will always be restricted, because if it is unrestricted it could compromise the freedom of the majority,” says Saleh Daulay, the secretary for law and human rights of Muhammadiyah, the second-largest Islamic organization in the country. “It is our duty to protect the established belief of a majority from interference. If we didn’t have the blasphemy law, we would no longer have any basis from which to prevent social unrest.”

“The blasphemy law is not going to solve the
religious conflicts in this country!“ - Masdar Farid
Mas’udi, legal expert for the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)

In practice, the law has primarily been applied in Indonesia to punish offences against the main streams of Islam. As well as sect-like groups like the Ahmadis, individuals have also increasingly been targeted. In May 2006, for example, the Muslim woman governor of Banyuwangi in East Java was nearly ousted from office after being accused of practising a religion other than Islam. The background to this was that she was married to a Hindu.

In December 2008 a Christian primary school teacher was arrested on the Moluccas because she was said to have made disparaging remarks about Islam during class. On the basis of this rumour alone, hundreds of furious Muslims destroyed 67 houses, a church, and a meeting hall. Five people were injured. Only two of the rioters were arrested.

No resolution of religious conflicts

“The blasphemy law is not going to solve the religious conflicts in this country,” stated legal expert Masdar Farid Mas’udi of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia’s largest Islamic organization, in the daily newspaper Jakarta Post.

“The court should have defined the terms blasphemy and heresy more precisely. If you follow the current interpretation, Islamic preachers should in fact also be criminalized for their diatribes against other religions.”

Mas’udi, however, is pretty much alone in his opinion. Both his own organization, the NU, which is regarded as moderate, and Muhammadiyah joined the radical Islamists in speaking out against a repeal of the blasphemy law. The Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia (PHDI), Indonesia’s highest Hindu council, and the Indonesian Buddhist Council (Walubi) were also in favour of retaining it.

The only vote against the court’s decision came from constitutional judge Maria Farida Indrati, who one month earlier was also the only one in the body to oppose another highly controversial law, that against pornography.

In her opinion, the blasphemy law is a product of the past and is no longer compatible with today’s constitution – especially in respect of the preservation of human rights and religious freedom.

“Officially, we have religious freedom in Indonesia, but in reality it’s not that free,” says Dwi Nurdianto (not his real name), who works for a social organization in Yogyakarta on Java.

“On paper I am a Muslim, although I am in fact an atheist. But I’m not allowed to be an atheist here. If I don’t belong to any religion, I can’t get official papers. And if certain people came to know my true beliefs, what would happen would be something like the scenes in front of the constitutional court. The state should really be protecting minorities from persecution. Instead, it’s arguing that it has to protect the majority.”

Christina Schott
© Qantara.de 2010
Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins
Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de

URL: www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-476/_nr-1325/i.html

Indonesian Blasphemy Act Restricts Free Religious Expression

---The Huffington Post, USA

April 28, 2010
Asma Uddin
Founder and editor-in-chief, Altmuslimah.com

Posted: April 27, 2010 08:12 PM

Indonesian Blasphemy Act Restricts Free Religious Expression

Last Monday, as I stood in the Indonesian Constitutional Court, the Court released its eight-to-one decision to uphold the Law on the Prevention of Blasphemy and Abuse of Religion, also known as the Blasphemy Act. My colleagues and I at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty had submitted an amicus brief in the case, urging the Court to repeal the Act, which has been used in the past to persecute devout members of a variety of religions. The Court’s decision was deeply disappointing for us and our human rights colleagues in Indonesia and across the world, as it not only failed to repeal a problematic law but also legitimated, if not encouraged, future government incursions into matters of conscience.

The Blasphemy Act makes it unlawful “to, intentionally, in public, communicate, counsel, or solicit public support for an interpretation of a religion … that is similar to the interpretations or activities of an Indonesian religion but deviates from the tenets of that religion.” One of the purposes of the Act is to help the government protect Indonesia’s six recognized religions – Islam, [Protestant] Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism – by punishing those who encourage conversion away from one of these religions or preach “deviant” interpretations of those religions. The six official religions each have government-funded religious bodies who decide what an acceptable belief for that religion is and what is not.

The Act establishes civil and criminal penalties, including up to five years imprisonment, for violators. In the past, it has been used to impose criminal penalties on groups like the Ahmadiyya, which most Muslims do not recognize because they believe it deviates from mainstream Islamic teachings. In 2008, the Indonesian Minister of Religious Affairs, the Attorney General, and the Minister of Interior issued the Joint Decree on the Ahmadiyya, which orders Ahmadiyya adherents “as long as they consider themselves to hold to Islam, to discontinue the promulgation of interpretations and activities that are deviant from the principal teachings of Islam.”

Similarly, in 2009, police arrested the leader of the Sion City of Allah Christian sect and six of his followers for straying from “correct Christian teachings.” Because the Sect is based on only one book of the Bible (the Book of Jeremiah), the government banned it as an unacceptable branch of Christianity and forbade its followers from attending church till 2011.

These cases underscore the problematic nature of the Blasphemy Act. While private citizens and religious groups should be able to decide among themselves what does or does not constitute the essence of a religion, and while they should be able to exclude certain individuals from membership on the basis of such disagreements, the Act appoints the state, with all of its police power, as arbiter of what a particular group believes and what it should be allowed to propagate.

In some cases, the state will deem a group blasphemous even when the allegedly blasphemed group disagrees. For instance, in the Sion City case, the government charged the sect with blaspheming the Timor Evangelical Church, despite the Church’s statements to the contrary. Instead of ceding autonomy to the Church and allowing it to determine religious questions, including blasphemy, for itself, the state stated, “We hope the church will not interfere in the case.”

Religion, regulated as such, is defined by the state and is necessarily politicized by the state’s involvement. The state-approved version of religion often tempers social justice components of faith, especially in the case of authoritarian regimes, which use religion to protect and legitimate their own power. Religious matters in this way become intertwined with questions of national security and public order.

Indeed, the public order argument played a big role in the Court’s decision to uphold the Blasphemy Act. The idea is that blasphemy – real or supposed, intentional or unintentional – would anger adherents of a given religion, who will then cause destruction or otherwise act violently. This is different from regulating incitement to violence because it limits peaceful, not violent, speech. According to the Court, the state has to control potentially blasphemous statements, peacefully expressed, in order to increase societal harmony.

However, the court’s reasoning in this regard is deeply flawed as it protects the wrong party and provides the wrong incentives. The Blasphemy Act appeases rather than controls violent extremists, giving them license to continue bullying religious minorities while the police look the other way. It creates a culture of impunity where increasingly egregious crimes are committed with little or no consequences for the criminals.

Instead of penalizing the speaker in order to prevent violence, the law should compel potentially violent actors to regulate their own behavior – even, indeed especially, in the face of insults. Violence is far more effectively controlled if states enforce those laws which punish criminal behavior.

This sort of legal scheme makes sense not simply because it’s more effective, but also because it protects the fundamental human right to free religious expression. Individuals have the right to not only hold particular beliefs but also to express them openly in public – as long as they are peaceful and do not contravene the rights of others. This works in favor of the larger society rather than against it, as only in a free marketplace of ideas can those ideas with greater utility or persuasive power prevail.

In upholding the Blasphemy Act, the Court affirmed the power of the state to compel individuals to abide by certain beliefs against their own conscience – all for the sake of keeping at bay a presumably uncontrollable public. The decision is both logically and morally flawed, and a major setback for human rights in Indonesia.

URL: www.huffingtonpost.com/asma-uddin/the-indonesian-constituti_b_554463.html

Discourse: Blasphemy law ‘has not prevented conflict’

---The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Headlines | Wed, 04/21/2010 9:03 AM

Discourse: Blasphemy law ‘has not prevented conflict’
Todung Mulya Lubis

The Constitutional Court (MK) ruled Monday to uphold the 45-year-old Blasphemy law after a judicial review request was filed last October by human rights groups and backers of pluralism who said the law violated religious freedom. The Jakarta Post talks to renowned lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis, who said the Court tends to lean “to the right” in certain issues.

Question: What is your comment on the Constitutional Court’s ruling which rejected the judicial review request on the Blasphemy Law?

Answer: I regret the decision because it disregards the diversity and plurality of our nation. We have to respect the court’s authority to conduct a judicial review, but this decision has distorted freedom of worship which is acknowledged as a basic human right.

The law allows ample room for misuse. The court said this law is needed to prevent horizontal and vertical conflicts. Conflicts occur when there are coercive actions (to prohibit someone or a group) from worshipping according to their religion and belief.

If there was no intimdiation against the Ahmadiyah congregation, for instance, they would be free to worship. So the law has been disturbing this and has not prevented conflict.

Coercion which disregards diversity and people’s religious rights cause conflicts. The logic of the court is misleading when it says that the law prevents conflicts.

On the contrary, conflicts happen when there repressive actions by groups which believe that only the state-sanctioned religions (the “standard” forms of Islam, Christianity, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism) are legal while the others have to be eradicated. Such actions are a source of conflict.

Doesn’t the Blasphemy Law contradict the 2008 Law Prohibiting Racial and Ethnic Discrimination which says nobody can be discriminated against due to his or her religion and belief?

It’s against that law. It’s also against the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. So the Blasphemy Law has fundamentally violated international and national laws.

The Constitutional Court’s ideology tends to the right. Many have expressed concerns about this. When the court faces issues of religion and freedom of speech and expression, it becomes conservative and fundamentalist.

This disregards human rights, pluralism and reform efforts. So we must face the fact that the court is dominated by conservatives and fundamentalists.

We are forced to acknowledged formal religions while we actually have freedom of choice.

The Constitutional Court’s ruling is final but it doesn’t mean we can tolerate its excessive implementation.

However, we don’t know yet how far the implementation will go. But this is obviously a setback.

What are the possible implications of the court’s ruling?

Groups like the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) will be happy with this.

When new religious groups or thoughts emerge, they can be considered as defaming formal (forms of) religions. FPI and HTI will have legal justification for their coercive actions violating human rights. They act as if they are the private religious police.

What are the further plans of human rights groups to anticipate the impact of the ruling?

We will arrange a meeting to look at the Constitutional Court’s ruling because it potentially could cause divisions. We are going to try to limit its divisive impacts while continuing to promote diversity and pluralism. (rdf)

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/04/21/disc...E2%80%99.html

Court justices accused of ‘distorting’ testimonies

---The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Headlines | Wed, 04/21/2010 9:03 AM

Court justices accused of ‘distorting’ testimonies
Arghea Desafti Hapsari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Constitutional Court has again become the target of criticism following its ruling on the controversial Blasphemy Law, with plaintiffs accusing the judges of distorting the opinions of expert witnesses.

Just weeks after giving the nod to the divisive pornography law in late March, the Court on Monday ruled to uphold the 45-year-old law on religious blasphemy. Only one judge, Maria Farida Indrati, had a dissenting opinion.

But this held no sway in the final outcome as the Court turned down a judicial review request by human rights groups and high-profile figures such as late former president Abdurrahman Wahid and progressive Muslim scholar Siti Musdah Mulia.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Uli Parulian Sihombing, on Tuesday criticized the way judges had claimed that the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) had recommended keeping the law when in fact the latter had requested revisions to be made to it.

The panel of judges in its argument said that of the 24 parties whose testimonies were heard, two — Komnas HAM and the Indonesia Confucianism High Assembly (Matakin) — had said that the contested articles in the law were still needed and should not be revoked before a new and more comprehensive regulation was enacted.

Chief justice Mahfud MD did not return numerous calls from The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Komnas HAM chairman Ifdhal Kasim, who testified in February, said several articles in the law needed to be revised. He argued that the law “rests on the old Constitution, which opposes the new [amended] Constitution”.

“That’s why, based on the new Constitution, there needs to be a review [of laws] produced by former administrations,” he said.

The law stipulates criminal penalties for those who intentionally publicize, recommend or organize public support for a different interpretation of the six officially recognized religions.

Opponents say the law has been used to persecute members of religious minorities and of traditional beliefs, including when members of the Ahmadiyah sect were forced to take refuge after enduring violent attacks against them. The Court, however, said the law was needed to maintain public order.

On Tuesday, Uli also said that judges had not made an objective decision based on facts and evidence.

Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) chairman Amidhan, on the other hand, expressed his support for the Court ruling. He said that the law was needed to maintain harmony among religions. “Without the law, there would be chaos. I fear people would take the law into their own hands,” he added.

Amidhan also said that the law could be revoked only if Indonesians were “wiser”. “But the people are not as wise as in the US, where religion is a personal matter,” he told the Post.

Masdar Farid Mas’udi from Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Muslim organization, voiced a different opinion, despite the organization’s official position supporting the court’s ruling.

He said that by keeping the law, the numerous Islamic preachers who criticized other religions and therefore broke the law “would now have to be prepared to be arrested and face criminal charges”.

“They are the ones who supported this law and they cannot be above it,” he said.

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/04/21/cour...80%99-testimonies.html