Raging FPI Mob Disrupts Annual Ahmadiyah Prayers in Makassar

NEWS

Raging FPI Mob Disrupts Annual Ahmadiyah Prayers in Makassar

Rahmat | January 29, 2010

Makassar. Dozens of protesters from the Islamic Defenders Front surrounded an Ahmadiyah center in Makassar on Friday, demanding that the sect disband.

Clad in white, members of hard-line group, also known as the FPI, arrived on motorcycles and tried to storm the center where around 50 Ahmadis were holding an annual prayer gathering called Jalzah Salanah.

More than 50 armed officers from the Mamajang Police and Makassar Police prevented the demonstrators from entering the center.

The FPI, however, continued to chant and yell threats at the panicked Ahmadiyah members, who hid inside a mosque in the center on Jalan Antang and locked the gates.

“We give you 24 hours to disband and bring down that sign that reads Jamaah Ahmadiyah,” Habib Reza, leader of the FPI in South Sulawesi, shouted during Friday’s rally.

“If you don’t do this, we will come back on Saturday and forcibly tear it down,” he added.

Habib cited a 2005 edict issued by the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI) and a 2008 state decree that deemed the Ahmadiyah a deviant Islamic sect and restricted its religious activities.

Mainstream Muslims reject the Ahmadis’ belief that sect founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the last prophet, which runs counter to Islamic tenets reserving that distinction for the Prophet Muhammad. [**]

“All of you are atheists! Come back to Islam,” Habib said, as the crowd chanted “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great.”

“If you refuse to disband yourselves, you are welcome to enter any other religion. Do not use the name of Islam,” Habib said.

Police officers later attempted to ease tensions by offering to mediate between FPI and Ahmadiyah leaders.

However, Habib said he would only speak to the head of the South Sulawesi Ahmadiyah community if he agreed to “immediately disband” the sect that day.

After the protest, the hard-liners dispersed at around 6:30 p.m. and promised to return to the Ahmadiyah center the next day.

But after evening prayers, the protesters flocked to the site again and held speeches for another 20 minutes.

According to Ismail Hasani, from the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, there were about 50 recorded cases of violence or intimidation against the Ahmadiyah last year.

The statement is erroneous. Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian did not make any such claim of being last prophet. Please visit Alislam.org/messiah for further info.

---

Copyright 2010 The Jakarta Globe
URL: www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/raging-fpi-mob...makassar/419684

Violations of Religious Freedom in Indonesia Rise in 2010

NEWS

Violations of Religious Freedom in Indonesia Rise in 2010

Ulma Haryanto | January 25, 2011

Youths chanting in front of a burning house belonging to an Ahmadiyah follower in Ciampea, West Java, late last year. A total of 216 cases of violations of religious freedom across Indonesia were recorded in 2010, up just a little from the 200 cases recorded in 2009, a human rights watchdog says. (Reuters Photo)

Jakarta. A total of 216 cases of violations of religious freedom across Indonesia were recorded last year, up just a little from the 200 cases recorded in 2009, according to a human rights watchdog.

In a media briefing on Monday, the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy pointed out that West Java, with 91 cases registered last year alone, continued to top the list as the region where the highest number of violations occurred.

East Java stands at second place with 28 violations last year, followed by Jakarta with 16 cases.

Setara’s Ismail Hasani said the highest number of violations in all of last year — 75 — were targeted at Christian congregations, followed by 50 violations aimed at the Ahmadiyah, a minority Muslim sect.

“A total of 59 houses of worship were attacked or suffered security disturbances last year. Of those 59, 43 were Christian houses of worship and 9 were Ahmadiyah mosques,” Ismail told reporters.

The number of incidents, he said, peaked in August 2010.

“Even though we did not detect any significant trigger for August last year, we believe the number of incidents coincides with statements and speeches that condone attacks — a violation in itself — by state figures and leaders,” Ismail continued.

Those behind the violations were divided by Setara into two categories: government and non-government. The police, the institute said, with 56 cases topped the list of those responsible for or condoning violations, followed by district heads in 19 and subdistrict chiefs in 17 cases.

“The Indonesian Council of Ulema [MUI] took second place among the non-state actors with 22 violations, followed by the Islamic Defenders Front [FPI] with 17,” Ismail added.

Setara chairman and founder Hendardi called on the state to guarantee the rights of the people and to eradicate violence and religious intolerance.

“This has been the fourth year we published a report like this. We see it as a tool to demand from the state, over and over again, to protect religious freedom, which is the people’s constitutional right,” he said.

Setara deputy chairman Bonar Tigor Naipospos added that the central government had only responded to two incidents after they escalated into physical conflict: the Ahmadiyah attack in Kuningan, West Java, in July and the attack of leaders of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) in Bekasi in September.

“The central government only reacted to situations that had already gotten out of hand — smaller incidents were left for regional governments to deal with, which do not have the capacity to solve such problems,” Bonar said. He added that 40 percent of the cases in 2010 were conflicts that had been going on for years.

Contrary to recent statements made by Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali, Nasaruddin Umar, director general for Islamic Affairs at the ministry, said there had been religious conflicts in 2010, although he said these were part of local political struggles.

“Causes or issues presented in religious terms always attract many followers,” he said.

Copyright 2010 The Jakarta Globe
URL: www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/violations...2010/418819

In defense of Islam, vigilante justice in Indonesia

Indonesia Home / Asia / Indonesia

In defense of Islam, vigilante justice in Indonesia

Indonesian government sits idly by as Islamic Defender's Front, called thugs by most, runs amok.

By Sara Schonhardt — Special to GlobalPost
Published: August 23, 2010 06:44 ET in Asia

Indonesian Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab gestures as he delivers a speech to his supporters inside the court room after his trial in Jakarta on Oct. 30, 2008. (Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images)

JAKARTA, Indonesia — They call themselves the Islamic Defenders Front and they say their mission is to stamp out sinful acts and to protect the poor and marginalized.

But the majority of Indonesians in this moderate Muslim nation call them thugs. They say the FPI, as they are known here, are tarnishing the image of both Islam and Indonesia.

In only the last few months the group has been accused of attacking churches, raiding suspected communist conferences and waging assaults against minority religions.

A showdown took place in the Jakarta suburb of Bekasi earlier this month when a stick-wielding mob of FPI members attacked and beat around 20 members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church.

And through it all, Indonesia’s secular government has largely stood idly by and, in some cases, offered support. In most cases the country’s leaders have remained silent, even as FPI attacks grow increasingly frequent and increasingly violent.

The FPI argues that the Batak congregation is worshipping without the proper government permits and is threatening Muslim society by proselytizing.

Bonar Tigor Naipospos, vice chairman of the Setara Institute, which works to promote democracy and peace, said the FPI is using the threat of Christianization to strengthen their position, to gain sympathy and spread their ideology to their followers.

According to a recent study by the institute, acts of violence against Christians are on the rise, which could signal that religious tensions, which always seem to be simmering in Indonesia, are coming to a boil.

“Some politicians in the West use Indonesia as a model of moderate Islam, but behind the surface the embryo of intolerance still exists,” Naipospos said. “And if the Indonesian government doesn’t do something, this embryo will get stronger.”

During an Islamic congress in June, FPI leader Habib Rizieq said evangelicals were Christianizing Muslims by offering them social services like free health care and education. They were also performing hypnosis and constructing illegal churches, he said.

Murhali Barda, the leader of the FPI’s Bekasi branch, had been preparing for a clash.

“My Muslim brothers…!!! Come to Ciketing..!!” He wrote on his Facebook page the day before the attack. “Help our brothers that were walked all over by the Batak people … church business people, moneylenders, pig and dog eaters!”

Angry tweets began trending on Twitter after news of the attack broke, just one among many in recent weeks. Forced church closures and protests against community activity, such as the butchering of pigs, have also made recent headlines.

The occasion forced Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to break his silence on FPI’s attacks. The president, however, said only that anarchic behavior would not be permitted during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

“But it is permitted,” said Sidney Jones, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, which monitors security issues. “The easiest thing would be to arrest the perpetrators, and it’s not clear to me why they have refrained from doing so.”

In 2008, following an assault on a peaceful rally in support of religious freedom, police did arrest nearly 60 FPI members, including Rizieq. The FPI kingpin was later sentenced to 18 months in prison for helping organize the attack against the supporters of Ahmadiyah, an Islamic sect many conservative Muslims consider heretical since they refuse to accept Mohammad as Islam’s final prophet.

But the arrests were mostly a response to public outrage. And while the government stopped short of completely banning the Ahmadis as the FPI had demanded, it did issue a ministerial decree prohibiting Ahmadis from practicing their faith or proselytizing in public, appearing to again side with religious hardliners instead of religious pluralists.

Jones said it was unacceptable that the Indonesian police and military have stood by and let these attacks continue. Individuals in the FPI should be prosecuted for assault, but the police should also be held responsible, she said.

Both Jakarta’s governor and one of its police chiefs attended the FPI’s 12th-anniversary celebration earlier this month in what is thought to have been an attempt to enlist the group’s material, and perhaps political, support.

And even though the Religious Affairs Ministry in March named the FPI among nearly 70 potentially illegal sects because its actions deviated from the country’s accepted Islamic teachings, the government still took no action against the group.

Started with police and military backing in 1998, the FPI was originally part of a group of street-level militias aimed at countering the student-led, democratic reform movement and providing security to then-president B.J. Habibie. The FPI has since gained notoriety for conducting vigilante crackdowns on “un-Islamic” activities, which, before recently, usually only involved aggressive raids on bars and nightclubs during Ramadan.

FPI members say their actions are not antagonistic to Islam and that they are merely upholding their duty to rid society of sin.

“FPI has one mission and one vision, and that is to eliminate tyranny and to enforce truth and justice,” said H. Chep Hernawan, head of the Islamic Reform Movement. “Our ulemas [Muslim scholars] and Muslim warriors are the ones who fought against the colonizers. So, I think it’s normal if we want to enforce Islamic law.”

The FPI are not religious crusaders, however. Ian Wilson, a researcher of radical groups-cum-gangs at Australia’s Murdock University, said its members frame issues in religious terms but are not on the same page ideologically as Islamic terrorist organizations like Jemaah Islamiyah.

“Their whole rationale is to stir up trouble … to be in the public eye,” he said.

Barda, who wears a wrap-around skirt and white skullcap often associated with conservative Islam, said FPI’s activities in Bekasi are based on the wishes of the community, which it works to coordinate and strengthen against people who might pose threats, namely the Christian Batak, an ethnic group originally from the neighboring island of Sumatra.

For more than a month the Batak congregation has been praying in a field in Ciketing, on the outskirts of Jakarta, where demonstrators meet them each Sunday demanding they cease prayers and leave the area.

Christian groups must have the consent of the surrounding community to establish a place of worship, and the hardliners say they are fighting the Batak because they refuse to abide by the law.

But when asked about rumors of declining membership numbers among the FPI, Barda, who likes speaking in idioms, only laughed. He said all he needs to do is produce a magnet and the nails will come to him.

“We are small, but we have many supporters,” he said.

Copyright 2010 GlobalPost — International News

URL: www.globalpost.com/dispatch/indonesia/100822/fpi-islam-vigilante-justice

Worst to come for Ahmadiyah as more turn a blind eye

HEADLINES Tue, 08/10/2010 9:39 AM

Worst to come for Ahmadiyah as more turn a blind eye

The Jakarta Post, Mataram

A single day erased a year’s worth of effort by the Jamaah Ahmadiyah congregation members to renovate their dilapidated, old mosque which has stood since 1977 in Cisalada village in Ciampea district, Bogor regency.

On July 12, the district chief of Ciampea, Budi Lukmanul Hakim, accompanied by 24 public order officers and 300 police officers, destroyed the steel foundations for what was to be an extension of the mosque.

The action caused Rp 250 million in losses for the congregation.

“It took us one year, starting from Lebaran, to collect donations from the congregation to achieve that sum of money,” said Ahmad Hidayat, an Ahmadi cleric.

The congregation has not received any settlement for the losses caused by the local administration’s action nor has it received a response to their settlement request, he added.

“We pleaded with the District Leadership Assembly [Muspika], especially the district chief to cancel the plan [to destroy the mosque],” he said. “But the plan went ahead due to many reasons and [social] pressure.”

The foundations were destroyed on orders expressed in a letter issued by the district chief after the administration was pressured by hard-line mass organizations in three surrounding villages, according to the Institute for Democracy and Peace (Setara).

“Since the district chief was not brave enough to defy the masses’ requests, they asked us to stop constructing the mosque so that we would not incur greater losses,” Ahmad said, adding that religious oppression was common in society.

“A junior high school student was beaten and stoned by children from a neighboring village for being part of Ahmadiyah, which they consider deviant,” he added.

There are currently 650 Ahmadiyah members and one Ahmadiyah mosque in Bogor, according to Budi.

Setara vice-chairman Bonar T. Naipospos said the destruction of the mosque was the result of the-discrimination Ahmadiyah congregations faced, which had worsened with the politicizing of the Ahmadiyah issue.

The regional secretary of Garut district, West Java, saw his performance decrease after his opponents accused him of being an Ahmadiyah member.

“Accusations of being an Ahmadiyah congregation member have become a stigma for many officials,” said Cecep A. Sentosa, head of Garut’s Ahmadiyah congregation.

He said that on June 13, the Anti-Ahmadiyah Movement organized a demonstration against Ahmadiyah in which the members went in convoy to several administration offices to seek out civil servants who were Ahmadiyah members.

“The demonstrators also demanded the local court and police disband Ahmadiyah and seal our mosques,” he said, adding that the mosques had not been sealed thanks to good coordination between the congregation and local administration officials.

He added that the administration generally took a neutral stance on the issue with the exception of a few officials who demanded Ahmadiyah stop their activities citing pressure from various organizations.

There are currently 1,500 Ahmadiyah members and five active mosques in Garut, Cecep said.

Setara reported that on Aug. 7, a meeting led by the Bayongbong sectorial chief Sutia and attended by the Bayongbong District Leadership Assembly as well as the head of Cigeduk Indonesian Ulema Council “asked” 15 Ahmadiyah members to “repent” by leaving Ahmadiyah.

Ahmadiyah members in Tasikmalaya district and Kuningan district face religious persecution as well. On July 29, hundreds of Islamic extremists attacked an Ahmadiyah mosque in Manis Lor village in Kuningan, West Java.

Bonar of Setara, said Ahmadiyah’s plight was rooted in a joint ministerial decree issued in 2008 that banned congregation members from proselytizing.

“This itself is a violation of the congregation’s religion and human rights from a democratic perspective since the government has no authority to state whether a belief is considered right,” he said, adding that the government, especially local administrations, had chosen not to oppose the oppressive organizations because they provided support when needed. (gzl)

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/10/worst-c...-a-blind-eye.html

Indonesia: Religious violence up: survey

--- The Straits Times, Singapore

Breaking News January 15, 2009 Thursday Updated 11.28 pm

Religious violence up: survey

JAKARTA - RELIGIOUS violence in Indonesia escalated in 2008, researchers said on Thursday.

A study by the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace found 265 cases of violence on religious grounds last year compared to 135 cases in 2007.

‘Religious violence was more sporadic in 2008 than 2007 as more individuals were involved besides the radical Islamic organisations,’ Setara Institute chairman Hendardi, who only uses one name, said.

‘The government’s ban on the Ahmadiyah sect triggered the escalation of religious violence,’ he said of the Muslim sect which claimed as having about 500,000 followers in Indonesia.

The study found 103 religious violence cases alone in June 2008, the month in which the government issued a quasi-ban on the Ahmadiyah sect.

But liberals in the world’s most populous Muslim country lambasted the ban as unconstitutional and criticised the government as caving in to the behest of extremist groups.

Hendardi said the institute used a different method for its latest study.

‘We had field researchers across 10 provinces for the latest study. In 2007, we only observed reports in the media,’ he said, adding that the media had done a thorough job in reporting religious violence in the country. — AFP

URL: www.straitstimes.com/Breaking+News/SE+Asia/Story/STIStory_326614.html