Hard-liners go after Indonesian Islamic sectMosques, homes attacked - radicals seek to ban them
By Anthony Deutsch
July 6, 2008
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An excerpt.
The vast majority of Indonesia's 235 million people are moderate Sunni Muslims. Most view the roughly 200,000 Ahmadis with suspicion, and the government's move to restrict the sect is widely seen as a bid by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to shore up support among voters for his run for a second term next year.
"Our state is a weak state that doesn't dare to enforce the law if it goes against the religious feeling of the majority," said the Rev. Franz Magnis-Suseno, a Jesuit priest and prominent advocate of interfaith relations. "The state has no right to say you may or may not worship." Indonesia's Constitution protects the people's "right to worship according to their own religion or belief,"
though Ahmadiyah opponents argue that the group's beliefs violate a blasphemy law from the 1960s. Ahmadiyah came to Indonesia in 1926 from Punjab, a region straddling the India-Pakistan border, and has branches in 190 countries. The group, which stresses nonviolence and tolerance of other faiths, is banned in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The Ahmadis identify themselves as Muslims, pray five times a day and follow the teachings of the Quran, Islam's holy book. But they hail their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as a messiah and prophet. That offends Muslims who consider Muhammad the final prophet in a line of dozens of historical figures in the monotheistic religions, including Moses, Abraham and Jesus.
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