Word: ahmadiyah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Indonesia's government is caught between its constitutional obligation to protect religious freedom, and the demands of hardline Muslim clerics for the banning of the Ahmadiyah sect. An alliance, including the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), demanded on Tuesday that the government outlaw the Ahmadiyahs, warning that any delay would result in conflict. While falling short of calling for attacks on the group's mosques or followers - many of whom are now in hiding - the clerics threatened to enlist the help of other Muslim countries to pressure Jakarta into issuing an official decree forbidding Ahmadiyah followers from calling themselves Muslims. "They...
...Ahmadiyah are a fringe group who adhere to a spinoff from Islam that arose in India in the late 19th century. Although they consider themselves Muslims, mainstream Sunni and Shi'ite Islam do not recognize them as such, because of a series of Ahmadiyah beliefs deemed contradictory to the basic tenets of Islam - Ahmadiyahs believe, for example, that Muhammad was not Islam's last prophet, and that the sect's founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was the Mahdi or Messiah. The sect is banned in Pakistan, although it has coexisted peacefully with Indonesian Muslims since being established in the country...
...Tuesday's warning comes on the heels of increasing tension between Ahmadiyah followers and Muslims in Lombok and West Java in recent years. In April, a joint ministerial team issued a recommendation that the government ban the group, which subsequently encouraged hardliners to step up pressure on the group and the government to issue a formal ban. Unidentified groups razed an Ahmadiyah mosque two weeks ago in West Java, threatening further violence if the group continued to defy the April 16 ministerial recommendation that the group be outlawed. Similar attacks, with few casualties thus far, have taken place in Sumatra...
...Indonesian Council of Ulemas, would help "re-educate" followers of the group. "If the government issues the ban we will tell our followers to protect them," he told reporters at a press conference. Rizieq said recent clips of an FPI member on the Internet calling for the death of Ahmadiyah followers were taken out of context, as the video was filmed at a closed gathering of FPI members and did not represent the views of his organization, a puritanical group best known for its raids on bars and nightclubs...
...Those who have the most to lose are the millions of Indonesians who are either non-Muslim or belong to heterodox Islamic sects. In 2005, the nation's ruling clerics prohibited interfaith marriage and prayer. The Indonesia Ulema Council also renewed an edict deeming heretical the Islamic sect Ahmadiyah, which claims up to 500,000 members. In the past year, several Ahmadiyah mosques have been forcibly closed or destroyed by mobs, as have dozens of Christian house churches. Separately, a Muslim cleric in East Java was jailed for preaching in Indonesian, as opposed to the normal Arabic. In West Java...