Indonesian Sect Comes Under Fire
By Kenneth Conboy
The vast majority of Indonesian Muslims tend to be extremely tolerant toward other religions, and toward the slight variants of Sunni Islam that are practiced across the archipelago. Every so often, however, an Islamic sect crosses the line and is declared heretic by the country’s most senior ulama.
This happened two years ago, when a quasi-Muslim group called Ahmadiyah Indonesia came under scrutiny. Very quickly, mainstream Indonesian Muslims closed ranks and moved decisively against Ahmadiyah communes around the country. In several cases, local residents stormed those communes, turning thousands of Ahmadiyah adherents into refugees.
History is now repeating itself. On 23 July, the head of an Islam offshoot called al-Qiyadah al-Islamiyah drew attention to itself after its leader, Ahmad Moshaddeq, declared that he was the next Prophet after Mohammad. Shortly thereafter, the Indonesian Ulema Council issued a fatwa calling the group “deviant.”
Pressure against al-Qiyadah has continued to steadily mount. This past Tuesday, Moshaddeq was questioned by the Jakarta police. The latter are weighing the possibility of charging him with blasphemy, a crime in the Indonesian criminal code that carries a penalty of five years in prison.
More disturbing, the Bandung chapter of the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front declared this week that it was prepared to launch raids against al-Qiyadah communes in West Java. (The sect is believed to count about 41,000 members in nine Indonesian cities.) If the Ahmadiyah case offers any precedent, at least a few such raids can be expected.
As this has played out, the Indonesian Ulema Council has come under some criticism in the media. After all, al-Qiyadah members apparently profess peaceful beliefs, but still were quickly condemned by the council. By contrast the council offered no similar criticism when Jemaah Islamiyah suicide bombers took hundreds of lives in Bali and Jakarta between 2002 and 2005.