Islamist Thuggery and Official Complacency Challenge Secular Foundations of Indonesia

By Zachary Abuza

This month has seen several incidents that are calling into question the Indonesian government’s commitment to maintaining its multi-ethnic and pluralist traditions, enshrined in its national identity the Pancasila.

Today, some 30 Islamist vigilantes attacked a “house church” in a town in West Java, a region where Islamists have traditionally been quite strong. Despite a constitution that enshrines freedom of religion, in order to establish a Christian, Buddhist or Hindu house of worship, a permit must be obtained. The permitting process, as defined in the 21 March 2006 law on religions, includes requirements for the group to have at least 90 members and win the support of at least 60 local residents of a different faith. It is often difficult to obtain such permits, and religious minorities often have informal houses of worship.

But where one sees an even greater hardening of Islamist values is in the state’s handling of Muslim sects. On 9 November, the Indonesian Supreme Court sentenced a leader of a fringe Islamic sect known as Lia Eden, Abdul Rachman, to three years in prison for blasphemy for claiming to be be the reincarnation of the Prophet Muhammad.

On 8 November 2007, the Attorney General’s office banned another Islamic sect, al-Qiyada and arrested its founder Ahmad Moshaddeq, who claimed to be the next Islamic prophet, as well as several other of his followers.

In 2004-06, there was a spate of attacks by hardline Islamist militias, such as the Islamic Defenders Front, on the Ahmadiyah sect. Several Ahmadiyah temples were destroyed and many members were injured in those attacks.

If recent history is any judge, today’s attackers of the Christian house church will not face much if any in the way of official prosecution. The government failed to arrest any FPI members for their attacks on the Ahmadiyah sect. Likewise the FPI’s 2005 march on the Liberal Islam Network headquarters and verbal threats to their leadership was not prosecuted by the state, indeed their right to free speech was cited. The quasi official Ulama’s Council of Indonesia (MUI), now headed by Din Syamsuddin, has only pushed the government to adopt a more conservative position. The MUI issued a number of fatwas against the Liberal Islam Network in 2005, and issued them against al-Qiyadi in 2006. In 1999-2001, the MUI also supported Islamic vigilantism against Christian and Hindu paramilitaries in the Malukus and Central Sulawesi. As reported by the International Herald Tribune, on 15 November 2007, “According to the People's Religious Monitoring Agency, a government body charged with keeping track of potentially heretical sects, there are 250 Islamic sects in Indonesia classified as "deviant." The Ulema Council has issued 86 fatwas against them since 1975.”

What is truly outrageous here is the fact that Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional terrorist group, is not a proscribed entity in Indonesia. Mere membership in JI is not a crime and many JI leaders, such as Abu Bakar Ba’asyir and Muhammad Iqbal Rahman (Abu Jibril), freely proselytize and raise funds for their dawa and social welfare activities. The Majelis Mujihidin Indonesia, an overt civil society organization run by Abu Bakar Ba’asyir has some 13 offices around the country.

Over 80 percent of Indonesia’s 240 million people are Muslim, making it the largest Muslim country in the world. While the majority is moderate, piety has grown rapidly, as has the prevalence of Salafism and Islamists in politics and society.

States have an obligation to uphold the law and defend their religious and ethnic minorities. While the Indonesian government deserves much credit for their determination to target militant terrorist groups, their record in defending the country’s secular traditions is poor. The state’s failure to challenge and roll back gains by Islamists, including gains made through illegal and extralegal activities, is eroding secularism and minority rights and laying the groundwork for a less tolerant society.

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