A United States government watchdog called Monday on Indonesia to take action against extremists and reform its laws after a mob beat and stoned to death three members of a minority Muslim group.
A video showed the crowd of more than 1,000 people storming a house in West Java on Sunday to prevent Ahmadiyah Muslims from worship, with police doing nothing as fanatics went berserk with stones, knives and sticks.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, an autonomous board which advises the US government, renewed its call on Indonesia to review its 1965 Blasphemy Law that bars deviations from six sanctioned faiths.
"This is just more deadly evidence that blasphemy laws are the cause of sectarian violence, not the solution," said Leonard Leo, chair of the commission.
"Indonesia is a tolerant county that should be more intolerant of extremist groups," he said. "It's time the Indonesian government brings them to account for the violence and hatred they spread."
The violence comes less than three months after US President Barack Obama visited the world's largest Muslim-majority country and praised its "spirit of religious tolerance" as an "example to the world."
Indonesia's constitution explicitly guarantees freedom of religion. But under pressure from Islamic conservatives, Indonesia in 2008 banned the Ahmadiyah from spreading their faith.
The Ahmadiyah break with most Muslims by believing their founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who was born in 1835 in India, was a divine messenger. The Ahmadiyah, who have also faced a wave of attacks in Pakistan, reject the use of violence in jihad, or holy war.
The leader of the worldwide Ahmadiyah community, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, criticized the "barbarity" of the attacks in Indonesia, noting that "people watching the merciless beatings were clapping and cheering."
"Whenever such attacks occur, the Ahmadiyah Muslim Community both in Indonesia and worldwide always displays patience and seeks solace not in revenge or violence but through prayers to God Almighty, and this will always remain the case," he said in a statement.
"It is, however, certain that those who have inflicted these cruelties will be answerable to God Almighty and will have to face His punishment," he said.