Five high school students in Tolitoli, Central Sulawesi, who recorded themselves dancing to a Maroon 5 song and praying, have been expelled from school and face time in juvenile detention for "tainting religion" after the video surfaced on the Internet.

The five girls were trying to kill time between an hours-long break from classes in the afternoon of March 9 when they made the video.

In a long explanation sent to Detik.com, the headmaster of the school, Muallimin, said he decided to report the students to the police after consulting with the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).

"The students were performing Sholat [prayer] movement with dancing while alternately reciting [the] Koran and turning on 'One More Night' music," Muallimin said, referring to the Maroon 5 song. "The activity was recorded with a mobile phone of one of the students and they forced other student to hold the phone for a duration of five to six minutes."

The students have been expelled from school and were forbidden from taking last week's high school national exam, which counts for 60 percent of a student's final mark to determine whether they will graduate from high school. The expulsion was approved by the FPI Tolitoli branch head, local Youth and Sports Agency, Tolitoli Religious Affairs Ministry and the MUI.

The students were questioned for the first time by police on April 3. Adj. Comr. Alhajat, the Tolitoli Police chief of detectives, said that the five students were charged with blasphemy against religion under article 156 of the Criminal Code.

"Temporarily we use this law, but there's a possibility that we'll charge them with other articles during the process," Alhajat said, as quoted by JPNN.com.

Tolitoli Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Rudy Mulyanto said that the five have not been detained because they are children, but the legal proceeding would continue.

Minister of Education Muhammad Nuh said that the school had reacted disproportionately to the student's video. "Even students in [juvenile detention] were allowed to join national exam," Nuh said on Tuesday, as quoted by Detik.com.

On March 29, a man told his wife, a teacher at the school, the he saw people watching the video at a market. She later reported the case to the school. It was not clear who uploaded the video to YouTube.