Ary Hermawan, Jakarta – Religious violence against minority group Ahmadiyah stems from the weakening of the Indonesian Islamic thought movement and the government's ineptitude meet the basic needs of its citizens, experts say.
Ahmadiyah, a messianic movement found by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Qadian, Punjab, India in 1889, entered Indonesia in the first decades of the twentieth century, during which the early followers of the sect eagerly – and peacefully – spread their teachings through publications and public debates.
Today the Islamic sect is on the brink of being officially outlawed by the government after its mosques were burnt and some of its adherents now desperately search for asylum.
Muslim scholar Luthfi Assyaukanie, who studied Islamic Law at Jordan University and took his doctoral degree from Melbourne University, said the Ahmadiyah case reflected a weakening effort to rejuvenate understanding about Islam and enlighten Muslim communities.
"The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and the Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council (DDII) are controlled by those who defy the (Islamic) rejuvenation movement. They also dominate state agencies with certain religious authorities," he told The Jakarta Post. The MUI declared Ahmadiyah "deviant" and demanded the government outlaw its activities.
While recognizing and praising the achievement of the late Muslim scholar Nurcholis Madjid in separating Islam from politics, Luthfi said the iconic progressive Muslim thinker failed to deeply cultivate the value of pluralism in Muslim communities.
Thamrin Amal Tamagola, an anthropologist from University of Indonesia, said the violence against Ahmadiyah followers was not only triggered by differences in religious doctrine but also the economic disparities between the Ahmadiyah community and the majority of Muslims where they live.
"The society is divided vertically by wealth and horizontally by ethnic, race and religion. The horizontal conflicts that lead to violence usually occur when there is a wide gap in terms of wealth between two different groups," he said.
He said Ahmadiyah followers were an exclusive community and therefore able to use their cohesion to develop their businesses.
"Being a minority, they tend to become exclusive and think they can only survive by supporting each other economically. Look at their cooperatives and small businesses, they are sufficiently wealthy. This exacerbates the tension between them and mainstream Muslims. "
Both Thamrin and Luthfi called on the government to adhere to the Constitution by maintaining religious freedom and dropping its plan to ban Ahmadiyah.
They said the MUI was initially established by the New Order to smooth its religiously controversial policies, including the Family Planning (KB) program. "It's part of the past," Thamrin said.
The government has not announced a decision about Ahmadiyah – whether it will favor Muslim hard-liners who demand the Islamic sect be banned or the rights activists who have said such a move would contravene religious freedom.
Some analysts, however, fear that politicians will use the issue as a political commodity.
"I suspect the state is deliberately using this issue to distract us from bigger problems such as the disappearance of several basic commodities and the planned fuel price hike," Abdul Latif Bustami, who works at Partnership for Governance Reform at UNDP, said.
"In the end, I guess we all have to return to the old debate about the separation of church and state," Thamrin said.