Nabiha Shahab, Jakarta – Liberal Indonesians accused the government of caving in to extremists Tuesday after it issued a quasi-ban against a minority Islamic sect in the face of violent protests by Muslim hardliners.
Islamic conservatives welcomed the move and demanded an all-out ban on the Ahmadiyah sect, but liberals in the world's most populous Muslim country condemned Monday's ministerial decree as unconstitutional.
"The government has been weakened by this decision, weakened in the sense that aggressive or extremist fundamentalist Muslims have taken a good lesson from this. They know they can put pressure on the government," said lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution, an advisor to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"I would say this is the beginning of a further war between Indonesians who want to maintain a secular state, an open democratic society, and those who want to dominate (and turn) the country into a Muslim country."
Ahmadiyah leaders said they did not recognise the decree and would appeal. "In the decree it's not detailed what kind of activities are forbidden so we'll keep doing all our rituals," Zafrullah Pontoh, a senior leader of the sect, told a press conference.
He asked whether the sect's three monthly blood-donation drive was one of the activities forbidden under the decree. "We are also the biggest eye donor of any Muslim organisation in this country, is that also forbidden?" he asked.
Television reports showed Ahmadis praying at home instead of their mosques out of fear of further attacks by radical vigilante groups emboldened by the decree.
The edict requires Ahmadiyah, which claims 500,000 followers in Indonesia, to "stop spreading interpretations and activities which deviate from the principal teachings of Islam" or face five years' jail.
Ahmadiyah followers believe the sect's founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was the final prophet of Islam and not Mohammed, breaking one of the basic tenets of the religion.
"The ban is against the Indonesian constitution that guarantees freedom of religion," said Lutfi Assyaukani, chairman of the Liberal Islam Network think tank. Yudhoyono "should have been firm toward the radical Muslim groups but he is bowing to their pressure instead. It's a very shameful decision."
New York-based Human Rights Watch called on Yudhoyono to immediately reverse the restrictions. "The Indonesian government should stand up for religious tolerance instead of prosecuting people for their religious views," the group's Asia director, Brad Adams, said in a statement.
The move comes less than a year ahead of elections and as the archipelago struggles to define its Islamic identity following the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in the late 1990s.
Top clerics have ruled that the sect is "deviant" and a government panel overseeing religious affairs recommended a ban in April, fuelling extremists' demands for the government to act to "protect Islam."
Thousands of hardliners threatened to launch jihad or holy war against Ahmadiyah in angry protests outside police headquarters in central Jakarta on Monday.
The sect's mosques have been burned and even mainstream Muslims who gathered in Jakarta earlier this month in support of freedom of religion were attacked by stick-wielding fanatics.
Nine of the radicals allegedly behind that attack, including preacher Rizieq Shihab who has declared "war" on Ahmadiyah, are in custody. The man who allegedly led the June 1 attack, Munarman, turned himself in late Monday, saying his mission to ban the "infidel" Ahmadis had been accomplished.
Shihab released a statement to the press calling Yudhoyono a "coward" for failing to explicitly outlaw Ahmadiyah. "Ahmadiyah has corrupted Islam. They cannot be contained or protected, they have to be disbanded," he said in the statement released by another radical cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, who visited him in police custody.