Dessy Sagita – The head of Indonesia's Constitutional Court on Friday said calls by the president to disband violent organizations in the wake of the recent religious violence would do little to address intolerance.
Mahfud M.D. said the best solution was to take "firm legal action" against anyone implicated in violence.
On Wednesday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spoke out against what many perceive to be as a growing wave of intolerance by the Muslim majority, saying the law should be used to disband groups advocating violence.
"For those groups proven to have violated the law, engaged in violence and caused unrest in society, if they need to be dissolved, then ways should be sought to do that in line with the law and democracy," Yudhoyono said.
He said the murder of three members of Ahmadiyah, a minority Muslim sect, in Pandeglang, Banten, on Sunday and anti-Christian violence in Temanggung, Central Java, on Tuesday must not happen again. "If it is allowed, we will regress," he said.
Mahfud said dissolving an organization was a complicated and lengthy process.
"First, we have to make sure that the organization is registered at the Ministry of Home Affairs, because if it's not registered it's considered non-existent, thus impossible to dissolve," he said.
"Second, there must be evidence that he organization violated the country's ideology, received grants from another country or helped those countries without informing the government: only then they can be dissolved."
He said the most viable option was to enforce the law. "What we need is the real action on the field, when someone is playing judge, arrest them right away, bring them to court," he said.
Mahfud said that from a constitutional perspective, the Ahmadiyah case was problematic.
He said the Constitution stipulated that freedom of religion should be upheld. However, he said, the Constitution also stated that the government must regulate religious communities to ensure there was no conflict because of multiple interpretations or multiple beliefs.