|
WE Filipinos have had the best of relations with
Indonesians, through all the twists and turns of their and our
respective country’s histories.
A fascinating fact about
Indonesia—which has a population of about 245 million and is the
world’s fourth most populous nation—is that it has the world’s
largest Muslim population but remains a secular state.
Recent events, however, could
indicate that Indonesia might cease to be a secular state before
long. These have to do with a heretical Muslim sect, the Jemaah
Ahmadiyah, which came to Indonesia from Pakistan in 1925.
In the past 83 years, Ahmadiyah
has grown to be a sect with 200,000 adherents in Indonesia. It’s a
gnat compared with the more than 215 million Muslim Indonesians who
are members of the mainstream sects.
The Ahmadis have their own
mosques and mullahs and imams. But the gulf that separates Shiites
and Sunnis and other Muslim sects from one another is not as wide as
that which separates Ahmadiyah from any other Muslim sect. For
Ahmadis believe that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was the last
prophet of God, not Mohammed.
Orthodox Islam believes that the
great prophets of Allah, the One True God, were Abrahim, Moses,
Jesus and Mohammed. The Ahmadis are therefore breaking one of the
fundamental articles of the mainstream Islamic faith. Until
recently, no one bothered much with the Ahmadis. With the rise of
fundamentalist Islam in the past decade, however, they have been
persecuted. In 2005, 2006, 2007 until today, they have, according to
the Indonesian Human Rights Commission, suffered gross human rights
violations.
Department of Religion edict
The attacks on Amhadiyah mosques,
priests and members increased after 1980, when the Indonesian
Council of Clerics—the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI)—issued a
fatwa against the sect for being heretical. The Saudi Arabian
Embassy in Indonesia even got involved. It wrote the Indonesian
government’s Department of Religion recommending that the sect be
banned. Three years later, the Department of Religion issued an
edict proclaiming Ahmadiyah to be heretical and a danger to the
Indonesian nation.
Indonesia’s Human Rights
Commission then formed a special task committee to monitor the
Ahmadis’ plight. It found that once the government made its formal
declaration of heresy, groups of Muslims—organized in mosques or
religious association heaquarters—actively marched against the
Ahmadis with placards and banners. They shouted threats, evicted
Ahmadis who were praying, vandalized and even burned mosques. Some
local law and order authorities and policemen even participated in
the attacks.
Civil Society to the rescue
Radical and hardline Muslim sects
began to hold regular rallies and raids against the Ahmadis. It came
to a point that civil society groups, including moderate Muslims and
Christian human rights activists moved to defend the Ahmadis.
Central government authorities then took action, arrested and jailed
perpetrators of violence.
But this only increased the fury
of the Muslim demonstrators, crying “Jihad! Jihad! Jihad! (Holy
war! Holy War! Holy war!)” and threatening to break open the jails
were the arrested radicals were kept.
Five principles
The Indonesian constitution
guarantees freedom of religion, although it recognizes only some
major religions and sects, namely,
Islam (with 88 percent of the
population), Protestantism (5 percent), Catholicism (3 percent),
Buddhism (2 percent), Hinduism (1 percent) and Confucianism (less
than 1 percent). In Bali, over 90 percent of the population
practices Hinduism. In some remote areas, the religion of the
tribals is animist.
The secularism of official
Indonesia comes from its modern founding fathers’ philosophy of
Pancasila (pronounced Pantjasila) meaning “the five principles”
that are the philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state. These
are: (1) Belief in the one and only God; (2) Just and civilized
humanity; (3) Unity of Indonesia; (4) Democracy through consultation
and representation; (5) Social justice for all the Indonesian
people.
Though the pancasila’s “One
God” principle obviously favors the Muslims and the Christians
(Protestants and Catholics), through the decades—until recent
years when radical fundamentalism has gained millions of
adherents—animists, Hindus and Taoists-Buddhists-Confucianists
(mainly Chinese Indonesians) have been respected and allowed to
practice their religions unmolested.
Then on Monday, June 9, the
government announced tough restrictions against the Jemaah Ahmadiyah
while up to 5,000 angry Muslim hardliners, shouted calls for holy
war and waved banners outside police headquarters and blocked the
main route to the presidential palace.
The government decree did not
quite fulfill the fundamentalist Muslims’ demand for the abolition
of Ahmadiyah. But it will surely kill it as a public religion. It
forbids Ahmadiyah from “spreading interpretations and activities
that deviate from the principal teachings of Islam.” It specifies
as forbidden “the spreading of the belief that there is another
prophet with his own teachings after Prophet Mohammed.”
End of diversity?
The Indonesian government wants
to be seen as a modern and human-rights sensitive institution. So
Attorney General Hendarman Supanji told the world “There has been
no dissolution [of Ahmadiyah].” But it is not even clear if the
Ahmadis may practice their heretical version of Islam in private.
Outside, cries of “Allahu Akbar!
(God is great!)” and “Jihad! Jihad!” filled the air.
What a great pity it will be if
our Indonesian cousins ultimately reject their inspired republican
motto: “Bhinneka tunggal ika. (Unity in Diversity).”
|
