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Indonesian village struggles with ban on sect

More than 70 percent of Manis Lor’s 4,000 people are members of Ahmadiyya, a 130-year-old Muslim sect in the Sufi strain that holds that its founder was the Messiah; Sunni fundamentalists have denounced it as heretical. The villagers have been attacked at least three times in the past.

On Tuesday, a day after Indonesia’s government issued a decree calling on the country’s 200,000 Ahmadiyya adherents to cease practicing their faith or face arrest, rumors swept through Manis Lor and surrounding towns that hard-line Muslim groups were planning protests, demonstrations or possibly an assault.

“I am sad, and I am angry,” said one lifelong resident of Manis Lor, Ani, 49, on Tuesday. “We feel like our hearts are being torn apart.”

“I feel abandoned by my government,” she said. “I don’t understand why they don’t accept me.” Meanwhile, Muslim groups across Indonesia, both moderate and conservative, were meeting to consider how to respond to the government’s decision, which had been anticipated for months and appears to have satisfied no one.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed the decree on Monday. He had been under pressure for months to take some sort of action as sect members frequently came under physical attack from fundamentalist Muslims. The situation had been viewed as a test for Yudhoyono, who relies on the support of conservative Muslims and is up for re-election next year.

Yudhoyono kept putting off a decision but was finally forced to address it after a hard-line group attacked participants in an interfaith rally in Jakarta on June 1, when speakers defended Ahmadiyya.

Since then, TV stations have repeatedly played the footage of the extremists beating people with sticks and screaming their demands that Ahmadiyya be banned or face more attacks. Prominent members of both moderate and extremist Muslim groups have joined the debate over the constitutional issues.

Human rights advocates accuse the president of giving in to a vocal but extreme minority. Lawyers for the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation said they planned to file a lawsuit on behalf of Ahmadiyya. Meanwhile, the Islamic Lawyers’ Organization is preparing a defense of the group responsible for the June 1 attack.

Ahmadiyya is viewed with suspicion, he added, because members pray separately from other Muslims in their own mosques, send their children to Ahmadiyya schools and live in an isolated community.

Nearly 90 percent of Indonesia’s 240 million people are Muslims. It is the world’s largest Islamic population, with more Muslims than the entire Middle East.

The Indonesian Constitution ensures religious freedom, but the government recognizes only five official religions — Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism and Buddhism.
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