The on-going campaign in Indonesia, to ban and persecute the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
underscores the challenges facing the nation in protecting human rights,
forging a secular identity and strengthening the spirit of democracy and rule
of law. It is worth recalling that freedom of belief is a fundamental human
right, guaranteed by the Indonesian Constitution, and no citizen can be denied
this right on the grounds of his or her beliefs. Any thinking citizen would
agree that as a religious order, the Ahmadiyya has every right to preach and
propagate all of its doctrines and beliefs. It is immaterial for a secular
state whether the beliefs or ritual practices may or may not conform to the
beliefs and practices of the other denominations in Islam.
The religio-political campaign obviously seeks to discredit the
teachings of the Ahmadiyya community and to call attention to the
"danger" faced from this intrinsically peaceful sect of Islam. Instead
of displaying sectarian intolerance and moral bankruptcy, the orthodox
leadership would do well to engage the Ahmadiyya Muslims in a theological,
civilized, intellectual debate and thereby show a modicum of respect for the
faith, intellect and convictions of ordinary Muslim citizens and others.
The sectarian politics of religious mobilization and its current
manifestations will have divisive implications for the country's plural future.
Clearly, banning the movement to prevent its spiritual appeal or declaring it a
non-Muslim minority to stop its growth is not the business of a secular
government. Leaders of the country and conscientious citizens would do well to
reflect over the politically disastrous and socially divisive legacy of
Pakistan's experiment with the criminalization of the Ahmadiyya sect. Social
scientists and political analysts have, in recent times, traced the growth of
Muslim extremism and cultural intolerance in Pakistan and elsewhere, to the
divisive politics of anti-Ahmadiyya rhetoric.
At one level, what is at stake is the very notion of human rights and rule
of law in a secular democracy. Extremists and right-wing Muslim orthodoxy
should not be allowed to dictate the future of Indonesian identity. At another
level, perhaps even more importantly, what is at stake for devout Muslims is
the very meaning of being a Muslim in our times. After all, the Holy Qur’an
explicitly states: "Let there be no
compulsion in matters of faith." Islam's plural character and legacy
of religious tolerance needs to be defended, ironically enough, against an
"orthodoxy" that claims to represent it!
In an article published on The Hindu,
one of India’s leading newspapers, on June 15, 2013, Pallavi Iyer has thrown
searching light on the persecution of Ahmadis and other minority religious
denominations and the growing signs of cultural intolerance in Indonesia, the
world’s largest Muslim country.
Read the Article:
Over the last few years, Jakarta has laid down legal infrastructure that
discriminates against religious minorities, allowing Islamists to take the law
into their own hands