http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/03/11/antagonizing-religious-minorities.html
Antagonizing religious minorities
Endy M. Bayuni, Asia Pacific Bulletin, Washington | Fri, 03/11/2011 9:25 PM |
Opinion
Blasphemy can be a deadly affair in Indonesia and Pakistan, two of Asia's
largest Muslim-majority countries. Triggered by allegations of blasphemy,
virulent mob attacks against those perceived to have offended Islam have rocked
the two countries in recent months.
While Indonesia and Pakistan have laws that specifically address issues of
blasphemy, those unfortunate enough to be labeled blasphemers are rarely taken
to court. Encouraged by, if not with tacit approval from, conservative Muslim
leaders, Indonesian and Pakistani mobs have been taking the law into their own
hands instead.
On Feb. 5, three Indonesian adherents of Ahmadiyah, a sect with origins in
19th-century British India and considered heretical by many Muslims, were
killed when a mob raided their house in Pandeglang, a town in Banten province
to the southwest of Jakarta.
This was the deadliest attack yet on the sect - which has 200,000 to 500,000
followers in Indonesia - that subscribes to most of the tenets of Islam but
recognizes its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as a prophet. Sunni Muslims, the
great majority of Indonesians, believe that Muhammad is the last prophet, and
any claim to the contrary is considered offensive to Islam and thus blasphemous.
Under great pressure from Muslim conservative groups, the Indonesian government
has been trying to persuade - to no avail - Ahmadis, followers of Ahmadiyah, to
cease all "deviant" religious activities and "return to the right path," or at
the very least drop their claim to being Muslims. This is the gist of a 2008
joint decree signed by Indonesia's Minister of Religious Affairs, Minister of
Home Affairs, and Attorney General.
Deriving its legal basis from an anti-blasphemy law originally promulgated in
1965, the joint decree also enjoins that Muslims refrain from attacking
Ahmadis. As Ahmadis refused to obey the joint decree, conservative Muslim
groups have grown impatient and attacks on Ahmadis have become more frequent
and more violent. A YouTube video of the Feb. 5 raid shows frenzied attackers
beating an Ahmadi to death while shouting "God is great" in - or perhaps
because of - the presence of unstirred police officers.
Two days later, with Indonesia still in shock after the brutal attack on the
Ahmadis, another mob vandalized several churches in Temanggung, a town in
Central Java. The trigger this time was a district court's ostensibly
insufficiently harsh conviction of a man charged with insulting Islam through
the leaflets he had produced and circulated around town.
Antonius Richmond Bawengan had received the maximum sentence of five years
under the anti-blasphemy law, but the crowd amassing in court to hear the
verdict demanded nothing less than the death penalty. That Bawengan's leaflets
also insulted Christianity mattered little to the mostly Muslim crowd. More
disturbingly, attacks on Christian churches and schools have become more
frequent under many pretexts, blasphemous or otherwise.
In Pakistan, two top government officials have been assassinated in the last
two months for speaking out against the anti-blasphemy law, apparently a
capital offense. On March 2, Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a
Christian and a member of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, was shot in
Islamabad by unidentified gunmen as he left home for work.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, although Bhatti had said
before his death that he had received many death threats. There was no doubt
about who killed Salman Taseer, the governor of the Punjab, on Jan. 3: his own
bodyguard.
Instead of widespread handwringing, reports from Pakistan immediately after the
murder described massive rallies of Muslim conservatives who endorse the
murder. Both men spoke in defense of Asiya Bibi, a Christian farmer who was
sentenced to death for insulting prophet Muhammad and is awaiting execution.
Although the anti-blasphemy law has been part of the criminal code since the
creation of Pakistan, the death penalty was introduced in 1984 as an addition
to life imprisonment for offenses that amount to insulting Islam, the Koran,
and Prophet Muhammad. Only in 1992 did capital punishment become mandatory for
those specific offenses.
Nevertheless, while no execution has taken place in Pakistan under the
anti-blasphemy law, extrajudicial killings of over 30 people presumed guilty of
those offenses by angry individuals or mobs have occurred. According to the
Asian Human Rights Commission, at least 1,030 people had also been charged for
blasphemy in Pakistan since 1986. The fatalities figures exclude Ahmadis who,
as in Indonesia, have been the target of recurrent violent attacks. In May
2010, a mob massacred 86 Ahmadis in a Lahore mosque after Friday prayers.
Furthermore, Pakistan has declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslims and continued to
let violent persecution of the sect persist. This is little comfort for
Indonesian Ahmadis who are under pressure to drop their claim to being Muslims.
In light of these recent events, there is little hope of seeing the
anti-blasphemy laws in Indonesia and Pakistan repealed any time soon. On the
contrary, both governments are under growing pressure from conservative Muslim
groups to deal even more harshly with religious minorities that are perceived
to offend Islam and with any effort to alter the legal status quo.
Presiding over a precarious coalition government, Pakistani Prime Minister
Yousaf Raza Gillani has ruled out repealing the anti-blasphemy law, and Sherry
Rehman, a coalition politician whose bill would repeal the law, has been told
to withdraw the offending bill. In Indonesia, the Constitutional Court rejected
by a majority decision a petition to have the 1965 anti-blasphemy law annulled
in April 2010.
The anti-blasphemy law's increasing use in the two countries is a reflection of
the growing political clout of conservative Muslim organizations, and religious
minorities are increasingly finding themselves at the wrong end of the law. The
Ahmadis are the most vulnerable because their belief itself is considered
blasphemous by the majority Muslims.
At a time of increasing religious intolerance, conservative Muslims may
construe any indication of slight by members of other religious minorities,
Christians in particular, to be a blasphemous offense. A relative absence of
government intervention in cases of violent vigilantism, a judiciary unwilling
to stand up for the defense of minority rights, and a legislature swayed by
conservative Muslim leaders cannot but undermine the underpinnings of the
state.
Leaders of Indonesia and Pakistan should know what to do: the Indonesian and
Pakistani constitutions do provide for, respectively, religious freedom and the
protection for citizens to practice their faith, and the protection of the
rights of religious minorities.
Indonesia and Pakistan support the resolution on "the defamation of religions"
at the UN Human Rights Council. Each year, the Council votes on the resolution,
which is proposed by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic
Congress, to address concerns about the rise of Islamophobia around the world.
Looking at recent events, Indonesia and Pakistan have a far bigger problem at
home than Islamophobia.
The writer is visiting fellow at the East-West Center in Washington and
formerly editor-in-chief of
The Jakarta Post.
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