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NU opposes blasphemy law review
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country’s largest Muslim organization, said Sunday it was against the move made by some NGOs and backers of pluralism to request the Constitutional Court to review the 1965 Blasphemy Law
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ahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country’s largest Muslim organization, said Sunday it was against the move made by some NGOs and backers of pluralism to request the Constitutional Court to review the 1965 Blasphemy Law.
NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi told a national meeting of former members of NU Students Association in Jakarta that he expected the court to reject the request, saying that revising the law would do more harm than good to society.
“We have to be able to differentiate between democracy and moral deviation,” Hasyim said as quoted by Antara.
Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali also expressed opposition to the NGO moves. “If the law is eventually scrapped, then many people will cast aspersions against other religions,” he said in Medan as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.
Hasyim, who has headed the NU since 1999, said the NGOs should be thankful that the law has provided the government with a legal instrument to prevent disturbances arising from alleged blasphemous acts.
The NU, founded in 1926, has around 40 million members, mainly in Java. It was set up to preserve traditional Islam against colonialism and the spread of Wahabism.
A group called the Advocacy Alliance for Freedom of Religion filed the judicial review request at the Constitutional Court in November last year. They believed the 1965 law was discriminatory against certain religious groups.
The first hearing will be held Feb. 4, hearing opinions from representatives of the government and the House of Representatives.
The group includes Imparsial, the Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam), the Indonesian Human Rights and Legal Aid Association (PBHI), the Institute for Studies on Human Rights and Democracy (Demos), the Setara Institute, the Desantara Foundation and the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI).
Also included in the group filing the lawsuit were national icons of pluralism, including the late Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, who chaired NU before Hasyim, recipient of the Magsaysay Award and former Muhammadiyah chairman Syafii Maarif, and noted Muslim intellectual Dawam Rahardjo.
Muhammad Nurkhoiron, director of Desantara, whose members are also in NU, said Hasyim Muzadi’s reflected his fear of the birth of new religious sects which would oppose established religions.
However, Nurkhoiron said no one could guarantee that any laws, especially the 1965 law on blasphemy, could stop the emergence of new religious sects or groups. “That’s a sociological fact.
“One cannot deny the fact that some people are no longer satisfied with the more established religions. The problem is that I don’t think Hasyim understands sociology,” he said.
