The events at Cikeusik are tragic: The murder of three Ahmadis is unjustifiable. The perpetrators of the violence acted outside of the law, outside the teachings of Islam, and outside the values enshrined in the Indonesian constitution and the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights — of which Indonesia is a signatory.

There is nothing natural, inevitable or accidental about these attacks. These are attacks that could have and should have been stopped. The police had forewarning of the movement of the attackers.

The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has stated that there was as much as two days warning of an impending attack of some 1-2,000 people. Other attacks against Ahmadiyah could have also informed the police as to the possible violence of the attack.

That the police were overwhelmed and impotent in countering the attackers indicates a degree of culpability. Yet, it is not just the law enforcement agencies that are implicated. The efforts of many public Muslim intellectuals in Indonesia are yet to gain widespread public legitimacy.

In the post-Gus Dur and post-Nurcholish Madjid era, the strong advocacy of intellectuals such as Luthfi Assyaukanie and Ulil Abshar Abdalla remain too easily lost in the louder din of leaders and officials who either promote a rigid orthodoxy or are not able to stand against it.

These attacks do not add further evidence to debates about whether or not Islam is a tolerant religion. Instead, these attacks show the power of some state institutions — i.e. the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and the Religious Affairs Ministry — in shaping discourses on what is acceptable Islamic practice. The fatwa against secularism, liberalism and pluralism issued by the MUI in July 2005, and their fatwas against the Ahmadiyah in 1980 and 2008 have been met with some resistance, but, as evidenced by the ongoing attacks against Ahmadis, they have been widely accepted as being reasonable and reflective of many people’s attitudes.

Some comments in the wake of the events show that some politicians are blaming the victims for the practicing of a ‘deviant’ interpretation of Islam. There are still repeated calls for Ahmadiyah to be disbanded.

Organizations such as The Wahid Institute and The Setara Institute, have, in the yearly reports, found an increase in violations of religious freedom as well as acts of intolerance. These acts of intolerance include demonstrations against the building of churches, efforts to remove Ahmadi communities, attacks on churches and mosques. As a recent report by International Crisis Group has argued, religious intolerance has increased due to governmental inability to prosecute those who violate laws, growth of vigilante groups, an increase in proselytization and a reluctance to prosecute hate speech (Indonesia: “Christianization” and Intolerance, Nov. 24, 2010).

The SKB (Surat Keputusan Bersama — Joint Decree) of 2008 issued by the Religious Affairs Ministry (Suryadharma Ali), the Home  Ministry (Gamawan Fauzi) and the Attorney General (Hendarman Supandji) limited the freedom of Ahmadis to spread their religion and to practice it in an open manner. In the eyes of many, Ahmadiyah is deviant, as some of its followers accept that the founder of the movement, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is also a prophet. This goes against general Islamic orthodoxy that the Prophet Muhammad is the final prophet of Islam.

The Nation of Islam, a politically oriented African-American religious movement, also accepted that
their founder, Wallace D. Fard Muhammad was also a prophet. The belief of Ahmadiyah in the prophethood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is unacceptable to many Muslims in Indonesia — as it is to many Muslims elsewhere.

Many contributors to polemics against Ahmadiyah have stated their displeasure that Ahmadis consider themselves to be Muslims. Difference of religion, however, is a part of everyday life in Indonesia.

Moreover, Indonesian law accepts freedom of belief and conviction.

The problem is not whether or not Ahmadiyah is acceptable as a faith or not, but, the shifting tendency in public religious discourses to allow less and less space for tolerance of ‘the other’, or indeed, engagement and acceptance of ‘the other’ — whether this otherness be based on religion or interpretation of a particular religion.

There is no shortage of intellectuals who argue for freedom of religion and the rights of individuals to believe in their convictions. In a recent article in Kompas (Jan. 9, 2011), Sukidi (a PhD student at Harvard University) argues that: “every citizen must be treated equally and without discrimination.”

“Every citizen has the right to worship, be free to embrace their beliefs and to establish places of worship without difficulty.” While on the same day, Saiful Mujani (of UIN Jakarta) argued in Tempo that “with the SKB of 2008, it is clear that Ahmadis lost their most fundamental human rights as citizens — that is the freedom of belief and the right to practice their beliefs”.

Elsewhere, a two-volume publication of interviews with over 70 Muslim intellectuals defending freedom of religion can be found in Budhy Munawar-Rachman (ed.), Membela Kebebasan Beragama (Jakarta: LSAF, 2010).

The events of the Feb. 6 represent a black and tragic moment in the interaction of different faith communities. The killing of Ahmadis was an act of denial of otherness, difference and plurality. This occurred not only at the level of discourse, but entered the physical realm: The bodies of three Ahmadis were violated in the most base and gruesome manner. Subsequently, their corpses were mutilated.

In such moments, there is no space left for dialogue, there is no space left for ideas espoused by Muslim leaders the world over. What speaks is anger, the sense of being threatened, the sense of a challenge from the other and the will to deny the other.

But again, these acts were neither natural nor inevitable. The aggressors were not locals and had pre-arranged the attacks.

Just as anywhere else, the acts of individuals are a result of a complex set of processes and forces that cannot be reduced to either nationality or religion. The acts of Muslims cannot be reduced and limited back to the Koran — the Holy Scripture of Islamic faith. Muslims, like others of other faiths or of no faith, interpret texts based on their own understanding (whether that understanding being enlightened or prejudiced) in complement with more public discourses on religious faith and practice.

Unfortunately, recently, there have been tendencies that give too much legitimacy to discourses on
Islam that promote strong distinctions between what is legitimate Islamic practice and what is not.

Tragically, those who feel that they are ‘legitimate’ have felt it their right to kill those who are ‘deviant’. The act of visitation of violence upon Ahmadis — no more than a minority religious group — in Cikeusik, need not be repeated. Nor should it be taken as evidence of the imagined intolerant nature of Islam.

The strong advocacy of intellectuals remain too easily lost in the louder din of leaders and officials who either promote a rigid orthodoxy.


Dr. Andy Fuller is a research fellow at Freedom Institute (Jakarta) and a researcher at The University of Melbourne.

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