The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) is backing a recent string of local regulations restricting the activities of Ahmadiyah members.

“Of course we support [the regional administrations’ acts] because they are the ones who govern their territories and that’s their stance so why not support them?” Attorney General Basrief Arief said Wednesday as quoted by Antara news agency.

Basrief said local administration decisions to issue certain bylaws restricting Ahmadiyah must have been based on their understanding of the social conditions in the region and the desire to keep public order.

If Ahmadiyah is believed to incite violence and disrupt public order, “it is the regional administration’s right [to ban Ahmadiyah],” he said.

Ahmadiyah teachings were deemed heretical and blasphemous towards Islam by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI). Followers of the faith have been a target of mob attacks in recent years.

The pattern is always the same: Violent groups conducted intimidation through rallies and local governments issue bans “to maintain security in their regions”.

Legal experts have said regional administrations do not have the authority to rule on religious matters.

In the wake of a bloody attack on followers of the minority religious group in Pandeglang, Banten, last month, the pressure on Ahmadis is increasing.

Several local administrations across the country have bowed to pressure from radical organizations and officially banned Ahmadiyah in their provinces. Those administrations yielded to certain groups that constantly pressured them through rallies, as well as through other forms of violent intimidation.

On Monday, the South Sumatra administration officially banned Ahmadiyah in the province, citing the sect as “not compatible with Islamic teachings”.

The decision came from acting governor Mahyudin NS after a meeting with officials from South Sumatra’s Religious Affairs Ministry, prosecutors, representatives from the MUI and other Islamic organizations and academics from Palembang-based Raden Fatah State Islamic Institute.

The same day, East Java’s governor issued a decree prohibiting all Ahmadis in Indonesia’s second most populous province from any kind of activities related to Ahmadiyah.

On Feb. 26, Samarinda’s mayor enacted a regulation which closed down Ahmadiyah’s houses of worship and halted their religious activities in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, a week after Pandeglang’s regent issued a decree banning all Ahmadiyah worship in the regency.

Former Constitutional Court chief justice Jimly Asshiddiqie suggested that all parties, including the legal aid foundation and NGOs, use the judicial system to deal with violent groups, saying it was better to disband Ahmadiyah as they were at the root of the violence.

“To avoid making matters worse, use legal methods against the groups. Such issues will always lead to never-ending pros and cons while court verdicts will be legally binding and must be obeyed by everybody,” he said.

The Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), which represents Ahmadiyah congregations, is preparing to fight back by demanding reviews of the discriminative regulations.

“We are still looking at the local regulations and will file reviews of those discriminatory policies with the Supreme Court or the State Administrative Court very soon,” YLBHI advocacy director Abdul Kadir told The Jakarta Post Wednesday.

“So far, we have collected 11 bylaws across the country,” he said.

In the meantime, Abdul said his team would keep pushing the government, in this case the Home Ministry, to revoke the local policies.

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