The reports were indeed entertaining, including one claiming she wrote to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo for permission to land “our UFO” at the National Monument.

Though the coverage of Lia Aminuddin draws amusement, what is largely lost on us is that one cannot easily change people’s beliefs even if they are deemed blasphemous by vocal majorities, in this case adherents of the state-sanctioned religions.

One study on the “Eden Community” suggested dialogue with its followers who were said to include intellectuals not prone to violence. Yet dialogue with anyone feeling that they are victims of blasphemy is close to impossible in our much praised democracy. It has become much easier to use the clauses against blasphemy in the Criminal Code and in the Blasphemy Law issued in 1965.

Those who use the latter are more emboldened since the Constitutional Court upheld the controversial law in 2009 on the grounds that it would “avoid anarchy” and ensure peaceful settlement in the event of anyone feeling that their faith had been insulted.

Since the end of the authoritarian New Order, the latest of over 100 convictions for blasphemy occurred on Tuesday. Leaders of the banned Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar) were sentenced to three to five years in prison. Among others charges, the leaders were found guilty of ordering group members to abandon mandatory Islamic rituals such as regular praying, fasting and going on the haj.

However, like other cases before them, we remain unconvinced as to how criminalizing blasphemy has managed to “avoid anarchy”. Indeed, the Constitutional Court argued that the Blasphemy Law was not about freedom of faith but of prohibiting insults against religion as defined by the representatives of the six state-sanctioned religions.

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