THE killing of three followers of the Ahmadiyah faith by a frenzied group of Islamists this week has left Indonesia reflecting on how closely it lives up to its national credo ''unity in diversity''.
Captured in horrific detail, on a video taken with a mobile phone, were the lifeless bodies of three men, stripped naked, being battered by stones and staves as hundreds of onlookers cheer. The police either stand back or, in the case of one officer, try half-heartedly to shoo away the attackers.
It was grotesque, stomach-churning stuff. And it was widely circulated throughout the country.
Then, two days later, a marauding mob of militants attacked churches and torched vehicles in central Java, upset that a man who had been found to have blasphemed Islam was given a five-year sentence, the maximum, and not death.
The country's reputation for religious harmony - lauded by US President Barack Obama as an ''example to the world'' on his historic visit to his boyhood home last year - is in tatters. After the violence, comes the self-examination.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has condemned the violence as ''intolerable' ' and vowed a full investigation. Many Muslim leaders also voiced their abhorrence, and there were soul-searching editorials in the press.
Yet the response of many Indonesian lawmakers and officials to the murder of the Ahmadis betrayed the sentiments that have underpinned the apparent disregard of anti-Ahmadiyah violence that has been evident in Indonesia for years.
Members of Ahmadiyah - a variant of Islam that follows the teachings of the Koran but regards an Indian preacher, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as a ''messiah'' who followed the Prophet Muhammad - ''should repent'', said Imran Muchtar, a parliamentarian from Dr Yudhoyono's Democratic Party.
Hazrul Azwar, a lawmaker from an Islamic party in Dr Yudhoyono's coalition, bemoaned that ''the fake prophet [Ghulam Ahmad] is a disgrace to my religion. Clerics in the whole world have banned Ahmadiyah; why is the government not doing the same thing?''
Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali, who has called for the group to be outlawed, said: ''The government hasn't made any decision on what to do [but] the suggestion to disband the Ahmadiyah will be a very valuable input for us.''
Put simply, for many, the problems suffered by Ahmadiyah - which has about 200,000 adherents in Indonesia and has been here since 1925 - are brought on themselves.
In Mataram, the capital of West Lombok district, Ahmadis driven from their homes live in a decrepit refugee centre, families packed into tiny cubicles fashioned from bamboo and rattan inside a crumbling building.
Clutching his grandson, Harun, a fisherman, sums up a life on the move since his village Kruak was first attacked in 1998. He had lived peacefully there for more than 15 years, he says, when, with no warning, a group of 50 men from outside Kruak destroyed the homes and prayer room of 15 Ahmadis.
He moved to Pancor, another small village. In 2002, the Ahmadis were attacked again by a group of teenagers.
Harun and some of the other Ahmadis then shifted to Gegerung, moving into a housing development that no one would inhabit because it was on the edge of a sand mine and close to a cemetery.
The locals were welcoming and, initially, it seemed the Ahmadis had found a safe place. But in 2006, a group of Islamists destroyed their homes. The Ahmadis returned to rebuild, and were attacked again in November.
''It is very sad. I don't understand why this happens, and why the police do nothing,'' Harun said.
Rather than attempt to find and prosecute the perpetrators and their ideological leaders, authorities here have proposed to send the Ahmadis to a deserted island, Gili Tangkong.
It would be exile in their own country, says Sahidin, another Ahmadi at the shelter.
''I have been there. It is 300 metres long. It has no fresh water. It's small and not liveable. Why can't we return to our homes?''
Comments