Religious Freedom Isn't an Absolute”

By Dr Bernhard Platzdasch
Today Newspaper Singapore
13 June 08

INDONESIA is commonly seen as a tolerant Muslim-majority country that guarantees and protects religious freedom. The current hullabaloo surrounding the legal status of the Islamic Ahmadiyah sect, the pressure by the Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam, FPI) on the government to ban the Ahmadiyah and the government's response to that demand, however, raises a number of questions.

On Monday, an official declaration said Ahmadiyah members "must cease all activities not consistent with the general interpretation of Islam". This long-awaited announcement gave another indication of the government's hesitancy in coming to terms with contentious matters. For those who want the government to take a firmer stance on the Ahmadiyah, the statement lacked the crucial words "prohibit" and "disband". Neither was the announcement illuminating for those wishing for a lenient position regarding Ahmadiyah.

Several commentators have said the statement was vague because President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his advisers needed to put pressure on Ahmadiyah in order not to risk losing the support of "conservative Muslims" ahead of next year's parliamentary and presidential elections. At the same time, the government reportedly felt that it also needed to safeguard the view that Indonesia endorsed and protected religious freedom through its laws and Constitution.

Two things come to mind: First, FPI is a numerically insignificant organisation and Islamist agendas have received only little support in recent national elections. Hence, by keeping up the pressure on Ahmadiyah, the President's team obviously did not cater exclusively to an "Islamist" audience as it did not expect to risk its approval ratings from the non-Islamist Muslim majority.

Catering to "conservative" Islamic sensitivities, the President and his team obviously deemed that, for all their perceived tolerance, it is the "mainstream" Muslim perception that a non-conformist Islamic offshoot like the Ahmadiyah should be barred from practising its tenets.

Indonesian political parties tend to reflect this view. Interestingly, it was not only MPs from Islamist parties (such as PKS), but also religiously neutral parties (Golkar) who publicly said last week that the government should issue a ban on Ahmadiyah. Their shared rationale seems to be that such a ban would stop FPI from causing trouble.

The logic here is peculiar. The FPI is prone to violence while Ahmadiyah is a dissident group committed to peaceful conduct. Yet Ahmadiyah's religious doctrine, which acknowledges another prophet after Mohammad, appears to make it less acceptable to the Muslim "mainstream" than the violent antagonism of the FPI. In other words, FPI is considered as belonging more to "mainstream" Islam than Ahmadiyah. This is a regrettable message to convey to the non-Muslim world.

Further, there is the question of whether a ban on Ahmadiyah would indeed be unconstitutional as several NGOs have claimed. It is certainly true that the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. The First Article of Paragraph 29 reads: "The state is based on the One All-Powerful God". Article Two adds: "The state guarantees all people the freedom of worship, each according to his/her own religion and belief".

The Constitution does not contain a reference to any religion in particular. One has to keep in mind, however, that Article Two is usually interpreted with regard to Article One which, due to its reference to "the One God", only appears to acknowledge monotheist religions. What is more, the Pancasila, the overriding philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state, only acknowledges five official religions and claims to treat them equally. These are Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

It is discriminative about Judaism and syncretic and mystic local beliefs ("kepercayaan" in Indonesian). The latter are not classified as formal religions but come under the constitutional Human Rights Paragraph (28), which says: "Every person shall have the right to the freedom to believe in his/her faith (kepercayaan)".

Yet this freedom is only defined as a human right. It therefore appears to be inferior in rank to that of an officially recognised "religion". It is not spelled out what the exact difference is, but adherents of religions tend to have greater access to state facilities and funds than adherents of mere "beliefs".

Furthermore, there are edicts banning heresy and blasphemy. Article 156a of the Criminal Code decrees a maximum 5-year jail term for people who "express hostile, insulting or abusive views towards religions". This article was adopted from a 1965 presidential decree concerned with the "Prevention of Blasphemy and Abuse of Religions", which bars "deviant interpretations" of religious teachings and obligates the President to disband groups practising "deviant teachings". Given the stance of various Muslim-based parties and organisations, there are apparently
more grounds to label the practices of the Ahmadiyah as "deviant teachings", rather than those inspiring the actions of the FPI.

Overall, the "blasphemy" law can either be seen as being at odds with the Constitution or as an elaboration of Article Two of Paragraph 29. As such, it would suggest that "the state guarantees all people the freedom of worship, each according to his/her own religion and belief", on the provision that those religions and beliefs can be classified as "non-deviant". In any case, avowals that Indonesia would per se "guarantee religious freedom" are to be taken with more than just a grain of salt.

The writer is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies (Iseas). His PhD is on Islam in post-New Order Indonesia.