State restrictions on the Ahmadiyya sect in Indonesia and Pakistan: Islam or political survival?

Australian Journal of Political Science
Volume 49, Issue 3, 2014

DOI:10.1080/10361146.2014.934656
Fatima Zainab Rahmana (Lake Forest College)
pages 408-422

Abstract
Indonesia and Pakistan have both adopted state policy that restricts the religious freedom of a minority heterodox sect, the Ahmadiyya, which is viewed by mainstream Muslims as a non-Muslim minority. This outcome is somewhat puzzling as there is a great discrepancy between the institutionalisation and formal privileging of the dominant religion – Islam – in the two Muslim majority states. I find that the similar outcome is attributable not to the institutionalisation of Islam in the state, but rather to the political survival needs of the regime, motivating it to adopt the policy demands of Islamist actors to repress the Ahmadiyya sect.

Keywords
Ahmadiyya sect, Indonesia, Islam, minorities, Pakistan, religious freedom

http://www.tandfonline.com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:2048/doi/abs/10.1080/10361146.2014.934656#.VGfhK_mUd4k

A nation that is religious Indonesia, the Ahmadiyah, and the state's SARA echoes

by Bottomley, Daniel C., Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE, 2014, 265 pages; 3631156

Abstract:
This study explores the Indonesian state's role in the constitution, renegotiation, and regulation of Islamic and Indonesian identities through the Ahmadiyah controversy. The Ahmadis (a small sect whose beliefs regarding the Islamic Prophethood diverge from mainstream Islam) provide a lens through which state actions and non-elite reactions can be critically engaged and understood in Indonesia's broader context and history. What it reveals is an Indonesian governing apparatus that continues to rely on SARA logics of discipline and control used under the authoritarian rule of Suharto despite Indonesia's post-authoritarian transformations in government and governing. Through three cases of these SARA echoes of the past, snapshots of Indonesian nationalism emerge as the state's evolving role in regulating Muslim identities in Indonesia and prosaic responses to the state can be better understood. Ultimately, the Ahmadi dilemma provides a partial glimpse into Indonesia's ongoing national evolution and the means through which the nation is reproduced and disciplined.

Adviser	Alice D. Ba
School	UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
Source Type	Dissertation
Subjects	Political Science
Publication Number	3631156

http://gradworks.umi.com/36/31/3631156.html

Government must act to halt growing discrimination against minorities: An interview with Zainal Abidin Bagir

Q: In your recent report on the state of religion in Indonesia, you worry about rising intolerance. How bad is it, and what forms does it take?

There are two critical issues, and they both involve bad regulations that lead to abuses against minorities. First, the 1965 law on the prevention of abuse and defamation of religion has encouraged certain religious groups to accuse minorities of ‘defaming’ their religion. Vigilante groups have organised violent protests against members of the ‘deviant’ Islamic sect Ahmadiyah in many places from 2005 onwards. The radical activist group Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) is the best known among them. Mainstream Islamic figures agree that Ahmadiyah is deviant, but they have not supported these attacks.
Other groups have launched court cases against minority religious groups. After the Constitutional Court upheld the law in 2010, allegations of defamation and deviancy have increased significantly. There were 11 court cases last year alone, compared with less than ten over the entire period between 1965 and 1998. As the criteria for being ‘deviant’ (sesat) widen, the target has expanded from mystical Javanese sects in 1965 (kebatinan) to Islamic groups much closer to the mainstream, such as Ahmadiyah and now Shi’a. I’m afraid the next target will be unorthodox sufi groups, as is already happening in Aceh.
Second, strict permission procedures for the erection of houses of worship have been exploited by the same groups to harass minorities. In our last report we discussed issues with churches in Aceh Singkil district. Two church cases closer to Jakarta are still prominent in the news: GKI Taman Yasmin in Bogor, and HKBP Filadelfia in Bekasi. In each case a growing religious community needs a larger house of worship, but a local majority resists that. Organised groups from outside have turned these cases into national issues. Until a few years ago such attacks were restricted to a few areas. They have now spread to others. Now it is not only churches. Mosques in some Muslim-minority areas have also become a problem, although to a lesser extent. This is what happens when the government fails to solve the problem: it spreads. This is very worrying. Instead of strong political will, we have seen one excuse after another for not taking it seriously.
If law is expected to transform society, the use of legal language such as ‘defamation’ or ‘deviance’ transforms society badly. Similar violent incidents have happened repeatedly in recent years. Some drag on and become much more difficult to solve. More than 100 Ahmadis have sought refuge in Mataram since 2006. Hundreds of Shi’a Muslims in Sampang have faced the same fate since 2012. Other potential conflicts are also not being handled well and threaten to escalate.
However, let us keep it in perspective. Terrorism and large-scale communal violence have receded because the government acted effectively. So if it were not for the two problems of defamation and houses of worship, we would not feel the situation is particularly bad. Indonesia is still more or less religiously harmonious in many places, and democracy is working.
Q: All the incidents you mention took place in provincial towns. Why is that?
Yes, not all of Indonesia is affected by these problems uniformly. West Java has had many problems with these two issues (though recently the police have brought some perpetrators to justice for attacks against Ahmadiyah). In 2012 Aceh saw significant defamation issues, leading to three deaths, and there were more problems with churches.
Q: Acts of intimidation against minority religious groups started with reformasi. First it was small radical groups like the FPI, but now much larger groups agree minorities are a problem. Politicians become afraid to act. What causes this escalation? Smart tactics by FPI? Intolerance among the broader public? Local governments seeking popularity in democratic Indonesia?
All the factors you mention play a role, but the main problem lies with local and central governments. It is very misleading to say, as our minister of religious affairs has several times, that these problems are only administrative. Law enforcement does not work. When local governments and security officials do not act it emboldens hardliners. I don’t think they are afraid to act, because sometimes they do and then we don’t read about it in the newspaper. But there is not enough incentive for them to act boldly on these two issues. It is not important enough to them. I heard that all the recent candidates for district head in Sampang, Madura, held similar views on what they would do about the Shi’ites. If any of them had defended the Shi’a community they felt it would set them apart from other candidates negatively. Interestingly, the incumbent in Sampang had been the boldest in speaking out against the Shi’a community, and he lost the election. So such an issue doesn’t always sell. And they forget that there is also a political risk in inaction.
Decentralisation has made local mayors, district heads and governors so powerful that they sometimes go against the central government. In the case of GKI Taman Yasmin in Bogor, even the President basically said he could not constitutionally be involved. He left it to the local leaders. This is true in non-religious issues too. At the same time, national political leaders tend to consider such concerns to be relatively minor. Religious freedom is not a popular issue among any of the parties in parliament. Even the dramatic attacks on the Ahmadis in Cikeusik and Shi’ites in Sampang only stayed in the headlines for a few days. This was not like the large-scale communal violence of some years ago. It did reach international forums, but somehow the government always got away with merely a normative response.
The fact that religious issues are not always effective politically can actually be positive. Religion may leverage your position a few points in local elections, but if you are weak in other points, it will not save you.  The unlikely victory of Jokowi and his non-Muslim, ethnic Chinese running mate Ahok in the Jakarta governor’s election proved that. They beat the incumbent Fauzi Bowo, who was supported by FPI, Rhoma Irama and other Muslim organisations using religious arguments. They were too strong on other points, so the religious attacks ultimately were ineffective.
The main issue is not intolerance but what we call the ‘management of diversity’. This involves central and local government policy, conflict prevention and resolution, and law enforcement. It also means doing more to deal with potential or imminent conflict between groups. We recommend avoiding legal or rights-based approaches as much as possible. Religious grievances since reformasi are more frequently framed in legal terms: for example, building permits for churches and the religious defamation law. Yet we have big problems enforcing the law, from the police level up to the Supreme Court—and not only on religious matters.
Moreover, our regulations, especially on defamation, are poor. The defamation law is old and bad, yet it is being used more and more. The regulation concerning houses of worship was improved slightly in 2006 but it still makes life difficult for minorities. It created an instrument called the Forum for Religious Harmony (FKUB) to resolve problems. There are now around 500 of them. With the exception of a number of such forums at the district and provincial level, they have not performed well and have sometimes caused new problems. This has happened despite some progressive new laws and a constitutional amendment that should have improved religious freedoms.
Rather than rights-based approaches, we recommend mediation. This already happens a lot. Yet it is not always done well because too often the victims have to pay the biggest price. But there are also success stories. We can develop our ability to mediate. Of course I do not say we should forget law, but changing bad laws has been a priority for so long that we forgot to strengthen our society’s capacity for mediation.
Q: In your report you say government leaders often blame the victims of religious intimidation rather than the perpetrators. They urge minority groups to move elsewhere, as if they had no right to live where they do. This would have been unimaginable under the New Order. Why is government today so much weaker?
First, the New Order was not that good either. The harmony was on the surface. Suharto decided who would be the victims—at different points of time they were the alleged communists, Muslims, Christians, and other groups. Transmigration was also a policy of relocation, sometimes by force, though for different reasons.
In any case, second, just as in other democratising countries, the government tends to be weak, or even has to be weakened to give more space for people. Decentralisation weakens central government power, to an extent that is not always clear. Sometimes the president finds this convenient. On things that do not matter much to him, he can be seen to be making compromises. In this case, democracy is not the explanation for his inaction, but an excuse. In cases like this, which have deteriorated because local governments are unable or unwilling to act, the president himself surely has to act.
Even international human rights institutions, such as the United Nation Human Rights Council, cannot force the government to act. Only a few countries have pressed Indonesia on its treatment of minorities and their questions did not go very far. They consider Indonesia’s human rights record is not bad overall.
Q: Other fragile democracies treat their minorities badly too. Burma's Rohingya, Pakistan's Christians/ Hindus/ Ahmadis, Iraq's Sunnis, Egypt's Copts. Minorities are particularly vulnerable at election time. Is this the dark side of democracy?
This shows that democracy should not only be about elections and other institutions. It also means better protection of minorities. With time, I think our democracy will mature. Indonesia’s democracy is better and more stable than those you mention, especially Pakistan and Iraq. Indonesia is more like India, Turkey and Senegal, which all show the success of building a democracy in a religious society. Of course more incidents force us to be more cautious. It is difficult to say that religion should not play a public role in a country like Indonesia. It has done so throughout our history and in my opinion it can continue to play roles in a democracy. But we worry about religious expression that leads to violence and discrimination.
Q: Is there a democratic way to solve this in the short term?  All the democratic solutions you mention in your report seem to be inadequate. You mention mediation, but acknowledge that in practice this often involves blaming the victims. You hope the central government will show more spine, but you know they have shown none the last few years because they are afraid of the voters.
We are now at the point of no turning back. There’s no alternative to democratic solutions. I am still optimistic that most of this is temporary. The problems are not uniformly widespread; in some places leaders have acted tough and kept minorities safe, and police have also done well; in other places budding conflicts have been solved or mitigated. People are not stupid. Democracy can give them ways to punish bad leaders. Our civil society is strong. That is what has saved Indonesia so far. But of course civil society’s strength has limits. If the government, both local and central, does not act to solve these problems immediately, I’m afraid they will grow like a cancer, and our life in Indonesia will be much more difficult.

Zainal Abidin Bagir directs the postgraduate Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University. He is one of the authors of the ‘Annual Report on Religious Life in Indonesia 2012’ (‘Laporan Tahunan Kehidupan Beragama di Indonesia 2012’, http://crcs.ugm.ac.id/annual-report). He was interviewed by Gerry van Klinken.

http://www.insideindonesia.org/weekly-articles/stopping-intolerance

Reading Ahmadiyah and Discourses on Freedom of Religion in Indonesia

Fuller, Andy. 2014. "Reading Ahmadiyah and Discourses on Freedom of Religion in Indonesia," in Religious Diversity in Muslim-majority States in Southeast Asia: Areas of Toleration and Conflict, edited by Bernhard Platzdasch and Johan Saravanamuttu, pp. 75-88. Sngapore: ISEAS.

The process of democratization that emerged in 1998 was seen as a highly positive break from an authoritarian and highly centralized recent past. Decentralization, democratization, and a liberal press, however, also opened up space for intense conflicts to emerge. Some of the voices that have gained prominence in the post-New Order era have been highly anti-democratic and illiberal. This casts a question mark over Indonesia's reputation for fostering a supposedly "tolerant Islam"...

A reading of the ongoing cases and controversies surrounding Ahmadi communities and Ahmadi faith is necessary in order to gain a deeper understanding of how public debates on Islam and religious freedom are changing and developing. This chapter draws on material from the mainstream liberal media as well as from texts that seek to condemn liberal thought. It explores some of the main ideas that are being circulated, critiqued, and debated concerning Ahmadiyah and the contestable legitimacy of the Ahmadi faith. I argue that such a reading will provide an insight into the range of views and perspectives on Ahmadiyah and freedom of religion. Does this multiplicity of voices indicate diversity and richness, or does it indicate a reluctance of some groups to understand and approach the religious other

Ahmadiyah dispute intensifies

Violence at the National Monument in Jakarta almost caused a conflict between Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah in Lamongan

Nathan Franklin

A typical street scene in Lamongan, East Java, where FPI finds support from many Muhammadiyah members    Nathan Franklin

1 June 2008 marked the sixty-third anniversary of the Pancasila ideology. On this day members of the National Alliance for the Freedom of Faith and Religion held a rally at the National Monument (popularly known as ‘Monas’) in Jakarta demanding that the controversial Ahmadiyah sect should be dealt with in accordance with Indonesian law rather than subjected to organised violence. Members of the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI) descended upon the gathering, harassing and assaulting them. It did not surprise many that the FPI took this action: for years its members have attacked Ahmadiyah mosques, prayer houses, and other properties throughout Indonesia, while calling on the government to disband the organisation.
The incident at the National Monument appeared to swing public opinion against the FPI. What should have been a day of celebration was instead transformed into a violent incident that reverberated throughout the country. For several weeks, the national media were flooded with reports about the incident at Monas. There was a cry from liberal groups and many ordinary Indonesians for the FPI itself to be disbanded. The government responded by arresting the FPI militant wing’s commander, Munarman, and central chief, Habib Risiek Shahib, for initiating the violence.
It is less widely known that the incident also had consequences outside the capital. In the East Java pesantren region of Lamongan, it very nearly caused a conflict between members of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah.

FPI in Lamongan

The FPI was formally established in Lamongan in July 2005, built upon a local organisation called ‘The Fighters Enjoining Honour and Forbidding Dishonour’. The Lamongan branch is relatively autonomous but nevertheless receives instructions from the FPI Central Leadership Board in Jakarta. A long-standing instruction commands FPI members to pressure the government to disband Ahmadiyah.
The FPI has a strong presence in the subdistricts of Brondong and Paciran, north of Lamongan. Local reports suggest their numbers range from 75 to 100 members. However, according to their leader in Lamongan, the FPI under his command can amass between five hundred and a thousand ‘soldiers of Allah’ when it goes on raids. The Lamongan group relies heavily on young males as foot-soldiers. The older members provide leadership in Qur’anic studies, and in directing physical operations. This is based on the FPI philosophy of ‘amar ma’ruf nahi mungkar’, derived from the Qur’anic verse in Surah Ali Imran (Ayat 104), ‘Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity’.
Since this Brondong–Paciran area along the north coast of Lamongan is dominated by Muhammadiyah, the FPI ranks include many Muhammadiyah Muslims. In fact, the deputy leader of the FPI in Lamongan is also the headmaster of the Muhammadiyah pesantren of Karangasem in Paciran. Another Lamongan group whose membership overlaps with the FPI is the North Coast Islamic Youth Association, which was responsible for inviting Abu Bakar Ba’asyir to the area in October 2007 (see Inside Indonesia 92 ). Like the FPI, Ba’asyir encourages a rigid interpretation of ‘amar ma’ruf nahi mungkar’ during his sermons, selectively intertwining it with promotion of holy war and martyrdom. These narrow and literalist interpretations of Islam provide legitimacy for hardline Muslims in the area who wish to resort to physical action to achieve their objectives.

An NU–Muhammadiyah conflict in the making?

Even before the 1 June incident, former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) had been an outspoken defender of Ahmadiyah’s rights and a frank critic of the FPI. Gus Dur argued that Ahmadiyah was not a threat to anybody, and that its followers were responsible citizens who deserved the same rights and privileges as other Indonesians. FPI founder Habib Risiek Shihab argued that Gus Dur was wrong and that Allah would judge him so. The situation developed into a heated public debate about tolerance and what methods were acceptable for dealing with such issues.

Police in Lamongan asked local religious leaders to discourage angry NU youth from confronting the FPI

Although there are no known Ahmadiyah members in Lamongan, the local youth wing of NU, known as the Ansor Youth Movement (GP Ansor), who are concentrated in the south of Lamongan, were angered by the way the FPI – and in particular Habib Risiek – treated Gus Dur. In a TV statement broadcast on Indonesia’s Channel One shortly after 1 June, Habib Risiek stated that Gus Dur could not have understood what happened at Monas because he was blind. Furthermore, he claimed that Allah protected the FPI from the former president’s efforts to disband it, and instead disbanded Gus Dur’s government. A local newspaper reported that the GP Ansor were about to come to the north coast of Lamongan from their base in the south to force the FPI to disband. According to a police chief in the area, there was a real concern that the row could develop into an NU–Muhammadiyah conflict, as a large number of Muhammadiyah members were affiliated with the FPI.
Police in Lamongan approached the local religious leaders, including the leaders of the Sunan Drajat School and the Lamongan branch of the Indonesian Council of Islamic Scholars, in the hope that these religious figures could persuade the GP Ansor not to come to the north coast to confront the FPI. This strategy proved successful. The GP Ansor members never arrived. Speaking afterwards, the leader of the Lamongan branch of NU downplayed the situation, saying the GP Ansor had planned to go to the Paciran-Brondong area only to get a clear picture of the FPI’s position in Lamongan. However, many local residents believe that the intervention and consultation initiated by the Lamongan police succeeded in averting a dangerous conflict which could have had serious long-term consequences.

Is the problem over?

FPI members gather to study the Quran     Nathan Franklin

According to polling conducted on the official NU website, 57 per cent of respondents maintained that the FPI was necessary to eliminate immorality and oppose liberal groups, while a quarter of respondents believed that the FPI should be disbanded because it ruined the image of Islam.
Both positions are found among the NU community in Lamongan. Some locals think that the FPI were just thugs and the organisation should be disbanded. Others see the FPI as useful for eliminating drinking, gambling and prostitution in the area. Although there were mixed opinions about disbanding FPI, there is considerable consensus among NU followers in Lamongan about Ahmadiyah. Most believe it should be disbanded because of its recognition of a prophet postdating Muhammad. Regardless of affiliation, all Lamongan residents believed that an NU–Muhammadiyah conflict would be detrimental to Islam.
The existence of Ahmadiyah and the FPI will continue into the foreseeable future, as will disagreements between Gus Dur and Habib Risiek. And as this example shows, events on the national stage can resonate in regional contexts and ignite religious conflict. There is reason to hope that the incident in this rural district in East Java has been resolved. But the history of rivalry in Lamongan means religious matters are highly charged and the potential for conflict remains.     ii
Nathan Franklin (nathan.franklin@cdu.edu.au) is a doctoral student at the Charles Darwin University, working on pesantren and Political Islam in East Java.

Inside Indonesia 95: Jan-Mar 2009

 http://www.insideindonesia.org/weekly-articles/ahmadiyah-dispute-intensifies

Faith and violence: The Islamic sect Ahmadiyah has been under official pressure and violent attack

Munawar Ahmad

In July 2005, several thousand followers of the Ahmadiyah movement were holding a jalsah, or annual gathering, at their headquarters, the Mubaraq campus in Bogor, just outside Jakarta, when a mob invaded the campus grounds. This attack received considerable media publicity in both Indonesia and around the world. But it was just the latest and most dramatic episode in what increasingly looks like an organised and systematic campaign of violence against Ahmadiyah.
Ahmadiyah, an Islamic religious movement founded by a nineteenth century visionary, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, from present-day Pakistan, first appeared in Indonesia in 1925. It has approximately 500,000 followers in the country, part of a world-wide movement led from Britain. Its views on some key matters are very different from mainstream Muslims. For example, followers of Ahmadiyah believe that Ahmad was the promised messiah. As a result, its followers often come under great pressure in Indonesia and elsewhere.
The July 2005 attack began when a group of activists from the well-known Islamist group the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), hung a banner outside the meeting ground proclaiming ‘Ahmadiyah is un-Islamic, its Prophet is Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, its holy book is the Tazkirah.’ An FPI leader, Abdurrahman Assegaf, as well as others, made speeches denouncing Ahmadiyah as a ‘deviant sect’ and demanding that the meeting be cancelled.
Failing to have their way peacefully, on the second day, about 100 FPI members attacked the meeting. They began by throwing rocks at whoever they could see in the campus grounds. None of the Ahmadiyah members responded in kind, but 15 of them received head wounds. Although there was a police post located at the campus gates, the authorities did not prevent the growing crowd pushing down the gate, destroying and looting whatever they could find, breaking windows and burning copies of the Qur’an.
Most of the attackers came from the area of Parung, about one kilometre away from the campus. Other local people could do little more than look on. One of them, Trisno, told an Ahmadiyah production crew (who later produced a VCD detailing the attack) that it was the anarchy of the mob that seemed un-Islamic to him, and that the Ahmadiyah followers had behaved well and not disrupted the locals.

History of discrimination

This attack was just one of many attempts to forcefully dissolve Ahmadiyah in Indonesia. Between 1993 and 2005, 35 separate violent attacks on Ahmadiyah members were recorded around Indonesia. And since the attack in Bogor, there have been more.
Ahmadiyah’s problems in Indonesia flow from more than just mob rule. Since 1980 the movement has faced structural discrimination. In that year, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (the government-endorsed Council of Islamic Scholars) released a fatwa (legal ruling) that Ahmadiyah was ‘outside Islam’, that it was ‘deviant’ and could lead others into error. Then Minister for Religion, H Alamsyah Ratu Prawiranegara, signed off on the decree. Eventually, in 1984, the Ministry of Religion in Jakarta issued an instruction to its offices in the regions to carefully monitor the movement and do what they could to prohibit its activities.
At the July 2005 attack, one of the main speakers denouncing Ahmadiyah was Amin Jamaluddin, a leader of the Islamic Institute for Research and Study (LPPI). LPPI is itself part of MUI. Its job is to study the religious credentials of movements within Islam, and its views are typically endorsed by the Ministry of Religion.
A few days after the attack on the Bogor campus, MUI again reconfirmed its view, issuing another fatwa declaring that Ahmadiyah are kafir (infidels). Since then, the Minister of Religion, Maftuh Basyuni, has repeatedly spoken out against Ahmadiyah. For instance, in February 2006 he warned them that its adherents would have to choose between returning to core Islamic beliefs or proclaiming themselves a new religion.

What is Ahmadiyah?

In sociological terms, the followers of Ahmadiyah are not strikingly different from other Muslims. They perform the five pillars of Islam: they pray five times a day, fast in the month of Ramadhan, read the Qur’an, recite the confession of faith and partake in the haj pilgrimage if they are able. Theologically speaking, however, Ahmadiyah is unique because it believes that prophets can appear after the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him [pbu]). They believe that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the movement’s founder, was himself such a person.
This view about prophets and prophecy is the central source of conflict between followers of Ahmadiyah and most other Muslims in Indonesia. The Ahmadiyah understanding is quite unique. As Mirza Ghulam Ahmad himself wrote in the Tazkirah (Our Teaching), to confirm whether a person has truly been appointed by God as a prophet, he must first proclaim himself to be acting on God’s mandate. The community of believers then must make their own evaluation of the claim on the basis of the previous scripture.
This belief conflicts with that of the mainstream Islamic community. Mainstream sunni Muslims believe that there is a total of 25 prophets, and that none would come after the Prophet Muhammad (pbu). This view is based on an interpretation of the Al-Ahzab verse (33): 40 of the Qur’an which includes the Arabic phrase khataman nabiyiin, which is usually translated into English to mean that Muhammad (pbu) is the ‘seal of the Prophets’. The mainstream interpretation is that Muhammad (pbu) is the ‘last’ of the prophets. However, the Arabic word khatam in fact has several meanings, including ‘most perfect’, ‘most glorious’ and ‘ring’ or ‘seal’. Ahmadiyah followers interpret the phrase to mean that the Prophet Muhammad (pbu) was the main or most important of the prophets, thus not excluding the possibility that others would come after him. For them, it is thus not inconsistent to be both a Muslim and to believe that the founder of their movement was a prophet.
For many Muslims in Indonesia, however, this interpretation of the phrase ‘khataman nabiyiin’ is a dangerous insult to their own beliefs. MUI scholars are particularly angered by the belief that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad could be considered a prophet, as well as by the view that his book, the Tazkirah, is a revelation from God and that Ahmadiyah followers make the haj pilgrimage not to Mecca but to Qadian.
In my own view, it is possible to reconcile Ahmadiyah’s beliefs with mainstream Islamic practice. Six centuries ago the famous theologian Ibn Arabi wrote that there would be prophets after Muhammad (pbu). In his view, the spiritual light provided by the Prophet Muhammad (pbu) would continue to glow after his departure. Indeed, he believed that the phrase ‘khataman nabiyiin’ guaranteed that there would be prophets after Muhammad (pbu); if there were not, this would mean that the spiritual strength of the message of the Prophet Muhammad (pbu) was weak, which could not be. In this respect, it might be possible to think of prophets after Muhammad (pbu) as carrying forward the mission of their great predecessor, in the way that, in Islam, Isa (Jesus) is seen as carrying forward the prophecy of Musa (Moses). Such prophets do not bring their own law, but instead revive and implement the law their predecessor has brough.

Ahmadiyah today

The theological controversy about the status of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the root of violence against Ahmadiyah. The movement has been attacked not just in Indonesia, but also elsewhere, including in Bangladesh and Pakistan. As a result of the pressure they face from others, Ahmadiyah has become both more cohesive internally, and more exclusivist in how it deals with others.
Even so, Ahmadiyah is a fast-growing religious movement in many countries, including Australia. In Australia, the movement is based in Blacktown, Sydney, and has a beautiful large mosque and a congregation of about 2000 people, mostly Pakistani migrants. From the movement’s headquarters in Britain, Muslim Television Ahmadiyya (MTA) is broadcast globally. The channel provides information about Ahmadiyah’s vision of a rational Islam which can be applied easily in daily life, and which lays heavy emphasis on moral teachings and peace.
In Indonesia, it is almost as if the all the pressure has helped to promote Ahmadiyah. Many people have been attracted by Ahmadiyah’s peaceful resistance, and by the message of love that is at the heart of its vision. Data from 2004 suggests that over the preceding 12 years, there had been about 150,000 new converts in 298 branches around the country. This remarkable growth itself refutes the view that Ahmadiyah has no place in Indonesian society, as the movement’s detractors suggest. Indeed, it might just be that the cause of the violent reaction against Ahmadiyah is not just theological, but also derived from resentment at the movement’s success.
Munawar Ahmad (munawar_ahmad@lycos.com) is a lecturer at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University in Yogyakarta. He is currently writing a PhD thesis on the political thinking of Abdurrahman Wahid. This article was translated by Edward Aspinall.

http://www.insideindonesia.org/feature-editions/faith-and-violence