By IINA,
Jakarta : The Indonesian government announced tough restrictions against Ahmadiyahs yesterday calling on them to stop propagating beliefs that deviate from the principal teachings of the Islamic faith. A joint ministerial decree ordered the Ahmadiyah sect (also known as Qadianis) to stop spreading interpretations and activities, which deviate from mainstream Islamic teachings. “There has been no dissolution,” Attorney General Hendarman Supanji told reporters. It was not clear whether the ministerial decree meant that the Ahmadiyahs, who number only about 200,000 out of a total population of some 230 million, could continue to worship privately without spreading their faith.
Calls to outlaw the sect have been mounting since April when a government board overseeing religious affairs recommended the group be disbanded for its beliefs. Ahmadiyahs have been practicing their faith in Indonesia since the 1920s. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appeared to be seeking a compromise. Fauzan Al-Anshori, a spokesman for the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council, said, “This is not enough. The Ahmadiyahs may not be hitting people but they hit our faith… the decree is just a breeze, an entertainment — it doesn’t answer our demands.”
Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country by population, but its constitution guarantees freedom of religion. Parliamentary decrees mandate only six recognized religions — Muslims argue that as Ahmadiyahs are heretics they should not be allowed to operate under the umbrella of Islam. The statement came as thousands of Muslims protested against the sect outside police headquarters in central Jakarta. The protesters cried “Allah-o-Akbar!” and carried banners calling followers of the Ahmadiyah religion infidels. “If the president doesn’t dissolve the Ahmadiyah then there is no other way but jihad,” co-organizer Abdurrahman, from one of the main religious groups in the country, told the crowd. Around 5,000 protesters earlier blocked the street in front of the presidential palace in a show of force following a police crackdown on a religious group last week.
Later, they marched and rode motorcycles to the police headquarters to demand the release of eight of their members detained over an attack on a rally for religious tolerance earlier this month. The Ahmadiyah’s religious beliefs are considered contrary to Islam by mainstream Muslims. A widespread belief among the group’s members is that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani, was the final prophet of Islam — not the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Mirza Ghulam was born in the village of Qadian in British India in 1839. Initially claiming to be the awaited Mahdi, he professed to be a prophet in 1901 — something rejected by mainstream Muslims.
Around 140 Muslim organizations from the across the world convened in April 1974 at the Conference of Islamic Organizations in the holy city of Makkah and declared the Ahmadiyah as a non-Islamic group. Thereafter, Pakistan became the first country in the world in 1974 to declare them as a non-Muslim minority. A similar ruling has also been issued by Cairo’s leading Islamic university of Azhar.