Jakarta - Pressure mounted Tuesday for the Indonesian
government to outlaw the Muslim hardline group Islamic Defenders
Front (FPI) following a violent attack over the weekend by followers
against interfaith supporters.
In east Java provinces, hundreds of Nahdlatul Ulama supporters -
Indonesia's largest Islamic organization - rallied demanding that the
government disband the FPI. In a similar protest Monday in
Jogjakarta, central Java, one person was injured during a scuffle
with supporters of the hardliner group.
Indonesian police have identified five FPI activists as suspects
in Sunday's attacks on participants in a religious tolerance rally in
the capital, leaving nearly 30 people injured.
They were rallying against a possible government ban on the
minority Ahmadiyah sect, deemed deviant by religious authorities in
the country.
The violent attack triggered condemnation from community and
religious leaders, including NU and the country's second largest
Islamic organization Muhammadiyah, calling for the perpetrators to
'be prosecuted.'
In response, FPI leaders on Monday night threatened to wage war on
the Ahmadiyah sect unless President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono bans it
within three days.
Habib Rizieq, chairman of FPI, claimed that his supporters
attacked Sunday's gathering, billed as the National Alliance for the
Freedom of Faith and Religion, because it supported the 'deviant'
Ahmadiyah minority sect.
Rizieq, who was for seven month in 2004 for inciting
vandalism on entertainment spots in the capital Jakarta, vowed that
his supporters would fight 'until our last drop of blood' to resist
attempts to arrest them.
Ahmadiyah has been a target of attacks since a government
commission recommended in April that the minority sect be outlawed.
The Indonesian Ulema Council, the country's highest authority on
Islam, has declared the Ahmadiyah sect 'heretical' for believing its
founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who died in 1908 in India, is the last
prophet, not Mohammed, who mainstream Muslims worldwide believe was
God's final messenger.
However, human rights activists and civil liberties groups, argue
that followers of Ahmadiyah are protected under Indonesia's
constitution, which guarantees the right to religious freedom.
Indonesia is home to the world's most populous Islamic nation with
nearly 88 per cent of its 225 million people being Muslims. The
country has a long history of religious tolerance.
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