The Ahmadis, who have worshipped in their own mosques and communities here since 1924, believe that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is the messiah and last true prophet of Islam. The claim has energized and enraged Indonesia's disparate Muslim hardliners, who in recent years have united in a campaign to ban Ahmadiyya, labeling its followers "heretics" and "deviants".
Indonesia's mild-mannered and religiously moderate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his government are caught in the middle. In a campaign season, where conservative religious groups have electoral clout, his administration has so far managed to please neither side.
Tensions flared into the open on June 1, when the hard-line vigilante group the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) attacked a peaceful rally in support of both Ahmadiyya and religious tolerance at a symbolic national monument in central Jakarta. Stick-wielding FPI members, attacked women, the elderly and even clerics, leaving some 70 people injured. Police later arrested the FPI's firebrand leader, Habib Rizieq.
On June 9, Yudhoyono signed a controversial decree which failed to fully support the sect's right to exist, though it stopped short of disbanding it altogether, as religious conservatives have demanded. The decree explicitly forbade Ahmadiyya from proselytizing and threatened its members with up to five years in jail for possible charges of "tarnishing religion".
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12:56 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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