When the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front attacked demonstrators rallying in support of the embattled Ahmadiyah sect on June 1, 2008, many believed that fundamentalists would go to any length until they succeeded in ridding Indonesia of the minority Islamic group.
Many more had predicted that the issuance of a joint ministerial decree (SKB) — which bans Ahmadis from practicing their faith in public and proselytizing — a week after the rally would not be enough to halt intimidation and discrimination against members of the sect.
A secret document obtained by the Jakarta Globe, however, suggests there was one institution that believed otherwise: the State Intelligence Agency (BIN).
‘Unfounded Concerns’
A month after the June 2008 attack on the rally at the National Monument (Monas), BIN prepared a 180-page assessment on the expected implications of the decree. In the document, BIN claimed it had found no indications that persecution, torture or intimidation of the sect’s members would continue. Read more
Categories: Indonesia
A very interesting article. The ‘Ahmadiyya incident’ is not only an embarrassment for the police in Indonesia. The misreading of the threat is a danger for the Government itself. Do they not yet realize that the so-called ‘Islamist’ militants take first the little finger, than the hand, then the arm and then the whole body? It seems that in all political history only Field Marshall Mohammed Ayyub Khan, the Military Leader of Pakistan, realized what the Anti-Ahmadiiya lobby is all about. In 1953 he immediately said “I know they are after my chair” and put the leaders of the 1953 Anti Ahmadiyya riots in jail. This gave peace for the country for 20 years, until the next leader forgot this lesson.