Ahmadis and Christians under attack in Obama’s peaceful Indonesia
Lee Jay Walker
The Modern Tokyo Times
The followers of conservative Islam once more showed their mass hatred for diversity because Muslims stoned three Ahmadiyya Muslims to death and then chanted for the death penalty of a Christian on the grounds of blasphemy. This happened in Indonesia which is a nation that was praised by President Obama only a few months ago. However, the stark reality is very different because conservative Islam is rising and all minorities face persecution.
President Obama had praised Indonesia in late 2010 because he stated that the““spirit of tolerance that is written into your constitution, symbolized in your mosques and churches and temples, and embodied in your people” is a quality which is worth emulating.
President Obama continued by stating that “We are two nations which have traveled different paths. Yet our nations show that hundreds of millions who hold different beliefs can be united in freedom under one flag”
It is clear that the leader of America ignored the anti-Ahmadiyya Muslim law which was passed in 2008 and many other aspects of Indonesia. After all, the mainly Christian Papuans in West Papua are suffering from Javanization which will ultimately lead to Islamization. The same applies to Christians in the Moluccas islands (Maluku islands) who face the same fate and thousands of Christians were killed between 1999 and 2000.
Moluccas International Campaign for Human Rights (http://www.michr.net ) states that “The Moluccan people are victimized. Fifty-nine years of Javanese-dominant occupation of Indonesia has taken its toll. The national identity of the Moluccan people is disappearing fast. An overall Javanese identity is taking its place, which is pervading daily social behavior. This is effectuated by ceaseless efforts of Jakarta to transmigrate tens of thousands Javanese families all over the Moluccan islands. The more than two million indigenous people are being engulfed by the influx of new settlers.”
“Reports from the Moluccas tell of the movement of Malay families into these Melanesian islands and also of planned and encouraged intermarriage by the government. Suffering under the political and military repression, which exists throughout Indonesia, the Moluccans are powerless. And because of the naivete (too-easy adaptability) of the Moluccan people, the Javanization of the indigenous culture takes place with negligible opposition.”
Turning back to recent events in 2011 because at least three Ahmadiyya Muslims were stoned to death and others were seriously injured when conservative Muslim mobs attacked this religious minority group.
This attack was sickening because the anti-Ahmadiyya Muslim attack was allowed to happen because law enforcement agencies just stood by and did nothing. The attack witnessed conservative Muslims with machetes, rocks, and sticks, and while they were stoning Ahmadiyya Muslims to death they were in a state of high religious frenzy.
This applies to shouts of “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and Muslims were clapping in religious joy while innocent Ahmadiyya Muslims were dying in mass pain. Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya community, heavily criticized the “brutality” of this attack. Mirza Masroor Ahmad also highlighted the fact that “people watching the merciless beatings were clapping and cheering.”
Therefore, the followers of conservative Islam were once more killing innocents and not only this, they were celebrating while stoning people to death. Of course this is a reality in many other parts of the mainly Muslim world because Christians are often killed in Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and other Muslim dominated nations. The same applies to the persecution of Hindus and Ahamdiyya Muslims in Bangladesh and Pakistan; and in southern Thailand Buddhists are frequently killed by the followers of Sunni Islam.
After the brutal attack against the Ahmadiyya Muslim community the followers of Sunni Islam then turned their hatred against the Christian community. This applies to two Christian churches being attacked and Muslim mobs are calling for the death sentence of a Christian who was given a five year prison sentence for alleged blasphemy against the religion of Islam.
Muslims were chanting “kill, kill” outside the courtroom before the verdict was passed on Antonius Bawengan who is a Christian. However, after the judge passed down a 5 year prison sentence for mere words then this was not enough for Sunni Muslims because they demanded his death. Therefore, Muslim mobs attacked Christian churches and clearly they must have felt strengthened by the recent brutal killings of Ahmadiyya Muslims. After all, the same Muslim followers also celebrate in Somalia when they are beheading converts to Christianity.
James Heiser wrote an article called Obama Praises “Toleration” as Indonesian Churches Burn (Nov 11, 2010 – www.thenewamerican.com ) and commented that “It is hard to imagine that President Obama would be praising the tolerance of a Christian nation if it had witnessed the burning of 700 mosques since 1998. However, Obama would search the nations of the West in vain to find one in which violent religious bigotry is tolerated the way it is alleged to have been in Indonesia.”
The statistic that James Heiser mentions is a reality in modern day Indonesia and this applies to Muslims attacking Christian churches. The number he mentions is a sad reality with regards to Muslim attacks against Christian churches and clearly the Ahmadiyya community is also suffering from rampant persecution.
James Heiser also states that “Astoundingly, Obama compared Indonesia (a nation that has only recently begun to emerge from being an unabashed dictatorship) to the United States, declaring that the two nations share a spirit of toleration.”
If President Obama believes that Indonesia is really tolerant then he should look at the reality of the Moluccas and West Papua. In both cases the indigenous Christian community faces both Islamization and Javanization.
At the same time it is clear that Ahmadiyya Muslims and Christians face persecution and this applies to attacks against the followers of both faiths. Also, the legal system in Indonesia is trying to curtail the Ahmadiyya faith by putting many restrictions on this religious community. Ultimately, this is clearly encouraging conservative Muslims because they can whip up their hatred and highlight the legal system in Indonesia and this applies to anti-Ahmadiyya laws and the blasphemy law which is aimed at both faiths.
The recent brutal killings against the Ahmadiyya community and attacks against Christians is clear evidence that Indonesia is not so tolerant. Therefore, President Obama must stop making sweeping statements. After all, his comments about Islam in Cairo were not based on facts but sadly the recent massacre of innocents in the name of Allah in Indonesia is a reality.
It is clear that you could not “sweep Nazi fascism under the carpet” because this ideology was barbaric and brutal. The same applies to not “sweeping Sunni Islamic fascism under the carpet” because in history, and in modern times, the forces of Sunni Islam desire a global monolith based on Islam and enforced dhimmitude or in the case of some Islamic states like Afghanistan, then the complete annihilation of all other religions and thought patterns.
Lee Jay Walker