Officials Turn Blind Eye as Religious Tensions Rise in Indonesia
By SARA SCHONHARDT
Published: July 18, 2012
SAMPANG, Indonesia — The problems began shortly after Tajul Muluk, a Shiite cleric, opened a boarding school in 2004. The school, in a predominantly Sunni Muslim part of East Java, raised local tensions, and in 2006 it was attacked by thousands of villagers. When a mob set fire to the school and several homes last December, many Shiites saw it as just the latest episode in a simmering sectarian conflict — one that they say has been ignored by the police and exploited by Islamists purporting to preserve the purity of the Muslim faith.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has long been considered a place where different religious and ethnic groups can live in harmony and where Islam can work with democracy.
But that perception has been repeatedly brought into question lately. In East Java, Sunni leaders are pushing the provincial government to adopt a regulation limiting the spread of Shiite Islam. It would prevent the country’s two major Shiite organizations from organizing prayer gatherings and sermons.
Mr. Muluk is part of an increasingly threatened minority. Last Thursday, he was sentenced to two years in prison for violating a 1965 presidential decree against blasphemy by promoting a heretical interpretation of Islam. He denies the charges. Analysts say that Mr. Muluk challenged the Sunni-led power structure in his village, making him a target of local leaders.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/world/asia/indonesia-turns-blind-eye-as-religious-tensions-rise.html?pagewanted=all
