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Indonesia: Ex-Muslim imprisoned for inciting “religious hatred” after declaring himself atheist

May 4, 2014 12:47 pm By Robert Spencer

Alexander AanIt is extremely significant that he was jailed for “trying to incite religious hatred,” when what he actually did was declare himself an atheist. He didn’t say anything hateful, call for attacks on Muslims, etc. What is noteworthy about this is that it is exactly the same charge that Islamic supremacists use in the West to stigmatize any critic of jihad terror. Maybe they’re all working from the same playbook, or it a deeply ingrained assumption that anyone who criticizes or even appears to criticize Islam in any way is motivated by “hatred.”

“Embrace of Atheism Put an Indonesian in Prison,” by Joe Cochrane, New York Times, May 3, 2014 (thanks to David):

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Growing up in a conservative Muslim household in rural West Sumatra, Alexander Aan hid a dark secret beginning at age 9: He did not believe in God. His feelings only hardened as he got older and he faked his way through daily prayers, Islamic holidays and the fasting month of Ramadan.

He stopped praying in 2008, when he was 26, and he finally told his parents and three younger siblings that he was an atheist — a rare revelation in a country like Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. They responded with disappointment and expressions of hope that he would return to Islam.

But Mr. Aan neither returned to Islam nor confined his secret to his family, and he ended up in prison after running afoul of a 2008 law restricting electronic communications. He had joined an atheist Facebook group started by Indonesians living in the Netherlands, and in 2011 he began posting commentaries outlining why he did not think God existed.

“When I saw, with my own eyes, poor people, people on television caught up in war, people who were hungry or ill, it made me uncomfortable,” Mr. Aan, now 32, said in an interview. “What is the meaning of this? As a Muslim, I had questioned God — what is the meaning of God?” He was released on parole on Jan. 27 after serving more than 19 months on a charge of inciting religious hatred.

Indonesia’s state ideology, Pancasila, enshrines monotheism, and blasphemy is illegal. However, the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and speech, and the country is 16 years into a transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

But Mr. Aan’s case is one of an increasing number of instances of persecution connected to freedom of religion in Indonesia in recent years. Although Indonesia has influential Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities, every year there have been hundreds of episodes, including violent attacks, targeting religious minorities like Christians and Shiite and Ahmadiyah Muslims, as well as dozens of arrests over blasphemy against Islam. Numerous churches have been closed for lacking proper permits.

According to human rights organizations and various surveys, religious intolerance is on the rise in Indonesia, at least partly because of the growing influence of radical Islamic groups that use street protests and acts of violence to support their aims. Some of these radical groups demonstrated in Jakarta, the capital, before Mr. Aan’s trial in West Sumatra in 2012.

“His case very much ties in with that whole trend,” said Benedict Rogers, the East Asia team leader for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights organization founded in Britain. The group released a report in February warning that religious intolerance in Indonesia was spreading beyond traditionally conservative Muslim bases like West Java Province.

“Of course there would be religious people who would take offense about someone publicly expressing this view” about atheism, Mr. Rogers said. “But I think if it weren’t for this growing Islamism and extremism, Alexander’s case probably wouldn’t have happened.”

Mr. Aan’s troubles began in January 2012 when a mob in the Dharmasraya district of West Sumatra showed up looking for him at a government planning office where he worked as a data analyst.

“They wanted me to stop saying there is no God,” he said. “I told them that it was my right to express my beliefs.”

Police officers were called to prevent any violence, and they instead escorted Mr. Aan to the local police station, where he found himself being interrogated and, within hours, charged with disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred. The next day, he was charged with blasphemy and inciting others to embrace atheism.

A court in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra Province, threw out the blasphemy and atheism charges, but it convicted Mr. Aan in June 2012 of trying to incite religious hatred under the electronic information law and sentenced him to two and a half years in prison.

“What I posted was for discussion, not to incite hatred,” he said in the interview….

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Comments

  1. Jay Boo says

    May 4, 2014 at 1:05 pm

    If one does not reaffirm that Allah exists on a daily basis Allah may disappear and Muslims will be held accountable to themselves by society for their butchery.

    Will the UN also support a ban on “trying to incite religious hatred” as defined by Islamic countries?

  2. Angemon says

    May 4, 2014 at 1:57 pm

    “Indonesia’s state ideology, Pancasila, enshrines monotheism, and blasphemy is illegal. However, the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and speech, and the country is 16 years into a transition from authoritarianism to democracy.”

    Not sure what to think of this. Is it being implied that the blasphemy laws are remnants of the previous autocratic regime? And i’m not sure if “democracy” is the right word to describe what Indonesia is transitioning into, seeing how people are being discriminated against because of something that’s supposedly safeguarded on its constitution.

    • john spielman says

      May 4, 2014 at 2:08 pm

      I think there is little doubt that Indonesia is heading into the moral sewer of Islamic sharia law-lessness.

    • Know Thy Enemy says

      May 4, 2014 at 5:07 pm

      It is indeed democracy that Indonesia has! People have an idealistic understanding of democracy, but in the real world democracy works in either of these ways-

      1) Rule of the majority. E.g. Pakistan and Afghanistan, where no one can do anything that good Muslims (majority in that country) don’t like!

      2) Rule of the politically active minorit(ies) if the majority shows apathy. E.g. US, India, Europe etc. In India for example, politicians work real hard to appease Muslims and get their vote. It is because they know that Muslims, even though they are a minority, have a very high voting participation. And because they know that the majority in that country will not only not object to what the politicians are doing, but also because they know that it (majority) shows apathy towards the democratic process! Similar examples (not necessarily involving Muslims) can also be found all over the world including US.

      In either case it does not matter what the constitution says. The supporters of those who are politically active will always find a way to bypass the constitution! E.g. Hillary Clinton punishing that filmmaker even though Free Speech is protected under US Constitution.

      What if there are significant portions of politically active populations each with conflicting views? Answer: Then trouble happens, e.g. what happened in Egypt in the last one year or so!

      • eib says

        May 4, 2014 at 9:56 pm

        Only in the West do we have the concept of the Tyranny of the Majority.
        In all non-Western countries, democracy can be defined as a tyranny of the majority.

    • nothosaur says

      May 5, 2014 at 11:13 am

      The US is not a democracy.

      We are a constitutuonal republic with a federalist system and democratically elected representatives.

      There’s a difference.

      Read what the founding fathers and ratifiers said about democracy, and why they wisely avoided it.

      Our modern, ignorant politicians have no idea of the nature of our governmment.

      Notice how Hillary Clinton expressed a desire to have a filmmaker arrested, but did not bother to mention probable cause.

  3. Salah says

    May 4, 2014 at 2:17 pm

    Muslims are starting to wake up, Islam is in grave danger. After 14 hundred centuries of ignorance, Islam is losing it to the information superhighway.

    http://crossmuslims.blogspot.ca/2014/01/egyptian-muslims-tear-up-quran.html

    • EYESOPEN says

      May 5, 2014 at 5:56 am

      Not 14 hundred centuries, Salah. Just 14 centuries.

  4. Elise says

    May 4, 2014 at 4:33 pm

    In Indonesia, they really do not have freedom of speech, nor do they have freedom of religion. If your faith is not one of the accepted religions, you can’t have a job in the government nor can you receive a birth certificate. Many indigenous people in Indonesia still practice their ancestral religion and they are not accepted in Indonesia. If one want s to worship at a church or build a church, one must receive a permit from the local Muslim majority and pay a corruption bribe. If your passport shows that you visited Israel, you will not be allowed in Indonesia. Even corrupt politicians who steal USAID money to buy houses, 16 luxury cars, and things worth millions of US dollars, say that their money came from Allah. I guess that their Allah approves of telling lies, stealing, and allowing Indonesians to starve, but Allah beats women for having sex prior to marriage.

  5. dumbledoresarmy says

    May 5, 2014 at 12:30 am

    From the article – “He had joined an atheist Facebook group started by Indonesians living in the Netherlands…”.

    Now that’s interesting. One must assume that those Indonesians, resident in the Netherlands, *used* to be Muslims but are now happy apostates. I wonder how many of them there are? LOTS, I hope. May the trickle of defectors from the allah gang become an unstoppable flood.

    • Semeru says

      May 5, 2014 at 2:43 am

      DDA

      You assume to much, and you do not do your homework. Most of the Indonesians in holland are from the Moluccas, and interestingly they form one of the largest MC gangs “Satu Darah” in Europe, and the is such a small amount of Indonesia moslems that they do not even appear on the stastistics

      From the article – “He had joined an atheist Facebook group started by Indonesians living in the Netherlands…”.

      It is more than likely that Alexander was signed up to Faithfreedom Indonesia where he began posting commentaries outlining why he did not think God existed.

      He also had started a Facebook group for atheists called Ateis Minang or Minag Atheists. On the Facebook page for atheists, Alex posted both an essay entitled “the Prophet Muhammad was attracted to his own daughter-in-law,”(http://prophetmuhammadillustrated.com/muhammad-and-hafsa.html) and, a series of cartoon panels from the Biography of the Prophet Muhammad Illustrated – Volume 1 by Abdullah Ibn Sa’d Ibn Abi Sarh.

      Although the essay and cartoons are offensive to some Muslims, they are arguably based on the Quran and the Hadith, a collection of Mohammed’s sayings and actions written by Mohammed (or Muhammad) and those who knew him, including one Abdullah Ibn Sa’d Ibn Abi Sarh. Panels from the controversial biography can be seen by clicking on the Biography of the Prophet Muhammad Illustrated.

      http://prophetmuhammadillustrated.com/the-book.html

      Caution: Some of the panels depict violence and sexual content. One series of panels depicts the story of the Prophet having an affair with the maid of one of his wives. That story, Muhammad and Hafsa, was singled out by the presiding judge at Alex’s sentencing.

    • Mazo says

      May 8, 2014 at 2:11 pm

      According to Voldemortsarmy, all of those non-Muslim Christian Moluccans in the Netherlands can somehow apostasize from a religion which they aren’t a member of, LOL.

  6. David says

    May 5, 2014 at 3:33 am

    This is the logical next step in Britain’s Muslim dominant areas, such as Tower Hamlets. You already will get arrested & fined under “religious hatred” for tearing a Quran in Britain, the next step is being arrested for declaring yourself atheist if you have wall to wall allahu akbar shouting Muslims as your neighbours.

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