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Permalink Reply by shiva on June 15, 2012 at 21:20

Al Ghafur (The All-Forgiving) must be looking the other way

• On 6 May 2010, a court sentenced Bakri Abdullah to one year in jail for blasphemy because the 70-year-old claimed to be a prophet and to have visited heaven in 1975 and 1997.
• On 2 June 2009, the Central Jakarta District Court convicted Lia Eden, also known as Lia Aminuddin or Syamsuriati, of blasphemy. The court accepted that Eden had proselytized her religion, known as Salamullah, which she invented. The court sentenced her to two years and six months in prison. Eden had already served sixteen months for the same offence because of the same court's sentence on 29 June 2006. In 1997, the MUI had issued an edict declaring Eden's religion deviant. Lia's right-hand man, Wahyu Andito Putro Wibisono, who was also accused of the crime, was given a two-year prison sentence.
  

• On 9 December 2008, hundreds of Muslim rioters damaged sixty-seven houses, a church, and a community hall, and injured five people in Masohi, Central Maluku. The rioters were allegedly angry that a Christian school teacher, Welhelmina Holle, had allegedly said something blasphemous during an after-class tutorial at an elementary school. The police arrested Holle for blasphemy. The police arrested two Muslim men for inciting violence.
  

• In April 2008, a court sentenced Ahmad Moshaddeq, the leader of a sect called Al-Qiyadah al-Islamiyah, to four years in prison for committing blasphemous acts. On 2 May 2008, Padang District Court sentenced Dedi Priadi and Gerry Lufthi Yudistira, also members of the Al-Qiyadah al-Islamiyah sect, to three years in prison under Article 156(a).
  

• On 11 November 2007, the Supreme Court of Indonesia sentenced Abdul Rahman, a senior member of the Lia Eden sect, to three years in prison for blasphemy because he claimed to be a reincarnation ofProphet Mohammed.

• In April 2007, police in Malang, East Java, detained forty-two Protestants for disseminating a “prayer video” that instructs individuals to put the Quran on the ground, and to pray for the conversion of Indonesia’s Muslim political leaders. In September 2007, a local court found each of those detained guilty of insulting religion, and sentenced each to five years in prison.
  

• On 10 April 2007, police in the town of Pasuruan, East Java, arrested two men, Rochamim (or Rohim) and Toyib. Toyib was a follower of Rochamim who, according to local residents, said things such as Islam is an Arab religion; prayers five times a day are unnecessary; and the Quran is full of lies. The police charged Toyib under Article 156(a) because he was telling others what Rochamim said.
  

• On 28 June 2006, the Polewali, South Sulawesi state court sentenced Sumardi Tappaya, a Muslim and a high school religious teacher, to six months in prison for heresy after a relative accused him of whistling during prayers. The local MUI declared the whistling deviant.
  

• In May 2006, the press reported that the Banyuwangi, East Java regional legislature voted to oust from office Banyuwangi's Regent, Ratna Ani Lestari. Those in favor of the ouster accused Ratna, a Muslim by birth, of blaspheming Islam by practicing a different religion from the one stated on her identity card. Ratna's supporters stated that she was the target of a religiously motivated smear campaign because of her marriage to a Hindu.
  

• In November 2005, local police on the island of Madura arrested a man for denigrating a religion because he publicly professed a nontraditional version of Islam. A court sentenced the man to two and a half years imprisonment.
  

• In October 2005, police in Central Sulawesi raided their neighborhood Mahdi sect after locals from other villages complained that sect followers were not fasting or not performing ritual prayers during Ramadan. Three policemen and two sect members died in the clash. Local courts tried five Mahdi members for killing the police. In January 2006, the Mahdi members were convicted and sentenced to between nine and twelve years in prison.
  

• In September 2005, an East Java court sentenced each of six drug and cancer treatment counselors at an East Java treatment center to five years in prison and an additional three years in prison for violating key precepts of Islam by using paranormal healing methods. A local MUI edict characterized the center's methods as heretical. Police arrested the counselors while they tried to defend themselves from hundreds of persons who raided the center's headquarters.^[
  

• In August 2005, East Java's Malang District Court sentenced Muhammad Yusman Roy to two years imprisonment for reciting Muslim prayers in Indonesian, which, according to the MUI, tarnished the purity of Arabic-based Islam. Roy was released from prison on 9 November 2006 after serving eighteen months of his sentence.
  

• In June 2005, police charged a lecturer at the Muhammadiyah University in Palu for heresy. The police held the lecturer for five days before placing him under house arrest after two thousand persons protested against his published editorial: "Islam, A Failed Religion." The editorial, among other things, highlighted the spread of corruption in Indonesia. The lecturer was released from house arrest and was dismissed by the University.