INDONESIA: AHMADIYYA MUSLIMS PERSECUTED, REPORTS CNN

Intan Nurhati was on her way to the gathering in Parung, West Java province, from the capital Jakarta with a member of the Indonesian Parliament when the attack happened.  (CNN)

Ahmadiyya Times | News Desk | December 18, 2009
Source & Credit: CNN | By Richard Allen Greene

Vast majority of the world faces restrictions on religion, study finds | CNN
By Richard Allen Greene | December 17, 2009

(CNN) -- Intan Suci Nurhati was on her way to a religious gathering when her sisters called to say they were under attack.

"They were running for their safety as they called," she said. "When I heard, I realized how far it was to the main compound, and I was like, 'Oh, my God.' "

Nurhati and her family are members of a Muslim minority sect called the Ahmadi, who hold annual gatherings in each country where they have a community. It was in July 2005 that the Indonesian gathering came under attack by -- Nurhati estimates -- 10,000 people throwing stones.

The protesters outnumbered the Ahmadi by 100 to 1.

Nurhati was on her way to the gathering in Parung, West Java province, from the capital Jakarta with a member of the Indonesian Parliament when the attack happened.

By the time she arrived, houses and books had been burned, she said.

"No one was killed, but there were some minor injuries from the throwing of rocks. We decided to call off the conference. It was unsafe to go on with the gathering," said Nurhati, 27, a graduate student studying climate change at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.

"There was so much anger in their faces," said Nurhati, a native of Indonesia who has been living in the United States for 10 years.

Police provided buses to get the Ahmadi community to safety, but Nurhati does not know of any arrests or prosecutions as a result of the attack.

"It was really disappointing. We have the right to be there. But the police were trying to minimize the clashes, rather than trying to say we have the right to be there," she said.

Indonesia -- the most populous Muslim country in the world -- is often touted as an example of tolerance and democracy in the Islamic world.

But a huge new study suggests it's actually among the most restrictive countries in the world when it comes to religion.

The study charted publicly reported incidents of religious violence, intolerance, intimidation and discrimination in 198 countries and territories from mid-2006 to mid-2008, its authors said. Brian Grim, the lead researcher on the project, said he worked on the study for more than three years.

The report looks not only at legal restrictions, but also at how laws are implemented and how social tensions restrict freedom of religion, even where there is no official or legal bar against the practice.

Indonesia has both.

Read more: Vast majority of the world faces restrictions on religion, study finds

(Dr. Chairul Bahri contributed in identifying the story.)