Max Regus
PhD Candidate, Graduate School of Humanities, Tilburg University
Project: Religious Minorities, Human Rights and the Politics of Protection: A Study on the Case of
The Ahmadiyya Islam Minority in Indonesia
Supervisors: (1). Professor Herman L. Beck, (2). Professor Mirjam van Reisen
This research will employ multi-site perspectives such as political sciences, sociology, development
studies based on current information from the field and many previous research in the problem of the
Ahmadiyya Islam minority in Indonesia. This research focuses on the trend that religious minorites
are being denied fundamental and substantive rights, as the Indonesian state abdicates all responsibility
for ensuring their protection. The unstoppable violence is an experience that deeply reflects this
failure. The escalating violence experienced by the Ahmadiyya as religious minorities in
Indonesia strongly relates to the state’s political position, namely its ability to construct a distinctive
position within the discourse on the future of minorities in Indonesia.
The state needs to implement three fundamental concerns. The state should improve an inclusive
policy in which religious minority groups enjoy political-legal protection. The state must realise law
enforcement via the prosecution of the perpetrators of violence. This point is absolutely fundamental
to the protection of religious minority groups. The state also needs to prioritize the political concerns
of religious minorities, via the initiation of affirmative action. What is the future of religious minority
groups in Indonesia? This is an urgent question, when the current problematic situation has witnessed
the complete destruction of all dignity for these religious groups. And implicated in this is the future
of Indonesian justice, when the state’s respect for rights is beholden to political weakness. No justice
can be celebrated when the state becomes a passive audience to the violent attacks conducted by
militant groups. This failure of protection is increasingly leading justice into a state of silence.