From The Economist, a report on setting limits on Islamic extremism in Indonesia since the 2002 Bali bombings:
Indonesia’s invigorated anti-terror fight forms part of a broader struggle to set the limits of political Islam in a country that is mainly Muslim but hugely diverse. Whereas the former Suharto regime contained militancy with an iron fist, Mr Yudhoyono’s government must do so in a vibrant but often chaotic democracy in which hard-core Islamists are a minority but a vocal and sometimes thuggish one. On October 30th Rizieq Shihab, the leader of the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI), a vigilante group, was jailed for 18 months for leading an attack on an inter-faith rally in Jakarta. The mild sentence drew complaints from secularist groups but it is another sign of the building momentum for enforcing the rule of law against self-appointed religious police.
[…] Ahmadiyah, an unorthodox Muslim sect, has suffered many such attacks on its members and mosques. Facing Islamists’ demands to ban the sect and secularists’ demands to protect its members’ rights, Mr Yudhoyono made a weak compromise, allowing the group to exist but banning it from preaching its views. Indonesia’s struggle to strike a just balance between faith and freedom is showing results but it remains a work in progress.
Read the entire article here.