ABSTRACT
This article examines the contemporary discourses on orthodoxy and deviance in Indonesia and Malaysia from a perspective focused on their spatial dimensions and repercussions. In both countries, attacks against and controversies surrounding Muslims who are being accused of heresy have increased throughout the early 2000s. Ahmadis, but also Shia Muslims, are pushed to the margins of a religion whose mainstream versions are being consolidated in their national contexts. In the case of Malaysia, Ahmadis and Shia are not permitted to call their spiritual centres mosques. Their centres are located deep in the outskirts of the capital Kuala Lumpur. In the case of the Malaysian Ahmadis, the local religious authorities have marked their centre in Kampung Nahkoda as ‘non-Muslim’ with large signboards, subjecting them to scrutiny and suspicion from their neighbours. The main Shia centre Hauzah Imam Ali ar-Ridha Centre has been vulnerable to raids by the Islamic religious police who performatively treat the space as non-sacred. In Indonesia, several Muslim communities have taken over Ahmadi mosques and property as their own. These practices cement the groups’ status as different and marginal and establish the boundaries of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the urban landscapes of Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. In this chapter a focus is proposed on the spatial and social consequences of these attitudes.
