ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the legal ambiguity that contributes to the state’s ineffective response to the violence against Ahmadiyah and Shi’a communities. This legal ambiguity refers to unclear and occasionally incoherent laws being applied discriminatively, which resulted in perpetrators of violence being exempted from legal prosecution. This chapter finds that regional governments in the era of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono often manipulated this ambiguity to issue bylaws that further restricted the activities of Ahmadiyah and Shi’a communities. These bylaws justified vigilante groups further increasing pressure against the minority communities, which often resulted in violence against the latter, in the form of vandalism against their properties.
