Situating the Indonesian case in the broader literature

The number of “restrictions placed by governments or their agents on the religious practices or institutions of religious minorities that are not placed on the majority religion” (GRD) (Fox, Reference Fox2020, 3) has increased “substantially” (Fox, Reference Fox2020, 20) around the globe since the 1990s.Footnote ¹

This rise in GRD has triggered a debate about the causes behind this trend (Cesari, Reference Cesari2013, 84–85; Fox et al., Reference Fox, Finke and Eisenstein2019, 10). Several studies have argued that SRD, namely “societal actions taken against religious minorities by members of a country's religious majority who do not represent the government” (Fox, Reference Fox2020, 4), is a precondition for GRD (Finke, Reference Finke1990; Brustein, Reference Brustein2003; Gill, Reference Gill2005; Grim and Finke, Reference Grim and Finke2007, Reference Grim and Finke2011; Ben-Nun Bloom, Reference Ben-Nun Bloom2015, 18; Chebel d'Appollonia, Reference Chebel d'Appollonia2016).

Grim and Finke have argued most decisively that SRD causes GRD (Grim and Finke, Reference Grim and Finke2006, 637, 647, 651; Reference Grim and Finke2007, 637; Reference Grim and Finke2011, 9). They claim that there is “a strong relationship between social and government restrictions of religious freedoms. When the social attitudes toward other religions become more negative and social and religious movements are organized against alternative religions, the government's interference with an individual's right to worship rises sharply… Social restrictions [are] the most powerful predictor of government restrictions” (Grim and Finke, Reference Grim and Finke2011, 79–80). In other words, “[l]egal restrictions on religion arise from social origins” (Grim and Finke, Reference Grim and Finke2011, 9).

More recent studies have questioned the “universality” of such claims and pointed to the “unexamined complexities in the relationship between SRD and GRD” (Fox et al., Reference Fox, Finke and Eisenstein2019, 22). Some studies found that the “causes of GRD and SRD do not greatly overlap” (Fox, Reference Fox2020, 266). Other studies found that SRD caused GRD only in some countries (Ben-Nun Bloom, Reference Ben-Nun Bloom2015, 18), with regard to certain religious minorities (Fox et al., Reference Fox, Finke and Eisenstein2019, 22; Fox, Reference Fox2020, 4, 10, 263) and during specific periods (Grim and Finke, Reference Grim and Finke2011, 171). Overall, it has become increasingly clear that current theories present an incomplete picture of the situation on the ground as “[t]he summary measures used in previous studies mask important differences and findings…” with regard to the potential relationship between SRD and GRD (Fox et al., Reference Fox, Finke and Eisenstein2019, 22).

The debate about the SRD–GRD relationship in Indonesian studies

Both SRD and GRD have increased in Indonesia since 1998. The rise in SRD has manifested itself in various ways, ranging from places of worship being ransacked to followers of minority religions being attacked or killed (Beatty, Reference Beatty2009; HRW, 2013, 1; Fealy, Reference Fealy, Dibley and Ford2019, 129; Fealy and Ricci, Reference Fealy, Ricci, Fealy and Ricci2019, 2; Power and Warburton, Reference Power and Warburton2020, 8–15). GRD too has increased in Indonesia over the past two decades. National and subnational governments have issued laws and regulations that restrict the practices of religious minorities in ways that do not apply to the majority religion (Hurriyah, 2020). A considerable literature has tried to identify the causes of both SRD and GRD in Indonesia, although rarely explicitly differentiating between the two types of discrimination. Since this article wants to contribute to the debate whether SRD causes GRD, the following paragraphs will concentrate on the literature that has (implicitly) examined this relationship in the case of Indonesia.

Much like in the broader theoretical debate, there is no consensus in Indonesian studies whether SRD is a precondition for GRD. Several scholars have argued that in Indonesia, “societal pressures” (Grim and Finke, Reference Grim and Finke2011, 85), which originate in a “creeping religious and political conservatism” (Setiawan, Reference Setiawan, Power and Warburton2020, 268), within society (Assyaukanie, Reference Assyaukanie2017, 6–9; Hamid, Reference Hamid2018; Bayuni, Reference Bayuni, Power and Warburton2020, xv) and declining levels of tolerance vis-à-vis other religions (Hamid, Reference Hamid2018, 5; Warburton and Aspinall, Reference Warburton and Aspinall2019, 273) have led to an increase in both SRD (Hamid, Reference Hamid2018, 11) and subsequently GRD (Hamid, Reference Hamid2018, 13; Lindsey, Reference Lindsey and Hefner2018, 228; Sebastian and Arifianto, Reference Sebastian and Arifianto2020, 1). Other studies have cautioned against drawing a connection between mass attitudes and the rise of discriminatory government laws and regulations in Indonesia (Warburton and Aspinall, Reference Warburton and Aspinall2019, 273). Some have even claimed that in Indonesia “Islamic populism has never been an important driver of policy change” (Mudhoffir, Reference Mudhoffir, Power and Warburton2020, 130) and “[p]ublic opinion may have no causal impact on policy outcomes at all” (Pepinsky et al., Reference Pepinsky, Liddle and Mujani2018, 22). In response, some scholars have defined “society” in narrower terms. According to these accounts, religious groups situated in Indonesian society, which do not necessarily represent the ideological inclinations of the majority population, have acquired disproportionate political clout after 1998. The democratization of politics that followed the collapse of the centralized New Order dictatorship in 1998 not only fragmented the political arena (Aspinall, Reference Aspinall2013) but also deregulated this tightly constricted marketplace for religion (Sidel, Reference Sidel2007, 174; Fealy, Reference Fealy, Dibley and Ford2019, 125; Sebastian and Arifianto, Reference Sebastian and Arifianto2020, 3; Pelletier, Reference Pelletier2021). The increased competition for a share of Indonesia's religious marketplace brought identity politics to the fore (van Bruinessen, Reference Van Bruinessen2013; Hefner, Reference Hefner2019, 17; Arifianto, Reference Arifianto2020a, 27), as both old and new players resorted to increasingly extreme views and activities to stand out in the cacophony of voices now claiming to speak in the name of religion (Damanik, Reference Damanik2002; Sidel, Reference Sidel2007; Wilson, Reference Wilson2008; Hasani and Naipospos, Reference Hasani and Naipospos2010; Kloos, Reference Kloos2014, 76–89; Assyaukanie, Reference Assyaukanie2017, 6–9; Pelletier, Reference Pelletier2021; Permana, Reference Permana2021, 6). Concretely, long, established, mainstream religious organizations such as Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah “remain pillars of Indonesian democracy and associational life” (Hefner, Reference Hefner2019, 13), but have passively watched from the sidelines as SRD and GRD increased (HRW, 2013, 19; Arifianto, Reference Arifianto2020a, Reference Arifianto2020b, 2). In fact, conservative elements within these organizations have actively encouraged the discrimination against religious minorities, either through direct measures to exclude them from the public sphere (Fealy, Reference Fealy2018; Mietzner and Muhtadi, Reference Mietzner and Muhtadi2018, 75; Nuraniyah, Reference Nuraniyah, Power and Warburton2020, 81) or by lending support for various government regulations discriminating against religious minorities (HRW, 2013, 19; Menchik, Reference Menchik2016, 1). Likewise, MUI's national leadership issued several fatwas, religious edicts that are non-binding, against religious minorities (Schäfer, Reference Schäfer2018, 4). However, it is mostly comparatively small conservative religious groups with mainly a local presence that have been most vocal about curbing or banning the religious practices of religious minorities in Indonesia (Mudzakkir, Reference Mudzakkir2012; Simanjuntak, Reference Simanjuntak2021, 2, 10). Many of these groups also called for more government laws and regulations discriminating against religious minorities (Facal, Reference Facal2020, 2). Consequently, numerous studies (Hamid, Reference Hamid2018, 2; Arifianto, Reference Arifianto2020a, Reference Arifianto2020b, 9) have attributed the rise of government laws and regulations discriminating against religious minorities to the fact that “hardline civil society groups operating outside the political system have grown in size, number, and sophistication” (HRW, 2013, 14) after 1998. While some scholars claim that such hardline groups have gained enough “power to deploy the state apparatus in the service of their goals” (Jaffrey, Reference Jaffrey, Power and Warburton2020, 304) and that particularly subnational governments are “unable to act independently from the influence … of traditionalist [groups]” (Permana, Reference Permana2021, 9), others have cautioned against such arguments of “state capture” by conservative interests situated in society. Rather, they argue, the government is susceptible to societal pressure only if specific “triggers” are in place (Ahnaf and Lussier, Reference Ahnaf and Lussier2019, 277). Elections at both the national (Nuraniyah, Reference Nuraniyah, Power and Warburton2020, 85; Simanjuntak, Reference Simanjuntak2021, 8) and subnational level (Bush, Reference Bush, Fealy and White2008; Buehler, Reference Buehler2016, 184; Pisani and Buehler, Reference Pisani and Buehler2016; Soedirgo, Reference Soedirgo2018, 194) have been identified as important “triggers” for government regulations discriminating against religious minorities (Setara, 2017, 19).Footnote ²

To summarize, some scholars have claimed that deep societal transformations in Indonesia that began during the New Order regime, but which became more consequential once political competition increased after the collapse of the dictatorship in 1998, explain why societal discrimination against religious minorities has become more pronounced and why it has increasingly been enshrined in laws and regulations at both the national and subnational level. Other scholars have used a narrower understanding of “society.” They have argued that hardline groups situated in society have gained influence over the policymaking process in newly democratic Indonesia. Finally, some scholars have argued that societal pressure, broadly or narrowly defined, is not a sufficient condition for GRD. Instead, the state mediates the influence of society in the lawmaking process as it becomes susceptible to societal pressure only in the context of “trigger” events such as elections.

The remainder of the article will critically examine these different arguments about the SRD–GRD nexus by analyzing the diffusion of government regulations discriminating against the Ahmadiyah community in Indonesia.Footnote ³

Diffusion patterns

Research on the spread of laws in consolidated democracies has shown that laws which enjoy widespread popular support spread differently within a country than unpopular laws (Mooney and Lee, Reference Mooney, Lee and Mooney2001, 173–178). Diffusion patterns reveal information about the drivers of the diffusion process, in other words. Such patterns may therefore offer insights into whether the discrimination against religious minorities is the result of societal pressure. To interpret these diffusion patterns correctly, one first needs to understand that there are different types of laws and policies. Most public policies are fairly technical and complex. Such ordinary policies diffuse across space and time in a way that is best depicted as an S-shaped curve of the kind shown in Figure 1 (Mooney and Lee, Reference Mooney, Lee and Mooney2001, 172; Rogers, Reference Rogers2003, 273). This particular diffusion pattern emerges for the following reason: Initially, a new policy is adopted in only a few jurisdictions. These jurisdictions may be home to an innovative parliament or a government head who is a “political entrepreneur.” Most other jurisdictions may be unaware or disinterested in the new policy at this point in time. However, as awareness of the new policy spreads, a learning process occurs. Slowly, a growing number of jurisdictions embraces the new policy. Eventually, the cumulative number of jurisdictions that embraces the new policy plateaus as there is only a limited number of jurisdictions left to which the policy can spread (Mooney and Lee, Reference Mooney, Lee and Mooney2001, 172; Rogers, Reference Rogers2003, 273).

Figure 1. Diffusion pattern of ordinary policies.

Source: Based on Rogers (Reference Rogers2003, 273).

However, morality policies usually diffuse in a different manner. This is because they have different characteristics than ordinary policies: One, morality policies are regulations about “first principles.” Questions morality policies raise are “not questions about which policy might best achieve a commonly held goal, but they are debates over basic policy goals themselves” (Mooney and Lee, Reference Mooney, Lee and Mooney2001, 172). The saliency of morality policies is therefore high. Two, morality policies are usually simple, which is why people are “less confused by technicalities” (Mooney and Lee, Reference Mooney, Lee and Mooney2001, 173) compared to ordinary policies. In short, morality policies usually figure prominently in public discussions and most people easily form an opinion about such policies. The following insights from existing research on the spread of morality policies deserve being quoted in full, as they show how patterns in the diffusion of such policies can shed light on the driving forces behind it.

Hence, morality policies that address issues of concern to the majority of citizens are likely to diffuse across time and space in a way shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Diffusion pattern of popular morality policies.

Source: Based on Mooney and Lee (Reference Mooney, Lee and Mooney2001, 179).

If most of society does not support a morality policy, norm entrepreneurs, namely “people interested in changing social norms” (Sunstein, Reference Sunstein1996, 909), have two options: One, they can abandon the issue. Two, they can try to “demoralize” an issue by portraying it as technically complex and of low saliency to the general public (Mooney and Lee, Reference Mooney, Lee and Mooney2001, 175; Hollander and Patapan, Reference Hollander and Patapan2017, 19). If successful, the diffusion of such a “demoralized” policy will then resemble the S-shaped curve shown in Figure 1. In contrast, if norm entrepreneurs fail to “demoralize” a morality policy that the majority of society does not support, the diffusion pattern will resemble the sawtooth pattern shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Diffusion pattern of unpopular morality policies.

Source: Based on Mooney and Lee (Reference Mooney, Lee and Mooney2001, 181).

This sawtooth pattern emerges because periods during which there is no interest in, or strong resistance to, a morality policy follow periods in which such policies are enacted. Policies may even get revoked in-between spikes, as the “dips” in the cumulative number of policies in Figure 3. The diffusion process comes full circle when “focusing events” (Termeer et al., Reference Termeer, Dewulf, Breeman, Knieling and Leal Filhox, 34) trigger a renewed interest in the policy, as a consequence of which additional jurisdictions may adopt the policy. Overall, however, the policy diffuses only with great difficulty across both space and time as a majority of society has either no interest in the policy or does not support it (Mooney and Lee, Reference Mooney, Lee and Mooney2001, 81).

To summarize, the temporal and spatial variance in the diffusion of policies reveals important information about the forces driving the process. Hence, a diffusion curve analysis can not only reveal whether a “particular policy looks more regulatory or morality” (Fulwider, Reference Fulwider2011, 13), but also whether or not a morality policy enjoys widespread popular support. Studying the diffusion patterns of GRD may therefore provide information about whether SRD is a driving force behind the dissemination of discriminatory regulations.

Text reuse patterns

A small number of studies in the policy diffusion literature has tried to understand the way laws come into existence by studying how “ideas” travel between legislative documents (Fulwider, Reference Fulwider2011; Wilkerson et al., Reference Wilkerson, Smith and Stramp2015; Gilardi and Wüest, Reference Gilardi and Wüest2018; Linder et al., Reference Linder, Desmarais, Burgess and Giraudy2020). To this end, they have examined text reuse between different laws. Studying how text is being reused between laws allows scholars to better understand the flow of “ideas” and the actors involved in formulating a law.

Diffusion curve analysis

There are two different ways to interpret the diffusion curve in Figure 4. However, both interpretations suggest that dynamics at the government level, not society, are the dominant driver behind the diffusion of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations. The starting point for the first interpretation of the diffusion curve is the studies that have argued how anti-Ahmadiyah sentiments in Indonesian society have deep historical roots, dating back to the colonial period. During the 1930s when the archipelago was still under Dutch colonial rule, groups at the fringes of the political system such as the Islamic Union (Persis—Persatuan Islam), but also mass organizations such as NU and Muhammadiyah began to condemn Ahmadiyah after they had initially tolerated, even collaborated, with the group (Menchik, Reference Menchik2016, 67). Intolerance against the Ahmadiyah among Islamic organizations continued after Indonesia had become an independent democracy in 1949. Eventually, “opposition to Ahmadiyah … stretched across theological and political cleavages in Muslim civil society” (Menchik, Reference Menchik2016, 79). Indonesia's post-independence experiment with democracy came to an end in 1957, with General Suharto installing a full-fledged dictatorship in 1965. Once Suharto had consolidated power, political parties were prohibited from using religious platforms to campaign in the (rigged) elections that were held every 5 years. In addition, mainstream Islamic organizations of the kind described above were co-opted, while hardline Islamic groups were driven underground. Even though the Suharto regime tightly controlled the role of religion in both the political and public sphere, intolerance toward the Ahmadiyah remained prevalent throughout the New Order (Menchik, Reference Menchik2016, 82). It resurfaced after Indonesia transitioned toward a democracy in 1998. For instance, the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI—Forum Pembela Islam), one of the most notorious vigilante groups in Indonesia, began to pursue a very aggressive course against the Ahmadiyah immediately after the collapse of the New Order dictatorship. In 2008, FPI's general secretary Sobri Lubis even “called upon his followers to murder Ahmadis” (Facal, Reference Facal2020, 14). This is not mere talk. Groups such as FPI, the Islamic Reform Movement (GARIS—Gerakan Reformasi Islam) and the People's Movement Against Ahmadiyah (GERAM—Gerakan Rakyat Anti-Ahmadiyah) assaulted Ahmadiyah facilities, including an orphanage, in several jurisdictions across Indonesia (Mudzakkir, Reference Mudzakkir2012). Several of these groups also called for government regulations curtailing the religious freedom of the Ahmadiyah community (Facal, Reference Facal2020, 2). The literature has also used data from various surveys to support claims about widespread anti-Ahmadiyah sentiment in Indonesian society. For instance, in a survey conducted among Mosque officials in Jakarta in 2009, 57% of respondents wanted to ban Ahmadi from practicing their faith (Tanuwidjaja, Reference Tanuwidjaja2010, 39). Similarly, a survey conducted among Muhammadiyah and NU leaders in 2010 claimed that a large majority of respondents supported restrictions against Ahmadiyah (Menchik, Reference Menchik2019, 424). A survey conducted in 2017 among 1859 students revealed that 86.6% of respondents agreed that the government should ban groups that mainstream Muslim consider heretics, including Ahmadiyah (Syafruddin and Ropi, Reference Syafruddin and Ropi2018, 9; Yusuf et al., Reference Yusuf, Shidiq and Hariyadi2019, 5). There are also surveys that examined the attitude of Indonesian society at large toward Ahmadiyah. For instance, in a survey of ordinary Indonesians conducted by Indonesia's Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2009, 70% of respondents said that they wanted the government to ban Ahmadiyah (Tanuwidjaja, Reference Tanuwidjaja2010, 39).

If aforementioned historical accounts and surveys accurately capture the views of ordinary Indonesians and their religious leaders vis-à-vis Ahmadiyah, it raises the question why despite an alleged 100 years of widespread anti-Ahmadiyah sentiment throughout Indonesian society, anti-Ahmadiyah regulations have not been adopted in higher numbers and more frequently? The uneven adoption of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations across both space and time since 1949 suggests, at the very least, that SRD is not a sufficient condition for GRD to emerge. Instead, the state mediates the influence of society. The following paragraphs provide a sketch of this mediation process, drawing on several studies that have described, if not necessarily explained, this process in more detail.

The first anti-Ahmadiyah regulation in Indonesia was adopted in Subang district in West Java province in 1976 by the local branch of the national government Coordinating Body to Monitor Indigenous Beliefs (Bakor Pakem—Badan Koordinasi Pengawasan Aliran Kepercayaan Masyarakat). Over the next 22 years, an additional 10 anti-Ahmadiyah regulations were adopted across Indonesia. Two of these regulations were adopted at the provincial level, seven at the district level, and one at the national level, as shown in Appendix 1. Most regulations were adopted by either local branches of Pakor Bakem or the local branch of the Attorney General's Office, in which Bakor Pakem is embedded.Footnote ⁶ The existing literature does not offer any explanation for why anti-Ahmadiyah regulations suddenly began to emerge during the New Order dictatorship in the mid-1970s and why they appeared in only a few districts in a small number of provinces scattered across the archipelago (Hicks, Reference Hicks2014, 326; Soedirgo, Reference Soedirgo2020, 76–81). There is anecdotal evidence, however, that the state-mediated societal pressure, thereby shaping the diffusion of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations in the peculiar way shown in Figure 4. For instance, one study mentions that the Institute of Islamic Studies and Research (LPPI—Lembaga Pengkajan dan Penelitian Islam), a conservative religious group, “put pressure on different government bodies to act against [Ahmadiyah] … throughout the 1980s and 1990s.” However, “LPPI's lobbying efforts were ineffective due to the institutional context” (Soedirgo, Reference Soedirgo2020, 90). MUI is another lobbying group frequently mentioned as putting pressure on the government to ban Ahmadiyah. The group was established in West Java in 1958, but the Suharto regime turned it into a national organization in 1975 in an attempt to co-opt growing Islamic piety in Indonesian society (Crouch, Reference Crouch2009, 7). The MUI issued its first anti-Ahmadiyah fatwa in 1980. It also urged the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs to ban Ahmadiyah. However, “the outcome the MUI desired was not achieved at this time” (Crouch, Reference Crouch2009, 7), as the Ministry of Religious Affairs did not ban Ahmadiyah. In short, existing studies agree that the institutional context during the New Order dictatorship was not receptive to calls from within society to discriminate against Ahmadiyah through regulations. This still leaves the question why not a single anti-Ahmadiyah regulation was adopted from 1949 until 1976, even though Indonesia was a democracy between 1949 and 1957, with elections being held in 1955, an event that temporarily increased the influence of “society” in Indonesian politics to a great degree (Anderson, Reference Anderson1983, 482–483)?

The post-1998 period presents a similar puzzle. If anti-Ahmadiyah sentiments are prevalent in Indonesian society to the degree claimed in the anecdotal accounts and surveys mentioned above, why did this not translate into a multitude of such regulations being adopted in a large number of jurisdictions in quick succession immediately after the demise of the New Order dictatorship?Footnote ⁷ At the time of writing this article, anti-Ahmadiyah regulations had been adopted in only 23.7% (9/38) of all provinces, 5.3% (22/416) of all districts, and 15.3% (15/98) of all municipalities in Indonesia. Moreover, there are only two provinces where a majority of jurisdictions adopted at least one anti-Ahmadiyah regulation since 1998, as shown in Figure 6.Footnote ⁸

Figure 6. Percentage of jurisdictions that adopted at least one anti-Ahmadiyah regulation 1949–2022, per province. *Anti-Ahmadiyah regulation also adopted at the provincial level.

Source: Author's calculation based on Appendix 1.

In addition to this spatial variance, there is also considerable temporal variance in the adoption of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations after 1998. As mentioned above, in the immediate aftermath of the political opening in 1998, there was a slow but gradual incline in the number of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations. The number of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations increased sharply between 2005 and 2012. From 2012 to 2022, only three anti-Ahmadiyah regulations have been adopted, compared to 46 anti-Ahmadiyah regulations during the decade before.

Several studies have argued that the state mediates the influence of society in the policymaking process in post-New Order Indonesia too. The state becomes receptive to calls from within society to discriminate against Ahmadiyah only when certain “triggers” or “focusing events” are present. For instance, the uptick of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations after 2005 is the result of changes in state society dynamics related to events that year, scholars have claimed. Direct elections for governors, district heads, and mayors were introduced in 2005. The same year, the MUI issued another fatwa against Ahmadiyah. It was this combination of subnational government heads having to win direct elections to gain or maintain power and renewed societal pressure to ban Ahmadiyah that resulted in a spike of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations from 2005 onwards, the argument goes (Crouch, Reference Crouch2012, 562; Hicks, Reference Hicks2014, 327).

However, even claims that the state only becomes receptive to societal pressures when certain triggers and focusing events are in place struggle to explain the diffusion pattern of anti-Ahmadiayh regulations in Indonesia. This is because the overwhelming majority of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations adopted after 2005 were not adopted during election years. Only four out of 45 anti-Ahmadiyah regulations that have been adopted between 2005 and 2022 were adopted during an election year, as shown in Appendix 1.Footnote ⁹ In short, if one assumes that aforementioned surveys accurately capture the prevalence of anti-Ahmadiyah sentiment in post-1998 Indonesian society, it remains unclear how exactly public sentiment shapes the diffusion of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations in Indonesia. There is no immediate connection between popular elections being held and anti-Ahmadiyah regulations being adopted. Overall, there is then considerable evidence that SRD is not a sufficient condition for GRD to emerge even in an environment such as newly democratic Indonesia whose government is seemingly more exposed to participatory politics and pressure from within society.

Text reuse analysis

The difficulties of existing studies to explain the spread of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations suggest a second interpretation of the diffusion curve shown in Figure 4, namely that SRD is not a necessary condition for GRD to emerge either. Discriminatory laws and regulations may inspire other discriminatory laws and regulations without any direct pressure from society. Text reuse patterns between anti-Ahmadiyah regulations provide evidence in support of this argument.

Text from existing anti-Ahmadiyah regulations is frequently reused in subsequent regulations, as the numerous links between nodes in Figure 5 indicate. Furthermore, text reuse between anti-Ahmadiyah regulations goes beyond referencing, as the thickness of the links between nodes, depicting the percentage of text copied from a previous regulation, shows. For instance, 71% of the anti-Ahmadiyah regulation adopted in West Sumatra province on March 24, 2011 was copied verbatim from the anti-Ahmadiyah regulation adopted in West Java province on March 2, 2011, as shown in Appendix 2. The text reuse analysis also shows that the diffusion of discriminatory content seems to occur mainly within administrative layers. Links between nodes situated within the same layer of Indonesia's administrative hierarchy are both more numerous and thicker than links between nodes situated at different layers of Indonesia's state apparatus. Provinces copy mostly from other provinces, while districts and municipalities copy mostly from each other. The vertical diffusion of discriminatory content is much less pronounced. This is shown by a lack of thick lines between nodes from different administrative layers. Furthermore, if text reuse occurs along vertical lines, it occurs mainly in a top-down fashion. The bottom-up diffusion of text between administrative layers barely exists, as shown in Figure 4. Finally, to examine the aforementioned claim that pressure from societal groups has paved the way for the diffusion of discriminatory government regulations, I compared the content of anti-Ahmadiyah regulations with the MUI fatwa against Ahmadiyah issued in 2005. Comparing the content of the MUI fatwa with government regulations discriminating against the Ahmadiyah shows that text reuse is absent. While this may have to do with the brevity of the 2005 fatwa—the MUI needed only five pages to condemn the religious beliefs of 300,000 people—it suggests that the MUI document is unlikely to have served as a blueprint for subsequent government regulations unlike previous scholarship has claimed (HRW, 2013, 36).

Aforementioned text reuse patterns do not establish a direct causal relationship between the adoption of different regulations. However, they suggest that at least some anti-Ahmadiyah regulations may result from the interdependence between jurisdictions, and not because of demand from within society. The literature provides anecdotal evidence in support of the argument that GRD may result in GRD without any direct societal pressure. For instance, Crouch mentions how the anti-Ahmadiyah regulation adopted in Banten province in 2011 was inspired by a regulation the government of East Java province had adopted earlier that year. An anti-Ahmadiyah regulation the West Java provincial government adopted the same year even “borrowed some key provisions from the East Java Regulation and extended its scope further” (Crouch, Reference Crouch2012, 560).Footnote ¹⁰ To provide another example, Pontianak City, the capital of West Kalimantan province, issued an anti-Ahmadiyah regulation in 2011. Although conflicts between religious groups are common in West Kalimantan province, in Pontianak City neither the broader population nor hardline groups situated in society called for a ban of Ahmadiyah prior to the adoption of Regulation No. 17/2011. The regulation seems to have been inspired mainly by the presence of similar regulations elsewhere in Indonesia. Regulation No. 17/2011 adopted in Pontianak City on March 11, 2011 copied 59% of its text from Regulation No. 12/2011 adopted in West Java Province on March 2, 2011. Even in areas of Indonesia with no prior societal tensions between the majority Sunni population and the Ahmadiyah such as East Java Province, anti-Ahmadiyah regulations have been adopted (Soedirgo, Reference Soedirgo2020, 43). In 2011, Soekarwo, then East Java governor, adopted Regulation No. 188/2011, which banned Ahmadiyah in the entire province. Again, this seems to have occurred without any apparent societal pressure, both broadly and narrowly understood, to do so.Footnote ¹¹ While the provincial parliament in East Java had issued a letter earlier in 2011 that called for a government regulation against Ahmadiyah, “[i]t is unclear why the legislature did not pass a regulation itself, although there may not have been sufficient support for such a regulation” (Crouch, Reference Crouch2012, 559). Again, the availability of similar regulations seems to have inspired the regulation in East Java Province. Thirty-six percent of the Regulation's text was copied from Regulation No. 143/2006 adopted in Sukabumi District in West Java province years earlier on March 20, 2006.

There is also anecdotal evidence in support of the argument that top-down pressure emanating entirely from within the government triggers anti-Ahmadiyah regulations. In 2008, the Minister of Religion, Attorney General, and the Minister of Home Affairs issued Joint Decision No. 3/2008 against Ahmadiyah. Scholars have argued that this joint decision was the main driver for the subsequent spike in anti-Ahmadiyah regulations in 2011 (Crouch, Reference Crouch2009, Reference Crouch2012; Schäfer, Reference Schäfer2018, 5). This is because the joint decision “is being used as justification by local government authorities to ban the activities of Ahmadiyah at the regional level” (Crouch, Reference Crouch2012, 556). Figure 5 shows that there are indeed many lines between the Joint Decision No. 3/2008 and subsequent regulations, indicating text reuse between these documents. A final example for GRD potentially causing GRD in a top-down fashion comes from Depok City in West Java province. There, the municipal government adopted an anti-Ahmadiyah regulation after the national Ministry of Religion and the National Intelligence Agency, in collaboration with MUI, had begun to investigate Ahmadiyah in the city (Crouch, Reference Crouch2012, 561–562).