ICC Note: Although the Indonesian government has been cracking down on terrorist groups around the country for the past ten years, extremist religious groups still threaten the freedoms of religious minorities around the country, including Christians and Ahmadiyya Muslims. One staggering statistic provided below is that over the past 14 years the Indonesian Christian Communication Forum has recorded over 700 attacks on Christian churches. 
10/31/2012 Indonesia (Jakarta Globe) –  When Indonesia foiled a plot to attack the United States Embassy in Jakarta and other targets last week, it proved two things. The first is that terrorism remains a threat. The plot is believed to be the work of a new militant group called the Harakah Sunni for Indonesian Society, or Hasmi.
Second, the fact that the attack was thwarted attests to the success of surveillance and other police skills in the fight against terror. This is one reason why mega-terrorism has been on the decline since the Bali bomb blasts of 2002.
A bigger threat, however, hovers: Religious extremism is the challenge which Indonesia will have to fight….
The imprint can be seen in challenges to society ranging from the militancy of outfits such as the Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT), accused of involvement in the recent killing of two police officers in Poso, to the radicalism of groups such as the Front Pembela Islam (FPI), which uses violence or its threat to try and impose a spartan version of Islam on members of other religions or even on other Muslims.
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But extremism is another matter. According to the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum, there were 700 cases of church attacks in the 14 years since the downfall of the Suharto regime in 1998. The lack of vigorous state action against the perpetrators of religious violence in some cases encouraged them to believe they could get away with such attacks.
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