Indonesia is the most populous Islamic country and as such is host to a diverse range of Islamic beliefs and practices. Here we examine how the diversity of beliefs and practices among Indonesian Muslims relates to group bonding and parochialism. In particular, we examine the predictive power of two distinct types of group alignment, group identification and identity fusion, among individuals from three Sunni politico-religious groups - a fundamentalist group (PKS), a moderate group (NU), and a control sample of politically unaffiliated citizens. Fundamentalists were more fused to targets than moderates or citizens, but contrary to fusion theory, we found across all groups, that group identification (not fusion) better predicted parochialism, including willingness to carry out extreme pro-group actions. We discuss how religious beliefs and practice impact parochial attitudes, as well as the implications for theoretical models linking fusion to extreme behaviour.

The present study aims to understand the roles of religious fundamentalism and collective narcissism in predicting extreme behavior. It was hypothesized that religious fundamentalism may enhance collective narcissism and that this would in turn increase the tendency to endorse extreme behavior. It was also anticipated that perceptions of social tightness would moderate the indirect effect of religious fundamentalism on extreme behavior through collective narcissism.To test the hypotheses, we collected data from 788 members of Islamic religious groups in Indonesia (Male= 457, Female= 325), ages ranged from 17 to 52 (M= 25.14, SD= 8.49).Supporting the hypotheses, our findings demonstrated the validity of the expected pathways, confirming that it is important to consider the role of collective narcissism and tightnesslooseness when studying relationships between religious fundamentalism and extreme behavior.In particular, our findings demonstrate that there is a away for religious fundamentalists not to support for extreme behavior when they can have looseness culture, through which it can lower are low either in the level of collective narcissism or tightness.

This paper presents an analysis of interviews of participants in a political manifestation in Indonesia about the reasons for the rally and the resulting riot. The rally was held in the middle of the Jakarta gubernatorial election, against a non-Muslim incumbent who was accused of having insulted the Quran. We argue that there is a deep relationship between social identities and religion, which has implications for societal togetherness and political freedom. Using a snowball technique, we interviewed 16 Muslims who had participated in this rally. The findings suggest that 1) even though the rally was held in the middle of an election, the demonstrators denied that the rally was politically motivated; 2) Those demonstrators who thought that intruders had infiltrated the rally, maintained that the intruders are to be held responsible for any violence, but not the ‘actual’ participants. 3) Interviewees claimed that their actions were not motivated by anti-Chinese prejudice, although traces of racist thinking can be found in their statements. The findings are discussed before the background of social representations, social identity, theories of collective action, and the black sheep effect.

Conducted in Indonesia, this study analyzes how a religious group accused of being heretical ended up receiving threats and a number of violent reactions, a situation in which the victims were considered to have caused the violence. The study presented here focused on this case of the Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim group in Indonesia that are the most frequently reported as being victims of violence. In total, 309 Sunni Muslims participated in filling out open-ended questions, and 10 Sunni Muslims (all male) participated in interviews discussing the Ahmadiyya and interreligious groups. We found that a substantial number of majority Sunni Muslims think that the values of the Ahmadiyya group are incompatible with common, mainstream Muslim values. As a consequence, their existence is considered a threat and a disruption to the Muslim community. Therefore, violence is justified if the group insists upon continuing their religious activities. In the eyes of these Sunni Muslims, Ahmadiyya members undermine the coherence within the Muslim community, and occurrence of violence against Ahmadiyya members is thus thought to be the victim's own fault.

Since 1965, in Indonesia, people labelled as communists and their descendants have been mistreated. Recently, there has been an issue to apologize to them, but up until now, no official apology has been offered by the Indonesian government. The present study aims to understand how communism is perceived in Indonesia and why communism attributes labelled to a person can lead to negative effects, such as social exclusions. We interviewed 23 Muslims living in Jakarta (i.e., majority group) and used a thematic analysis to organize and describe the data. We found that Muslims who see communists as non‐believers view communist members as dangerous and a threat for the unity of the Republic of Indonesia. Among participants with such beliefs, the past maltreatments to accused communists are justified and legitimate; any apology toward the victims is considered not needed. The findings are discussed in the context of collective blaming and group essentialization, and ways to solve the problems are suggested.