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Bogor. A bumper sticker prompted members of the hard-line Islamic Reform Movement to attack several members of the GKI Yasmin church on Sunday.

The bumper sticker, on the back of a church member’s car, said, “We need a friendly Islam, not an angry Islam.”

Scores of vociferous Muslims from the group known as the Islamic Reform Movement (Garis) terrorized members of the congregation who came to the church’s New Year’s Eve service in Bogor, GKI Yasmin spokesman Bona Sigalingging said.

Garis chairman Majudien was infuriated by the sticker and began to run after the car. The incident led the congregation to disband and move the service to the home of one of the members.

“What is the aim of that sticker being put there? That is a provocative action against us, the Muslims of Bogor,” Majudien said.

Bona said that the sticker was a souvenir that was distributed by the family of the late former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid during a commemoration of his death on Friday.

“All guests who came, including the chairman of the Constitutional Court, the deputy religious affairs minister and other VIPs also got the same souvenir, the same sticker,” he said.

On Sunday, the mob from Garis shouted at church members when they began to arrive but were prevented from physical contact by hundreds of police officers who separated the congregation from the crowd.

Lawmaker Indah Kurnia on Sunday said that cases of intolerance like in Bogor should not be allowed to continue and called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to intervene.

“There is no need to just say that the green light had been given; the evidence is that the congregation cannot worship at its church,” Indah said.

Also present there was the chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), Ifdhal Kasim, but he did not comment.

Bona said that the church was waiting for Yudhoyono to take action. “The president has said that he has tasked the concerned ministers to ascertain that the law is firmly upheld in the case of the GKI Yasmin and we are now awaiting the steps,” Bona said.

The church has been illegally sealed off by the city administration on the pretext that the congregation doctored a petition needed to obtain a building permit. The congregation has since 2008 been forced to hold Sunday services on the sidewalk outside the church.