RESEARCH ARTICLE Identity, representations, religion, and apologizing for past wrongdoings: Muslim discourse about Indonesia's 1965–66 massacres of communists Idhamsyah Eka Putra 1 | Wolfgang Wagner 2 | Any Rufaedah 3 | Peter Holtz 4 1 Persada Indonesia University & Division for Applied Social Psychology, Jakarta, Indonesia 2 University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia 3 Division for Applied Social Psychology Research, Jakarta, Indonesia & Universitas Nahdlatul Ulama Indonesia, Indonesia 4 Leibniz‐Institut für Wissensmedien (Knowledge Media Research Center), Tubingen, Germany Correspondence Idhamsyah Eka Putra, Faculty of Psychology, Persada Indonesia University, Jalan Diponegoro No. 74, Jakarta 10440, Indonesia. Email: idhamsyah.ekaputra@gmail.com Abstract 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 govern- ment. The present study aims to understand how commu- nism 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 consid- ered not needed. The findings are discussed in the context of collective blaming and group essentialization, and ways to solve the problems are suggested. KEYWORDS collective blaming, dehumanization, demonization, past maltreatment ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received: 7 March 2018 Revised: 14 April 2019 Accepted: 29 April 2019 DOI: 10.1002/casp.2419 J Community Appl Soc Psychol. 2019;1–12. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/casp 1