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ANALYSIS
Mayhem and moderates in
Indonesia
JAKARTA - If the forces
of peace are winning over the forces of violence in the
"war on terror", it is far from obvious in Indonesia.
Less than a week after a car bomb allegedly set
off by a suicide bomber (a rarity in the Southeast Asian
brand of Islamist terror) killed at least 11 people and
injured scores in and around the US-owned JW Marriott
Hotel in the Indonesian capital, the alleged leader of
the region's most feared Islamist organization delivered
a chilling message to his followers from his Jakarta
prison cell. And a few days before that, Amrozi bin
Nurhasyim, sentenced to the firing squad for his role in
last October's terrorist bombings in Bali, accepted the
verdict with a smile and a thumbs-up, declaring: "If I
die there will be hundred more Amrozis. You can't stop
us. It will never end."
On Sunday, Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir, a Muslim extremist leader allegedly linked to
al-Qaeda and on trial for treason and deadly church
bombings, told his followers they must fight to impose
Islamic laws dating back 1,300 years and not worry about
being called "terrorists".
"I say do not be
afraid of being labeled as trying to overthrow [the
government] or as terrorists when you are carrying out
Islamic Sharia [law] in full," Abu Bakar Ba'asyir said
in a speech read out to 3,000 followers at a meeting of
the Mujahiden Council of Indonesia (MMI) in Solo,
Central Java. Ba'asyir's base is in Solo, where he
headed an Islamic school allegedly attended by some of
the Bali bombers.
"The Indonesian government
must not discredit Muslims wanting to perform their
religious duties and should not arrest clerics,
religious leaders or religious teachers because that
will anger God," Ba'asyir was quoted as warning in a
speech sent from his Jakarta prison.
Ba'asyir's
speech was read out to stern-faced followers who
endorsed it by shouting, "Allahu Akbar" (God is great),
including men dressed in camouflage uniforms with their
heads wrapped in checkered scarves to conceal their
faces.
"Allahu Akbar" was also the defiant cry
of Amrozi last Thursday, the day he was condemned to
death.
The fiery words of Amrozi and Ba'asyir
are in stark contrast to those of the moderates who
still predominate in the Muslim regions of Southeast
Asia, including Indonesia, the world's most populous
Muslim country.
"Islam is a religion that
teaches peace, charity, love and forgiveness," I Made
Karna, the chief judge, said during the sentencing of
Amrozi. "The action of the defendant can be classified
as cruel and inhuman." His sentiments were echoed by
another judge, Lilik Mulyadi, who said, "Islam never
teaches violence, murder or any other crimes."
Ba'asyir begged to differ. Hours before last
Tuesday's bombing of the Marriott, the white-bearded
cleric testified in a Jakarta court that Sharia law
could justify several church bombings scattered across
Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000, which killed 19 people.
"If those examples had reasons which were not
based on Sharia law, it is obviously wrong. But if there
is a Sharia reason - then from the religious point of
view it is right, but not from the national law's point
of view," Ba'asyir told the court.
Ba'asyir's
followers at the MMI conference met to demand imposition
of Sharia law throughout Indonesia, based on the Muslim
holy book the Koran, written more than 1,300 years ago.
Sharia law metes out severe punishments, including
amputation of a hand for theft, and the stoning of death
for adultery and other crimes.
Sharia law has
never been popular in Indonesia. The organizers of
Sunday's rally backed candidates in the last national
election, but they failed to win any seats in
parliament. However, some commentators have remarked
that ordinary Indonesians, increasingly fed up with
their secular government's failure to deal with the
corruption and incompetence that have denied them
justice and economic well-being, have become more
sympathetic to reactionary religious ideas such as
Sharia. Whether or not that is so, those who argue that
frustration with injustice and bad government breeds
violence and terror can find plenty of evidence not only
in Indonesia but in other Muslim pockets in Southeast
Asia, notably the southern Philippines.
Ba'asyir
has been accused of being a leader of the terrorist
group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), though he has claimed that
the US Central Intelligence Agency invented both
al-Qaeda and JI in order to persecute Muslims throughout
the world. Notwithstanding that claim, Jemaah Islamiyah
is believed to have begun in the mid-1980s fighting to
create an Islamic "caliphate" in Southeast Asia - which
would unite Muslim-majority regions of the southern
Philippines, southern Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and
Indonesia - where Sharia law would be imposed.
JI was blamed for last October's bombing on Bali
that killed 202 people and for last week's Marriott
bombing in Jakarta. Ba'asyir was arrested several days
after the October 12 Bali bombing and accused of
involvement in the Christmas assaults on the churches,
which he denied. He was also accused of teaching and
preaching with the alleged commander of the Bali bomb
plot, Mukhlas, also known as Ali Ghufron, who is
currently facing trial in Bali.
Ba'asyir was
also alleged to have known Amrozi, who was convicted on
Thursday for buying the van and explosives used in the
Bali bombing.
The most wanted fugitive in Asia,
suspected JI leader Hambali, whose real name is Riduan
Isamuddin, reportedly attended Ba'asyir's Islamic
sermons, as did alleged Bali bomber Imam Samudra.
Ba'asyir and Hambali are suspected of being the
masterminds behind JI. Hambali was also suspected of
orchestrating a meeting of al-Qaeda members in January
2000 in Malaysia with two men who hijacked planes in the
September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that
killed about 3,000 people.
"I affirm that this
group [Jemaah Islamiyah] is behind the Marriott bombing,
based on intelligence reports following the arrest [in
July] of nine suspects who are also JI members,"
Indonesian Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil told
reporters on Friday. "There are many more Jemaah
Islamiyah members on the loose in Indonesia. Because of
this, I am sure that JI is behind all of this."
The fugitives possess deadly skills, including
bomb-making, he added. "Each one of them has special
abilities received from training in Afghanistan and
Pakistan," Matori said.
Investigators are
looking for evidence linking the Bali bombing and the
Marriott Hotel attack, based on possible similarities in
the mixture of explosives, detonation by mobile phones
and the scraping off of the vehicles' identification
numbers.
Police identified Asmar Latin Sani, 28,
from Sumatra - where the Jakarta government is battling
armed separatists in the state of Aceh - as the driver
of the Toyota minivan that exploded at the Marriott
Hotel, after finding his scarred and blistered severed
head after it had been hurled by the blast on to the
hotel's fifth floor. Asmar has not been linked to the
Aceh conflict.
Within hours of the Amrozi
verdict, Indonesia's moderate clerics weighed in with
their views in support of the judicial process that
condemned him to death. They included Ahmad Syafi
Maarif, who heads a 20-million-strong body of moderate
Muslims in Indonesia, including clerics and religious
scholars, called the Muhammadiyah.
Yet, as the
Jakarta Post noted in an editorial on Friday, prevailing
over the small but effective network of Islamic
extremists will not be easy. The English-language daily
viewed last Tuesday's car-bomb attack at the Marriott as
a stark warning by Muslim militants that they will not
let moderates win.
"Given the timing, and the
similarities of means and methods employed in the Bali
and [Jakarta] blasts, it is difficult not to read the
latter as an ominous message to the government of
President Megawati Sukarnoputri and to the panel of
judges" in the Amrozi case, the editorial said.
Nevertheless, the moderates refuse to be
silenced. After the bomb attack, Indonesia's largest
religious organization, the 30-million-strong Nahdlatul
Ulama, called on the public to avoid provocation and
said the bombing had nothing to do with Islam.
Muslim moderates, however, will have to work
hard to ensure that their views continue to attract the
much more substantial numbers they currently draw. As
the Indonesian newspaper Koran Tempo commented in an
editorial, "Amrozi's thumbs-up drives us to reply that
we will never run out of militants ready to become
martyrs."
(Asia Times Online/Inter Press
Service. Additional reporting from Richard S
Ehrlich in Jakarta. Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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