Church bomb shows Indonesian extremism
By Gary LaMoshi
BALI - Indonesia was shocked and shamed on Sunday when a suicide bomber struck
a Christian church in Solo, killing at least one congregant and injuring at
least 27 others. But the reaction from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has
been even more shameful.
On Sunday morning, a still unidentified bomber detonated explosives at the
entrance of Gereja Bethel Injil Sepenuh (Bethel Whole Gospel Church, GBIS) at
the conclusion of the church's second service. Police say it was a low
explosive device spiked with nails and bolts that aimed to harm people rather
than destroy property.
Solo, also known as Surakarta, is considered a wellspring of
Javanese culture and more recently a hub for Islamic extremism. Militant
preacher Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the jailed spiritual leader of the terrorist
Jemaah Islamiyah movement, and his Ngruki Islamic boarding school, a hub for
planning the 2002 Bali bombing, are based in the town. Solo has also served as
a hideout for a number of radical Islamist fugitives, including master bomber
Noordin Mohammad Top. Several churches were burned in Central Java earlier this
year.
In the face of the latest evidence of growing religious intolerance, in his
televised speech on Sunday night Yudhoyono used the incident to lobby for
passage of controversial amendments to Indonesia's anti-terrorism act. The new
provisions would allow police and intelligence authorities to begin
surveillance operations against anyone without evidence, measures that critics
say hearken back to former General Suharto's authoritarian rule. In the wake of
the Solo bombing, legislators reported a breakthrough on the bill late Monday
night.
"There are fears that it is excessive, but we have to learn from our past,"
Yudhoyono said, referring to the legislation. "I hope that in future life can
return to normal and people won't be afraid or overly worried, as long as we
can pull together in facing down violence."
Not a hate crime
He asserted that the church bombing was linked, not to a wave of sectarian
strife that has intensified in recent months, but to a national terrorist
network. That network was supposedly behind the April suicide bombing in
Cirebon, West Java, of a police station mosque that injured 30, all but two of
them police officers. Yudhoyono declared, "Crime is crime and terrorism is
terrorism. It does not relate to ethnicity or religion."
Instead of looking away from Indonesia's growing sectarian violence, the
once-popular president would have been better advised to meet it head on. Even
in the highly unlikely event that the Solo bombings have nothing to do with
religious extremism, Yudhoyono nevertheless could have used the occasion to
fight it. Within an hour of hearing of the bombing, Yudhoyono could have been
on a plane to Solo with leaders of Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, the
country's two largest mainstream mass Muslim organizations, other religious
leaders and heads of political parties to visit the victims of the bombing in
the hospital.
After commiserating with the victims, comforting their families, and
encouraging the police to get to the bottom of the crime, these national
leaders could have presented a united front condemning the attack. Moreover,
they could have reiterated they stand by Indonesia's constitutional protection
of religious freedom and assured the public that the state will take all
necessary steps to guarantee it for all Indonesians regardless of their faith.
While Yudhoyono seems content to ignore the accelerating erosion of that
freedom, Indonesia's recent history shows that religious strife can also serve
as a convenient smokescreen for forces that threaten freedom for all.
Democracy breeds contempt
Since the end of former dictator Suharto's New Order regime, democracy has
provided an opening for greater Islamization of Indonesia, the country with the
world's largest Muslim population. An estimated 88% of Indonesia's 233 million
people follow Islam. That leaves 28 million Indonesians of other faiths, or as
many people as the total populations of Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, or Australia
and New Zealand combined. Minorities are being marginalized by a combination of
violent extremism and politicians that play the Muslim card to pander to
religious hardliners.
As part of the 2005 agreement that ended a decades long civil war in Aceh,
Indonesia's easternmost province was permitted to adopt sharia (Islamic) law.
Indonesia's parliament approved this exception to the national constitution.
However, since 2001, government decentralization measures have led to some 150
local laws and regulations based on religious teachings, according to the
national newsweekly Tempo. All but a handful are based on Islamic law,
including dress codes, deductions for charitable donations, and Koran
proficiency requirements for civil service promotion or marriage.
The magazine also reported research by Northern Illinois University academic
Michael Buehler showing that the overwhelming majority of these religion-based
ordinances are proposed by politicians from secular parties, rather than the
Islamic parties. That suggests the regulations are more about electoral
politics than piety.
Church is out
Recently, religious intolerance has been on display in several high-profile
incidents. In Bogor, outside Jakarta, Mayor Diani Budiarto revoked the building
permit for the Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church and has, since January,
defied a Supreme Court order to reinstate it.
Instead, Budiarto ordered the building sealed since April, forcing the
congregation to hold services on the sidewalk outside. That's become a weekly
circus featuring hundreds of worshippers, members of the extremist Islamic
Defenders Front (FPI by its Indonesian acronym) taunting and threatening the
Christians, and dozens of police in riot gear with water cannons separating FPI
demonstrators and worshippers.
Last week, the case completed the final phase of its legal enforcement process,
and the mayor's refusal to comply with the Supreme Court ruling is due to be
handed to Yudhoyono for resolution. Budiarto's Democratic Party of Struggle
(PDI-P) has revoked its support for him due to his defiance of the law, but he
retains support from two parties in Yudhoyono's ruling coalition, the Islamist
Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and Golkar.
Religious extremism doesn't just threaten violence, and Christians aren't the
only victims. When extremism ratchets up in Indonesia, the Ahmadiyah Muslim
splinter sect is a favored target. In western Java's Cikeusik district, local
Muslim preachers and political leaders spent a year stirring hatred against a
community of about two dozen Ahmadis, members of a local family that converted
during the 1990s.
On February 6, a mob of thousands from nearby mosques, pesantren (Islamic
boarding schools), and the surrounding area descended on the Ahmadis to drive
them out of the area. As a token contingent of police and military stood by,
the Ahmadis were beaten, their homes ransacked, and three of them killed. Last
month, a local court sentenced 12 people to three to six month sentences in the
attack, including one Ahmadiyah member.
Blame the victims
< Indonesia's National Human Right Commission condemned the police for
allowing, if not condoning, the attack. The commission also cited prosecutors
for presenting laughably weak cases against the attackers and blaming Ahmadiyah
followers for provoking the attack by refusing to leave their homes.
Human-rights observers believe the light punishment- with time already served
in pre-trial detention, the longest sentences amounted to a few days - will
encourage more religious extremism.
Earlier this month, seven people died in fighting between Muslims and
Christians in Ambon in Maluku province, provoked by text messages falsely
implicating a Christian in the death of a Muslim in a traffic accident. The
incident evoked the extreme sectarian strife that begin in late 1999 in the
area once known as the Spice Islands.
Over the next two years, about 10,000 people died in sectarian clashes.
Indonesia's military helped fuel the conflict, supplying weapons to both sides
and transporting jihadis from Java to join the fighting.
The military stoked the religious conflict in Ambon and similar fighting in
Central Sulawesi as part of its effort to undermine then President Abdurrahman
Wahid's reformist regime. Wahid sought to curb the power of the military that
had been at the center of Suharto's 32 years of iron-fisted rule and operated
with impunity. After a dozen years of democracy, the military has moved to the
sidelines but still operates largely without meaningful civilian oversight.
With a current presidential leadership vacuum and a successor not due until
2014, sectarian strife presents an opportunity for extremists from all sides to
fill the void and manipulate the public. It's up to the champions of freedom
and tolerance, and its primary beneficiaries including Yudhoyono and the
religious mainstream, to fight back. The alternative is nothing less than chaos
and death, as seen most recently in Solo on Sunday.
Longtime editor of award-winning investor rights advocate eRaider.com, Gary
LaMoshihas written for Slate and Salon.com, and works an adviser to
Writing Camp (www.writingcamp.net). He
first visited Indonesia in 1994 and has tracking its progress ever since.
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