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Tommy's embrace of
Islam
By Bill Guerin
Ex-millionaire playboy Hutomo Mandala Putra,
better known as Tommy Suharto, plans to devote himself
to the Muslim cause by "deepening his knowledge and
studying Islam" while in jail.
One of his
lawyers, Elza Syarief, announced the news, thus
encouraging intellectuals and dimwits alike to
conjecture on just how a convicted murder conspirator
and adulterer would come to terms with the new rigors
imposed by strict observance of Islamic codes within the
environs of a comfy non-standard cell in Jakarta's
Cipinang jail.
However, a whole new dimension
was added when Elza said two of Indonesia's most
notorious radical Islamic leaders will be helping former
president Suharto's beloved son in his journey inside
Islam. None other than Al-Habib Muhammad Rizieq bin
Hussein Syihab (Habib Ali Baagil for short), leader of
the pro-Suharto radical Muslim group FPI (Defenders of
Islam), and Habib Al-Habsyi, head of the Ikhwanul
Muslimin Indonesia, are the chosen gurus.
On
September 13, 2000, a massive blast rocked the Jakarta
Stock Exchange, killing at least 10 people, injuring
more than 30 and damaging hundreds of cars. Police
quickly arrested more than 25 suspects, dismissing
allegations that the military and/or ex-president
Suharto and his cronies were involved. The bombing took
place a day before the corruption trial of the former
president was to resume.
President Abdurrahman
Wahid, after Friday prayers that week, nonchalantly
accused Tommy and Baagil of masterminding the blast, and
Wahid later sacked police chief General Rusdihardjo for
refusing to arrest Tommy. Prosecutors dropped tentative
charges against him due to a lack of evidence.
Wahid had also ordered Baagil's arrest but,
after talks with the police chief, he walked free,
announcing that his innocence and threatening to sue the
president.
Asked whether he knew Tommy Suharto,
Baagil said: "Not only Tommy. I am also good friends
with the Cendana family [the family of former president
Suharto]. I know Bambang and Tutut. The house I live in
was a gift from Tutut [Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana,
Suharto's eldest daughter]. Should I be accused just
because I know them well?"
This week's
widespread protests, mainly by the FPI, calling for the
inclusion of Islamic law in the Indonesian constitution
highlight a growing threat to President Megawati
Sukarnoputri from shadowy radical Muslim and Suharto
followers' alliances.
The downfall in 1998 of
Tommy's father, who kept a tight lid on Islamic
extremists, was followed by a rapid rise in such
fundamentalist groups more devoted to protection of
elite vested interests than symbolic Islamic issues and
guaranteed to stir up emotions.
On August 27
last year, thousands of FPI members marched on
parliament, demanding the revival of the Jakarta Charter
on Islamic law in the 1945 constitution. If the charter
were adopted, all Muslims would be required to follow
Islamic law strictly.
Baagil said the charter
should be adopted because the majority of Indonesians
are Muslims. He also urged Megawati to resign because "a
woman should not rule a predominantly Muslim country".
PPMI leader Eggi Sudjana, during the same
protest, slammed Muslim leaders, People's Consultative
Assembly Speaker Amien Rais, Vice President Hamzah Haz
and Justice and Human Rights Minister Yusril Ihza
Mahendra for betraying Islamic law by accepting a female
president.
This week more than 5,000 Muslims
demonstrated at the parliament yet again calling for the
imposition of Islamic sharia law throughout Indonesia
and voicing opposition to Megawati. Among the protesters
were Baagil himself, Indonesian Mujahidin Council leader
Abu Bakar Bashir, Laskar Jihad leader Jafar Umar Thalib,
Front Hizbullah leader Noval Dunggio, and members of the
Betawi Rempug Forum, the Sriwidjaja Brigade, the Islamic
Youth Movement and the Sharia Defenders Committee.
Every single one of these groups is associated
with violence and destruction.
The FPI first
came to public attention in 1998 when joining hands with
a government-sponsored civilian security force, PAM
Swakarsa, set up to beat and berate student
demonstrators protesting against then president B J
Habibie and the military's role in politics.
Wielding vicious home-made spears everywhere
they went, these forces of repression were ill-received
by a reformation movement determined to fight. Six
Swakarsa louts were mob-lynched, although the FPI
members were miraculously untouched.
A year
later an estimated 4,000 FPI members broke into and
occupied Jakarta City Hall demanding that Governor
Sutiyoso close all discos, cinemas, pubs, restaurants,
billiard halls, karaoke bars and massage parlors during
the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
By January
2000 the FPI had expanded its reach and held rallies in
Jakarta urging the government to find a comprehensive
solution to the clashes between Muslims and Christians
in the Maluku islands, where thousands of people have
been killed in more than three years of religious
violence. They then recruited and dispatched about 5,000
Muslims from North Maluku to fight a jihad (holy
war) against Christians in Maluku.
In April
2000, after the violent religious riots that left
several people dead in Poso, Central Sulawesi, the FPI
staged a massive pro-Muslim rally on Ternate Island and
said it had made ready a 30,000-strong holy war legion
to help Muslims fight Christians.
In Jakarta FPI
thugs have waged a relentless campaign of destruction of
property owned by those they say are sinners, though to
the radicals the sin of the president is not just that
of being born a woman.
"We are led by a
president who does not know anything, is always silent
and only uses her father's name. If this year they can't
pass sharia law, we will keep on pushing for it and her
resignation," Front Hizbullah leader Noval Dunggio
thundered to the crowds this week.
Baagil
chipped in and said that according to Islamic law, the
main task of a woman is not to lead but to give birth to
a male leader and "a woman should not rule a
predominantly Muslim country".
Guru No 2, the
blind cleric Al-Habsyi, heads another radical group, the
Ikhwanul Muslimin Indonesia, which consistently slammed
former president Wahid for being a Zionist.
Suharto had jailed Al-Habysi for 12 years for
the January 1985 bombing of the Borobudur Buddhist
temple in Central Java, which was alleged to have been
in retaliation for a massacre of scores of Muslims by
the military at Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta a year
earlier.
Is Tommy Suharto behind these radical
movements? Will he fund elements such as these who long
for the president to be removed from power, and does he
blame Megawati for the failure of his high-powered
lawyers to pull off a deal with the judiciary?
On assuming power last year, Megawati bit the
bullet and pledged that police would capture Tommy and
put him in jail. She ordered police to "immediately
arrest" the felon, but the enigmatic lady has since made
little public comment on the ensuing arrest, detention
and trial of Tommy.
However, incarcerating Tommy
may well have been the president's ultimate act of
revenge against his father, her tormentor for so many
years, and few, especially Megawati herself, are likely
to be fooled by the smokescreen from Tommy's eldest
sister Tutut, who frequently claims Daddy does not know
anything about his favorite son's adventures over the
past two years.
One persistent conspiracy theory
over Tommy's trial is that the assassination of Supreme
Court judge Syafiuddin Kartasasmita was engineered by
high-placed generals who wanted Tommy made a scapegoat
for a murder that would warn judges off against bringing
them to account over human-rights violations of the past
as well as the East Timor scorched-earth policy. Is
Tommy's new incarnation geared to getting back at these
generals?
Tommy claimed he had been treated
unfairly during the trial and accused the Supreme Court
of having intervened in the verdict.
Elza has
her own theory, and said before the trial that she
feared the five judges would also be influenced by
demands to punish a member of the Suharto clan.
One conspiracy theory now dead in the water is
the one that had it that the Central Jakarta Court, in
opting to sentence Tommy in his absence, was showing
that there had been a deal struck that Tommy would have
such a loophole to escape justice through a successful
appeal to the Supreme Court.
The reality,
however, is that had he appealed his 15-year sentence
and the higher court rejected it, he would have run the
risk of a heavier sentence, as murder and illegal
possession of firearms and ammunition both carry a
maximum penalty of death.
Tommy's decision not
to appeal has given the impression that he is indeed
guilty and thus indirectly owns up to the offences of
masterminding the murder of a Supreme Court justice and
illegal possession of weapons.
Although some 80
percent of Indonesia's 215 million people Indonesia are
Muslim, the vast majority are moderates. According to
Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) chairman Amidhan, Muslim
hardliners make up only 1 percent of the country's
population of 210 million.
To such a majority of
moderate Indonesians the issue of the Jakarta Charter -
the seven words meant for the preamble of the
constitution that require Muslims to follow
syariah law - is of little importance. They are
likely to be much more interested in, and concerned
over, the implications of Tommy Suharto's path to
righteousness and his links to the Defenders of Islam.
Last October 8, the FPI gave Megawati a
three-day deadline to sever diplomatic relations with
the United States, or it would start forcibly expelling
Americans and Britons and attack foreign assets.
Six days later virtually all bars, nightclubs
and restaurants across Jakarta were shut after being
warned by police and city officials to close as a
"security precaution" and, on October 15, hundreds of
FPI members rallied at parliament to demand the
government sever ties with the US. Police used water
cannons, tear gas and batons to disperse the protesters.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, however, who
visited Jakarta last Friday, praised Indonesia as a
Muslim nation that allows "diversity to flower". If the
radicals are allowed rein to force the pace and
adversely affect the image of Islam in Indonesia,
Washington could yet have second thoughts on renewed
military assistance to Indonesia.
Abu Bakar
Bashir, accused by Singapore and Malaysia of being
linked to regional terrorist groups allegedly connected
to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, said this
year that "the US government has evil intentions with
regards to Islam because it is controlled by the Jewish
people. All the United States military aid that would
come to Indonesia is a strategy to fight Muslims."
Vice President Hamzah Haz is also a wild card.
He was adamantly against Megawati becoming president in
October 1999 and heads the Islam-based United
Development Party (PPP), which, with another Islamic
party, the Crescent Star Party (PBB), have long been
campaigning for the revival of the Jakarta Charter.
Haz has been slammed many times this year for
blatant electioneering in most of his speeches and
deeds.
Power groups within the DPR (Dewan
Perwakilan Rakyat, or House of Representatives) and her
own cabinet could use the Islamic card to exploit
Megawati's weakness. Notwithstanding her solidarity with
the military, Megawati's secularism, and that of her
party, expose her to any new alliance among the Islamist
parties of what was the Central Axis, and Golkar, for
example.
Wahid and his National Awakening Party
(PKB) remain bitter over his ouster, and in the long run
up to the 2004 elections, the Islamic card will become
even more pivotal.
More political infighting
would ensure further adverse publicity and set Indonesia
even further back on the road to economic recovery.
Where does Tommy fit into all this? Possible
scenarios are endless. Is he to be trained to lead from
the front in the war against sinners and thereby achieve
redemption of his own sins? Is this his way of striking
back at those he calls "some people or a small group who
want to destroy me and my family for political reasons,
creating public hatred towards me"?
Or is Tommy
intent on political mischief? One witness at Tommy's
recent trial claimed he had been given money by Tommy to
organize demonstrations against Wahid, for example.
The president remains a sitting target for
radical Islamic elements seeking political gains.
Megawati was lucky post-September 11 in balancing
support for the US global "war" on terrorism and the
sensitivities of the Muslim majority in Indonesia. This
was largely due to senior officers in the Indonesian
military (TNI) holding fast to their predominantly
moderate and secular views so as to avoid alienating the
wider Muslim community.
However, the new
military paradigm, and consequent hardline stance on any
protests or disturbances that threaten security or
stability, may encourage once again the use of excessive
force in controlling anti-US sentiment, if President
George W Bush decides to bomb Iraq and thence spark
widespread protests by moderate Muslims here.
As
ever, the shadow plays color politics and life in
Indonesia, but Tommy's embrace of the white-robed
radicals is a new act that may yet see him back where he
loves to be - in the spotlight.
(©2002 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com
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