Indonesia clerics to fight militants in ‘war of ideas’
JAKARTA, Nov 21: A move by Indonesia’s mainstream Muslim groups to form a team to counter militant ideas, work with the police and review radical publications is an important step but must be more than just rhetoric, analysts said on Monday. The special team was set up last week after the discovery of videos showing three suicide bombers using Islam to justify attacks on restaurants in Bali on Oct 1 that killed 20 people.
It is the first time moderate groups have agreed to play a decisive role in tackling terrorism. In the past, they have been reluctant to criticise militants or have said fighting terrorism was the responsibility of the government and the police.
Sidney Jones, director of the International Crisis Group in Indonesia and an expert on the country’s radical fringe, praised Vice President Jusuf Kalla for summoning mainstream clerics to view the videos of the young suicide bombers last week.
“That’s a real new step and we haven’t had this level of government involvement before in any of the cases that have come up from Bali onwards,” Jones said, referring to the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people.
“It’s taken this long for some of the (Muslim) organisations to realise the extent of the problem in Indonesia and to realise it’s got a kind of staying power.”
All major bomb attacks in Indonesia in recent years have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, a shadowy network seen as the regional arm of Al Qaeda. It usually recruits young, poor Muslims from teeming Java island as its foot-soldiers.
Jones said it would be interesting to see how the team challenged militant arguments and whether it addressed issues of how and where bombers and others were recruited.
The head of the team, Ma’ruf Amin, told El Shinta radio that clerics wanted to devise a strategy that looked at Islamic boarding schools known as pesantrens in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, the youth and also publications.
“We will clarify these ideas with pesantrens, especially those alleged to have indications of influences from radical terror views,” said Amin.
He also referred to a book written by Imam Samudra, one of three bombers on death row over the 2002 Bali attacks, which he said was “everywhere” in Indonesia. Samudra wrote his book in jail, setting out his arguments for the attacks.
The team gathers top preachers from the two mainstream Islamic groups in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, that have a combined 70 million members.
The minister of religious affairs said the team would be involved in tracking information about terrorist suspects and search for books that promote radicalism so they could be banned, the Jakarta Post newspaper reported on Monday.
However, it was unclear if it would review curriculum in Islamic boarding schools. The International Crisis Group has listed several where Jemaah Islamiah members send their children and where some convicted bombers studied.
Andi Widjajanto, a security analyst from the University of Indonesia, said the team could be effective in dealing with formal, registered organisations and schools.
Underground groups were a different matter.
“Its effectiveness against fringe groups that are the main recruitment ground will be difficult,” Widjajanto said.
Anti-terrorism campaigns in Indonesia have often faced challenges because of a widespread belief that the United States wants to attack Islam.
While Islamic groups across the spectrum condemn bombings, memories also remain fresh of the persecution of Muslim leaders and activists by former President Suharto during 32 years of military-backed rule that ended in 1998.
Indeed, officials are still reluctant to use the term Jemaah Islamiah, which means Islamic community, believing it could be seen as putting the general Muslim populace under watch.
And Indonesia has not followed Western countries in banning Jemaah Islamiah. Officials say they cannot ban an organisation that does not have a concrete structure or address.—Reuters
