Ninemsn, Sunday Oct 15 22:05 AEST
Many Indonesians support JI: survey
Almost 20 per cent of Indonesian Muslims support the efforts of Jemaah Islamiah,
which is believed to be the Southeast Asia wing of international terrorist network
al-Qaeda, an independent survey said on Sunday.
The survey, carried out by the Jakarta-based Indonesian Survey Foundation or LSI,
revealed that 17.4 per cent of Indonesian Muslims knows and agrees with JI fighting to
implement Islamic sharia law in the country.
Of the 1,092 respondents from across Indonesia involved in the survey, 16.1 per cent
also shows the same support to Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, a Muslim-based
organisation championed by militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, according to the survey.
"The figures are not so high, but for such kinds of movements, which carry special
agenda, those are big enough," the pollster said in the survey.
The survey also showed that 9 per cent of Indonesian Muslims have an opinion that
bombing attacks carried out by convicted terrorist Imam Samudra and his
accomplices are a jihad to defend Islam.
Samudra is on the death row for masterminding the 2002 bombing attacks on the
resort island Bali that killed 202 people.
''For support of extreme actions like in the Bali bombings, 9 per cent is not
insignificant. It's very significant,'' the survey said.
''In the context of such kinds of Islamic movements, huge support is not the priority
because to launch bombing attacks on Bali, for example, only a few militant
supporters were needed,'' said the survey, carried out from Sept. 23 to Oct. 3.
JI is believed to be behind a series of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including the Bali
bombings.
©AAP 2006
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