Spiegel, January 5, 2006
Indonesia's holy war
Talking to Jihadis
By Michael Scott Moore
As the United States tries to spread democracy throughout the Muslim world, a rare
meeting with Islamic radicals in Indonesia shows the downside of the country's
post-Suharto representative politics: It has allowed fundmentalists to openly thrive in a
country where they were once suppressed. Are there lessons to be learned here for
Iraq?
[PHOTO: AP - An Indonesian soldier guards a Christian prayer service beside a
church destroyed in religious fighting several years ago in Poso, Central Sulawesi
province, Indonesia.]
As people shopped for groceries at an open-air market on New Year's Eve in the
Indonesian coastal town of Palu, a homemade bomb loaded with nails killed at least
eight people and ripped apart a kiosk selling pork. Christians on the island of
Sulawesi eat pork on New Year's, but devout Muslims, of course, don't. Indonesian
police believe the bombing is the latest tragic installment in a long-simmering religious
struggle, like the decapitation of three Christian girls on another part of the island last
October. Militants with machetes attacked the girls in a cocoa plantation while they
walked to a Christian school, and -- just to make sure they made their point nice and
clear -- they left one of the heads lying outside a church.
The message was war: Sulawesi is half-Christian, but jihadis there think the island
should be sanitized for Islam. The idea is to win a limited war for shariah law in an
area where radicals think they can set up an Islamic government. Scattered "secure
areas" for shariah have existed in other countries, like the Philippines. The Moro
Islamic Liberation Front built base camps there in the early '90s, for example, and
within a few years a network of Muslim villages on Mindanao Island answered to "the
Bangsamoro Islamic government" instead of Manila.
This war has been mentioned by US President George W. Bush. Lately he's been on
the lecture circuit to refresh everyone's memory about the war on terrorism. "The
terrorists' stated objective," he has said recently in a handful of cities, "is to drive US
and coalition forces out of Iraq and gain control of that country and then use Iraq as a
base from which to launch attacks against America, overthrow moderate governments
in the Middle East, and establish a totalitarian Islamic empire that reaches from Spain
to Indonesia."
He's right -- that is what the terrorists want. Whether their wishes are in danger of
coming true is another question. The columnist William Pfaff has made fun of the
speech line by calling it, "a farrago of unattainable Islamist ambitions and al-Qaida's
delusions, cobbled together by administration speech-writers to frighten Americans
who are laggard in their support for Bush's war."
Much of Sulawesi -- like most of Indonesia -- is peaceful and calm. But there are
scattered battlegrounds. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world: It has a
secular constitution, but (like Iraq) it's new to democracy. I went there in spring 2004
to research a book and watch the people elect a president. A right-wing dictator,
General Suharto, had ruled the vast chain of tropical islands for more than thirty
years, from 1965 to 1998; but a student movement inspired by a rotten economy
forced him out, and while I was there Indonesians were casting their first direct votes
for president.
I also dropped in on members of Majelis Mujahideen of Indonesia -- MMI, or the
Council of Martyrs -- which is a front group for Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaida linked
group that contributes foot soldiers in Sulawesi. Abu Bakar Baashir, the famous old
radical with a white beard who keeps moving in and out of jail, founded MMI in 2000.
The group's relationship to Jemaah Islamiyah is like Sinn Fein's to the Irish
Republican Army: One is official, the other not. MMI has a Web site and makes
campaign endorsements -- though they don't always talk to the press. Although
Baashir likes to call both Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaida figments of the government's
(or America's) imagination, everyone can agree that MMI is real.
Meeting the fundamentalists
My guides and translators were university students in Yogyakarta, a lively cultural hub
in the middle of Java. When I asked them to put me in touch with "fundamentalists," I
wasn't sure what to expect, but through Abi and Syihab I got to have a rare
conversation about democracy and shariah law with hard-core (but unarmed)
Indonesian jihadis.
The MMI office was a low bare building in the east of Yogyakarta, on a plain
residential street. It had the shabby uninspiring feel of a tax office. A concrete
overhang shaded a green-tiled porch where a desk stood next to a glass souvenir
case full of pulp novels with Muslim-superhero themes.
A member named Hasyim Abdullah checked us in. He was thin and short but intense,
with a dark beard like a lace curtain, a black peci or pillbox cap, and a brown callus
on his forehead from bowing during prayer. Abi and Syihab, my translators, mentioned
it later: The callus was a badge of radicalism.
First, there were rules: We had to sign in. We had to show I.D. I filled out a form
declaring my intentions. When that was over we talked about Islam in a casual way.
Hasyim sat behind the desk and spoke with brow-creased passion. Other Majelis
members came to sit around us. One of them, Rian Firdausi, said we were "just
talking," since the executive director wasn't in. No one else could speak for MMI as
an organization. They could give their own opinions, but not the official word.
Rian wore a white peci, squarish tape-mended glasses, and a long off-white robe. He
wasn't bearded so much as unshaven. He had a gentle manner and didn't polemicize
like Hasyim.
With my form in his hands, Hasyim squinted. He wasn't sure if he could trust me. He
started with a few principles: Muslims viewed God as the only source of truth, and
therefore the only source of law. Democracies since the French Revolution had turned
"majority rule" into God. Muslims, on the other hand, had a perfect way of ordering
society. God had given them an unimpeachable set of laws, through the Koran and
the hadiths, or acts of Mohammed, which would solve every human problem.
I said no one confused God with majority rule in the United States. The founders of
both America and modern France had seen a distinction between the law of God and
the law of man. Christianity allowed this distinction.
Hasyim asked for evidence.
"Evidence?" I asked Abi.
"He's asking if you remember any specific lines from the Bible that allow people to
have laws outside Christianity."
In other words, to Hasyim, western systems were Christian systems. He didn't believe
there was separation of church and state. So I tried to think of a good line from the
Bible.
"Well, there's a proverb from Jesus -- 'Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God
what is God's.' He was talking to Jews about paying tax to the Romans."
Hasyim had never heard this quotation. He asked me to repeat it. Then he explained
that in Islam, law came only from God.
Allah and traffic laws
"Allah makes law for every human problem," Rian said in careful English. "Why
should we make law again?"
"Every problem? Even the small ones?" I asked.
"Yes, of course," Rian said.
"How about parking and traffic laws?"
At first they were confused. I wasn't trying to be facetious. But Rian said bitterly, "Can
you think of a problem with traffic-parking that goes against the rule of Allah?"
"So human laws are allowed if they don't violate Islam?"
"Yes."
Abi explained, "Minor laws can be extrapolated from larger laws in the Koran."
"Then is democracy an acceptable way to arrive at smaller laws, as long as they don't
contradict the Koran?" I asked.
"Aha." Hasyim had me here. In his aggressive, precise and rapid dry voice he spun
out another argument, and Abi translated: "We cannot divide between Islam and
democracy, because Islam is by nature democratic."
"How?"
"One law in the Koran says, 'Males and females who have done their duties correctly
will be given the same reward.'"
"I see. Equality under God."
"Yes." Abi translated Hasyim: "Islam as a law of living is perfect; it's been blessed by
Allah himself. There's democracy as a doctrine, and Islam as a doctrine. But the true
one is Islam."
A doctrine? Abi had used this word more than once. Hasyim went on: The trouble with
America, he argued, was that it had no single moral standard. There were many
standards; this led to confusion. How did I account for America's social problems
under democracy? They were the result of different standards. In France, Muslim
dress had been outlawed -- was that democratic? In Indonesia or any Muslim nation I
was free to worship as I pleased. In fact, Islam was more tolerant than western
democracy. Since the 14th century there had never been a church, or temple, or
synagogue, or holy house from any foreign tradition destroyed by Muslims in any
Islamic society. Yet there was intolerance of Muslims in Europe and America. How
did I account for these contradictions?
The killing in Sulawesi that had been going on for several years seemed worth
mentioning, but Hasyim's answer had turned into a rant. The idea that no church or
temple or synagogue had ever been destroyed by Muslims in centuries was such
nonsense I had no idea what to say. Hasyim was baiting me. The reason for violence
against other religions in Muslim areas is normally some variation on self-defense.
Islam is under attack -- which is what militants think in Sulawesi, because so many
Christians do missionary work there -- so Muslims need to take up arms.
I went back to another subject. I asked Hasyim about the word "doctrine." To me,
democracy wasn't a doctrine -- it was a process. Not a perfect one, and people
weren't perfect under it. But a democratic system could evolve.
"But it cannot give answers to the human problem," he said.
I asked how he accounted for social problems in theocracies like Iran, Pakistan or
Saudi Arabia, where shariah was in force.
"They don't stay close enough to the Koran and the hadiths," said Rian. "God and his
law are perfect, men are fallible. Also, people who commit violence in the name of
Islam do dishonor to Islam, in the eyes of the world."
"Then Muslim terrorists aren't true Muslims?"
Hasyim scowled. His forehead furrowed around the dark prayer callous and he started
to shout: "George Bush is the terrorist!" he said. "Not Muslims! There are no Muslim
terrorists! George Bush ..."
But Rian said that in his opinion true Muslims could not be terrorists.
Then Hasyim began to rant -- really rant, in long passionate sentences which Abi and
Syihab interrupted sometimes, just to translate -- about President John F. Kennedy,
who (he said) tried to solve problems caused by America's wayward youth in the
1960s by sending the social scum to Vietnam. Did I think that was a good idea?
Kennedy, said Hasyim, had promised in a campaign speech to cleanse American
society of its losers and criminals by sending them as cannon fodder to Vietnam.
"That's not true," I said.
"But have you heard this campaign promise?" Rian asked.
"Never."
"Well," he said triumphantly. "You should look it up."
Of course Vietnam wasn't even a campaign issue in 1960; but I let that go.
Soon the meeting broke up. It had been tense. Abi and Syihab were shaken, too.
They'd never talked for so long to fundamentalists. The fierce defense of illogical
positions, to Abi, was "scary," but also a question of self-knowledge: He said Hasyim
and Rian and the others would never look inward to question themselves or their
religion. "Instead, they looked outside for enemies."
Abi also said something interesting. In spite of the shabby office building, and the
poor-looking clothes, fundamentalists in Yogyakarta tended to be middle-class
students from technical universities. "Science and religion aren't separated here, as in
the west," he explained. "But some people raised in secular homes have no exposure
to Islam until they are at university." They discover these ideas as technical students
and convert with fervor. Rian at the MMI office had said his family in Sulawesi was
aristocratic -- "but I no longer call myself an aristocrat; I am a Muslim" -- and Abi
thought that was a good example. "Rian may have been raised in a secular home," he
said.
Can fighting poverty help stop terror?
The radicals I met in Indonesia contradict the vague idea in America that violent Islam
is a function of oppression and poverty. Where dictators keep people destitute, goes
the thinking, frustrated young men turn to extreme religion. That was one point of the
Iraq war. Beyond the fizzled excuse about weapons of mass destruction, one of the
main justifications for the invasion was that "a stable, peaceful, and democratic"
Middle East would breed fewer terrorists, not only because terrorists relied on certain
dictators for money but also because ordinary Muslims would have less reason to
bomb London or New York if they could feed their families and vote for their leaders.
What complicates the situation in Indonesia is that democracy seems to have had the
opposite effect. The collapse of Suharto's dictatorship enabled Baashir to freely set up
MMI in Yogyakarta in 2000, and let Jemaah Islamiyah spread to the major cities and
rebel flashpoints of Indonesia, starting with East Timor. Germany's Federal
Intelligence Service (BND) reports that "fundamentalists in Jakarta's universities are
gearing up to assume power in the 2008 parliamentary elections" -- but that doesn't
mean that what they have in mind is democracy.
When middle-class or even rich young men discover the poetry of the Koran, the
austerities of sharia, along with the fiery rhetoric of rebellion against an imperial,
decadent west, it is easy enough to end up with warriors for the law of God in any
system. And democracy gives them freedom to move. To most Americans, this
tolerance of subversion is the great virtue of a liberal society, but in Indonesia -- for
example -- it fails to move Hasyim Abdullah's heart with gratitude.
This, of course, raises an important question for Iraq: If fostering democracy in other
Muslim nations has enabled the return of extremism, how can Baghdad avoid a
similar fate?
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