The Age, October 8, 2005
Boxing at shadows
Australia wants Indonesia to ban JI, but Jakarta's mood is very different. Mark Forbes
reports on the reluctance to confront the rising influence of conservative Islam.
'How do you ban a shadow?" asks Endy Bayuni, editor of The Jakarta Post, of calls to
outlaw the Jemaah Islamiah organisation, now linked to its fourth mass terror attack in
Indonesia in three years.
The deaths of another 22 people, following the carnage in Bali in 2002, outside
Jakarta's Marriott Hotel and at the Australian embassy last year, have been met with
horror and anger. Yet, despite the confessions and convictions of JI members, there
remains a resistance to accepting that a network of Indonesians was responsible.
Denys Cahyadi works as a cleaner at a Jakarta office block to pay his way through an
economics degree. He is shy before Westerners, but becomes animated when he
speaks of JI. "I think it is all fiction created by the US intelligence," he says. "No one
can prove where its headquarters is, who its leader is. Even (JI's alleged spiritual
leader Abu Bakar) Bashir said that there is no organisation called Jemaah Islamiah."
Among less-educated Indonesians, such conspiracy theories find fertile ground,
encouraged by leading lights of the nation's 193 million Muslims. Australia has
courted the smooth, softly spoken Hidayat Nurwahid as the rising force of moderate
Islam. He is Indonesian parliamentary chairman and his Peace and Justice Party
(PKS) won about 10 per cent of the vote in last year's elections at the expense of
established Islamic parties. Now, the party has a pivotal role in President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono's Government.
Nurwahid is preparing for a future tilt at the presidency, attempting to broaden the
party's base by playing down its support for imposing religious sharia law in
Indonesia. The PKS staged a three-day carnival for its national assembly this year,
attended even by Yudhoyono, who took part in its celebrity volley ball game.
But Nurwahid has suggested the September 11 attacks in the US and even the 2002
Bali bombings could be part of an elaborate CIA plot. On Monday, he called for a halt
to speculation that the weekend attacks in Bali were the work of "a certain group from
a certain religion". "I have valid information that these acts may be related to interstate
competition in the tourism industry," he says.
Although Nurwahid plays to a political constituency, presenting himself as a defender
of Islam without alienating the Indonesian middle ground, his eagerness to absolve JI
of blame and to question its existence as a terrorist organisation reflects public
opinion.
Even Yudhoyono, who has demanded tough action against terrorists and expressed
outrage at the attacks, has claimed JI doesn't exist in Indonesia and that he needs
evidence it does before banning it. After Islamic leaders criticised the use of the term
Jemaah Islamiah - which literally means Islamic community - to refer to terrorists,
Yudhoyono became almost painfully reluctant to utter the words in front of a domestic
audience.
"It shows how loaded the word has become," says the Australian National University's
Greg Fealy. "The President won't mention Jemaah Islamiah and very few officials will
as well.
"Many Indonesians follow Yudhoyono's line that it's not an Indonesian organisation
and may well be a construct of a foreign intelligence agency. For many Indonesians
the use of the Jemaah Islamiah term goes to the heart of their mixed feelings about
the war on terror and a belief that the West is manipulating them."
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and many share a belief that
the West is waging a religious war against Islam on several fronts. America's support
for Israel's persecution of Palestinians is constantly raised. The continuing wave of
terrorist attacks at home has affected public opinion. The Pew Foundation interviewed
more than 1000 Indonesians in May for its Global Attitudes Project, finding a decline
in support for radical Islam, but providing some startling results.
More than a third of Indonesians have confidence in Osama bin Laden as a world
leader (down from just over half in 2003) and 15 per cent think violence against civilian
targets can be justified, the survey found.
The Jakarta Post's Bayuni says the public deplores the recent terror attacks. "When
it comes to the question of JI, the public attitude is very indifferent, because JI doesn't
exist as a real organisation; it's a shadowy organisation that exists in intelligence
reports."
Yudhoyono's reluctance to confront the JI issue reflects his timidity before a rising tide
of Islamic conservatism and his dependence on a cobbled together parliamentary
coalition. Bayuni complains that Indonesia is witnessing "a war between conservative
Islam and liberal Islam . . . but the majority of Muslims, police and the President
remain silent about this issue".
"Conservative Islam is having its way and radical groups are committing crimes that
go unpunished. This is a battle for the soul of Muslims in Indonesia."
Ten weeks ago, hardliners forced Indonesia's council of Islamic scholars, the main
religious body in Indonesia, to issue 11 bans, or fatwas, condemning "liberalism,
secularism and pluralism", interfaith prayers and marriages between religions.
Supporters of the fatwas say they must protect Islam from the threat of globalisation
and Western ideas, by force if necessary.
Death threats have been issued to Muslim intellectuals promoting co-existence with
other religions. Mobs have burned churches and assaulted Christians.
Even followers of a small Muslim sect, Ahmadiyah - declared by the fatwas to be
"deviant" because they recognise their founder to be Islam's last prophet instead of
Muhammad - have had their mosques and houses ransacked.
Mainstream Muslim organisations Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, which boast
70 million members, have supported the fatwa against Ahmadiyah. Although NU's
deputy chairman, Achmad Bagja, tells The Age the group is against violence, he
rejects any suggestion of supporting a fatwa against JI. That, says Bagja, is an issue
for Yudhoyono.
The International Crisis Group's Indonesian head, Sidney Jones, is the acknowledged
expert on JI. She believes the impediments to its banning include its connections to
influential Muslim figures.
"You quickly move from JI to organisations that funded JI activities to the conservative
Muslim establishment," she says. "It's hard for the Muslim political constituency to
take."
If a ban on JI extended to its associated network of Islamic schools, including Bashir's
peasantran in Solo, "there certainly would be an outcry from NU and parts of
Muhammadiyah", she says.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer flies to Indonesia on Tuesday to
reiterate demands to ban JI.
Bayuni believes the call will impede Yudhoyono. "A ban may be counter-productive
because he would be seen as being dictated to by John Howard and President Bush."
Yudhoyono's spokesman says JI is "an underground movement. We can only ban an
established organisation." Instead of making an "emotional" move to ban an abstract
entity, it is more important to address the causes of terrorism, the Government
argues.
Although a ban would help investigation of JI and enable the breaking of its financial
networks, the ANU's Greg Fealy also questions if the Australian-driven debate is
worth the risk.
"Focusing on the JI issue is misguided," he says. "Because it could jeopardise what
has been a very successful counter-terrorism campaign."
Copyright © 2004. The Age Company Ltd.
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