The Jakarta Post, October 25, 2005
Islamic groups told to consolidate to fight terrorism
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Yogyakarta/Surakarta
Muslim groups in the country should consolidate to fight against terrorism and work to
develop healthy religious behavior, instead of putting the blame on each other or on a
Western threat, an Islamic scholar says.
Moeslim Abdurrahman, a scholar from Muhammadiyah -- the country's second-largest
Islamic organization -- said it was understandable that Muslims became defensive and
were loathe to link their religion to terror.
"It's only natural. Any religious follower would be upset if his or her religion is related
to terror because no religion justifies such an evil act," Moeslim said on Monday.
On Saturday, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University rector Azyumardi Azra
criticized Islamic organizations for speaking out against those who connected a
series of bomb attacks in the country to Islam. Azyumardi said the groups were
ignoring the fact that confessed bombers were avowed Muslims. He chided them for
acting defensively and for being reluctant to give their full backing to the national
antiterror drive.
Islamic groups, he said, made no attempt to solve the problem by finding out why
Muslims were ready to carry out suicide bombings, neither did they investigate how
such extremist thinking could grow in the country.
Moeslim denied that Islamic organizations tended to be less supportive of the fight
against terrorism, saying they also empathized with the bombing victims, as many of
them were Muslim too.
"What kind of support we should give, as terrorism is about politics and related to the
global political structure. The most responsible party to handle this is the security
forces."
The important thing, Moeslim said, was for Islamic organizations to campaign for
healthy religious behavior and to assure the nation that terrorism was a serious threat.
"And an anti-Western political stance is pointless. What are we going to do, close
down all the McDonald's? That would only make farmers suffer, and I believe most of
them are Muslims too," he said.
Meanwhile, Vice President Jusuf Kalla's recent call for the monitoring of several
Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) has sparked more protests.
Kalla said last week that there were only two to three pesantren which should be
closely watched as they were believed to breed extremists and terrorists by
brainwashing their students. He however refused to mention the name of these
schools.
National and international intention has focused on the Al-Mukmin boarding school in
Ngruki, Central Java, which was founded by imprisoned extremist Muslim cleric Abu
Bakar Ba'asyir. Its graduates included several of convicted terrorists who bombed Bali
and the J.W. Marriott Hotel.
After the second Bali bombs, International Crisis Group (ICG) director and terrorism
expert Sidney Jones said that there were 18 Islamic boarding schools affiliated to the
terror cell Jamaah Islamiyah in the country, which were used to train jihadis.
Jones also linked these schools with a "very prominent" university in Surakarta,
Central Java.
Farid Ma'ruf, chairman of the Al-Mukmin school's foundation, said the call to monitor
pesantren was a "repressive act" against Islamic movements.
"Religious freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution, so what is the legal basis of the
government's monitoring? I think it's just a way to find a scapegoat," Farid, also an
executive of the Ba'asyir-led Indonesian Mujahidin Assembly (MMI), said in
Yogyakarta on Monday.
In Surakarta, Al-Mukmin school director slammed Jones' statement.
"Sidney Jones's accusation was not backed up by accurate data. It was a matter of
making an international accusation which always connects Ngruki with terrorism, with
the goal of building a negative image of Islam," Wahyuddin said.
He said police had never gone to Ngruki to investigate the relationship between the
school's graduates with several bombing cases.
"Police know that nothing can be found here, especially the accusation that this place
breeds terrorists. That's too much."
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