ASIA TIMES, May 17, 2002
Speaking for Islam: A tale of two leaders
By Bill Guerin
JAKARTA - Unbridled and mindless terror unleashed on hundreds of innocents.
Bodies buried alive and others smashed to smithereens. New York or the West
Bank? Take your pick, but both scenes of terror have had far-reaching repercussions
in Southeast Asia. The United States, heartily sick of the incessant attacks and
threats against its nationals all over the world, seized on the September 11 attacks as
a just cause to raise the stakes to a degree that has now affected us all.
Palestinians, indisputably the new victims of Israeli acts of terror cloaked in the guise
of a fight against the same terror, had cheered in the streets at the news of the US
attacks last year, shouting "Allahu Akhbar" (God is Great). This was a measure of the
depths to which a concerted campaign of propaganda can drag the simple-minded,
but it also highlighted the problems ahead in convincing Muslims that the clash of
cultures was surely between the civilized world and global terrorism and not, as so
many try to say, between Islam and the West.
Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who leads the largest Islamic
population in the world, went to the US one week after September 11, and, sitting in
the Oval Office with a beaming George W Bush, expressed her unqualified support for
his administration (in return for a considerable amount of aid). The US saw her visit as
the chance to elicit an endorsement for the coming campaign of attrition against an
enemy who is here, there and everywhere at the same time. After all, as leader of the
largest Muslim country in the world, her full frontal support for a unilateral action,
outside of any official UN consensus, was a real chance for the US to grab the moral
high ground from the outset. But, this was not to be. Even as Megawati beamed her
way back to Indonesia, with an implied endorsement of her legitimacy and promises
of US largesse, the storm clouds were gathering back home. Before she even touched
down in Jakarta the trouble had started.
The storm of protest from Indonesian Muslims was the forerunner of a sustained
rear-guard action by her political adversaries who seek to weaken the fragile
consensus between the forces of secular nationalism, which Megawati represents,
and political Islam. During Megawati's absence, Vice President Hamzah Haz had told
a crowd of Muslims after prayers at a Jakarta mosque that the attacks in New York
and Washington "will cleanse the sins of the United States". His attempt at damage
control, when pleading that he was not condoning terrorism but looking at the tragedy
from a Muslim point of view, was a theme that was to prove consistent. Indonesian
Muslims' unfettered sympathy and brotherhood with Muslims all over the world had
lain dormant awaiting a cause.
Haz's September stance, and Bush's wrong-footed cry for a "crusade" against
terrorism, gave thousands of unemployed Indonesian youths, albeit Muslims, the
opportunity to make some "demo attendance money", in support of causes which
they need not even attempt to understand.
Last month, Haz also visited jailed Laskar Jihad leader Jafar Umar Thalib, who is
alleged to have called for a further war against Christians in the Spice Islands
(Malukus). National police spokesman Saleh Saaf charged that Thalib "violated the
law - has been preaching and insulting the government and has provoked Muslims and
asked them to prepare bombs". But once again, Haz said it was a purely Islamic
thing and that he was only offering a "brother Muslim" sympathy over his plight. He
also told the militants that Jafar was not a terrorist and that terrorism did not exist in
Indonesia.
In the end, there was no breakdown in law and order in Indonesia over the bombing of
Afghanistan, nor were US or other foreign interests seriously threatened. But there
was a subtle but telling damage to Indonesia's fragile political equilibrium, and the die
had been cast, helped along by the vice president.
Megawati has been unable to deliver on the deal made in her earlier meeting with
Bush and now, almost exactly eight months later, it is Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad of Malaysia who made the long trip this week to the White House, for 35
minutes with the leader of the free world, not Megawati. What went wrong?
First of all, Mahathir has played his cards like the veteran he is. Megawati leads some
210 million people, Mahathir a mere 23 million. But Malaysia's leader for 21 years has
seen his country dubbed a "beacon of stability" in Southeast Asia, by US Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James A Kelly, following its
detention of dozens of militants, some suspected of links to a regional network allied
to al-Qaeda. Malaysia came down hard on Muslim militants from the start, with
Mahathir sensing the threat to his rule and the stability of his country. He ordered the
rounding up and jailing of suspected militants.
In Indonesia, however, a complex mix of cultural factors combined with a real fear of
the potency of Islam fundamentalism, go some way to explain why the government
and the police steadily lost ground against the Islamic radicals and have never taken
seriously the charges that part of this network operated on their sovereign territory.
Although Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia have all taken action to crack down
on terrorism, Indonesia has so far made no arrests in connection with the alleged
network.
A case in point was the police invitation to Abubakar Baasyir, an Islamic cleric
alleged to be the ideological leader of an al Qaeda-linked organization that plotted to
blow up several Western embassies in Singapore with truck bombs, to come to police
headquarters for a "discussion". He was not charged and remains free to this day.
Washington's pragmatism, on the other hand, apparently knows no bounds. Though
at loggerheads with the region's longest serving elected leader since then vice
president Al Gore, in Kuala Lumpur in 1998, provoked Mahathir into his more normal
anti-West mode, Mahathir went to Washington this week with the real clout of a friend
of the US. Gore had voiced support for groups protesting against the trials, for sodomy
and abuse of power of Anwar Ibrahim, Mahathir's former deputy leader who openly
challenged him that year, in line with the Clinton administration's stance that the trial
was political.
Mahathir was to also meet the other power brokers in the Bush administration,
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a sure sign
that all is forgiven and that Mahathir's abysmal record on human rights is of nothing in
the interests of the greater cause.
Conversely, Indonesia remains cordoned off, denied spares for US-made aircraft by a
Congress that still judges the record of human rights in Indonesia as a means of
leverage. Megawati, unlike Mahathir, walks a thin tightrope, and has been unable to
juggle and balance the needs of her country, in terms of a secure and safe
environment for investment, and the excruciatingly subtle threats posed to Indonesia's
vast majority of peace-loving Muslims by the radicalized few.
Consequently, there has been much more talk than action, with the action on the
streets rather than in the corridors of power. A day after FBI Director Robert Mueller's
March visit to Indonesia to discuss the fight against global terrorism, Haz told a
packed crowd celebrating the Islamic New Year 1423 at the Bung Karno Sports
Stadium in Jakarta that Indonesia was no haven for terrorists. A few days earlier,
Mueller described the FBI's working relationship with Malaysian authorities as a
critical part of worldwide efforts to investigate terrorist acts and financial networks.
Islamic fundamentalism is still far off in Indonesia, yet the terrorism issue tars all
Islamic movements, political and social, non-violent and violent, with the same brush.
It also allows the more radical and extreme leaders to take some of the moral high
ground from the government. If the West and the Islamic world cannot meet in the
middle, then the future holds only the frightening prospect of more hatred and
radicalism, the rise of even more extremist movements, and a breeding ground for
recruits for the bin Ladens of the world.
This was a real chance for Megawati but it is proving to be one that remains elusive.
Taking the leadership position in speaking for Muslims worldwide in a commitment to
unearth evil networks in Indonesia, and to commit to find and capture terrorists, would
have ensured the Indonesian leader the same status in Washington's eyes as
Mahathir.
As Bush has repeatedly emphasized, the consensus in the West, and the single
most important thing to it, is to put an end to terrorism. The Muslim world believes
this will only be accomplished if all forms of terrorism, including acts perpetrated by
Jews, Christians, Hindus, radical secularists, etc, are targeted and not just those
perpetrated by those who profess Islam. Muslim grievances vary in level of severity but
prime among these are the effects of the US sanctions on Iraq, and their impact on
more than a half million Iraqi children, the blind American sponsorship of Israeli
occupation of, and attacks, on Palestine, and the presence of US troops on the holy
Saudi Arabian soil. Indonesian Muslim grievances tend more toward a brotherly
despair at the pain caused to Muslims wherever they may be.
The signs are that Mahathir, not Megawati, is now seen by the US as the de facto
leader for the Muslim world, and he has a chance, however slim, of encouraging the
Americans and Europeans to make much more proportionate responses in security
measures, anti-terrorism legislation, and, ultimately, foreign policy. This would
drastically reduce the protests from Muslims everywhere, including Indonesia.
Mahathir, on his way to Washington, fired off a warning and said that it would be a
mistake for the US to ignore the views of other nations in facing today's problems.
"For example, it is not correct for the US to deal with the issue of terrorism solely with
military might," he said. If he succeeds in getting that point across, Mahathir would
also reinforce investor confidence in his own country and leave Indonesia on the
sidelines, with investors here still spooked by the past two years of woolly and
wavering leadership.
Right from the start, there was a refusal from Indonesia to condemn. But the Taliban
did not, in any way, represent Islamic doctrine and law. Governments and religious
leaders criticized them across the spectrum of the Muslim world, but not,
unfortunately, in Indonesia. Their militant and aggressive interpretations of Islam, their
cruel restrictions on women and destruction of ancient Buddhist monuments, had
nothing in common with the culture and practices of the majority of Indonesian
Muslims and the more radical and splinter Indonesian groups were allowed to gather a
head of steam on the streets. Simple souls were "recruited" to be sent off to
Afghanistan to goodness only knows what fate.
Indonesians in all levels of society have for long had a common fear - the nightmare
scenario which would ensue when religion becomes the ultimate divisive parameter.
The level of fear is enhanced when the question is no longer are you a pribumi
(indigenous Indonesian) but are you a Muslim pribumi? Islam, Christian, Buddhist,
Hindu and other Indonesians yearn for a renewed belief in the sanctity of their
country's law and the return of the idealistic, stable, multi-ethnic, multIreligious state
which Megawati's father Sukarno gave them in 1945.
The US believes that somehow the civilized world will sleep easier when its 21st
century Pearl Harbor is avenged, but for Indonesia to support this cause to the hilt
there may be too heavy a price to pay.
©2001 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.
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