The Christian Science Monitor, May 02, 2002
Indonesian cleric fights for a Muslim state
Bashir's recent lawsuit against Singapore seeks $100 million for slanderous remarks.
[Photo: ABU BAKAR BASHIR: The Indonesian cleric denies that he has any
connection to a terror group trained and financed by Al Qaeda.]
JOHAN WIJAYA/REUTERS
By Dan Murphy | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
SOLO, INDONESIA – Abu Bakar Bashir is a schoolteacher. He has white hair, a
reedy voice, gold-rimmed glasses – and a growing number of close colleagues in
foreign jails.
Those colleagues, say officials in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, are part
of a sprawling international terrorist conspiracy with links to Al Qaeda led by Mr.
Bashir. Bashir, however, remains free to run his Al-Mukmin Islamic boarding school
because Indonesia officials say they have insufficient evidence to arrest him.
"All of these claims of terrorism are fabrications by America and the Jews," says
Bashir at his school, a noisy jumble of low buildings in the central Java city of Solo.
"They are attacking me, because they hate it when Muslims stand up for
themselves."
The anti-American, anti-semitic Bashir is a living symbol of what the US fears for
Indonesia. His apparent political clout has led the government to resist calls for his
arrest. He also runs a growing organization, the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI),
which is lobbying to convert Indonesia into an Islamic state.
Foreign officials worry that this sends a message to Al Qaeda that Indonesia is a
good place to hide. "If they were locking up local radicals, then I think an Al Qaeda
fugitive would think twice about coming here,'' says a Western diplomat. "But there's
this feeling that the climate is friendly to them."
Though Indonesia is one of the Islamic world's most religiously tolerant countries,
Islamic militancy has had a renaissance since the fall of Suharto in 1998. The more
open political climate has allowed men such as Bashir, who lived in exile in Malaysia
for 15 years, to return home.
The Islamic movement here is running on parallel tracks – political and militant. It has
funded paramilitary groups that have ignited sectarian conflicts, conducted vigilante
raids on bars and brothels, and burned churches. Bashir has ties to most of these
groups through the MMI.
But the MMI also played a more traditional political role. Bashir and other MMI leaders
had a two-hour meeting with Vice President Hamzah Haz this week. The vice
president told them he shares their dream of introducing Islamic law to Indonesia,
says MMI member Deliar Noer, who attended the meeting.
Bashir isn't the only militant leader who has been able to make an impact on
Indonesia's stability.
Last week, the paramilitary group Laskar Jihad ignited another wave of killing in
Maluku province, where thousands have been killed in sectarian violence since 1999.
Indonesian officials had hoped that a three-month lull in the violence and a peace
agreement signed in February meant the worst was over.
But militants such as Bashir and Laskar Jihad leader Jaffar Umar Thalib had attacked
the peace deal and vowed to bring it down. Last Friday, Mr. Thalib, who has also held
meetings with Vice President Haz, led prayers at the main mosque in the provincial
capital of Ambon and urged renewed attacks on Christians, calling the peace deal
"treasonous."
Bashir says that the MMI and the Laskar Jihad coordinate their activities and that
Thalib is doing "good work" in Ambon. Government officials say that Thalib, like
Bashir, has remained free because the government worries that arrests could be
counterproductive.
"The official government line is that, if they go too hard, there will be a backlash,'' says
David Martin Jones, a politics professor at the University of Tasmania in Australia.
"This is not a very good strategy in terms of preserving rule of law. The message
certainly seems to be that you can get away with murder.''
Singapore and Malaysia say that Bashir leads the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a terror
group trained and financed by Al Qaeda. Nearly two dozen members of the group
were arrested in the two countries last year for conspiring to blow up the US Embassy
in Singapore.
Bashir's fame grows
Bashir says the JI doesn't exist, though he acknowledges teaching a number of the
detained men about jihad. "Teaching is my only weapon,'' he says. "This is all a
slander.''
In fact, Bashir is seeking more than $100 million from Singapore over remarks linking
him to terrorism.
"The fact is that some of the detained JI members in Singapore have described Bashir
as the overall leader of the JI organization,'' says a Singapore government
spokesperson in response to Bashir's denials.
Yet rather than hurt Bashir's image, the alleged link to terrorism has boosted him to
national prominence. Millions of Indonesians are angry at the US for the war in
Afghanistan and for perceived support of the Israeli offensive on the West Bank. To
them, the frail, pious Bashir is more credible than what they see as the American
bully.
"Bashir is respected because of his constant opposition to what he believes
constitutes oppression,'' says Wisnu Pramudya, editor of Hidayatullah, a Muslim
magazine in Jakarta, Indonesia.
"Compared to three years ago the prospects for real Islam look good,'' says Bashir.
"We are winning, and we will win. It's only a question of when."
"Real" Islam, as Bashir defines it, is rooted in the puritanical Wahhabi traditions of
Saudi Arabia. Like many of Indonesia's militant preachers, he is of Arab descent. His
students, from 6-year-olds to young adults, are taught that going to war to defend
Muslims is as important as performing the pilgrimage to Mecca or giving alms. The
school has grown from a few hundred students at its inception to more than 2,000
today.
Bashir receives visitors in an unadorned room at the boarding- school compound, and
wears a simple white skull cap, faded pants, and no shoes.
He speaks directly and clearly, occasionally sipping from a plastic cup of water.
There's a global conspiracy, led by the US, to keep Muslims poor and weak, he says.
In addition, he says, the World Trade Center was destroyed by the US and Israel to
justify an attack on the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Indonesia, he warns, could be
next.
Indonesia walks tightrope
Officials in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines say they've been shown
Indonesia interrogation transcripts, telephone records, and surveillance pictures that
prove Bashir and other members of the MMI created a network of terrorist cells with at
least some assistance from Al Qaeda. And despite the MMI's practice of sending
fighters around the country to "defend" Muslims from Indonesia's Christian minority,
the Indonesian government says there are no grounds to arrest Bashir, who enjoys
support from many of the small Muslim parliamentary parties in Indonesia that hold
about 20 percent of the seats.
Bashir has dedicated his life to bringing sharia, or Islamic law, to Indonesia.
In 1972, Bashir and a close friend founded the Al-Mukmin boarding school.
With its emphasis on jihad, and the need for the boys to be prepared to defend
Muslims against "infidels," it resembled the madrassahs of Pakistan more than the
Islamic boarding schools of Java.
The government grew alarmed. In 1978, Bashir was sentenced to 15 years in jail by
the Suharto government for advocating the creation of an Islamic state. Given early
release in 1982, he resumed this activism.
In September 1984, Indonesian soldiers massacred about 50 Muslim protesters in
Jakarta's impoverished port district of Tanjung Priok. Muslim activists like Bashir saw
the killings as a declaration of war by the resolutely secular dictator Suharto.
Reprisals followed.
More than a dozen bombings rocked Java from late 1984 to the middle of 1985. The
targets included banks owned by Suharto's friends, churches, and the 9th- century
Borobudur Buddhist temple in central Java, a symbol of Java's pre-Islamic traditions.
When arrests were made, suspects said Bashir had encouraged the attacks. He fled
to Malaysia.
In Malaysia, Bashir became a magnet for exiles, including Abu Jibril Abdurrahman
and Riduan Isammudin, two other alleged leaders of the JI. Singapore officials say
that while Mr. Jibril, who is under arrest in Malaysia, and Mr. Isammudin, still a
fugitive, focused on operations for the nascent terror group, Bashir was more of a
religious front man – someone who could provide ideological justifications for violence
and inspire recruits.
Earlier this month, Fathur Roman Al-Ghozi, an Indonesian who graduated from
Bashir's school in the late 1980s, was sentenced to 12 years in jail. Mr. Al-Ghozi said
he was financed by Mr. Isamuddin, who is better known as Hambali.
"Once they're done with me, they'll go after others," Bashir says, laughing. "I just
hope the Indonesian government does the right thing and stands up to foreign
pressure before it's too late."
• Previous articles in this series appeared April 30 and May 1.
Part 3 of 3
Indonesia is in the midst of a painful transition. It left the Suharto dictatorship behind
four years ago and is undergoing a transition to democracy.
But destabilizing social forces have reemerged in the more open political climate, and
one of them is militant Islam.
Three Indonesian clerics – all exiles during the Suharto years – are accused of
building a terror network with Al Qaeda assistance. Their stories show the challenges
that political Islam is posing to the elected government and how complicated the US
relationship with Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, has become in the
wake of Sept. 11.
Copyright © 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
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