Query to the moral equivalence crowd: when was the last time you heard of a Christian cleric being influenced by Eric Rudolph or Tim McVeigh to go out and wage war against unbelievers? How did this Muslim cleric miss all the peaceful teachings of the Qur'an that we hear so much about? From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
JAKARTA, Indonesia — "I met with Usama bin Laden frequently in Afghanistan and heard him speak about waging war against America and its allies," said Mohammad Rais, giving testimony in the trial of alleged terrorist leader Abu Bakar Bashir."We saw the Marriott attack as a message from Usama bin Laden," he said.
Bashir has been charged with heading Al Qaeda's alleged affiliate in Southeast Asia, the Jemaah Islamiyah group, and of inciting his followers to take part in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, and the Marriott attack that left 12 dead.
Rais also said that bin Laden offered Bashir refuge in Afghanistan if "he didn't feel comfortable" in Indonesia. The message was given to Hambali, the jailed militant accused of leading Jemaah Islamiyah, who gave it to Rais.
Rais, who in May was sentenced to seven years in jail for helping plan the Marriott attack and transport explosives used in the blast, gave the message to Bashir in 2001 when he visited the cleric's Islamic boarding school in Solo.
For the record, McVeigh did not consider himself a Christian. That's a myth spread by Muslim apologists and leftists. Eric Rudolph does, true.
They won't touch Bashir.
He should have been roasted long ago, but the slimy Generals in Indonesia are just too jittery about the militants.
Some of the Bali bombers have been seen in Jakarta coffehouses accompanied by military hotshots who openly admire them and give them "a day out of jail"...
it's incredible!
"Muslim brothers..."
Mosque vandalized in Medan
MEDAN, North Sumatra Indonesia: Dozens of people vandalized the Ar Ridho Mosque in the Polonia subdistrict of Medan on Wednesday morning.
An eyewitness, Maimunah, said that vandals alit from two cars, ordered her to leave the mosque and began to vandalize it -- particularly electronic items and other objects inside. They left immediately after the attack. It was the fourth such attack at the mosque in recent months. Maimunah surmised that the attack was linked to a land dispute between local residents and a private company that wants to use for commercial purposes. -- Jakarta Post
Seems like they ran out of churches to burn
Shiva~ I find that article interesting. I always thought vandalism was an act by a few people at least, an act of boredom or Maybe an act of bigotry... but dozens? That sounds very much like an act of protest.
Works for me.
Terminator
BULLS-EYE considering this
Investigating Jemaah Islamiah
Interview with author Sally Neighbour
First Broadcast 13/11/2004
The Bali and Jakarta embassy bombings have starkly demonstrated just how deeply Australia has been drawn in to the war on terror. And the group widely thought to be behind these attacks, Jemaah Islamiah, is now commonly known in this country. But that certainly hasn't always been the case.
Investigative journalist Sally Neighbour has closely followed JI's tracks throughout the Asia-Pacific region in her work for the ABC's 'Four Corners' program and found that until recently the terrorist group was an enigma to regional intelligence agencies.
Neighbour has now written a book, 'In the Shadow of Swords', analysing the power wielded by JI's alleged spiritual leader, the Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, and the motivations driving the group to commit further acts of terror. She's speaking with Michael Maher.
Michael Maher: Sally Neighbour, welcome to Focus. The alleged terrorist leader Abu Bakar Bashir is on trial at the moment in Indonesia. From your intimate knowledge of terrorism in that country, how central a figure do you think he is in the spate of bombings that has occurred in Indonesia over the past two years?
Sally Neighbour, author, 'In the Shadow of Swords': Well, there is now overwhelming evidence of Bashir having been the central leader of JI since 1999. He co-founded JI. He took it over after his fellow co-founder died. He has been central in recruitment, training, indoctrination, swearing people into JI. There is also evidence of him having been directly and personally involved in planning several terrorist attacks, including the bombing of a series of churches across Indonesia in 2000 in which dozens of people were killed and injured, and also a plan to assassinate the former president Megawati Sukarnoputri.
"The evidence of his (Abu Bakar Bashir's) involvement, in the more recent attacks like the Bali bombing and the Marriott bombing, in particular - both of which he's charged over - is much weaker ... so while I think the evidence against him of being the leader of JI is overwhelming, and he is most likely to be convicted of that, there is a much lesser chance of him being convicted over those recent bombings."
"The evidence of his involvement, however, in the more recent attacks like the Bali bombing and the Marriott bombing, in particular - both of which he's charged over - is much weaker. He was in prison at the time of the Marriott bombing and had been for several months. So I think it's probably unlikely that he had any direct role in that. The strongest evidence that they have of his involvement in Bali is a meeting at which he is supposed to have given Amrozi tacit approval for an operation in Bali, which is fairly weak evidence. So while I think the evidence against him of being the leader of JI is overwhelming, and he is most likely to be convicted of that, there is a much lesser chance of him being convicted over those recent bombings.
Michael Maher: Nevertheless, there is enormous international pressure, isn't there, on the Indonesian court system at the moment to come up with a conviction in relation to those bombings?
Sally Neighbour: Well, that's right. There is. And this court is under so much pressure that I'm sure it will come up with a conviction of some sort. The laws, of course, are in disarray as a result of the Constitutional Court overturning the terrorism laws rushed in after Bali. So I am sure that this court will convict Bashir of something. But they may simply find that the evidence over those recent bombings doesn't stack up.
Michael Maher: Given the weakness of the evidence with regard to Abu Bakar Bashir and the bombings, who do you think was the mastermind behind these attacks?
Sally Neighbour: Well, in the case of the Bali bombing, it was masterminded by key figures like Hambali, who has been detained, but other figures like the Malaysians, Dr Azahari and Noordin Mohammad Top, both from the University of Technology in Malaysia, and both of whom are still at large and appear to have also masterminded the Marriott bombing and probably the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta as well. So key figures like these. And others like Dulmartin, another top JI bomb specialist, and Zulkarnaen, the head of JI's military wing, are probably all involved in these recent bombings and still have yet to be caught.
Michael Maher: It's quite a list of names you mentioned. Obviously, this is a very wide network. But there's been a certain reluctance in Indonesia to acknowledge...in some quarters, to even acknowledge the existence of JI. We've got a new president there, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. He says he's going to be tougher on terrorism. Do you believe him?
"I think Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has yet to do anything to actually demonstrate that he's going to be tougher on JI. He continues to refuse to ban JI."
Sally Neighbour: Well, I think Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has yet to do anything to actually demonstrate that he's going to be tougher on JI. He continues to refuse to ban JI. He repeatedly says that he won't ban JI because it's yet to be shown to really exist in Indonesia. That's an absolute nonsense that flies in the face of overwhelming evidence. He only has to read the testimony of the numerous JI figures who've confessed and given police information to know that that's not the case. There are other disturbing events since the election - for example, the Justice Minister making a point of going out and having himself photographed with Abu Bakar Bashir. So I think although the Indonesian Government has been resolute in hunting down the bombers behind these individual bombings, it has been far from resolute in actually tackling JI as an organisation.
Michael Maher: Let's move on to the links that JI has elsewhere in the region. You spend a substantial part of your book looking at JI's links here in Australia. How easy was it for JI to establish these links?
"They had 10 years before anyone even cottoned on to their existence to start establishing a branch in Australia ... (JI) collected a lot of funds in Australia, had quite an extensive support base, recruited, trained people for jihad ... and was in the process of setting up an operational cell in Australia."
Sally Neighbour: It was a piece of cake. JI's leaders, Abu Bakar Bashir and his cohort Abdullah Sungkar, started coming to Australia in the early '90s. Back then, of course, no-one knew of the existence of JI, and wouldn't know of it for another decade, basically. So they had 10 years before anyone even cottoned on to their existence to start establishing a branch in Australia that was equivalent to its other three branches, known as Mantikis. It had a sophisticated organisational set-up and hierarchy in Australia. It collected a lot of funds in Australia, had quite an extensive support base, recruited, trained people for jihad, sent people overseas for training - particularly to Mindanao in the Philippines - and was in the process of setting up an operational cell in Australia at the time that, of course, Jack Roche, who's now in prison, was seconded by al-Qaeda and sent off to case the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. So the JI operation in Australia was very extensive.
Michael Maher: What does this say, the fact that they were able to establish these links in Australia, about the country's intelligence agencies? I mean, were those agencies, like many other agencies in the West, just not up to speed on the threat that Islamic terrorism posed?
Sally Neighbour: Australian intelligence and Australian police were oblivious to the existence of JI until December 2001, when the plot was uncovered in Singapore by JI to bomb the Australian Embassy and other Western embassies. And Australian intelligence has acknowledged this. It completely missed JI. It wasn't on the radar at all. But of course the same has to be said of other intelligence and police agencies across the region, including Singapore itself. And I guess if the ever-vigilant Singaporean authorities and government are not going to detect JI, then it explains why in Australia, with an organisation that's as sophisticated and organised and secretive as it is, the Australian authorities really didn't have much of a chance.
Michael Maher: Now, the war on terrorism - that term - has planted itself very firmly in our lexicon. Not a day goes by without us hearing that term. What, in your assessment...how, in your assessment, is that war going? Has it been won or lost?
"I think the war in Iraq has been an extremely unfortunate diversion from the war on terrorism and has basically created a new theatre for terror where there previously wasn't one."
Sally Neighbour: Well, I think the war in Iraq has been an extremely unfortunate diversion from the war on terrorism and has basically created a new theatre for terror where there previously wasn't one. As we know, the campaign to track down key al-Qaeda leaders and operatives has had very mixed success. It's really a case of one step forward, one step back. In our region, it's also been mixed. Indonesia, as we've discussed, has been quite resolute in hunting down bombers but has pretty much failed to take on JI as an organisation. Other countries like Singapore and Malaysia have taken very tough action. On the other hand, again, in the Philippines, which has been a recruiting and a very important training ground for JI, in conjunction with the Philippines group the MILF, for many years, there has been little action taken that has effectively stopped that. We keep hearing of new training camps emerging in the Philippines. And of course in southern Thailand, we're seeing evidence that that is just starting to emerge as another really disturbing new theatre for the JI style of jihad.
And he will be shortly joining Amrosi at Starbucks
Thank you Shiva.
Yudhoyono was interviewed 4 weeks ago and it was aired in Australia in a Sunday morning program. When asked what he's going to do about JI he had to consult with his advisor in Indonesian. The microphones recorded this:
Bambang: "What should I say about JI?"
Advisor: "better not admit that JI exist' s"...
Bambang in English: "We have no evidence that JI exists..."
Was what is now Indonesia actually jihadized by the Middle East and forced into becoming Islamic in the late tenth century? We think it was and that most historical accounts of what is now Indonesia are biased --and WRONG.
Few historians broach this topic. Many claim that what is now Indonesia freely Islamicized of its own accord. But there is reason to doubt this version of Indonsian history.
First, the fall of the Great Hindu-Buddhist Javanese Kingdoms has never been explained. Despite the fact that ancies Java was a civilization on par with China and India. The usual theory has been that these extraordinary Kingdoms declined and were finally done in by the great Merapi volcano's massive eruption in 1006 AD. But the great Javanese religious edifices stop around 980 AD nearly thirty years before. There's a time window in there unaccounted for of at least a single generation. No one knows what went on in Java at the end of the tenth century.
Secondly, the East javanese Empire known as the Mojopahit of the 14th century is known to have had Arabs among its ranks. Now Indonesia is believed to have begun aopting Islam sometine in the fourteenth century. But what then werre the Islamic Arabs doing here then if that was the case? Something does not add up.
Thirdly, Javanese kings and warlords were using violence to spread Islam. Why? Who taught them they were to do so, or what had compelled them to apply Islamic violence to Javanese masses of peasants? This has never explained either.
We say, Java was the victim of a massive military assault that was planned in the Middle East and carried out somewhere from India or the Malay peninsula or Indonesia itself. The kingdoms fell under military pressure, while the Merapi volcano eruption of 1006 AD caused the Arabs to scatter which then destroyed most of whatever evidence there might have been and also wiped out any possible witnesses of a holy war. This would also explain the presence of Arabs in the Mojopahit Empire. The Javanese kings who later 'spread' Islam by violence were possibly acting under orders of Saudi Arabia itself. More Indonesian history is explained by jihad and thus it is the more likely explanation.
One more thing: are the Indonesia Armed Forces really being operated by the Middle East? That's the conclusion I've come to. Indonesia is a puppet state of the Middle East. That's all it is folks.