In "Indonesia strikes back at Islamist hardliners," in Asia Times (thanks to DFS), Gary LaMoshi details Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's campaign against jihadists:
DENPASAR, Bali - Last week was a rough one for jihadis in Indonesia. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration launched a long-overdue comprehensive campaign against violent Islamic extremists. In the country with the world's most Muslims, the outcome of Yudhoyono's initiative could prove far more significant in the global war for the hearts and minds of Muslims than the assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.Since the fall of General Suharto's New Order regime in 1998, Islamic extremists have asserted their right to enjoy the fruits of democracy and impose the will of Indonesia's Muslim majority as they presume to interpret it. They're unperturbed that most Indonesians, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, oppose their agenda. These radicals are no democrats. Politically educated under Suharto's reign of physical intimidation and intolerance of dissent, they merely wish to substitute their own version of autocracy and repression (see Indonesia's Islamists flex their muscles, October 27, 2005).
A handful of radical Islamic groups use violence as a first resort against their opponents, often with a wink from authorities. Violent extremism's renaissance began with police using vigilantes to extract protection money from reluctant bar owners and blossomed with the military's logistical support to send thousands of jihadis to the Malukus and central Sulawesi to undermine Abdurrahman Wahid's presidential election victory in 1999. Armed mobs draped in the white robes of Islam routinely attack churches, homes and businesses they accuse of various heretical views while police take no action and perpetrators escape prosecution. Government reluctance to stand up to thugs gives the impression of implicit approval, or that the extremists serve a higher authority....
The last straw stirring Yudhoyono's ponderous government appears to have been an attack on former president Wahid on May 23. At an interfaith forum in the West Java town of Purwakarta, members of FPI and other radical groups forced Wahid, virtually blind and limited physically because of a series of strokes, off the stage. The radicals cited Wahid's opposition to the anti-pornography bill as an insult to Islam....
The Yudhoyono administration's campaign against violent Islamists began innocently in the president's Pancasila Day speech on June 1. Pancasila (Sanskrit for "five principles") is the national philosophy enshrined by the nation's founders and subsequently corrupted under Suharto. In his speech, Yudhoyono called for a revival of Pancasila and accused "invisible hands" of trying to spread ideas against the nation's core principles of tolerance and pluralism. Although the "invisible hands" metaphor is hardly apt for white-robed mobs with stones and clubs, the message came through.
The speech was a nice bit of political shadow-boxing, indirectly confronting the extremists and recasting the debate in the government's chosen terms. But Yudhoyono is becoming famous for saying the right things, when he does finally speak out, and then failing to follow through with effective action.
This week, the action began. On Wednesday, Widodo Adi Suptjipto, coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, announced that the government will no longer tolerate groups that take the law into their own hands. While that may have been said before, Widodo added this important coda: the government will provide political cover for police and support their effort to enforce the law against these groups, no matter who their patrons may be....
These are all good, solid moves, breaking the government's deafening silence on extremist violence. Expect more this week: Yudhoyono (or Vice President Jusuf Kalla) will meet with the leaders of major Muslim organizations, and each group's head will denounce extremist violence as contrary to Islam. A similar meeting and announcement after the second Bali bombings last October reversed the groups' lukewarm criticism of terrorist violence - it's wrong but we understand why - and prompted a sea change in public opinion from indifference to condemnation of such acts of terror....
Long over due and good as far as it goes, but then there is this: "Militant Islamic Cleric Released from Indonesian Prison," from AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:
JAKARTA, Indonesia — A hardline cleric alleged to be a top leader in the Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group was released from prison Wednesday to cries of "God is great" from scores of cheering supporters.Abu Bakar Bashir, 68, had served 26 months for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people and thrust Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, onto the front lines of the war on terror.
"I thank Allah that I am free today," a smiling and waving Bashir said after emerging from a scrum of about 150 supporters and journalists waiting outside the gates of Jakarta's Cipinang prison.
"I call on all Muslims to unite behind one goal, that is the implementation of Sharia law."
Australia and the United States, which have accused Bashir of being a key Southeast Asian terrorist, said they were disappointed at his release, as did Australian victims of the Bali blasts.
His freedom has raised concerns that he could energize Indonesia's small, Islamic radical fringe, but few believe the stick-thin, softly spoken cleric will play any direct role in terrorism in the future.....
Sure. Like Sheikh Yassin.
The "crackdown on extremism" in Indonesia will be hollow as long as Bashir is roaming free.
The release of the leader is truly an act of hypocracy.
The war on terrorism is one of "Victory or Death". Fighting against terrorism has one possible result, not fighting against terrorism assures the other. The picture is becoming clearer albeit slowly. I pray that the worlds freedom loving nations will participate more actively against terrorism instigated primarily by Islam. Islam continues to force its will everywhere. Just today I read that some high school female Muslim basketball players refused to play if males or young male teens were in attendence. They also demanded a wall be erected in the gym to shield them from the view of others in the gym. We are doomed if we allow things like these petty demands become reality. I see more Muslim demands every day in every aspect of our lifestyles. The Muslim demands are encroaching and too many times succeed. I say--Go to any Muslim led country if you object to our lifestyle and traditions. Of course, they won't.
The Indonesian government has just announced that the recent natural disasters will require $3 billion in international aid. The West already poured vast amounts of money and men into Aceh, the most completely Muslim of any part of Indonesia. The derisory sums coming from the rich Arabs were -- derisory. It is time for the Indonesian government to be told that in a country such as Indonesia, with its tight connections between government and judiciary, the freeing of this man has lead to a new understanding (the same should be said by some Pentagon representative, reading the riot act to all those Indonesian military commanders rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of greatly expanded American military aid, which Rumsfeld, a fighter in the "war on terror" -- has promised them).
Tell the Indonesians, tell them on radio stations, tell them in the Western press, tell them at every meeting, that Saudi Arabia, the richest member of that famous O.I.C., that grouping of Muslim states in a Muslim club to express Muslim solidarity, the solidarity of states that presumably reflects the solidarity of the umma al-islamiyya, the Community of Believers, takes in nearly a billion dollars a day. And Kuwait and the U.A.E., Qatar and the other almost entirely Arab and Muslim member-states of OPEC, take in similar sums. Ask them for the money. Ask them for the aid -- and keep asking them. If you get it, that will be less that the Saudis and the other rich Gulf Arabs (the "Gulf" in question being the Persian Gulf, not the "Arabian" Gulf as the Arabs,not content with renaming Judea and Samaria as "the West Bank," would have it) will have to spend on mosques and madrasas in the West. And if you don't get it -- then that will be a grievance, a grievance against the rich Arabs that might, in time, fester and grow, and anything that causes resentment within the camp of Islam is a good thing.
Make no mistake about it Islam will continue massacring human beings in the Republic of bin-donesia too, with Jakarta's full knowledge and complicity. That will NEVER EVER change! And neither of course will Islam.
Could it be that Jakarta has its own gaggle of Islamic terrorists stationed about the archipelago? And the jihadists they have arrested are unwanted loose ends or outsiders?
The US State MIlitary has (again) proven its lunacy with its decision to assist the Indonesian Armed Forces!
I think a lot of this crap will go away once we rage out of appeasement-mode.