Why can't we have a president like this?
It's all just words, of course, in a state where jihadists have committed numerous terrible acts of violence more or less with impunity. Even on the level of words alone, however, Yudhoyono has now surpassed virtually every Western leader. "President Hits Out at Terrorists, Says Indonesia Will Never Be Islamic State," by Camelia Pasandaran in the Jakarta Globe, May 17:
In some of his strongest comments against terrorists yet, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Monday called on all Indonesians to join the government in combating terrorism and their plans to establish an Islamic state governed by Shariah law."I call for all Indonesian people to join together in saving the nation, saving our people, saving us all from the terrorism threat and from irresponsible parties that act beyond the limits of humanity," Yudhoyono said at Halim Perdana Kusuma airport in East Jakarta before leaving for an informal visit to Singapore....
While Obama and European leaders have spoken about combating (a vaguely-defined) terrorism, none have ever spoken this strongly about "saving the nation, saving our people." Maybe it is just hyperbole -- or maybe Yudhoyono actually understands what is at stake in the resistance to Islamic supremacism and the advancement of Sharia. Certainly Obama does not.
The National Police have recently arrested and murdered several terrorist suspects in Aceh, Central and West Java, and Jakarta. The police have revealed that the terrorists were planning to assassinate the president and high-ranking officials in a bid to create an Islamic state....Yudhoyono, speaking to journalists in offices adjoining the runway, said that several important terrorists had been arrested in the past but when they were released from jail fell back into their terrorist ways....
How refreshing it would have been if Obama had ever admitted as much regarding Guantanamo.
"What we're actually facing now is those who have been controlling [the terror movement in Indonesia] for the last ten years ... with some more new members," he said."What is interesting is the target of the terror," he said. "In the past, they targeted foreigners, but now they are targeting our nation, our country, our government as the main target. They want to build an Islamic state, something that has been finished with in our history."
Yudhoyono said that though Indonesia was not an Islamic state, Indonesia respected Islam and had adopted its values and aspects of its laws in building the nation.
"But if this group wants to push its intention to change the nation's ideology, change the Constitution and the nation's foundation, it is unacceptable for the Indonesian people. They're against democracy while democracy is the result of reformation."
Such an effort is going on in the U.S., as I documented in Stealth Jihad, but it has never been officially acknowledged.
The situation of the government in Indonesia viz a viz Islam is very different from that in the US in that jihadist forces are far more powerful in Indonesia. That gives Indonesia's government an incentive to be more resolute in its opposition to Islam, which directly threatens its control.
While Islam fosters hostility and violence against unbelievers, it also threatens those believers deemed insufficiently orthodox, thereby creating a constant state of tension, undermining social cohesion, civil liberty and democracy.
Islam is a work in progress.
In the seventies I spent a considerable amount of time in Indonesia.
Nobody, nowhere wore hijab or veils. The girls were friendly and Westerners were welcome everywhere. Still, I had some strange encounters with Islamists, but not as threatening or unpleasant as in the ME, Turkey, or Afghanistan, Pakistan, north Africa etc.
Nowadays, I would not travel through Java on my own. Even toddlers are hijabbed and infibulated.
What does that tell you? Do you believe Bambam?
Indonesia had a similar president not too long ago too... Someone who really seemed to go far from real, true mahoundianism. Here's more about him, in an excerpt from an article posted at New English Review by Hugh Fitzgerald, titled Wahid and Israel:
While studying in Baghdad, Abdurrahman (Wahid) worked part-time as a translator cum letter-writer at a textile export company, side by side with an Iraqi Jew named Ramin. Abdurrahman knew very little about Judaism and Jewish history when he arrived in Baghdad, but after four years of daily conversations with Ramin he had developed a deep respect for Jewish religious thought and culture. Upon returning to Indonesia, Abdurrahman fell in love with the novels of the American Jewish writer Chaim Potok, seeing parallels with his own community in the conservative religious community described in works such as My Name Is Asher Lev.
Always an idiosyncratic and original thinker, Abdurrahman's personal engagement with Jewish thought caused him to react critically to the simplistic and prejudicial notions about Israel and the Jews that he encountered in Muslim society. Consequently, for the past thirty years he has made a point of speaking out against anti-Semitic thinking and ignorance about Israel and Judaism. And he has made numerous visits to Israel, the earliest taking place in 1980. It is not surprising, then, that he was quick to accept Peres's invitation to visit Israel in October 1994 and then in March 1997 to join the Board of Governors of the Shimon Peres Peace Center. Nor is it remarkable that criticism about being pro-Zionist by Amien Rais, his longtime nemesis and leader of Muhammadiyah, or negative comments by Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, did not stop Abdurrahman from traveling to Israel in October 1997 to speak at the Peres Peace Center.
Well, one thing you've got to hand it to these Indonesians - they have resisted Arabization and retained their old Sanskrit names, a throwback to their ancient Hindu/Buddhist heritage. They also have a great continuity of culture and pride in their heritage, unlike most other Islamic dominions, which develop a sense of inferiority, if not amnesia, for their own past.
I hope that Indonesia remembers who came to the their aid after that devastating tsunami.
No, it wasn't Saudi Arabia, home of the two Sacred Shrines of Islam.
The Javanese people are more fluid in their beliefs--Indonesia is (theoretically) governed by the principle of "Pancasila" (belief in one god) and Javanese people are known to have accepted various religions throughout history (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, even Christianity)--it is hoped by this Concerned Observer they abandon Islam and revert to the Hindu-Buddhist civilization that made them great in the 1st place.
In November 2000 the Laskar Jihad militia announced ‘We intend during this Ramadan to … carry out various activities paving the way for full shari’a at least in places that have now become exclusively Islam, such as the islands of Ternate, Tidore and Bacan.’ This is a kind of code for religious cleansing of Christians from those regions. The town of Poso in Central Sulawesi used to have a population of 40,000, mostly Christian. By the end of 2002 it had been reduced to an exclusively Muslim population of 5,000, with all of its churches destroyed. Reports of the Laskar Jihad’s operations in Ambon and Sulawesi describe a systematic progression through villages and towns, sometimes using equipment such as bulldozers, petrol tankers, rocket launchers and other military hardware. Villages are looted, burnt out and razed to the ground.
The Laskar Jihad is known to include fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, while acting as Indonesia’s top political and security minister, said of them ‘They also play a role in defending truth and justice that is expected by Muslims in Indonesia. For me, as far as what they are doing is legal and not violating the law, then this is OK’.
The Indonesian politicos will learn that there is no moderate Islam, and they will have to die in some numbers before their people are forced to either reject the alien terrorist cult of Mohammad, or begin the internecine slaughter of their neighbors in order to usher in pure, intolerant Islam.
Best for Indonesia would be to battle against this foreign ideology and draw upon their original cultural and spiritual roots, in enlightenment Buddhism, and use their renewed resolve to expel the unenlightened warlord belief system of the medieval desert Arabs.
There is no compromise with mass-murdering Mohammadism.
Indonesia is facing the monster in the Koran.
They will embrace it and perish or fight it and survive.
The people's instincts are against Islam.
I pray for their triumph.
maybe the current fellow is OK, but wasn't his predecessor Suharto a very fierce critic of Israel?
I wish him good luck
Abdurrahman ad-Dakhil Wahid
In 1944, Wahid moved from Jombang to Jakarta where his father was involved with the Consultative Council of Indonesian Muslims (Masyumi), an organization established by the Imperial Japanese Army which occupied Indonesia at the time.
Yet he had no problem to take over the leadership of NU (Nahdlatul Ulama)that was founded by his grandfather.
It should not be forgotten that took sides with the General Suharto-led army and was heavily involved in the mass killings 800.000 of Indonesian communists in 1965.
While he was studying in Egypt he was spying on fellow students on their political views.
Not such a nice guy
I agree,the slaughter of 'communists' in 1965 seems to have been conveniently 'forgotten'.
This kind of article makes the case for us. It comes from a Muslim elected leader and it speaks of the threat of jihadist ideology against democracy, constitution, etc. We should use this in arguments with those who don't get it. It would be useful to cite this speech in the future.
Perhaps the Indonesian President does not live in the same Indonesia that I do. On a recent 1200Km drive down the length of Java I saw HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of Mosques being built , expanded and renovated.
Now that was on ONE ROAD only so just imagine what is happening everywhere else.
So tell us again Mr President 'Indonesia will NEVER be an Islamic State' It ALREADY is in all but name.
I met Gus Dur as he became know on an unofficial visit to London when he was President. He was extremely knowledgeable and affable and a pleasure to speak to. Which was why of course the Indonesians conspired to get rid of him.
Indonesians love their democracy and love the exercise of it after decades of a military dictatorship under Suharto. Ironically the Islamic extremism which continues to plague them with acts of terrorism was a revival in the late 1970s, early 80s of a very nationalistic Islam. Islam was always the state religion but complete freedom of worship for other religions is guaranteed under the Indonesian constitution as referred to by Yudhoyono and in Indonesia's national creed 'Pancasila' (The Five Principles - one God, justice and humanity, one state, democracy and social justice for all) Some of Indonesia's 'founding fathers' formed 'Darul Islam'(known as DI - literally 'Islamic State') as they thought Indonesia should have been an Islamic state, with government derived from Sharia - God's law - and rejected anything secular like democracy as man-made. They had a poster boy at the time, an Islamic version of Che Guevara - Kartosowirjo - who led an Islamic rebellion for over a decade, establishing an Islamic state in Central Java. A feature of this was a terrorist campaign aimed at driving out any Western influence (sound familiar?) - they bombed cinemas showing Western movies (Indonesians were mad for Westerns!), bombed & burned government schools etc etc killing hundreds of their fellow Muslims who didn't agree with them. Sukarno (Indonesia's 1st president) finally sent the army in. Thousands of DI guerrillas were killed and Kartosowirjo was captured then executed.
It is from these old DI areas on Java are where the latest extremist groups like Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) - the successors to DI - have sprung from and where they gain most of their recruits. In other words, the fundamentalists are deeply entrenched, continue to provide terrorist recruits and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. BUT - they represent at best a tiny segment of the vast Indonesian population - maybe 2-4 million out of more than 220 million people!
While there has been considerable intolerant and anti-Semitic fundamentalist rhetoric and even a flourishing of the hijab and full burka, the vast majority of educated Indonesians are totally opposed to the idea of an Islamic state and the vast majority of the rural population are at best indifferent to it. Basically, most Indonesians cherish their right to vote and when they exercise their democratic rights, the elections are arguably better run, freer from irregularity - more 'democratic' - than those in most Western democracies, including the US.
Yudhoyono is quite fearless in appealing in very direct terms to his fellow countrymen BECAUSE he knows that they will never tolerate any attempt by extremists to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state.
"or maybe Yudhoyono actually understands what is at stake in the resistance to Islamic supremacism and the advancement of Sharia. Certainly Obama does not."
Nor does Obama give a shit. He is interested in supporting his wife and kids and keeping them happy in the comfort they have become accustomed to. He is a whore of the worst kind. His corporatist amorality not only affects those closest to him but an entire nation. I sometimes find it hard to maintain friendships with people who voted for him and/or refuse to see what he is doing and not doing. Mozoids rely on an executive public official like him to get away with murder and that is exactly what is happening.