Abu Bakir Bashir asks his followers to take their Inner Spiritual Struggles elsewhere. The Saudis asked the same thing of Al-Qaeda, and they honored the deal — for awhile. “Bashir warns against Indon jihad,” from Agence France-Presse, :
HARDLINE cleric Abu Bakar Bashir today told his fellow Indonesian Muslims that if they wanted to go on jihad, they should do so outside the country.
“If you want to go on jihad, do not do it here (in Indonesia), but in the southern Philippines or even in Iraq,” Bashir told members and supporters of the Indonesian Mujahideen Council (MMI) in a sermon at a mosque in Kediri, East Java province, the state Antara news agency said.
Bashir chairs the MMI, an umbrella organisation advocating the implementation of Islamic Sharia law.
His sermon came as he was commenting on the “jihad” by the key players in the 2005 Bali bombings, for which he had been accused of advance knowledge and of having sanctioned the action.
He said that the Bali bombers had been on jihad but unfortunately “not at the right time or place”. He did not elaborate.
“Therefore I ask MMI followers not to imitate them because (their actions) are harmful. They miscalculated,” Bashir said.
Yes, they probably didn’t realize that the West might react with strength.