Here is yet another chapter in our ongoing series, Why We Don’t See More Genuine Islamic Reformers: “Bomb explodes at Indonesian Islam group HQ: police,” from AFP, March 15:
JAKARTA “” A bomb exploded at the office of a moderate Islamic group in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Tuesday, injuring four people including a police officer, police and a witness said.
The device was in a package sent to the office of the Liberal Islam Network (JIL), a grouping of religious intellectuals, in East Jakarta, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told reporters.
“We suspected that it was a bomb. Our officers were trying to tame it when it went off,” he said, adding that the police are investigating the motive.
A witness told local television station MetroTV that the package was addressed to the group’s former director and liberal Muslim scholar Ulil Abshar Abdalla….
Abdalla, who graduated from a US university, is a well-known liberal Muslim figure who espouses pluralism and religious tolerance.
He regularly speaks out against Islamic hardliners through the microblogging website Twitter, where he has 50,000 followers….