Ba'asyir: Reviled by some, revered by others<\/p>\n
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir is a soft-spoken, smiling Muslim preacher
\nreviled in the West for his alleged terrorist links but revered
\nby his small group of followers as a defender of Islam.<\/p>\n
Ba'asyir, 66, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison
\nThursday after a Jakarta court found him guilty of involvement in
\na \"sinister conspiracy\" that led to the 2002 Bali bombings which
\nkilled 202 people.<\/p>\n
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer once called
\nBa'asyir a \"loathsome creature\" while an Indonesian Islamic
\nmagazine named Ba'asyir its \"Man of the Year\" in 2002.<\/p>\n
\"Ba'asyir is a person we should look up to,\" Sabili magazine
\nsaid in its editorial of the man who admiringly describes Al
\nQaeda leader Osama Bin Laden as a \"true Muslim fighter.\"<\/p>\n
Always dressed in a white robe and shawl, a white skullcap and
\nglasses, Ba'asyir is \"very business-like, outgoing, gregarious,\"
\nsaid Sidney Jones, who has extensively researched the Jamaah
\nIslamiyah extremist network which Ba'asyir was accused of leading.
\nHe is a radical preacher filled with extreme anger at the West
\nbut with a down-to-earth attitude, said Jones.<\/p>\n
\"This is not a person that gives a sense of being in a
\nspiritual dreamworld,\" she said from Singapore.<\/p>\n
Married to housewife Aisyah Baraja, Ba'asyir has two adult sons
\nand a grown-up daughter.<\/p>\n
In the early 1960s he was active in several Islamic student
\norganisations at Al-Irsyad University in his home town of Solo in
\nCentral Java, before founding in 1972 the Al Mukmin Muslim
\nboarding school at nearby Ngruki.<\/p>\n
He and his close friend Abdullah Sungkar, both of Yemeni
\ndescent, were jailed by the Soeharto regime from 1978 to 1982 for
\ninciting people to reject the secular national ideology in favour
\nof an Islamic state.<\/p>\n
They fled to Malaysia in 1985 when the Supreme Court granted a
\nprosecution appeal for a longer sentence. It was there, according
\nto prosecutors, that they officially founded JI in 1993.<\/p>\n
Sungkar died in 1999, a year after Ba'asyir and several other
\nmembers of his Ngruki network returned to Indonesia following
\nSoeharto's downfall.<\/p>\n
From 2000 he devoted more and more time to the Indonesian
\nMujahideen Council, an umbrella group which he heads and which
\nseeks Islamic sharia law, said Jones, who does not regard Bashir
\nas influential in Indonesia generally.<\/p>\n
Ba'asyir, arrested one week after the Bali bombings which
\nauthorities blamed on JI, was later tried for alleged links to
\nbombings and convicted of treason.<\/p>\n
Higher courts overturned the conviction and he served time
\nonly for immigration offences before being re-arrested as he
\nstepped out of prison in April 2004.<\/p>\n
Ba'asyir urged his followers to remain calm and polite during
\nhis just-concluded trial.<\/p>\n
But he maintains that U.S. President George W. Bush, \"the
\nenemy of Allah,\" has pressured Indonesia to incarcerate him to
\nprevent his campaigning for Islamic law.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/baasyir-reviled-by-some-revered-by-others-1447893297",
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"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
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