Ba'asyir at the center of controversy

Ba'asyir at the center of controversy

Blontank Poer
The Jakarta Post
Surakarta

Forcing the religious conversion of a state and government and
justifying any means to carry that out. This appears to be the
stigma Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir bears following the
Bali bomb blasts that killed 202 people on Oct. 12 last year.

And so Ba'asyir and his Pondok Pesantren Al Mukmin (Islamic
boarding school) in Ngruki village south of Surakarta have become
part of the picture of today's international terrorist networks.

His deep knowledge of religion, however, has preserved his
composure. It is this imperturbable attitude that has triggered
speculation about Ba'asyir's being the key figure with a cunning,
elusive role in the movement to establish Islamic leadership.

Police have detained him since November last year. They have
charged him with involvement in a series of church bombings on
Christmas Eve in 2000, and a plot to assassinate then vice
president Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Although not yet a suspect in the Bali bombing case, police
believe he took part in meetings to plan the attack.

Nearly all the Bali bombing suspects have admitted to knowing
him, and some said Ba'asyir was present at the planning meetings.

But these accusations have been met with skepticism by those
in Ba'asyir's inner circle, those who claim to know him best.

Strangely enough though, one person who has come to his
defense is a convicted terrorist. Once a student of Ba'asyir, his
name is Muhammad Achwan. He was sentenced to life imprisonment
for blowing up a church in the East Java town of Malang in 1985,
until he received clemency from then president B.J. Habibie and
was released in 1999.

Achwan believes that "other parties" planned the terrorist
moves to intentionally discredit the founder and leader of the Al
Mukmin pesantren.

The likely parties, the erstwhile bomber opined, were highly
militant and zealous Muslims striving to set up a sharia-based
state and government.

They along with their collaborators, military intelligence
operatives working within the government, were the real culprits
of the Bali bombing.

"Ustad (teacher) Abu is a moderate figure and tolerant of
differences," Achwan said.

That's why he attempts to apply the sharia in Indonesia
peacefully and openly through the founding of Majelis Mujahidin
(Islamic defenders assembly). As an amirul mukminin (caliph), he
forbids his followers from committing violence that causes the
innocent to suffer," he explained.

Ba'asyir himself meanwhile chooses to remain silent instead of
debating it all through the mass media.

"He has repeatedly declared he will not be disturbed by
worldly threats as long as his life is not endangered. To him,
being patient with other people's improper treatment is
rewarding," he added

The only flaw by which to corner the Al Mukmin leader is, in
his view, Ba'asyir's association with a co-founder of the
pesantren (Islamic boarding school), the late Abdullah Sungkar,
in opposing the sole state philosophy of Pancasila in the 1980s.

As Sungkar appealed to his supporters not to vote in the 1977
elections, both had to face Soeharto's New Order regime and flee
to Malaysia, where they continued their campaigns against
Soeharto.

Though Soeharto was their common political opponent, Ba'asyir
and Sungkar had different styles of leadership.

While the former was known for his gentleness and patience,
the latter was a rigid and more radical figure, fighting
frontally against Soeharto by training troops, so that followers
of the Abdullah Sungkar became quite militant.

Muhammad Nursalim, a former pesantren student at Ngruki and
now an official in the Sragen regency religious affairs office,
described Sungkar's struggle in his master's degree thesis at
Muhammadiyah University, Surakarta, entitled "The Abdullah
Sungkar faction and NII (Indonesian Islamic State) in the New
Order period".

He maintained that Sungkar built his self-styled network after
he quit NII.

Sungkar called his group Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), which provided
religious teaching to form militant platoons of Muslims as well
as to apply training methods to build paramilitary forces.

JI candidates had to undergo tough phases of selection
including physical drills in martial arts and firearm uses.

When Sungkar died on Oct. 24, 1999, at least 5,000 of his
supporters had been given military training by joining actual
battles in Mindanao, Southern Philippines, and Afghanistan
against the Soviet Union, but the exact number of his men was not
known.

The high militancy and total obedience demanded by Sungkar
reportedly made his group members less inclined to follow
Ba'asyir's style of leadership, yet the possibility of conflict
between both factions has remained obscure.

An ex-member of the Jihad Command in East Java told The
Jakarta Post on condition of anonymity that Ba'asyir compromised
too much with the Indonesian government, and his relatively
tolerant interpretation of sharia, applied through Majelis
Mujahidin, was a big mistake.

"One of the principle tactics of Sungkar's organization was
underground struggle, which prohibited open identities," said
source who was also New Order regime's political fugitive.

He added that therefore, nobody knew for certain the exact
strength of Sungkar's forces both at home, in Malaysia and other
countries.

Such developments may have led most of the JI platoons to
refuse to join Ba'asyir after the death of Sungkar.

The same source pointed out that Ba'asyir failed to meet two
of the seven requirements demanded, specifically battlefield
experience and preparedness to launch covert operations to bring
down the secular government.

When asked to confirm Ba'asyir's model of struggle, Muhammad
Achwan, who would accompany his mentor on visits to East Java,
only briefly commented: "Abu has indeed preferred open
popularization of the sharia over a secretive operation, while
providing political education."

This East Java Majelis Mujahidin devotee admitted that before
the Bali terrorist attack, Ba'asyir had asked him to approach a
radical band suspected of planning violent acts, which met 11
times from the end of August to the end of September among others
in Surabaya, Lamongan and Mojokerto, all in Java.

But all attempts to prevent such acts were to no avail.

According to Achwan, Ba'asyir was convinced that an armed
movement was impossible under current circumstances, and his
stance even strengthened when the foreign mass media launched
massive reports on the linkage between JI and the al-Qaeda
network as indicated in the confession of al-Qaeda operative Omar
al-Faruq.

"If this method is adopted, the American and Indonesian
governments will further impose pressure on the growing Islamic
movement," cautioned Achwan, referring to the issuance of the
government antiterror laws as an example.

Even in Surakarta, where Sungkar built his political career,
his men are small in number. "To my knowledge, those who are real
followers of Ustad Sungkar number less than ten," said M. Rodli,
former chairman of the city's Justice Party branch, who has
conducted investigations and advocated on Ba'asyir's behalf.

Despite their respect for Ba'asyir as an elder, according to
Rodli, they have little, if any, loyalty or obedience toward
Ba'asyir, who in the thesis on the Sungkar faction was mentioned
as the author of Tarbiyah Islamiyah, a mandatory book in the
institution jointly developed with Sungkar.

Ba'asyir's moderate attitude once even surprised Islamic
groups in Surakarta. When the reform faction in the city council
invited him as a resource person in a discussion to draft a
regional regulation on the distribution of liquor in 2000, the
three-party faction firmly rejected the unregulated sale of
alcohol, and expected his blessing.

To the councillors' consternation, the Al Mukmin leader voiced
his tolerance of alcohol distribution as long as no vendors were
allowed to sell near schools or places of worship, while signs
reading "Muslims prohibited" were required at each place where it
would be sold.

More shockingly, Ba'asyir also criticized and rejected acts of
vandalism of food stalls which also sold beer. For what reason?
"Because most of the sellers are economically weak," he stressed.
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