Ba'asyir's: A historical view

Onghokham, Historian, Jakarta

For weeks the Indonesian press has reported on the difficulties and reluctance of the Indonesian police and security forces in arresting or interrogating the old, frail cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, founder of a religious school (pesantren) in Ngruki on Central Java's north coast. However, finally the police arrested Ba'asyir.

Is Ba'asyir somehow untouchable because of political reasons or other reasons? With regard to the religious establishment there are always those who could offer resistance; The arrest of, say the Archbishop of New York or the Archbishop of Canterbury would create a big political stir.

In our age we have seen the mightiest earthly king, the Shah of Iran overthrown by a frail old cleric, the Ayatollah Khomeni; the most totalitarian of regimes in Eastern Europe were even more recently being heavily influenced by the Roman Catholic clergy.

No wonder Indonesian security forces hesitate in dealing with Ba'asyir, whatever the reasons. This is an entirely new attitude departing from usual practices in Indonesia.

Under Soeharto there were the ruthless Tanjung Priok killings involving the death of a religious leader, the practice of mysterious killers who executed arbitrarily, without trial and police warrants, thousands of suspected criminals and trouble makers.

In view of this still relatively recent arbitrary policies of police and security forces, its attitude towards the Ba'asyir case is indeed entirely new; especially with regard to the centuries-old principle of state supremacy and security as its prime objective. Is there suddenly a new consciousness of the limits of state power?

It is not politics but primarily human rights considerations and principles of innocence before proven guilty that has likely led to this stance. If the latter is the case, then this is progress, aside from one's political sympathies or religious allegiance. Human rights cases are always political, thus the Ba'asyir case might have both aspects.

The Ba'asyir case should be depoliticized and be made into a purely criminal case for both domestic as well international purposes -- as the whole terrorist question should be -- instead of the silly issue of being an Islam-versus-Christian (Western)- conflict.

First, terrorism is always criminal. Although its events, if successful, are always spectacular such as the bombings of the World Trade Center in New York or the Kuta beach nightclubs in Bali, history has shown that such acts can never bring victory over modern nations and states or cause their overthrow.

As for the conflict between Islam and the West, for the large part of the 20th century during the Cold War there was more cooperation rather than conflict between Islam and the West.

For a real conflict or clash of civilizations similar to the author Samuel Huntington's model, one really needs two equal powers of equal political and military strength -- and there are none of those in Islam which can match the wealth, power and strength of the West, let alone its current standard bearer the United States. Within the Islamic world, in the foreseeable future, there is no country or society, not even Iraq, which could become anything near such a power.

The only civilization which could challenge the West is that of East Asia (Japanese and Chinese civilizations). However, both the Western civilization and the Eastern civilizations are too esoteric and too isolated from each other to invite a conflict or even a skirmish.

Terrorism nowadays is not a conflict but a phenomena of the lunatic fringe and the best way to treat it is not by counter terrorism of the state -- which is equally useless as history has shown, such as in the case of Indonesia under Soeharto.

If the new hesitancy of the state in dealing with the Ba'asyir case is because of concerns over human rights and legal procedures, then the security apparatus deserves praise.

Whatever the state's hesitancy in the Ba'asyir case was, relations from now on between the state and society might well have undergone a big change -- hopefully because of reformasi.