Danger of cracking down on Islamist groups

Danger of cracking down on Islamist groups

John Sidel, Guardian News Service, London

In the wake of the bomb attack in Bali, media and government
sources have begun to point fingers at a shadowy group called
Jemaah Islamiyah, said to be al-Qaeda's local franchise outlet in
Southeast Asia. The emerging picture is of an Indonesian-based
Islamist terrorist group and of insurgent militant Islam in the
country, if not the whole region.

In all likelihood, the Indonesian security forces will soon
yield to Australian, American, and British pressure and "round up
the usual suspects" associated with this group. However, it is
important to reconsider the assumptions behind this impending
crackdown on "Islam" in Indonesia, and to assess the likely
political consequences.

The arrests of suspected members of Jemaah Islamiyah in the
Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia over the past year have yet
to generate evidence of this group's terrorist activities, or
even of its existence. The security forces in these countries are
eager to impress America with their commitment to the war on
terrorism and have few scruples in their treatment of suspects.
Over the years, groups like Jemaah Islamiyah have also enjoyed
clandestine ties with elements of the Philippine and Indonesian
military and intelligence services, who have used them for
financial and political gain.

Even if Jemaah Islamiyah does not really exist in a formal
sense, there certainly are networks of Islamist scholars,
students and activists in Indonesia who are eager to inculcate a
stronger sense of Islamic identity throughout the region. For
example, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the Muslim cleric accused of leading
Jemaah Islamiyah, has been a vocal critic of secular nationalism
and was elected to head the Indonesian Mujahidin Assembly in
2000.

But Ba'asyir and his students represent a small minority in
the context of Indonesian Islam, which is notable for its
syncretism, pluralism and fragmented political representation.
Under Dutch colonial rule, indigenous aristocrats were retooled
as bureaucrats in western-style secular schools, just as
graduates of Christian missionary schools occupied a privileged
position in the civil service, colonial army and professional
classes.

Thus Christians and secularized Muslims came to occupy a
dominant position in the Indonesian political elite after
independence. And in the first years of the military regime of
Soeharto, the organizations which claimed to represent devout
Muslims in Indonesia were marginalised.

By the 1980s and early 1990s, economic growth, urbanization
and the expansion of the university system brought Indonesians
schooled in a self-consciously Islamic tradition into the urban
middle classes in record numbers, and allowed for their
ascendancy within the political elite.

By the late 1990s, such Muslims were well represented in
parliament, the Cabinet and military. The resignation of Soeharto
in 1998, and the presidency of a self-styled champion of Islam,
BJ Habibie, represented the peak of this Islamic ascendancy.

But this trend was soon to be reversed. Muslim parties did
badly in the 1999 elections. Politicians representing Christian,
secular, and accommodationist Muslims assumed power, culminating
in the rise of Megawati Soekarnoputri to the presidency in 2001
and her party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI
Perjuangan). More than a third of the PDI Perjuangan's MPs are
non-Muslim (mostly Protestants), and virtually none has any
history of Islamic association. In areas plagued by inter-
religious violence, like Maluku and Central Sulawesi, the PDI
Perjuangan is the party of Protestants. Secular nationalism is
entrenched in power in Indonesia today as a partisan political
force.

It is against this Indonesian backdrop that the emergence of
armed Islamist groups like Laskar Jihad and Jemaah Islamiyah must
be understood. After all, alongside the Muslim professionals who
emerged in the 1990s, there were many "professional Muslims" who
enjoyed the boom years for political Islam under Soeharto and
Habibie. Among them were Muslims -- like Abu Bakar Ba'asyir --
who were schooled in a tradition rooted in Indonesia's small
Hadrami Arab immigrant community and closely connected to centers
of Islamic education in the Middle East. Such Indonesian Muslims
nurture an understanding of Islam that stresses its most orthodox
principles, its appeal as a foundation for supra-national
spiritual unity, and its potential as a basis for the exercise of
power. They have been concerned to "purify" the faith of the
accretions of local customs in Indonesia -- promoted by the Dutch
colonial regime and its successors.

For Indonesian Muslims of this ilk, the past few years have
been deeply embittering. Indonesia is now again run by
politicians favoring secular nationalism, with Christians
regaining influence. Outraged by the pro-Christian bias of the
Megawati government in areas of inter-religious conflict, some of
these Muslims are deeply disillusioned with Indonesian democracy
and attracted to the promise of violent action. Small wonder that
an armed group called Laskar Jihad emerged, with the connivance
of elements of the military, to defend Muslims -- and attack
Christians -- in Maluku and Central Sulawesi.

Against this backdrop the past few months have seen the
escalation of pressures on the Indonesian government to crack
down on Islamist networks in the country. It is in this context
that western tourists on Bali (a Hindu island and a PDI
Perjuangan stronghold) have become targets of a terrorist attack,
along with a US consulate on the island and a Philippine
consulate in the predominantly Christian province of North
Sulawesi.

The danger of the impending crackdown is not simply that
trends towards the reduction of military influence in Indonesia
will be reversed in the name of the war against terrorism. In
2004, Indonesia may see its first direct presidential elections,
with Megawati facing off against a Muslim candidate. If
mishandled, the impending crackdown and consequent polarization
could inadvertently help rather than hinder the formation of a
Jemaah Islamiyah -- an Islamic community -- in Indonesia.