Efforrts to stigmatize Islam as extremism

By Adian Husaini

JAKARTA (JP): The editorial of The Jakarta Post on Jan. 8, 2001, entitled "Soldiers of fortune", referred to a police statement about the involvement of the "Afghan militia" in the recent Christmas Eve bombing.

The editorial went on to say that the young Asian Muslims, from Indonesia and the Philippines, who took part in the Afghan War were recruited by the CIA in the context of the American Cold War against the Soviet Union. That they were also mercenaries.

The editorial said, "Mercenaries by definition are foreign soldiers hired to fight a war on behalf of their sponsors. This was the nature of the participation of the Indonesian volunteers in the Afghan war."

The editorial was but an attempt to exploit the myth of the "terrorism" of the Afghan mujahideens.

The mujahideens of Afghan, coming from various countries and taking part in the war against the Soviet Union in the 1970s, performed a noble deed. They went there to help their brethren fight communist troops of the Soviet Union who were equipped with sophisticated weaponry.

Calling the mujahideens "mercenaries" is an insult and offense.

The editorial went on to ask that the identities of the Afghan militia be revealed, because with their skills, discipline and experience, they had the potential to launch unrest here.

By its editorial, The Jakarta Post has slapped a stigma on the Indonesian mujahideens to Afghanistan. The newspaper, by demanding that their identities be disclosed, has judged that the bombing perpetrators were Indonesians who fought in the Afghan war.

On Jan. 5, police detective chief Inspector General Engkesman R. Hillep at the National Police stated that among those involved in the bombing in Bandung some have admitted to being members of the Afghan militia. The police also stated that the suspects were members of the militia during 1990-1992.

The police, through a statement by police spokesman Saleh Saaf, later clarified and said the correct term was "Afghanistan volunteers." The term "militia" connotes an orderly and organized group.

Even this clarification was still vague, so much so that only a few publications highlighted the police allegation that the Afghan militia were suspected of the bombings.

There are several points that beg further explanation. Police claimed the suspects admitted to being in Afghan in 1990-1992, when the fact was that at the time the Soviet Union had been expelled from Afghan.

In addition, the police statement was one-sided and the public was not given any opportunity to confirm it. The public, too, still remembers how officials and members of the Indonesian Forum for Peace (FID) have given various statements about the bombing suspects. Some have linked the violence with former military officers of the New Order, others with enemies of President Abdurrahman Wahid, and so on.

Finally, the police statement was also premature and has yet again stigmatized certain Muslim groups, in this case the former fighters of Afghanistan.

The police should have avoided this "stigmatizing" by refraining from giving out the social, communal identities of the suspects or their ethnicity. Police do not need to say, for instance, that the suspects are people of Batak origins, members of Golkar or activists of certain mosques.

Stigmatizing is something the New Order often resorted to in its earlier years. In the 1970s, for instance, the regime shackled mosque-based youth activism by infiltrating their ranks, seducing them into extremism and violence and ultimately creating the image that mosque activists were terrorists. This image effectively stifled the growth of mosque-based youth activities.

The same infiltration and stigmatization was launched again to stifle the influential Dewan Mahasiswa (University Students Council). Whether the same campaign was operating in the context of the Christmas Eve bombings has yet to be clarified, but the need is obvious for everybody to exercise self-restraint and refrain from arbitrary condemnation of any party.

The media, too, should exercise the same restraint and refrain from cultivating suspicions in sensitive cases such as the bombings.

Because, the Muslim community, too--tired of being stigmatized for decades--can have their own suspicions that the bombings were carried out by extremists of another religion seeking not only to further stigmatize Muslims but also to invite public (both domestic and international) sympathy.

Creating the image of an oppressed group is something that Israel Zionist leaders usually did par excellence. The Zionist leaders allowed the massacre of Jews in Europe to create the image of an oppressed group, which benefited in the long run.

In his book, A Hidden History of Zionism, Ralph Schoenman revealed evidence of collaboration between Zionist leaders and Nazi leaders. The Zionist leaders deliberately let the holocaust, the massacre of 6 million German Jews, take place, and used the tragedy as their eternal campaign to elicit world sympathy. They used the campaign to slaughter and massacre the Palestinians, and take over their land.

Many of the Indonesian Muslim activists remember vividly how some military leaders in the past skillfully engineered stigmatization and the creation of situations where Muslims were marginalized and treated as extremists.

Given this history, it is understandable that they now question whether the various recent incidents -- which again stigmatized Muslims -- were yet another campaign by a certain party to marginalize Muslims.

Is it possible the bombings of the churches was part of a campaign to stigmatize Muslims? Wallahu a'lam (only Allah knows), but in such an uncertain situation it would be better if all parties waited until everything is clear before launching attacks indiscriminately.

It would be a pity if The Jakarta Post became part of the conspiracy to stigmatize Islam.

The writer is secretary of KISDI (Indonesian Committee for World Muslims' Solidarity).