Hard-liners step up pressure for JIL to close

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Muslim hard-liners have continued intimidating the Liberal Islam Network (JIL), an organization that promotes pluralism and liberalism in the country, after failing to realize their threat to attack its office in Utan Kayu, East Jakarta, last month.

The radical conservatives are now seeking support from Utan Kayu residents to stop the activities of JIL -- who they accuse of spreading a defiant tenet of Islam -- and are warning the liberal group to close its office by Tuesday evening.

In addition to JIL, several other institutions -- including Galeri Lontar, the Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Information (ISAI), and private radio station Radio 68H, which are all headquartered in the Utan Kayu Community complex -- were told to halt their operations.

Cleric Ustadz Tandjung, who heads the Al-Muslimun mosque in the area, has accused ISAI, Radio 68H and Galeri Lontar of being parts of JIL's undertows for similarly promoting liberalism, pluralism and secularism.

Leaflets have been distributed among local residents, asking them to support the attempt to evict the four institutions from Utan Kayu.

Several figures from JIL and the other threatened institutions, grouped as the Utan Kayu Community, held a meeting on Sunday night with the local district head to discuss the threats from the hard-liners.

"Figures from the Utan Kayu Community prefer to pursue peaceful ways by clarifying our activities here. We told the local district head that we have not committed any crimes, and the leaflets have spread false information against us," Lalang, a staffer working for the ISAI, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

"We believe that the district head has understood the situation. And now, we are organizing a dialog with local religious leaders and other residents living in the Utan Kayu area to make them understand our activities here," he added.

Lalang said the dialog session is planned for Tuesday evening with the local community and religious leaders.

On the same day, activists of JIL, ISAI and other institutions would also hold a news conference at their office compound.

Muslim hard-liners have increased their threats against JIL after the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) in July issued a much- criticized decree outlawing liberalism, pluralism and secularism.

Early in August, hard-liners from the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) had reportedly planned to attack the JIL office, but the threat failed to materialize as the building was tightly guarded by police.

In 2003, hard-liners from the Islamic Community Brotherhood Forum (FUUI) had even declared that the blood of JIL coordinator Ulil Absar Abdalla was halal (permitted under Islamic law), meaning that he was allowed to be murdered by Muslims.

Separately, leader of the country's largest Muslim organizations Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Hasyim Muzadi, appealed to Muslims to not commit acts of violence against others, saying that religions must solve problems rather than creating them.

"Radicalism and liberalism are like a coin. One leads to another. And, I hope that Muslim followers can use their religious thought truly, which respects their own community, as well as that of non-Muslims," he told a news conference at NU headquarters in Central Jakarta.