Indonesian Muslims drawing a clear line from terrorists

R. William Liddle, Professor of Political Science, The Ohio State University, Ohio, U.S.A.

Many years ago, when I was a young and impressionable scholar, I had an opportunity to interview a senior American embassy political officer who had served several tours in Indonesia. We were interrupted by an American journalist, just arrived in Jakarta and on a tight schedule, with an assignment to write about Islam. In my presence the officer described at length the differences between sunni and syiah (shi'ite) Islam.

The syiah, he said, were represented by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, or the Awakening of the Traditional Religious Scholars), the largest Muslim organization in the country. They were the biggest threat to American interests because they lived in the villages, rejected modern life, and were plotting to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state. I was astounded by his analysis, mainly because virtually all Indonesian Muslims are sunni, but also because even then it was clear to academic observers that NU was a force for moderation, not radicalism, in Indonesian political life.

No U.S. embassy officer today would make such basic mistakes. Judging from news reports on the sentencing of militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, however, many foreigners still misread Indonesian Islamic politics. For example, a prominent risk consultant is quoted as saying that the Ba'asyir verdict demonstrates a lack of governmental will to crack down on terrorists, apparently forgetting that just last month Amrozi, the Bali bomber, was sentenced to death. He was also assuming, too facilely, that the courts automatically do what the government tells them to do.

The New York Times lead story claimed that "today's verdict will reinforce the view of many Indonesians, including senior political leaders, that the United States has exaggerated the terrorism problem here." Another piece, appearing on the same day, asserts that "The moderate strand of Islam that absorbed touches of Buddhism and Hinduism is being eroded, some fear at a rapid pace." Alarmingly, "Some have begun to ask whether the Islamists who want to create a caliphate across the Muslim areas of Southeast Asia will at the very least eventually succeed in Indonesia."

Results of a survey are cited to the effect that 60 percent of the respondents would not object to the introduction of the sharia, "the often harsh Muslim system of justice."

In the Indonesian media, the reaction to the verdict was strikingly different. Most headlines said that Ba'asyir had been found guilty and sentenced to four years, which was indeed the heart of the story. Some expressed surprise that he received such a long sentence, given the circumstantial nature of much of the evidence and the prosecutor's dependence on witnesses who could not be brought to Jakarta.

The most important witness, Omar al-Faruq, spirited away by the U. S. after he was captured in West Java last year, had not even been directly questioned by Indonesian authorities. Moreover, Ba'asyir is reported by the widely-respected International Crisis Group (ICG) to have been sidelined years ago by the most militant members of Jamaah Islamiyah, the organization which he co-founded in Malaysia in the mid-1990s.

"Ba'asyir undoubtedly knows far more than he has been willing to divulge about JI operations," concluded the ICG in December 2002, "but he is unlikely to have been the mastermind of JI attacks." No foreign media, to my knowledge, referred to the ICG study in their analyses of the Ba'asyir verdict.

The real trend in Indonesian Islamic politics in the last year has been to draw a brighter line between the violent few represented in organizations such as Jamaah Islamiyah and the huge majority of Muslims, moderates and conservatives, who condemn violence.

After the Bali bombings, many moderates tried to protect Ba'asyir and JI; for a time they even took seriously the popular conspiracy theories blaming Mossad, the CIA, or rogue elements in the Indonesian army. With good reason: For decades President Soeharto and his generals plotted against politically active Muslims, often falsely accusing them of violent conspiracies.

The moderates, and even many conservatives, were turned around by good police work. Amrozi, Imam Samudra, and the other arrested bombers were clearly Muslims, though misguided in their beliefs, who belonged to the JI network. Early this year, a young Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera) conservative told me that "we know who the terrorists are, and we are determined to keep them out of our party."

The other two Muslim parties, the United Development Party (PPP) and Crescent Star Party (PBB), though in favor of an Islamic state, are also opposed to violence. The three parties together won less than 15 percent of the vote in the 1999 elections. According to the most reliable polls, those percentages are about the same today.

Are Muslim terrorists a threat to Indonesian society and to the United States? Undoubtedly they are. The Bali and JW Marriott bombs, made in Indonesia but targeted at Americans, are clear proof. Is moderate Islam being eroded by the terrorists or by the conservatives who share some of the terrorists' goals if not their means? Most of the evidence points in the other direction.

The moderates control Indonesian Islam's key social and educational organizations, NU and Muhammadiyah (NU's modernist counterpart), each of which has tens of millions of members. Moreover, the survey cited by The New York Times also shows that devout Muslims who are socially and politically active mostly join and vote for non-Muslim political parties, including President Megawati Soekarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan).

While they support the sharia in general terms (as indeed good Muslims everywhere are obliged to do), they oppose stoning for adultery and amputation for thievery. In short, Indonesian Islam remains a beacon of moderation.