Indonesian Muslims drawing a clear line from terrorists

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.