Islamic groups told to consolidate to fight terrorism

Islamic groups told to consolidate to fight terrorism

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Yogyakarta/Surakarta

Muslim groups in the country should consolidate to fight against
terrorism and work to develop healthy religious behavior, instead
of putting the blame on each other or on a Western threat, an
Islamic scholar says.

Moeslim Abdurrahman, a scholar from Muhammadiyah -- the
country's second-largest Islamic organization -- said it was
understandable that Muslims became defensive and were loathe to
link their religion to terror.

"It's only natural. Any religious follower would be upset if
his or her religion is related to terror because no religion
justifies such an evil act," Moeslim said on Monday.

On Saturday, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University
rector Azyumardi Azra criticized Islamic organizations for
speaking out against those who connected a series of bomb attacks
in the country to Islam. Azyumardi said the groups were ignoring
the fact that confessed bombers were avowed Muslims. He chided
them for acting defensively and for being reluctant to give their
full backing to the national antiterror drive.

Islamic groups, he said, made no attempt to solve the problem
by finding out why Muslims were ready to carry out suicide
bombings, neither did they investigate how such extremist
thinking could grow in the country.

Moeslim denied that Islamic organizations tended to be less
supportive of the fight against terrorism, saying they also
empathized with the bombing victims, as many of them were Muslim
too.

"What kind of support we should give, as terrorism is about
politics and related to the global political structure. The most
responsible party to handle this is the security forces."

The important thing, Moeslim said, was for Islamic
organizations to campaign for healthy religious behavior and to
assure the nation that terrorism was a serious threat.

"And an anti-Western political stance is pointless. What are
we going to do, close down all the McDonald's? That would only
make farmers suffer, and I believe most of them are Muslims too,"
he said.

Meanwhile, Vice President Jusuf Kalla's recent call for the
monitoring of several Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) has
sparked more protests.

Kalla said last week that there were only two to three
pesantren which should be closely watched as they were believed
to breed extremists and terrorists by brainwashing their
students. He however refused to mention the name of these
schools.

National and international intention has focused on the Al-
Mukmin boarding school in Ngruki, Central Java, which was founded
by imprisoned extremist Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir. Its
graduates included several of convicted terrorists who bombed
Bali and the J.W. Marriott Hotel.

After the second Bali bombs, International Crisis Group (ICG)
director and terrorism expert Sidney Jones said that there were
18 Islamic boarding schools affiliated to the terror cell Jamaah
Islamiyah in the country, which were used to train jihadis.

Jones also linked these schools with a "very prominent"
university in Surakarta, Central Java.

Farid Ma'ruf, chairman of the Al-Mukmin school's foundation,
said the call to monitor pesantren was a "repressive act" against
Islamic movements.

"Religious freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution, so what
is the legal basis of the government's monitoring? I think it's
just a way to find a scapegoat," Farid, also an executive of the
Ba'asyir-led Indonesian Mujahidin Assembly (MMI), said in
Yogyakarta on Monday.

In Surakarta, Al-Mukmin school director slammed Jones'
statement.

"Sidney Jones's accusation was not backed up by accurate data.
It was a matter of making an international accusation which
always connects Ngruki with terrorism, with the goal of building
a negative image of Islam," Wahyuddin said.

He said police had never gone to Ngruki to investigate the
relationship between the school's graduates with several bombing
cases.

"Police know that nothing can be found here, especially the
accusation that this place breeds terrorists. That's too much."