Muslim brotherhood tested while Aceh starts rebuilding

Muslim brotherhood tested while Aceh starts rebuilding

Tomi Soetjipto, Reuters/Banda Aceh

Like many Muslims in tsunami-hit Aceh, M. Yusuf looks to his
religion for guidance. But lately he feels empty as he tries to
cope with being thrust from shoe seller to Islamic preacher.

When the giant waves razed his suburb of Kaju in the
Indonesian city of Banda Aceh six months ago, they also killed
its leading Muslim clerics.

Yusuf now is the head of a temporary housing camp for 1,000
refugees in Kaju, and is its unofficial preacher, a role he
laments because of the strain of dealing with the loss of his
wife, six children and home.

But his main disappointment stems from the fact that no
Indonesian Islamic groups from other parts of the world's most
populous Muslim nation have come to help his community.

"No. None have come here," said Yusuf, speaking before leading
dusk prayers.

The Canadian and Indonesian Red Cross have offered to help
fund construction of permanent houses for the refugees, he said.

Finding strength in Islam was natural for Acehnese in the
weeks after the Dec. 26 tsunami left 168,000 people dead or
missing. The province on the northern tip of Sumatra island is
dubbed the "Verandah of Mecca" because it was where Islam first
entered Indonesia centuries ago.

But some survivors said they now needed something more
practical, like job retraining, and complained they were not
getting enough attention from their fellow Muslims in Indonesia.

"They (Indonesian Muslim groups) are concentrating more on
reconsolidating their own strength and rebuilding their branches
(in Aceh)," said Hasballah M. Saad, an Acehnese figure and former
government minister.

That was not the case after the disaster.

Countless Indonesian Muslim groups and individuals rushed to
Aceh to help with relief operations.

A Jakarta-based militant group, the Islamic Defenders Front,
notorious for trashing nightclubs and bars in the capital, won
the hearts of locals for collecting thousands of corpses.

But many of those groups have left Aceh as the region enters A
reconstruction phase, a process in which foreign aid agencies,
including Christian ones, are playing a leading role.

Some Islamic organizations have expressed fears that Christian
groups will try to convert Muslims. At one Islamic boarding
school in Banda Aceh, a teacher said Christians were handing out
sweets to children and saying: "This is from Jesus."

But Indonesian officials in charge of religious affairs in
Aceh said they found no evidence of any proselytizing.

In Thailand, however, an army of Christian volunteers is
rebuilding tsunami-devastated Khao Lak and stirring controversy
as they win new converts in the mainly Buddhist country.

Amid prayers and singing of hymns, 19 villagers were baptized
recently in a jungle waterfall, the latest group to join a new
evangelical church in Khao Lak.

"Through the relief, people see the love of Christ and the
love of God," said Achara Ratanasopon, a feisty Thai Christian
pastor from New York City who led the baptism and oversees aid
projects funded by her church.

Indonesia's second largest Muslim group, Muhammadiyah,
dismissed suggestions it was out of touch with the Acehnese.
A lack of funding had prevented many local organizations from
contributing to reconstruction, said Aslam Nur, deputy secretary
of Muhammadiyah in Aceh.

"We have come up with a program to reach the community,
training and so on, but this depends on funding. The program is
there but the money is not," said Nur, whose Muhammadiyah has the
strongest local base of any Muslim group in Aceh.

Near Banda Aceh in the village of Sibreh, a small Islamic
boarding school -- known as a dayah -- has many tsunami victims.
There, U.S.-based Mercy Corps has stepped in with scholarship
funding for students. It has done the same for 2,000 pupils at a
number of Islamic boarding schools in Aceh.

"The visibility of the dayah are fairly low because they are
not in the tsunami area. They were often overlooked so we saw
there was a need there to be fulfilled," said Mercy Corps
program manager, John Brownlee.

Some tsunami victims have received practical help from their
Muslim counterparts abroad.

A U.K-based group, Islamic Relief, has set up a livelihood
project, teaching skills from carpentry to business management.
"I said to myself, 'I have to do it'. I don't want to go back to
the sea so I signed up," said former fisherman, Munir, 28, after
sliding a plank of wood through an electric saw.