Part 1 of 2 : The west and Islam in Indonesia and the true jihad

Juwono Sudarsono, Indonesian Ambassador, United Kingdom, London

The most frequently asked question after Sept. 11, 2001 was: What were the reasons for so much hatred against the West among al-Qaeda and its followers? The answers have varied, depending on one's educational background, social standing and cultural perspective of responders across the Muslim world.

As an Indonesian Muslim academic turned temporary diplomat my tentative answer would be: Sept. 11, 2001 was in a sense an inevitable consequence of the combination of America's pervasively dominant role as the world's "24/7" superpower in all of its dimensions -- political, economic, military, scientific, cultural -- and the unique combustible atmosphere of modern Middle East political economy. American preponderance begets defiance most tellingly in many Middle east societies whose governments often fail to address much needed comprehensive political and economic reforms. Anti-Westernism in the Middle East are linked to the anger and desperation of the Muslim poor against established oil-rich governments, perceived to be rampantly corrupt.

Fortuitous circumstances created the Osama bin Laden phenomenon whose virulently anti-American ideology were based on his personal marginalization and ostracism by the Saudi royal family and his particular view of Middle East regional and domestic politics since the early 1990s. Bin Laden's personal psychological scars defined his main goal which was to fuel acerbic hatred against selected Arab governments -- especially in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt -- whom he saw as corrupt and immoral clients of United States economic imperialism and purveyors of Western moral decadence.

The perpetrators of the hijacking of the fatal planes in New York and Washington were middle-class Saudi and Egyptian nationals who saw their governments as being hand-in-glove partners of the American "infidels" since 1981, made worse by supporting Israel politically, militarily and economically. Bin Laden and his followers' main objective was to polarize the Islamic world of the ummat, instigate the cause of an Islamic revolution in those Arab states allied to Western interests and regain the moral high ground for what he believed was the interest of Islam's true believers across the world.

In fact, the United States was not the prime target of bin Laden's real objective; it merely represented the modern Hubal, symbol of contemporary idolatry and of that most ubiquitously powerful "Christian" nation supporting what he deemed as corrupt Arab governments who exploited and usurped power from the Muslim ummat in their respective countries.

It is this defining intra-Muslim and intra-Arab ideological struggle which explains more cogently the 9/11 phenomenon and which to my mind explains more cogently than analyses centering on the notion of "challenge and response" of Arnold Toynbee, the patronizing theme of "Islam on the defensive" of Bernard Lewis or the popular but misplaced "clash of civilizations" of Samuel Huntington. Understanding the ideological struggle within political Islam in the Middle East, in Africa and in East Asia , sheds more light on 11 September than rehashing variations on the theme of permanent discord between Islam and the West.

In the contemporary world of the Middle East, leaders of Arab governments that for reasons of economic and military strategy are perceived as clients of the fulcrum of global idolatry are despised by bin Laden and his followers as hypocrites, munafiqun. These leaders are also invariably demonized as those who formally believe in Islam but reject its precepts after being poisoned by the greed and predatory disposition of Western interests in the oilfields of the Middle East.

Worse, they were branded as mere apostates, since they were depicted as never having embraced "true" Islam in the first place. Al-Qaeda ideology derives much of its precepts from the more extremist interpretation of the Salafis, who believed in the imperative of the return to the pure teachings of the Prophet. In the view of the Salafis, all states with Muslims majorities must apply the sharia' exclusively. Failure to adopt it constituted idolatry.

The extremist versions of Islam further maintain that it is the duty of the purist to go on the path of jihad against those governments that do not adopt the sharia as state identity and that these despicable regimes should therefore be overthrown by violent means. In the Declaration of War against the Americans in 1996, Osama bin Laden saw himself as having common cause with members of the Islamic Jihad in Egypt whose members had been involved in the assassination of president Anwar Sadat in October 1981. Both groups viewed members of the Egyptian government and the Saudi royal family as having renounced Islam both by refusing to apply al-Qaeda's view of the sharia as the basis for political life and because of their dependence on American economic patronage and military protection.

For us in Indonesia, events in the Middle East often resonate quickly into our domestic situation. What happens in the Middle East may affect our future, politically, economically, even strategically. But the vast majority of Indonesian Muslims also believe that Indonesia can provide an alternative to political desperation in the Middle East. Our tradition of enriched discourse and constructive dialogue about the need for all members of the Islamic ummat throughout the world to come to terms with contemporary Western dominated globalization has been scrutinized by many scholars of Islam. The true jihad is to improve oneself and our Muslim communities. Western dominance can be overcome by using our brains, skills and knowledge to gain leverage and restructure the world's political and economic system into a more equitable international order.