'Pesantren' nurtures militants

Agus Maryono, The Jakarta Post, Purwokerto, Central Java

Central Java Police Chief Insp. Gen. Didi Widayadi said on Tuesday that several pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) in the province were believed to be home to followers of militant group Jamaah Islamiyah (JI).

Didi, nevertheless, refused to disclose the names of the pesantren due to technical reasons, but stressed that police would watch their activities closely.

Police recently accessed files, saved in the laptop of Imam Samudra, a suspected JI member tried for his role in the Bali bombings last year. The files named pesantren across the country that had developed hard-line tenets.

Earlier, West Java Police Chief Insp. Gen. Dadang S. Garnida declared that a number of districts in that province were believed to be home to extremists advocating sharia and are now under tight surveillance, to prevent the possibility of further terrorist attacks.

Noer Iskandar al-Barsany, chairman of Robithoh Ma'ahid Islamiyah, an association of pesantren, based in Central Java, concurred with Didi, saying that several pesantren had become safe havens for JI followers, including Ngruki in Surakarta.

Ngruki is led by Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, who is currently on trial for treason and faces a possible 15-year jail term.

"But we can count on our fingers the number of pesantren that have developed extreme tenets and I believe that hundreds more pesantren in Indonesia promote peace as the truth of Islam and also nationalism," said al-Barsany, who is also a member of the country's largest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU).

"For the time being, I warn the country of the possible infiltration of pesantren by certain individuals," said al- Barsany.