'Pesantren' nurtures militants

'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.