SMALL NAIL, BIG HAMMER

 

                          Creating victims, fuelling hate

Indonesian President Joko Widodo, a leader prone to blunders (he initially took the Trump no-worries approach to Covid-19 now ravaging the Republic), may have made another serious error.  He’s banned a Muslim organisation that’s become the loudest and most militant critic of his government.

By making it illegal to belong to the Front Pembela Islam (FPI – Islamic Defenders’ Front} and join its activities has given the shambolic wackadoos the chance to find common purpose and gain credibility.

If the democratically elected government is so frightened of a rabble with an estimated 200,000 followers that it needs to banish it into the shadows to brew hate, then it seems Widodo is running scared.

Instead of using a prominent Muslim cleric to publicly confront the FPI and demolish its vile teachings with better interpretations of Islam, the government has chosen to strike using the secular mallet of the law. 

The person best qualified to challenge the FPI is vice president Ma’ruf Amin.  The high-standing Islamic scholar was picked as Widodo’s running mate in the 2019 election to offset the scuttlebutt that his boss isn’t a fair dinkum Muslim.  Instead he’s said to be a Javanese Abangan, a follower of a milder, more accepting form of the faith recognising local pre-Islamic beliefs.

However Amin, 77, has so far used his office more as a sinecure than a platform to disabuse the radicals’ line that the administration has lost its moral compass by, among other sins, bedding Chinese business.

As reported in this column, the FPI was formed late last century– allegedly with the help of the military - after the fall of the Republic’s strongman president, General Soeharto.  During his 32-year authoritarian rule any spark of religious militancy was crushed by army boots.

 

Some leaders fled to the Middle East or Malaysia where they covertly stayed in touch with supporters plotting the introduction of Sharia (Islamic) law.  In the chaos following the 1998 economic crisis, student-led riots against the corrupt regime and resignation of Soeharto, the demagogues slipped back to their homeland and roused the rabble.

One of the most notorious returnees was cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, leader of the militant Jemaah Islamiyah (JI - Islamic congregation).  Its gangs were responsible for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing which killed 202, including 88 Australian holidaymakers.

Now 82, Ba’asyir remains in jail after being convicted of inciting violence and plotting terror. 

JI has been proscribed in Indonesia since 2008.  It’s one of 27 organisations forbidden in Australia.  According to Australian National Security: ‘JI remains a threat to the region.  JI continues to exist as a functional terrorist organisation and remains committed to its long-term strategy to overthrow the Indonesian Government and establish a pan-Islamic state in South-East Asia—through violence if necessary.’ 

The FPI is a separate swarm, but its younger leader Rizieq Shihab, 55, has filled the vacant post of hardline frothy-mouthed demagogue.  For the past three years he’s been in self-imposed exile in Saudi Arabia, returning to Jakarta on 10 November to such riotous applause that roads to the international airport were closed for several hours.

Countries which outlaw ‘illegal’ (meaning unregistered) organisations – as Indonesia has with the FPI – justify their actions with slippery phrases like ‘disturb public order and national security.’

Indonesia’s new catch-all law lists ‘activities that were in violation of the law such as violence, sweeping (raids on homes and businesses), incitement and other matters.’  But the likelihood that the FPI hoons will not regroup under another name or give up because a law has been proclaimed is fanciful.

Writing in The Conversation academics Lee Jarvis from East Anglia Uni, and Tim Legrand from the ANU, claimed debarring is ‘more political symbolism than effective counter-terrorism.

 ‘This scepticism dovetails with the work of other researchers ... who doubt that contemporary terrorist groups are appropriate targets for listing because they tend not to exist as coherent organisations with a fixed identity and an identifiable membership.’

 

Amnesty International Indonesia Executive Director Usman Hamid said the law ‘has the potential to discriminate against and violate the right of association, and will further undermine civil freedoms in Indonesia.’

 

Banning may sometimes be necessary to control immovable extremists.  But it’s also the favourite tool of tyrannical governments and often used against mild critics whose only weapons are reason and facts.

The blacklisting follows the police killing six FPI members on a toll road near Jakarta last month, and then arresting Rizieq Shihab on charges of breaking Covid-19 lockdown rules by encouraging mass rallies.  The government has rejected calls by NGOs for an inquiry into the shootings.

Days later the police said they’d discovered a JI military-style training centre in Central Java.  Separately they arrested two JI leaders allegedly involved in the Bali bombing after 18 years on the run.  By now the populace was well prepared to accept a ban on the FPI.

Christmas in Indonesia sometimes excites zealots to try their hand at bomb-throwing.  This year targets were few as the coronavirus closed churches, though a building in Sigi, Central Sulawesi was torched.   Local families claimed it was their church where they gathered to pray; authorities countered it wasn’t a ‘house of worship’ but a ‘service post’.

The Indonesian Constitution is supposed to guarantee freedom of worship, though the legislature has decreed citizens must follow one of six approved religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

There are scores of other ancient faiths which the government labels traditional practices.  Endy Bayuni, a senior editor at The Jakarta Post and executive director of the International Association of Religion Journalists wrote that minority faith communities have lived in constant fear of persecution this century.

‘The fate of the followers of Ahmadiyah (a messianic movement) and Shiism (the branch of Islam dominant in Iran, Bahrain and Iraq) illustrates Indonesia’s failings in protecting freedom of religion or belief for everyone. Thousands of their followers have been lingering in shelters, unable to go home, others are facing harassment.’

The peak non-government authority Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI – Islamic Scholars’ Council) has declared Ahmadiyah and Shiism ‘deviant’ giving the FPI mobs an excuse to attack.

In a Cabinet reshuffle at the end of December Widodo announced a new Minister for Religious Affairs.

Yaqut Cholil Qoumas is a former chairman of Ansor, the 800,000-strong youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Islamic mass organization. Ansor’s militia wing Banser sometimes musters its green-uniformed gangs to protect churches. (The FPI militias wear white.)  

Banser weren’t always the good guys; in the mid 60s they helped massacre thousands of real or imagined Communists after the coup which brought Soeharto to power.

Qoumas promised he’d protect minorities but within a day he copped a blast from conservative Muslim leaders.  He then said there’d be no special treatment.

‘No one is really asking for special treatment,’ wrote Bayuni. ‘If only he (Qoumas) could protect all religions, particularly religious minorities, against harassment and outright persecution, which would be sufficient.

‘This is hardly a picture that Indonesia wants to convey to the world. The nation of 270 million people takes pride in its diversity of all kinds, from race, ethnicity and culture to tradition, language and religion.

‘Living up to the spirit of the state motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) however has become more challenging now with the increasing use of religion as political identity that encourages religious intolerance.’

At his swearing-in Qoumas said he wanted to ‘turn religion into an inspiration, not an aspiration’.  With others bent on wrath, the minister will be praying for wisdom.

Update: The FPI has reportedly changed its name to Front Persatuan Islam (United Islam Front). The government has also announced terrorist leader Abu Bakar Ba'asyir will be released from jail on 8 January after completing his sentence.

First published in Pearls and Irritations, 5 January 2021: https://johnmenadue.com/small-nail-big-hammer/

 

 

 

 

JOKOWI'S THREATS FROM WITHIN

 

                                          An early test of strength

 

Just a year into its second five-year term, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s government is under threat. Opposition is being powered by a hate group led by a xenophobic preacher demanding the nation abandons democracy for a sharia state. How serious is the menace?  We’ll know next week.

 

On Wednesday 2 December the 212 Alumni Brotherhood plans a mass rally at Medan Merdeka (freedom square) the one hundred hectare park in central Jakarta to commemorate a shameful event four years earlier.

 

That’s when about half-a-million Muslims from the capital and bussed in from the regions protested against the city’s governor Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama.  They alleged he’d committed blasphemy by commenting on the right of non-Muslims to lead Muslims – their evidence a doctored video.

 

The ethnic Chinese and a Christian is a double minority in the Republic of 270 million where almost 90 per cent claim to follow Islam. Purnama was jailed for two years.  Denouncers included a senior Islamic scholar Ma’ruf Amin, 77. 

 

He used to chair the world’s largest Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama (revival of the guardians of Islamic doctrine) with a claimed membership of 57 million.  Now he’s the nation’s vice president and has since apologised for testifying against Purnama.

 

The leader of what’s now known as 212 (after the date) is Rizieq Shihab, 55, – self-styled Great Imam for life of the Front Pembela Islam (FPI Islam Defenders’ Front).  As reported earlier he came back to his homeland on 10 November after three years exile in Saudi Arabia. 

(For those with long memories the jubilant welcome reminded of the return of Ayatollah Khomeini.  He was the Shia Muslim leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which overthrew the Shah.  Shia Islam is banned in Indonesia where people follow the Sunni denomination.)

 Police claim they expected only a few supporters would greet the portly cleric at the airport.  Instead they were overwhelmed by maybe 50,000 or more, densely packed and with few wearing masks.  Flights were disrupted and roads blocked for up to seven hours.  More worrying is that some police were caught posting messages of support for Shihab.

 President Joko Widodo immediately sacked the city’s two top police chiefs for being unprepared, suggesting that intelligence is as sloppy as the response to the pandemic – rapidly approaching half a million cases and 16,000 deaths. Shihab’s plans were known well in advance.

His estimated 15 million backers across Java, swelled by rent-a-crowd mobsters, is a formidable force.    The police, who can probably muster no more than 600,000, claim they’ll not let the 212 rally go ahead next month, setting the stage for confrontation.

It’s not just the government worried about the FPI destroying law and order, particularly after Shihab allegedly called for the killing of blasphemers and celebrating the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty in Paris last month.  NU chair Said Aqil Siradj issued this appeal:

 ‘Fellow Muslims in this country, please don‘t get easily provoked by some groups who want to divide us and break up this Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia ... Let’s fight against this common enemy.’

For many Shihab is not the enemy but their saviour, come to fulfil destiny.  In 1945 the committee writing the Jakarta Charter – which became the Constitution - included a seven-word sentence obligating Muslims to follow sharia religious law. 

To keep the multi-faith nascent nation intact Mohammad Hatta, later to become vice president, persuaded delegates to drop the clause.  Since then radicals like Shihab have demanded the words be returned, the secular government be purged of liberal policies and kafir (unbeliever) ministers sent packing.

The close economic dependence on the Reds of godless China, now Indonesia’s major trading partner and lender, is also another target.

The fact that Indonesia is in a recession with ten million unemployed, poverty increasing and the Covid-19 toll the highest in Southeast Asia has created fertile ground for dissent.  The government has managed the pandemic badly leaving much running to the regions.

Particularly concerning for Widodo are the actions of Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan, 51, the man who replaced Purnama.  Before winning his present job with his campaign endorsed by Shihab, Baswedan was Education Minister in the first Widodo administration.  In 2016 he was abruptly sacked by the president after less than two years in the job.

Before being shown the door the US-educated academic and former university rector looked set to shake up Indonesia’s dysfunctional school system.  For a while he was internationally famous for his Indonesia Mengajar (teaches) project putting uni grads into remote schools for a year.

At the time Baswedan told this writer he didn’t know why he’d been booted, but the dogs were barking he’d been critical of Widodo who saw the intellectual as a threat.  This now looks the case as he’s widely tipped to be a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

As soon as Shihab had a shower and a change of his pure white gear he was off not to the Palace but the Governor’s home for chats.  These were billed as a meeting of ‘scholars’. 

That’s not a word associated with Widodo, who’s best described as a modest doer with no regal, revolutionary, military - or Arab ancestry as claimed by Baswedan and Shihab.  The Javanese commoner’s more rabid opponents label him communist, ignoring the fact the party has been banned since he was a toddler drawing stick figures in the mud outside a riverbank squat.

Although he follows religious rituals the president isn’t strikingly pious.  Till recently his wife Iriana often went bareheaded in public, though the move to wearing jilbab seems to be growing more fashionable by the day. 

Sympathy for a more religious society quietly spread by scarfed women wouldn’t suit the turbaned roughies.  They want change by cracking heads.

 

(First published in Pearls & Irritations, 24 November 2020: 
https://johnmenadue.com/an-early-test-of-strength/  )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HATE STIRRER THREATENS JOKOWI

 

               Return of the dangerman preacher

It was a full-on snub to history and a challenge to the social and business reforms of President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo.  More worrying is the likelihood of a return to faith-based hate politics in the world’s most populous Muslim country. 

November 10 is Indonesia’s Heroes’ Day commemorating the 1945 Battle of Surabaya, a bloody clash in the East Java city between war-hardened allied forces backing the return of the colonial Dutch and young revolutionaries armed with bamboo spears.

But the thousands who gridlocked Jakarta on that day this month cutting off car and bus access to the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and delaying flights for hours were not brave revolutionaries. They were the pliant followers of a Muslim priest with a criminal record who wants to turn our giant neighbour into an Islamic state and away from its two-decade journey towards full democracy.

Rizieq Shihab – self-styled Great Imam for life of the Front Pembela Islam (Islam Defenders’ Front) – returned to his homeland last Tuesday after three years exile in Saudi Arabia.  He fled to the kingdom after police alleged offences involving pornography (nude pictures on his cellphone) and insulting Pancasila.

This is the nation’s five-point ideology - religious devotion, humanitarianism, nationalism, consultative democracy, and social justice.  Pancasila was devised by first president Soekarno and his colleagues as a foil to zealots demanding an Islamic state. Although taught in schools so all citizens can chant the words, it’s still considered by extremists to be too secular.

The charges have reportedly since been dropped.

Shihab, regularly tagged ‘firebrand’ by the Indonesian media and involved in ‘hatemonger rallies’, told the welcoming mobs ignoring social distancing rules that his objective was ‘to fight with the people for the moral revolution’.  This was left undefined.  However his real aim is to make mischief which he’ll most likely do in spades.

 Earlier he said his mission was fighting the Omnibus Law.  This is being heavily promoted by the government and corporates as red-tape shredding legislation to create jobs and attract foreign investors.  It also reduces some green-tape environment protections to speed developments.  Although the law has been passed, fist-shaking continues outside government buildings ringed by barbed wire.

Overseas businesspeople watching the FPI’s kerb-to-kerb whitecapped herds crippling the capital might well reconsider plans to put their money into Indonesia.  The Republic suddenly appears heading for division after some earlier clever quelling of disunity following last year’s presidential election.

Before the return of the demagogue, the usually peaceful demos against the new law were running out of energy.  The placard-waving students and unionists were also leaderless. Shihab has refuelled their tanks by stirring religion into an industrial relations row largely concerned with the cropping of employees’ rights so bosses can make hiring and firing easier.

The father of seven and son of an Arab-Indonesian family, Shihab, 55, studied in Malaysia before working as a teacher in a madrasah (Islamic boarding school).  He created the FPI in 1998, the year when second president Soeharto was felled by student riots after 32 years in power. 

Members formed vigilante gangs, notorious for their ‘sweeping’ of hotels during the holy month of Ramadan, seeking people allegedly breaking Islamic laws on dress and behaviour. They also trashed and firebombed businesses they claimed were offending religious norms.  Targets were often ethnic Chinese.

In 2003 Shihab was jailed for seven months for inciting violence.  In 2008 he was convicted on a similar charge and put behind bars for 18 months.  Being labelled a criminal burnished his credentials among his troops and enlarged his status.

The FPI’s biggest triumph came in December 2017 when he led a half-million strong protest again the Christian and ethnic Chinese governor of Jakarta.  Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama was accused of blasphemy – and later jailed for two years.

Shihab claimed he then went to Mecca as a pilgrim and could not return because he’d been ‘exiled’ by the government.  The charge was denied although it’s clear the administration wanted him out of the way during last year’s presidential election campaign.

Shihab supported Widodo’s rival, former general Prabowo Subianto, now the Minister for Defence.  The surprise invitation to join the ministry neutered much opposition to the government and gave Subianto the chance to busy himself on arms-buying sprees abroad while Widodo concentrated on domestic affairs.

That was before the pandemic which has so far infected 444,000 and killed almost 15,000, though these figures are widely believed to be under-estimates.  With the country in recession, there’s nothing in the kitty to purchase bang-bangs, so the ambitious billionaire Prabowo has nowhere to go and little to do.

Whether he’s prepared to side with Shihab again in the hope of contesting the presidency in 2024 when he’ll be 73 – or even scheming to dethrone the president - is the worry that’s now returned with the preacher.  

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 13 November 2020: 
https://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-return-of-the-dangerman-preacher/