Author: Jane Perlez
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 3, 2003
The moderate strand of Islam that
absorbed touches of Buddhism and Hinduism, and some mysticism, along its
journey over the centuries here, is being eroded, some fear at a rapid
pace.
The battle for the soul of Islam
in Indonesia is under way. Some have begun to ask whether the Islamists
who want to create a caliphate across the Muslim areas of Southeast Asia
will at the very least eventually succeed in Indonesia.
A group of American experts, headed
by a former United States ambassador to Syria, Edward P. Djerejian, is
scheduled to arrive here in coming weeks as part of a worldwide look at
Islam. Eventually, they will report to the Bush administration on how to
mold the American message to the Muslim world. They are likely to find
some of the same underlying themes in Indonesia as in the Middle East,
where the group has begun its work.
Far-reaching changes in Indonesia's
Islam have been under way for 20 years, says the distinguished historian
of Indonesia, Merle Ricklefs. But the trends were largely hidden, he says,
during the three-decade authoritarian rule of Gen. Suharto, which ended
in 1998.
No one argues about what's causing
it: a political and economic leadership that even after the end of the
dictatorship remains corrupt and inordinately selfish. World Bank statistics
show that indicators of poverty and health improved under the Suharto government.
But these numbers do not mean a lot to the 40 percent of the 220 million
population who, by most estimates, are unemployed.
To compound the social malaise,
the Indonesian military - which commands respect and remains one of the
most revered institutions - is widely regarded as corrupt. During the late
1990's, the army high command tolerated links between some of its officers
and militant Islamic groups. Jemaah Islamiyah, whose spiritual leader Abu
Bakar Bashir was sentenced to four years in jail today, seems not to have
enjoyed military support. But Laskar Jihad, a group that specialized in
fighting Christians in the Maluku Islands, and the Islamic Defenders' Front,
which has vandalized nightclubs and bars in Jakarta, have been linked by
human rights groups to the army.
Adding to this volatile mix came
Suharto's decision in his waning days to court Muslim associations that
he had previously suppressed. With his encouragement, they sent students
to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and many returned with anti-Western and anti-Semitic
ideologies that had been largely absent from Indonesia. This growing connection
with the Middle East developed further in the 1990's, when Saudi Arabian
charities began financing mosques and the large network of Muslim boarding
schools in Indonesia. The highly conservative Wahhabi strain of Islam,
which was largely unknown in Indonesia, filtered into some of the boarding
schools through teachers from Saudi Arabia.
The end of the Suharto government
gave an important impetus to the most extreme of Indonesia's Islamic groups,
Jemaah Islamiyah.
Many of its members, young men in
their 20's and 30's, had been forced into exile in Malaysia, and from there
had gone for training at Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. After 1998 they returned
home to the freer atmosphere of a more democratic Indonesia. They used
familiar stamping grounds - mostly small religious boarding schools, like
Al Mukmin in the village of Ngruki in central Java - to regroup, and plot
their terror attacks.
But Jemaah Islamiyah was only the
most extreme of a number of groups that were galvanized by the events of
9/11 and the American response in Afghanistan. Indonesia's Council of Muslim
Scholars, considered a fairly benign organization, intensified its polemics,
calling on all Muslims of the world to unite against the United States.
The articulation of such common grievances helped fortify Indonesian Islam
with the anti-Western and anti-Jewish ideology of the Arab world in ways
that were quite new.
The growing strength of the militant
groups has been accompanied by adherence to stricter forms of Islam among
mainstream Muslims. In a recent poll by Tempo magazine, the nation's leading
newsweekly, 60 percent of those questioned said they would not object to
the introduction of Sharia, the often harsh Muslim system of justice. A
new political party, the Justice Party, has made the imposition of Sharia
one of its main planks. The party is led by smart, highly educated men
and women, who say they are determined to bring both orthodox Islam and
economic prosperity to Indonesia.
The Justice Party has only a few
seats in the Parliament, but in alliance with other larger Islamic parties
it has pushed legislation calling for such things as a legal right for
Muslims to be treated by Muslim doctors.
So far, none of these bills have
made it into the law books. But each time they come up for discussion they
serve as the catalyst for volatile debates and make some Westerners wonder
whether they should view Indonesia as a creeping Islamic state.
The president of Indonesia, Megawati
Sukarnoputri, is the daughter of Sukarno, the nation's founder and a determined
secularist. She is reputed to be a secularist, too, but unlike her forceful
father, she remains mostly above the fray. She has said virtually nothing
about Jemaah Islamiyah, or any of the militant groups. The leaders of the
major moderate Muslim organizations have refrained from criticism, too.
It is not appropriate, they argue, for one Muslim to criticize another.
Mr. Djerejian's group, which includes
Dr. Shibley Telhami, professor for peace and development at the University
of Maryland, and John Zogby, the president of the polling firm, Zogby International,
is supposed to figure out how to win friends for the United States in the
Muslim world. If they are finding it a hard slog in the Middle East, they
are unlikely to find it much easier in Indonesia.
