A police crackdown dealt a blow to extremists in Indonesia earlier this month but the government’s headaches with political Islam are only going to increase ahead of elections next year, analysts say.
Normally cautious Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono earned praise for a rare swoop on Muslim extremists after scores of stick-wielding radicals attacked a peaceful rally for religious tolerance in Jakarta on June 1.
But analysts said moderate political Islam would pose an altogether more difficult challenge for the “secular” liberal reformers who share Yudhoyono’s vision for the country’s development.
PHOTO: EPA
“In the long term, political Islam is on the rise,” University of Indonesia political scientist Kusnanto Anggoro said.
Anies Baswedan, a political scientist and rector of Paramadina University, said many Indonesians supported the Islamists’ fight to ban the minority Ahmadiyah sect, which does not recognize Mohammed as the final prophet.
“There is growing sympathy,” he said.
The “silent majority” had the attitude of “we like what you do but not the way you do it,” he said, in reference to the hardliners’ violent campaign against the sect.
The push to ban Ahmadiyah has become an obsession for radical groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front, whose militants have threatened “war” on Ahmadiyah and were the target of the police crackdown on Wednesday.
Some 60 Front members were detained but only eight, including leader Rizieq Shihab, remain in custody as official suspects.
LOSING PATIENCE
The crackdown shows the government has lost patience with the violence of religious vigilantes, but it could not ignore the views of increasingly assertive conservative Muslims who want a greater say in national affairs, Baswedan said.
“Right now if the government decides not to ban Ahmadiyah it will face quite a political challenge from Islamic groups,” he said.
Muslim political parties have been watching the developments with interest, trying to gauge the public mood and spot any weaknesses in Yudhoyono’s support with a view to the general and presidential elections next year.
NEW POLITICAL FORCE
Yudhoyono, a reform-minded former general who is allied to the nationalist Golkar party, will be seeking a second term after he became the country’s first directly elected president in 2004.
One of the president’s biggest election challenges is likely to come from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which has emerged as a political force in the past four years.
It is hoping to win 110 seats in the 550-seat parliament in the April general election, compared to the seven it held in 1999.
Although the PKS began as a zealous student movement inspired by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, it owes much of its success to a softening of its Islamic edges and to its clean image.
But there are also widespread suspicions that it has not fully abandoned its radical origins and many point to its support for the ban on Ahmadiyah as a sign that it is not committed to plurality and tolerance.
MODERATE CORE
Nathan Franklin, an Australian academic and researcher in Indonesian political Islam, said that while Muslim conservatives occasionally flexed their muscles, the country’s political center remained moderate and tolerant.
“Indonesia is a fragile country when it comes to sensitive religious issues but at the same time it’s unfair for the vast majority of moderate, tolerant Indonesians to be associated with the hardliners,” he said.
This was also the thrust of a study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released last month, which described the fuss over Ahmadiyah as “worrisome” but not likely to threaten Indonesia’s standing as a pluralist and tolerant country.
“Indonesian voters have overwhelmingly shown that they care far more about health care, education, jobs, poverty and food prices” than about Islamic law, the study said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS